and
surprise. Congress aided by voting two thousand troops for six months,
besides two small regiments of regulars. But everything went wrong.
Recruiting proved slow; the men who were finally brought together were
poor material for an army, being gathered chiefly from the streets and
prisons of the seaboard cities; and supplies were shockingly inadequate.

St. Clair was a man of honest intention, but old, broken in health, and
of very limited military ability; and when finally, October 4, 1791,
he led his untrained forces slowly northwards from Fort Washington, he
utterly failed to take measures either to keep his movements secret
or to protect his men against sudden attack. The army trudged slowly
through the deep forests, chopping out its own road, and rarely
advancing more than five or six miles a day. The weather was favorable
and game was abundant, but discontent was rife and desertions became
daily occurrences. As most of the men had no taste for Indian warfare
and as their pay was but two dollars a month, not all the commander's
threats and entreaties could hold them in order.

On the night of the 3d of November the little army--now reduced to
fourteen hundred men--camped, with divisions carelessly scattered,
on the eastern fork of the Wabash, about a hundred miles north
of Cincinnati and near the Indiana border. The next morning, when
preparations were being made for a forced march against some Indian
villages near by, a horde of redskins burst unexpectedly upon the
bewildered troops, surrounded them, and threatened them with utter
destruction. A brave stand was made, but there was little chance of
victory. "After the first on set," as Roosevelt has described the
battle, "the Indians fought in silence, no sound coming from them save
the incessant rattle of their fire, as they crept from log to log, from
tree to tree, ever closer and closer. The soldiers stood in close order,
in the open; their musketry and artillery fire made a tremendous noise,
but did little damage to a foe they could hardly see. Now and then
through the hanging smoke terrible figures flitted, painted black
and red, the feathers of the hawk and eagle braided in their long
scalp-locks; but save for these glimpses, the soldiers knew the presence
of their somber enemy only from the fearful rapidity with which their
comrades fell dead and wounded in the ranks."

At last, in desperation St. Clair ordered his men to break through the
deadly cord