es and corn,
and returning the next day, for it is no hardship for the Indians to
live without; they make themselves perfectly comfortable on meat alone;
and as for houses, they can build with as much facility as a bird does
his nest." Speaking of this campaign and of its effects on the Miamis,
Roosevelt says that "the blow was only severe enough to anger and unite
them, not to cripple or crush them. All the other western tribes made
common cause with them. They banded together and warred openly; and
their vengeful forays on the frontier increased in number, so that the
suffering of the settlers was great. Along the Ohio people lived in
dread of tomahawk and scalping knife; the attacks fell unceasingly on
all the settlements from Marietta to Louisville."

The expedition of Hamtramck against the Kickapoo towns on the Vermilion
river was a failure. He destroyed the Indian village at the site of the
old Shelby farm, near Eugene, but the warriors being absent, he returned
to Vincennes. Some local historian has written a bloodcurdling
description of the merciless massacre of old men, women and children by
Hamtramck's army, but this tale is an injustice both to the worthy Major
and the soldiers under him. The only truthful part of this sketch is
that "the adjoining terrace lands were filled with thousands of the
greatest varieties of plum bushes and grape vines and it was known as
the great plum patch." Since General Harrison's march to Tippecanoe the
crossing at this river has been known as "the Army Ford."

CHAPTER XII

SCOTT AND WILKINSON

--_The Kentucky raids on the Miami country along the Wabash in 1791._

The effects of Harmar's campaign were soon apparent. In the closing
months of 1790, the citizens of Ohio, Monongahela, Harrison, Randolph,
Kanawha, Green-Briar, Montgomery, and Russel counties, in western
Virginia, sent an appeal for immediate aid to the governor of that
state, stating that their frontier on a line of nearly four hundred
miles along the Ohio, was continually exposed to Indian attack; that the
efforts of the government had hitherto been ineffectual; that the
federal garrisons along the Ohio could afford them no protection; that
they had every reason to believe that the late defeat of the army at the
hands of the Indians, would lead to an increase of the savage invasions;
that it was better for the government to support them where they were,
no matter what the expense might be, than to comp