General Knox still feared English hostility to this move, and he instructed St. Clair to “make such intimations as may remove all such disposition.” These intimations, however, were better to follow, than precede, the possession of the post, unless circumstances dictated otherwise, as it was “not the inclination of the United States to enter into a contest with Great Britain.”[119]
St. Clair never reached Miamitown. Badly trained and inexperienced, his army of 1,400 men suffered one of the most terrible defeats ever inflicted on American forces. Five hundred and thirty-two men fell before Little Turtle’s Indians on the site of Fort Recovery, Ohio. The situation was now critical. The Indians now attacked the frontier with impunity and another defeat might mean the complete alienation of the West from the new union. At this crucial point, General Anthony Wayne, hero of Stony Point in the Revolution, was appointed commander-in-chief of the American army. It is not necessary to give in detail the long months of preparation of Wayne’s “Legion” and the swift campaign which was carried out in the Maumee valley. Wayne cut the Indian forces in two by feinting toward Miamitown, then moving between it and the English Fort Miami at the mouth of the Maumee. Before the various tribes could reorganize fully, the “Legion” turned on the Indian forces to the east. At Fallen Timbers, a short distance from Toledo, on August 20, 1794, Wayne’s army met and defeated the red men. The Indian power in the Northwest was for the time being shattered and Wayne moved down the Maumee to complete his task, the construction, near the site of the old Kiskakon, of a new American stronghold in the Northwest—Fort Wayne.
[1]“Kekionga” is said to mean “blackberry bush”, this plant being considered an emblem of antiquity because it sprang up on the sites of old villages. This theory rests on the statement of Barron, an old French trader of the area. However, the word “Kekionga” is more likely a corruption of Kiskakon. The Kiskakons or “cut tails” were the principal tribe of the Ottawas who lived on the Maumee at a very early time, for which reason this river was sometimes called the “Ottawa”. _Archeological American_, 1,278; “Relation of Sieur de Lamothe Cadillac, 1718” _Wisconsin Historical Collections_, XVI, p. 353.