lands have been ever since, until now there are no public lands left
worth having.

The Ohio Indians knew nothing of all this, or as little as they have
ever known of the fate of their ancient homes on the frontier which we
have pressed further and further westward. They held in their stubborn
way that the line between them and the whites was still the Ohio River,
as it had been for fifty years; and they made war upon the invaders
wherever they found them. At times they gathered force for a great
battle, and in the first two of these battles they were the victors,
but in the third they were beaten and their strength and spirits were
broken. In 1790 General Harmar destroyed the towns of the Miamis on the
Wabash; but they ambushed his retreat and punished his fifteen hundred
men so severely that he was forced back to the Ohio. In 1791 General
Arthur St. Clair led an army against the Indians in the Maumee country,
and was attacked and routed with greater havoc than the savages had ever
yet made of the whites, except perhaps in Braddock's defeat. In 1792
General Anthony Wayne set about gathering another army for the Indian
campaign. He moved into the enemy's country slowly, building forts in
Darke County and Mercer (where St. Clair was routed) as he advanced. In
1794, at the meeting of the Auglaize and Maumee, twenty miles from the
last post, which he named Fort Defiance, he finally met the tribes in
great force, and defeated them so thoroughly that for sixteen years they
never afterwards made head against the Americans.

At this day we can hardly imagine the dismay that the rout of St. Clair
and the slaughter of his men spread through the Ohio country. He was
a gallant officer, the governor of the Northwest Territory, and the
trusted friend of Washington. It is true that his army was largely the
refuse of the Eastern States, picked up in the streets of the larger
towns and lured into the wilderness with the promise of three dollars a
month; that these men were badly fed, badly clothed, and badly drilled;
and that they were led by a general whose strength and spirits were
impaired by sickness. But with them was a large body of Kentuckians and
other backwoodsmen, skilled in Indian warfare, and eager for the red
foes with whom they had long arrears of mutual injury to bring up; and
the hopes of the settlers rested securely upon these. The Indians were
led by Little Turtle, one of their greatest war chiefs, and at the point