On This Day: U.S. Army suffers decisive loss to Native American Confederacy - Nov. 4, 1791
(edited from Wikipedia)
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St. Clair's defeat was a battle fought on 4 November 1791 in the Northwest Territory of the United States. The U.S. Army faced the Western Confederacy of Native Americans, as part of the Northwest Indian War. It was "the most decisive defeat in the history of the American military" and its largest defeat ever by Native Americans.
The Native Americans were led by Little Turtle of the Miamis, Blue Jacket of the Shawnees, and Buckongahelas of the Delawares (Lenape). The war party numbered over 1,000 warriors, including many Potawatomis from eastern Michigan. The opposing force of about 1,000 Americans was led by General Arthur St. Clair. The forces of the American Indian confederacy attacked at dawn, taking St. Clair's men by surprise. Of the 1,000 officers and men that St. Clair led into battle, only 24 escaped unharmed. As a result, President George Washington forced St. Clair to resign his post, and Congress initiated its first investigation of the executive branch.
Background
In the 1783 Treaty of Paris, which ended the American Revolutionary War, Great Britain recognized United States sovereignty of all the land east of the Mississippi River and south of the Great Lakes. The native tribes in the Old Northwest, however, were not parties to this treaty, and many of them, especially leaders such as Little Turtle and Blue Jacket, refused to recognize American claims to the area northwest of the Ohio River.
The young United States government planned to raise funds via the methodical sale of land in the Northwest Territory. This plan necessarily called for the removal of both Native American villages and squatters.
During the mid and late 1780s, a cycle of violence in Indian-American relations and the continued resistance of Native nations threatened to deter American settlement of the contested territory, so John Cleves Symmes and Jonathan Dayton petitioned President Washington and Secretary of War Henry Knox to use military force to crush the Miami.
A force of 1,453 men under Brigadier General Josiah Harmar marched northwards from Fort Washington on 7 October 1790. The campaign ended in disaster for the United States. On 19–22 October Harmar committed detachments that were ambushed by Native American forces defending their territory. Suffering more than 200 casualties, Harmar ordered a retreat back to Ft. Washington.
Washington then ordered General Arthur St. Clair to mount a more vigorous effort by the summer of 1791.
Lieutenant Colonel James Wilkinson led a raid intended to create a distraction that would aid St. Clair's march north. In the Battle of Kenapacomaqua, Wilkinson killed 9 Wea and Miami, and captured 34 Miami as prisoners, including a daughter of Miami war chief Little Turtle. Many of the confederation leaders were considering terms of peace to present to the United States, but when they received news of Wilkinson's raid, they readied for war. Wilkinson's raid thus had the opposite effect, uniting the tribes against St. Clair instead of distracting them.
Command structure
The Native American forces did not have a formal command structure, and the overall planning and leadership has been a source of debate. The different nations were grouped by similar language groups in a crescent-shaped formation at the start of the battle.
Campaign
On the evening of 3 November, St. Clair's force established a camp on a high hill near the present-day location of Fort Recovery, Ohio, near the headwaters of the Wabash River. A native force of around 1,000 warriors, led by Little Turtle and Blue Jacket, established a large crescent surrounding the camp. They waited in the woods until dawn, when the men stacked their weapons and paraded to their morning meals. Adjutant General Winthrop Sargent had just reprimanded the militia for failing to conduct reconnaissance patrols when the natives struck, surprising the Americans and overrunning their ground.
The center, consisting of the Miami, Shawnee, and Lenape, first attacked the militia, who fled across the Wabash and up the hill to the main camp without their weapons. The left and right wings of the Native American formation flanked the regulars and closed in on the main camp, meeting on the far side. Within 30 minutes, the 1,400 warriors had completely encircled the U.S. camp.
[U.S. battalions fixed bayonets and charged] the central native position. Little Turtle's forces gave way and retreated to the woods, only to encircle [and destroy them].
After three hours of fighting, St. Clair called together the remaining officers and, faced with total annihilation, decided to attempt one last bayonet charge to get through the native line and escape. Supplies and wounded were left in the camp. As before, Little Turtle's army allowed the bayonets to pass through, but this time the men ran for Fort Jefferson. Ebenezer Denny wrote that the fastest ran, leaving the slow and wounded behind. The retreat quickly turned into a rout.
Casualties
The casualty rate was the highest percentage ever suffered by a United States Army unit.
Historian William Hogeland calls the Native American victory "the high-water mark in resistance to white expansion. No comparable Indian victory would follow."
Aftermath
The confederacy reveled in their triumph and war trophies, but most members of the force returned to their respective towns after the victory.
The British, surprised and delighted at the success of the Natives they had been supporting and arming for years, stepped up their plans to create a pro-British Indian barrier state that would be closed to further settlement and encompass what was then known as the Northwest Territory. But in 1794 the government in London reversed course and decided it was necessary to gain American favor since a major war had broken out with France. London put the barrier state idea on hold and opened friendly negotiations with the Americans, leading to the Jay Treaty of 1794.
Washington was outraged when he received news of the defeat. St. Clair asked for a court-martial to gain exoneration and planned to resign his commission after winning it. Washington, however, denied him the court-martial and forced St. Clair's immediate resignation.
Investigation
The House of Representatives began investigating the disaster. It was the first Congressional Special Committee investigation as well as the first investigation of the executive branch.
Washington established, in principle, the position that the executive branch should refuse to divulge any papers or materials that the public good required it to keep secret and that at any rate, it was not to provide any originals. That is the earliest appearance of the doctrine of executive privilege, which later became a major separation of powers issue.
The final committee report sided largely with St. Clair by finding that Knox, Hodgdon, and other War Department officials had done a poor job of raising, equipping, and supplying St. Clair's expedition. However, Congress voted against a motion to consider the committee's findings and issued no final report. St. Clair expressed disappointment that his reputation was not officially cleared.
[Army Expansion]
Washington urged Congress to raise an army capable of conducting a successful offense against the American Indian confederacy, which it did in March 1792 by establishing additional army regiments, adding three-year enlistments, and increasing military pay. That May, it also passed two Militia Acts. The first empowered the president to call out the militias of the several states. The second required free, able-bodied white male citizens of the various states between the ages of 18 and 45 to enroll in the militia of the state in which they resided. Washington would use the authority to call out the militia in 1794 to suppress the Whiskey Rebellion in western Pennsylvania.
On 30 June to 1 July 1794, the [Army] Legion successfully defended the fort from a Native American attack. The following month, the Legion won a decisive victory in the Battle of Fallen Timbers. The next year, the United States and the Northwestern Confederacy negotiated the Treaty of Greenville, which used Fort Recovery as a reference point for the boundary between American and Native settlements. The treaty is considered to be the conclusion to the Northwest Indian War.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Clair%27s_defeat
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= new reply since forum marked as read
Around Fort Recovery when she was a student in college. Her semester there was rather uneventful. She personally unearthed a pistol from the 1840s and that was common to find artifacts from later eras. An outhouse basin was another of their discoveries. 
