y discovered that he had left Faulkner behind.
He now dispatched Major James Fontaine with a part of the cavalry to
locate that officer. About this time Captain John Armstrong, who was in
command of a little company of thirty regulars marching with the
militia, informed Hardin that a gun had been fired in front of them
which he thought was an alarm gun, and that he had discovered the tracks
of a horse that had come down the trail and had returned. Hardin with a
dare-devil indifference paid no attention. He moved rapidly on without
scouts and without flankers. Armstrong now warned Hardin a second time.
He said that he had located the camp fires of the Indians and that they
must be close at hand. Hardin rode on, swearing that the Indians would
not fight.

All at once the army marched into the entrance of a narrow prairie,
flanked on each side by heavy timber. At the far end of the prairie a
fire had been kindled and some trinkets placed in the trail. The front
columns came up to these baubles and halted--the whole detachment, save
Faulkner's company, was in the defile. To the right and left of them,
concealed in the underbrush, were three hundred Miamis, led by the
Little Turtle. The Indians had divided and "back-tracked" the trail, and
were now watching the Americans enter the trap. At the moment the army
halted, a furious fire was opened, and all but nine of the militia at
once fled, carrying Hardin along with them. The company of Faulkner,
coming up in the rear, suddenly saw two horsemen approaching. Each of
them had a wounded man behind him covered with blood. The fugitives were
yelling: "For God's sake retreat! You will all be killed! There are
Indians enough to eat you all up!" The regulars, however, true to
tradition, stood their ground. All were stricken down in their tracks
except five or six privates, and their captain and ensign. Captain
Armstrong sank to his neck in a morass, and the savages did not find
him. "The Indians remained on the field; and the ensuing night, held the
dance of victory, over the dead and dying bodies of their enemies,
exulting with frantic gestures, and savage yells, during the ceremony."
The captain was a witness of it all. The scene of this conflict was at
what is now known as Heller's Corners, eleven miles northwest of Fort
Wayne, at the point where the Goshen road crosses the Eel river.

On the day of Hardin's defeat the main body of the army had moved down
the north bank of the Ma