Lochry's Defeat - Indian and British Preparations

Indian and British Preparations

Thanks to an effective intelligence network, British officials and their American Indian allies were aware of Clark's planned expedition as early as February 1781. In April, a council was held at Detroit in order to prepare a defense. The commander at Detroit was Major Arent DePeyster, Henry Hamilton's replacement, who reported to Sir Frederick Haldimand, the Governor General of British North America. DePeyster used agents of the British Indian Department such as Alexander McKee and Simon Girty, both of whom had close relations with American Indians of the Ohio Country, to coordinate British and Indian military operations.

Joining the Detroit conference was an Iroquois delegation headed by Joseph Brant (or Thayendanegea), a war leader of the Mohawks, one of the Six Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy. Brant was a minor war chief when the war began, but his ability to speak English and his connections with British officials made him prominent in British eyes. When Brant traveled to London in 1775 to discuss Mohawk land grievances, Lord George Germain, the colonial secretary, vaguely promised him that if the Iroquois supported the Crown during the war, native land grievances would be redressed after the rebellion had been suppressed. Brant returned home and encouraged the Iroquois, who lived mostly in upstate New York, to enter the war as British allies. Four tribes of the Six Nations eventually did so.

Brant became a skilled partisan commander during the war, initially leading about 100 men known as "Brant's Volunteers". Because the traditional Iroquois leaders regarded Brant as an upstart who was too closely connected to the British, most his Volunteers were white Loyalists. Brant gained additional native followers during the war and was perhaps the only Indian to be commissioned as a British captain, but he was not, as has sometimes been claimed, the head war chief of the Iroquois. Brant took part in a joint British-Indian invasion of New York in 1777, which for the British ended in a disastrous surrender at Saratoga. Afterwards, he led numerous frontier raids, both before and after the massive American invasion of 1779, which left the Iroquois lands devastated.

In April 1781, with the New York frontier in ruins, the British transferred Brant to Detroit. The official reason for the move was that Brant was needed to help rally Indian support to counter Clark's anticipated campaign. An apparent unofficial cause was that Brant, who was usually a moderate drinker, had been transferred after getting into a drunken fistfight with an Indian Department officer at Fort Niagara. Although the "Western Indians" of the Ohio Country and Detroit region had strained relations with the Iroquois, they cautiously welcomed Brant's help.

At the Detroit council, DePeyster encouraged the Indians to unite and to send a force to oppose Clark's expedition. In May 1781, Indian leaders and Indian Department officials began to gather warriors at the Wyandot town of Upper Sandusky for this purpose. In mid-August, Brant and George Girty, Simon's brother, headed south to the Ohio River with about 90 Iroquois, Shawnee, and Wyandot warriors, as well as a few white men, while McKee and Simon Girty continued to collect reinforcements.