nia had only partly filled her quota. She had sent forth
substitutes, old and infirm men, and boys. The troops from Kentucky had
seemingly brought into camp every old musket and rifle in the district
to be repaired. There was a scarcity of camp kettles and axes. The
commissariat was miserably deficient. To add to the confusion, the
Kentucky militia were divided in their allegiance between a certain
Colonel William Trotter and Colonel John Hardin. Hardin was fearless,
but extremely rash; Trotter was wholly incompetent. In two or three days
the Kentuckians were formed into three battalions, under Majors Hall,
McMullen, and Ray, with Trotter at their head. Harmar, an old army
officer of the revolution, who felt a contempt for all militia, was in
sore dismay, for the hasty muster was totally lacking in discipline, and
impatient of restraint.

In numbers, as Colonel Roosevelt observes, this army was amply
sufficient to do its work. It consisted of three battalions of Kentucky
militia, one battalion of Pennsylvania militia, one battalion of light
troops, mounted, and two battalions of the regular army under Major John
Plasgrave Wyllys, and Major John Doughty; in all, fourteen hundred and
fifty-three men. There was also a small company of artillery, with three
small brass field pieces, under Captain William Ferguson. But to fight
the hardy and experienced warriors of the wilderness in their native
woods, required something more than hasty levies, loose discipline, and
inexperienced Indian fighters. Harmar was not a Wayne. The expedition
was doomed to failure from the very beginning.

The details of the march along Harmar's trace to the site of the present
city of Fort Wayne it is not necessary to give. The army moved slowly,
and gave the British agents under Alexander McKee plenty of time to
furnish the redskins with arms and ammunition. The star of the Little
Turtle was in the ascendant. He was now thirty-eight years of age, and
while not a hereditary chieftain of the Miamis, his prowess and cunning
had given him fame. The Indians never made a mistake in choosing a
military leader. He watched the Americans from the very time of their
leaving Fort Washington and purposed to destroy them at the Indian town.

On the fourteenth of October the army reached the River St. Marys,
described by Captain John Armstrong as a pretty stream, and Hardin was
sent forward with a company of regulars and six hundred militia to
occupy Miamitown