s
should command the valleys of the Wabash and the Maumee, and while
breathing forth accents to deceive the credulous, were arming the red
men with the instruments of war.

On the sixteenth of May, the American prisoner, Thomas Rhea, captured by
a party of Delawares and "Munsees" arrives at Sandusky. An Indian
captain is there with one hundred and fifty warriors. Parties are coming
in daily with prisoners and scalps. Alarm comes in on the twenty-fourth
of May that a large body of American troops in three columns are moving
towards the Miami towns. The Indians burn their houses and move to Roche
de Bout, on the Maumee. Here are Colonels Joseph Brant and Alexander
McKee, with Captains Bunbury and Silvie, of the British troops. They are
living in clever cabins built by the Potawatomi and other Indians,
eighteen miles above Lake Erie. They have great stores of corn, pork,
peas and other provisions, which, together with arms and ammunition,
they are daily issuing to the Indians. Savages are coming in in parties
of one, two, three, four and five hundred at a time, and receiving
supplies from McKee, and going up the Maumee to the Miami villages.
Pirogues, loaded with the munitions of war are being rowed up the same
stream by French-Canadians. They are preparing for an American attack.

Rhea hears some things. While he is on the Maumee he tells Colonel McKee
and other British officers that he has seen Colonel Thomas Proctor on
his way to the Senecas and has talked with him. That Proctor told him he
was on his way to Sandusky and the Miami villages, and that he expected
the Cornplanter to accompany him and bring about peace; that he
(Proctor), expected to get shipping at Fort Erie, The British officers
who hear these things, say that if they were at Lake Erie, Proctor would
get no shipping. The Mohawks and other Indians declare that if Proctor,
or any other Yankee messenger, arrives, he will not carry back any
message. Simon Girty and one Pat Hill assert, that Proctor should never
return, even if he had a hundred Senecas with him.

On the ninth of March, 1791, the secretary of war issued orders to
General Charles Scott of Kentucky, to lead an expedition against the Wea
or Ouiatenon towns on the Wabash. The expedition was not to proceed
until the tenth day of May, as hopes were entertained that Proctor might
negotiate a peace. The force to be employed was to consist of seven
hundred and fifty mounted volunteers, including offic