Battle
Wayne's new army, the Legion of the United States, marched north from Fort Washington (Cincinnati, Ohio) in 1793, building a line of forts along the way. Wayne commanded more than 4,600 men, with Choctaw and Chickasaw Indians serving as his scouts.
Blue Jacket took a defensive position along the Maumee River, not far from present-day Toledo, Ohio, where a stand of trees (the "fallen timbers") had been blown down by a recent storm. They thought the trees would slow the advance of Wayne's Legion. Fort Miami, a nearby British outpost on American soil, had supplied the Indian confederacy with provisions. The Indian forces, numbering about 1,500, were composed of Blue Jacket's Shawnees, Buckongahelas's Delawares, Miamis led by Little Turtle, Wyandots, Ojibwas, Ottawas, Potawatomis, Mingos, and a company of Canadian militiamen under Captain Alexander McKillop.
The battle was over quickly. Wayne's men closed and pressed the attack with a bayonet charge. His horse soldiers outflanked Blue Jacket's Indians, who were routed. The Indians fled towards Fort Miami, but they found gates closed against them. The fort's commander, unwilling to start a war with the United States, refused them shelter. Wayne's army spent several days destroying the Indian villages and crops in the area, then retreated. Wayne's army had lost 33 men killed and 100 wounded. They claimed to have found 30 to 40 Indian dead on the battlefield. However, according to Alexander McKee of the British Indian Department, the Indian confederacy lost 19 men killed and an unknown number wounded, though this may not include casualties in the Canadian militia.
Read more about this topic: Battle Of Fallen Timbers
Famous quotes containing the word battle:
“It is humiliating to remain with our hands folded while others write history. It matters little who wins. To make a people great it is necessary to send them to battle even if you have to kick them in the pants. That is what I shall do.”
—Benito Mussolini (1883–1945)
“Above the bayonets, mixed and crossed,
Men saw a gray, gigantic ghost
Receding through the battle cloud,
And heard across the tempest loud
The death cry of a nation lost!”
—Will Henry Thompson (1848–1918)
“Forty years after a battle it is easy for a noncombatant to reason about how it ought to have been fought. It is another thing personally and under fire to have to direct the fighting while involved in the obscuring smoke of it.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)