es constantly hung
on his flanks, making attacks on his convoys of provisions, and picking
off the packhorses. On the morning of the seventeenth of October, a
force of ninety non-commissioned officers and men under Lowry and Boyd,
who were escorting twenty wagons loaded with grain, were suddenly
assaulted about seven miles north of Fort St. Clair. Fifteen officers
and men were killed, seventy horses killed or carried away, and the
wagons left standing in the road. Nothing daunted, Wayne pushed on. On
the twenty-third of October, he wrote to the Secretary of War that, "the
safety of the western frontiers, the reputation of the Legion, the
dignity and interests of the nation, all forbid a retrograde maneuver,
or giving up one inch of ground we now possess, until the enemy are
compelled to sue for peace."

In the meantime General Charles Scott had arrived from Kentucky with
about one thousand mounted infantry and had camped in the vicinity of
Fort Jefferson, but the season was so far advanced, that Wayne now
determined to send the Kentuckians home, enter into winter quarters, and
prepare for an effectual drive in the spring. Unlike his predecessors,
Wayne entertained no distrust of the frontiersmen, but determined to
utilize them with telling force. The hardy riflemen were quick to
respond to a real leader of men. They looked on the wonderful bayonet
practice, the expert marksmanship of the Legion, and the astonishing
maneuvers of the cavalrymen with great admiration. When they went to
their homes for the winter they were filled with a new confidence in the
government, and in its ability to protect their firesides. The
vigilance, the daring, and the unflinching discipline of the continental
general, gave them assurance. Fort Greenville was now erected on a
branch of the Big Miami, and here Wayne established his headquarters. In
December, eight companies of infantry and a detachment of artillery
erected Fort Recovery, on the spot made memorable by St. Clair's defeat.

At the opening of the year 1794, "the relations between Great Britain
and the United States had become so strained," says Roosevelt, "that
open war was threatened." On the tenth of February, Lord Dorchester
addressed a deputation of prominent chiefs of the northwestern tribes as
follows: "Children: I was in the expectation of hearing from the people
of the United States what was required by them: I hoped that I should be
able to bring you all together, and ma