Yankees, that he did not intend that the fierce Miamis, Shawnees and
Kickapoos should do so." However this may be, it is evident that from
the time of the breaking up of the Indian council on the Miami, that
Brant and the British agents did all that lay within their power to
frustrate the American negotiations with the Wyandots and Delawares at
Fort Harmar. According to reports reaching the ears of General St.
Clair, stories were placed in circulation among the tribes that in case
they attended the treaty, that the Americans would kill them all, either
by putting poison in the spirits, or by inoculating the blankets that
would be presented to them, with the dreaded smallpox. Brant, after
coming within sixty miles of the fort, turned back to Detroit, taking
all the Mohawks with him, and urging back the oncoming tribes of the
Shawnees and Miamis. "It is notorious," says President Washington, in a
letter to governor Clinton, of New York on December 1st, 1790, "that he
(Brant) used all the art and influence of which he was possessed to
prevent any treaty being held; and that, except in a small degree,
General St. Clair aimed at no more land by the treaty of Muskingum than
had been ceded by the preceding treaties."

Thus did the British government, through its duly authorized agents, its
governor and army officers, retain the posts belonging to the new
republic, encourage the tribes in their depredations, and defeat the
pacific intentions of the American people, and all from the sordid
motives of gain. On April 30th, 1789, when George Washington was
inaugurated as the first President, every savage chieftain along the
Wabash, or dwelling at the forks of the Maumee, was engaged in active
warfare against the people of the United States, largely through the
instrumentality of the British officials.

CHAPTER XI

JOSIAH HARMAR

--_The first military invasion of the Northwest by the Federal
Government after the Revolution._

The treaty of Fort Harmar, on January 9th, 1789, so far as the Wabash
tribes were concerned, was unavailing. The raids of the Miamis and the
Shawnees continued. Murders south of the Ohio were of almost daily
occurrence. For six or seven hundred miles along that river the
inhabitants were kept in a perpetual state of alarm. In Kentucky,
killings and depredations took place in almost every direction; at Crab
Orchard, Floyd's Fork and numerous other places. Boats were constantly
attacked on the Ohio