re long after peace had been declared. In the
wilderness north of the Ohio they had their villages, from which they
issued time after time to attack the white settlements to the south and
east. No one knew when or where they would strike, and every village and
hamlet along the frontier was liable to attack at any time. The farmer
tilling his fields was shot from ambush; the hunter found himself
hunted; children were carried away to captivity, and women, looking up
from their household work, found an Indian on the threshold.

The land which the Indians held was so beautiful and fertile that
settlers ventured into it, despite the deadly peril, and in 1787, the
Northwest Territory was formed by Congress, and General Arthur St.
Clair appointed its governor. A Scotchman, brave but impulsive, with a
good military training, St. Clair had made an unfortunate record in the
Revolution. Put in command of the defenses of Ticonderoga in the summer
of 1777, to hold it against the advancing British army under Burgoyne,
he had permitted the enemy to secure possession of a position which
commanded the fort, and he was forced to abandon it. The British started
in hot pursuit, and several actions took place in which the Americans
lost their baggage and a number of men. St. Clair had really been placed
in an impossible position, but his forced abandonment of the fort
impressed the public very unfavorably. He still had the confidence of
Washington, who assigned him to the important task of governing the new
Northwest Territory, and subduing the Indians who overran it. With
Braddock's bitter experience still vividly before him, Washington warned
St. Clair to beware of a surprise in any expedition he might lead
against the Indians, and the events which followed showed how badly that
warning was needed.

In the fall of 1791, St. Clair collected a large force at Fort
Washington, on the site of the present city of Cincinnati, and prepared
to advance against the Miami Indians. He had fourteen hundred men, but
he himself was suffering with gout and had to be conveyed most of the
way in a hammock. By the beginning of November, the army had reached the
neighborhood of the Miami villages, and there, on the morning of the
fourth, was surprised, routed and cut to pieces. Less than five hundred
escaped from the field, the Indians spreading along the road and
shooting down the crazed fugitives at leisure. St. Clair's military
reputation had received its