AUGUST 3:

1757 Fort William Henry New York Louis-Joseph, Marquis de Montcalm 1712-1759 besieges Fort William Henry on Lake George with 6,200 troops and 1,800 Indians; defended by 2,500 British under George Munro. 

August 3, 1795:  Today the "Greenville" Ohio treaty is concluded with twelve tribes, ending "Little Turtle's War".  Prisoners are to be restored on both sides; new boundary lines will be established; land will be given up for Fort Defiance, Fort Wayne, a British fort onthe Miami River, the old fort on Sandusky Lake, the post at Detroit, Fort Micilimackinac in Michigan, the old fort on the Chicago River and Lake Michigan, Fort St Vincennes in Indiana, Fort Massac, and Old Pioria's Fort.  Certain roads will be opened to unmolested travel by whites.  The annuity, in goods, for these lands will be worth $9,500.  They will receive $20,000 now.  The Indians can hunt in their old lands if they do so peacefully.  No whites may live on Indian lands without the Indians' approval.  The President is authorized to license all traders.  All former treaties are now void!  The treaty will be signed by General Mad Anthony Wayne and 90 Indians.  The spelling of Greenville varies by document; it is sometimes called Grenville and other variations.

BACKGROUND:
 

Little Turtle's War (1790-94) began with a series of disasters for the Americans as they attempted to destroy the alliance villages in northwest Ohio. Josiah Harmar's army of militia was ambushed on the upper Wabash in 1790 with more than 200 casualties. The following year, Arthur St. Clair suffered an even greater humiliation in western Ohio (worst defeat ever inflicted on an American army by Native Americans - 600 dead, 400 wounded). At Philadelphia, President George Washington exploded in a rage when told. When he calmed down, he sent "Mad" Anthony Wayne to Ohio. Wayne established himself at Fort Washington (Cincinnati) and during the next two years made careful preparations to destroy the alliance. While a line of forts was built aimed directly at northwest Ohio, Wayne trained a "Legion" of disciplined regulars to back the militia. Meanwhile, the prolonger war was causing the alliance to come undone. The Wabash tribes (Piankashaw, Kickapoo, Illinois, Potawatomi) made a separate peace with the Americans in 1792, and the Fox and Sauk left because the alliance was having trouble feeding its warriors.

Although the British were still encouraged the war, the Americans had opened negotiations with them to end their support of the alliance and to agree to abandon the forts they still occupied on American territory. Peace overtures were also made to the alliance, but the Shawnee in 1792 killed two of the American representatives enroute to meet with the alliance council. The following year, however, the Delaware protected the American delegation because it included Hendrick Aupamut, a Stockbridge (Mahican), with many Delaware relatives. The peace negotiations that summer failed, and in October, Wayne began his advance into northwest Ohio. After a Shawnee attack on Fort Recovery failed to stop Wayne, a council was held on the banks of the Maumee. Only the Miami, Shawnee and Wyandot favored war, but even the Miami war chief Little Turtle was beginning to think the alliance would lose and urged negotiations. He was replaced by the Shawnee Blue Jacket, and on August 20th, the alliance was defeated at the Battle of Fallen Timbers. To avoid a fight with Wayne's army, the British at Fort Miami closed their gates to the retreating warriors. The war for Ohio was over.

Wayne burned the alliance villages along the Maumee and destroyed the stored food supply to insure a hungry winter. Then he returned to Fort Greenville and waited. In August of 1795, the alliance chiefs signed the Fort Greenville Treaty agreeing to peace and ceding all of Ohio except the northwest corner. The treaty left the Delaware without land, and with the exception of Captain Pipe's small band on the upper Sandusky, they relocated, with the permission of the Miami, to White River in east-central Indiana near the site of present-day Muncie. Some of their villages were located in southern Indiana near the Ohio River which placed them in the path of the next wave of American expansion. Indiana was never a happy place for the Delaware who felt like squatters on Miami land. After their defeat in the fight for Ohio, there was social disintegration, the men refused to farm, and alcohol abuse became a serious. In 1801 the Shawnee chief Blue Jacket tried to resurrect the alliance at Brownstown, but there was little enthusiasm for this. The Moravians opened a mission, but the Delaware had had enough of the whiteman's religion for the moment. It closed in 1806.
 

- Part of "Delaware History", at http://www.tolatsga.org/dela.html, one of Lee Sultzman's comprehensive accounts on the history of some 240 tribes.

*****

Much indeed had happened - all of tragic import not only to the Ohio tribes, but to Indians everywhere because, once and for all,the ultimate fate of the Indian was sealed inthe summer of 1794.

After the routs suffered by Generals Harmar and St Clair,the tribes in the Northwest Territory revived the old idea of a white frontier along the Ohio. This, in fact, is what the chiefs demanded when Washington and Jefferson held out the pipe of peace in a great council at Sandusky.  The Government's answer to this impossible demand was to break up the council and make ready for war.

In preparation for this very eventuality, General Mad Anthony Wayne had been collecting an army.  He immediately marched 3000 men from Fort Washington tothe Maumee, built a fort, and wintered there. In the spring, one of his outposts was attacked by the Indians under Little Turtle - the same Little Turtle who had beaten St Clair.  The attack was repulsed with heavy losses by the Indians, and Little Turtle sought peace.  The other chiefs, still drunk on past successes, would have none of it.  They also would have none of Little Turtle any longer.  The great Miami was deposed and his place taken by a chief named Turkey Foot.

Encouraged by the British, Turkey Foot, with 2000 warrios and a few Canadian militia, met the Americans on the Maumee at a place called Fallen Timbers. Wayne delayed his attack for three days, until the Indians were half-starved.  Then, in a tangle of trees uprooted by a barricade, he fell on them suddenly with his well-trained troops.  Surprised and disorganized, Turkey Foot's braves panicked and fled to the nearby British fort of Maumee, whose commander had promised them refuge in case of defeat.  But they found the gates barred against them now, and Wayne's men cut them down as they begged to be let in.

For good measure Wayne, who had lost only thirty-eight men, burned all the Indian settlements and destroyed thousands of acres of corn.  It was more than the tribes could take.  Completely subdued, they met with the Americans at Fort Greenville and gave up all of the present state of Ohio and part of Indiana.  Thus Indian resistance to the implacable march of the white man ended in the Northwest Territory.   Elsewhere the struggle was to go on, but it was already lost.  After Fallen Timbers, there was no heart, only desperation left.
 

From:  In the Country of the Walking Dead, by Walter O'Meara (Award Books)