on and save themselves as best they could. The Indians kept
up a hot pursuit for a distance of four miles. Then, surfeited with
slaughter, they turned to plunder the abandoned camp; otherwise there
would have been escape for few. As it was, almost half of the men in
the engagement were killed, and less than five hundred got off with no
injury. The survivors gradually straggled into the river settlements,
starving and disheartened.

The page on which is written the story of St. Clair's defeat is one of
the gloomiest in the history of the West. Harmar's disaster was dwarfed;
not since Braddock and his regulars were cut to pieces by an unseen
foe on the road to Fort Duquesne had the redskins inflicted upon their
hereditary enemy a blow of such proportions. It was with a heavy heart
that the Governor dispatched a messenger to Philadelphia with the news.
Congress ordered an investigation; and in view of the unhappy general's
high character and his courageous, though blundering, conduct during
the late campaign, he was exonerated. He retained the governorship, but
prudently resigned his military command.

The situation was now desperate. Everywhere the forests resounded with
the exultant cries of the victors, while the British from Detroit and
other posts actively encouraged the belief not only that they would
furnish all necessary aid but that England herself was about to declare
war on the United States. Eventually a British force from Detroit
actually invaded the disputed country and built a stockade (Fort Miami)
near the site of the present city of Toledo, with a view to giving
the redskins convincing evidence of the seriousness of the Great White
Father's intentions. Small wonder that, when St. Clair sought to obtain
by diplomacy the settlement which he had failed to secure by arms,
his commissioners were met with the ultimatum: "Brothers, we shall be
persuaded that you mean to do us justice, if you agree that the Ohio
shall remain the boundary line between us. If you will not consent
thereto, our meeting will be altogether unnecessary."

It is said that Washington's first choice for the new western command
was "Light-Horse Harry" Lee. But considerations of rank made the
appointment inexpedient, and "Mad Anthony" Wayne was named instead.
Wayne was the son of a Pennsylvania frontiersman and came honestly by
his aptitude for Indian fighting. In early life he was a surveyor,
and in the Revolution he won distinction as a d