The Land of the Miamis. Barce Elmore
too great a slaughter, interfered with the movement of the troops, and shortened the lines. The great object of the Indian tactics was always to flank their enemy, therefore an extension of the lines was highly desirable when entering into action. "In fighting Indians, there was no shock to be given or received, and a very open order was therefore attended with two very great advantages; it more than doubled the length of the lines, and in charging, which was an essential part of the system, it gave more facility to get through the obstacles which an action in the woods presented."
A system was also developed whereby, in case the Indians attempted to flank the enemy, they were met by a succession of fresh troops coming from the rear to extend the lines. When encamped, the troops were to assume the form of a hollow square, with the baggage and cavalry, and sometimes the light infantry and riflemen, in the center. A rampart of logs was to be placed around the camp, to prevent a sudden night attack, and to give the troops time to get under arms, but this rampart was not intended as a means of defense in daylight. "To defeat Indians by regular troops, the charge must be relied upon; the fatality of a contest at long shot, with their accurate aim and facility of covering themselves, was mournfully exhibited in the defeats of Braddock and St. Clair. General Wayne used no patrols, no picket guards. In Indian warfare they would always be cut off; and if that were not the case, they would afford no additional security to the army, as Indians do not require roads to enable them to advance upon an enemy. For the same reason (that they would be killed or taken), patrols were rejected, and reliance for safety was entirely placed upon keeping the army always ready for action. In connection with this system for constant preparation, there was only a chain of sentinels around the camps, furnished by the camp guards, who were placed within supporting distance."
The outline and adoption of this system of tactics shows that both Washington and Anthony Wayne were fully aware of the dangerous nature of their savage adversaries; that they had a wholesome respect for both their woodcraft and military discipline, and that they regarded the conquest of the western wilderness as a task requiring great circumspection and military genius.
CHAPTER VII
REAL SAVAGES
– The savage painted in his true colors from the standpoint of the frontiersman.
The poets and philosophers who dwelt in security far from the frontier posts of danger, have been much disposed in the past to extol the virtues of the savage and bewail his misfortunes, at the expense of the rugged pioneer who had to face his tomahawk and furnish victims for his mad vengeance. They went into rhapsodies when speaking of the "poor Indian," assuming that in his primitive state, before he was corrupted by contact with the manners and customs of the white man, he represented all that was pure, good and simple, and that only after the European came, did this child of nature take on that ferocity and savagery that made his name the terror of the wilderness. They said that he was cruelly and unjustly despoiled of his lands and possessions; driven like a wild beast before the face of the settlements, and by fraud and force deprived of every right that he had enjoyed. These philosophers, while thus impeaching civilization, were always ready to condemn what they termed as the "rude frontiersmen," the men who originally made it possible that the land might be inhabited, the soil brought to a state of cultivation, and the arts and sciences brought to bear upon the wild forces of nature. They were especially severe in their animadversions upon the Kentuckians. They denounced their raids upon the Indian towns and villages along the Scioto and the Wabash as barbarous and uncalled for. They pointed to the fact that the Kentuckians pursued the Indians with a fierce and relentless hatred, using the scalping knife, and burning down their cabins and corn fields, forgetting at the same time the thousands of Kentuckians cruelly slain, the carrying away into captivity of pregnant women and innocent children, and the horrible tortures ofttimes inflicted on the aged and the helpless.
It must never be forgotten that despite his stoicism in facing danger, his skill in battle, his power to endure privation, and his undoubted valor and bravery, that the Indian was a savage, and entertained the thoughts of a savage. Toward those who, like the French, pampered his appetites and indulged his passions to secure his trade, he entertained no malice. The lazy, fiddling Canadians who dwelt in Kaskaskia and Vincennes, had no ambition to absorb the soil or build up a great commonwealth. The little land they required to raise their corn, their vines and their onions on, aroused no savage jealousies. But from the first moment that the Americans came through the gaps and passes of the Blue Ridge, and swept down the waters of the Ohio, with their women and children, their horses and cattle, the savage scented danger. These men were not traders; they came to set up their cabins and to build homes. The wild dwellers in the wilderness must be tamed or swept back. Conflict was inevitable; war certain. On the one hand was a grim determination to advance civilization; on the other, just as grim a determination to resist it. The savage, employing the same arts in his wars with the white man as he did in his wars with his fellow savage, used stealth and cunning, the ambuscade, the scalping knife, and the tomahawk, and tortured his victims at the stake. A terrible hatred was engendered, that meant death and extermination. In the sanguinary struggles that followed, many outrages were no doubt perpetrated by lawless white men upon the Indians. Such men as Lewis Wetzel are no credit to a race. But there is no sufficient ground either for the exaltation of the savage, or the condemnation of men like Boone, Kenton, Hardin and Scott, who stoutly fought in the vanguard of civilization. It was a war for supremacy between white man and red, and the fittest survived. The wild hunters of the forest and river, gave way to farmers and woodsmen, who made the clearings, built their cabins, and laid the foundation for the future greatness of the west. The passing of the tribes was a tragedy, but it would have been a deeper tragedy still, had savagery prevailed.
Among the Indians of the northwest there was one tribe that attained a considerable fame. In all their forays into Kentucky and Virginia the Wyandots fought with the most fearless bravery and the most disciplined skill. Their conduct at the battle of Estel's Station met with many words of praise from Mann Butler, the Kentucky historian. It was well known among the settlements that the Wyandots treated their captives with consideration, and that they seldom resorted to torture by fire. Though few in numbers, they acquired the acknowledged supremacy in the confederation of the northwest, were intrusted by Wayne at the treaty of Greenville with the custody of the great belt, the symbol of peace and union, and were given the principal copy of the treaty of peace. Between the Wyandot and the Ottawa, however, and the Wyandot and the Potawatomi, there was a striking divergence. If the Wyandot represented the highest order of intelligence among the savages of the northwest, the Potawatomi represented one of the lowest. He was dark, cruel, treacherous and unattractive, and proved a willing tool for murder and assassination in the hands of the English. There was no place on earth for the chivalrous Kentuckian and the treacherous Potawatomi to dwell in peace together, and the imparting of some idea of the true nature of this Indian will now engage our attention.
When the Dutchman put flint-locks and powder into the hands of the Iroquois, one of the tribes that he drove around the head of the great lakes was the Potawatomi. Where did they come from? The Jesuit Relation says, from the western shores of Lake Huron, and the Jesuit Fathers knew more about the Algonquin tribes of Canada and the west than all others. All accounts confirm that they were of the same family as the Chippewas and Ottawas. From the head of Lakes Huron and Michigan they were forced to the west and then driven to the south. In 1670 it is known that a portion of them were on the islands in the mouth of Green bay. They were then moving southward, probably impelled by the fierce fighting Sioux, whom Colonel Roosevelt so appropriately named the "horse Indians," of the west. At the close of the seventeenth century they were on the Milwaukee river, in the vicinity of Chicago, and on the St. Joseph river in southern Michigan. They had gone entirely around the northern, western and southern sides of Lake Michigan, and were now headed in the direction of their original habitations.
According to Hiram W. Beckwith, the Potawatomi were the most populous tribe between the lakes and the Ohio, the Wabash and the Mississippi. Their debouch upon the plains of the Illinois has already been mentioned. This was about the year 1765. The confederacy among them, the Kickapoos and the Sacs and Foxes, resulted in the extermination of the old Illinois tribes, and after that extermination, the Kickapoos took possession of the country around Peoria and along the Vermilion river, the Potawatomi of eastern and northern Illinois, while the Sacs and Foxes went farther to the west. After the treaty of