The Revenge of the Natives - Book Review

(Cross posting from Good Reads)

In 1791 American plans to populate the Northwest Territory—the future states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin and parts of Minnesota—paid scant regard to the wishes of the native peoples who lived there. While President George Washington preferred to purchase the Indians’ land rather than seize it outright—“that is the cheapest, as well as the least distressing way of dealing with them,” he wrote—virtually no Americans questioned the right of white settlers to replace the tribes or the duty of Indians to make way.

Although the drive to pacify the territories north of the Ohio River reflected popular sentiment, it was also a matter of money. The financially strapped federal government had little income apart from land—that is, Indian land—that could profitably be sold to emigrants. As one land speculator put it: If the government could “take the effectual measu to bring the natives to Submission, . . . She may fairly calculate on a rapid sale of her lands, by which She may Sink many millions of her National Debt.” Settlers and speculators demanded military protection from what they described as Indian terror. Many whites were indeed murdered, but it was equally true that settlers shot even peaceful Indians with impunity. As settlers retreated to defensible towns, the nation’s leaders feared that the entire region might be lost.

War was probably inevitable. But with no standing army, the few American soldiers north of the Ohio were spread far too thin to deter Indian attacks. Washington finally directed Gen. Arthur St. Clair, the governor of the Northwest Territory, to raise a force to chastise the tribes that had rejected the lopsided treaties that the United States proposed. In “The Victory With No Name,” Colin Calloway recounts the largely forgotten campaign that ensued in crisp, sometimes gripping prose. His account of the intertribal diplomacy and generalship that led the Indians to victory is revelatory. As he writes:“Indians fielding a multinational army, executing a carefully coordinated battle plan worked out by their chiefs, and winning a pitched battle—all things Indians were not supposed to be capable of doing—routed the largest force the United States had fielded on the frontier.”

St. Clair’s campaign, by contrast, was a virtual encyclopedia of incompetence. What was supposed to have been a summer campaign got under way in October, in the teeth of severe weather. Crooked contractors supplied shoes and knapsacks that fell apart. Rations arrived late. Recruits received inadequate training. Horses died from lack of forage. Soldiers’ wives and children ate up extra rations and slowed the army down as it hacked a road for itself through the forest. St. Clair was so grossly overweight that he had to be pushed around in a cart. Worst of all, intelligence about the Indians’ intentions was meager at best. Meanwhile, Mr. Calloway says, “St. Clair’s ponderous, noisy, tree-felling army, with its camp followers, bellowing oxen, and lumbering wagons, would have been hard to miss.”

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The climactic battle—on Nov. 4, 1791—was a debacle. Unaware that Indians were nearby, St. Clair failed to protect his campsite with even the most rudimentary defense. When the first warriors appeared, the militiamen broke and ran by the hundreds, throwing St. Clair’s regular troops into confusion. Indian sharpshooters picked off officers and cannoneers. Although many soldiers fought bravely, they were overwhelmed. Of the 1,700 Americans on the field, about 630 were killed (along with an unknown number of civilian camp followers) and some 250 wounded. The Indians lost between 12 and 50 men, out of just over 1,000 engaged. The battle was the biggest victory that Native Americans ever won, Mr. Calloway says, “and proportionally the biggest military disaster the United States ever suffered.” Americans called the battle “St. Clair’s defeat”; the Indians never gave it a name

As memory of the battle faded, the annihilation of George Armstrong Custer ’s smaller command at the Battle of the Little Bighorn 85 years later, in the Montana Territory, became the most famous engagement of the Indian wars—

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http://www.wsj.com/articles/book-review-the-victory-with-no-name-by-colin-g-calloway-1419807052