Military Roads of the Mississippi BasinHulbert, Archer Butler
History
Military Roads of the Mississippi Basin
Hulbert, Archer Butler
Clark, George Rogers, 1752-1818; Indians of North America -- Wars -- 1790-1794; Northwest, Old -- History -- 1775-1865
At eight o'clock in the morning of July 28 Wayne with two thousand
regulars and fifteen hundred mounted volunteers set out for the Maumee
Valley from Fort Greenville. The route followed by St. Clair and used
during the winter by the Fort Recovery garrison was the course pursued,
and camp was pitched in the afternoon on Stillwater Creek after a
twelve-mile march. The next day the army was off before sunrise; we
"pushed forward without regard to bag or baggage," records Clark, "as if
not in search, but in actual pursuit of a flying & disorderly enemy."
Fort Recovery was reached at noon and the army camped a mile beyond. On
the day following the army crashed onward, following the winding stream
called a tributary of the "St. Mary's" by St. Clair, but which was in
fact the head of the Wabash. Clark says the stream was crossed "more
than a dozen times" and "Camp Beaver Swamp" was pitched where the stream
was found to be impassable, eleven miles from Fort Recovery. Much of the
journey today had been through wide prairies covered with nettles, the
water unfit to drink and mosquitoes, "larger than I ever saw," observed
Boyer. Today the road was opened as the army advanced and the route was
up the Wabash from the present village of Fort Recovery, Mercer County,
Ohio.
The construction of a bridge at Camp Beaver Swamp seventy yards in
length delayed the army one day but enabled the road-cutters to hew a
way through to the St. Mary River.[153] On August 1, the army pressed on
over the backbone of Ohio and down the northern slope into the basin of
the Maumee River, and encamped beside the famous little St. Mary River.
Today, emerging suddenly from the vast stretch of nettles and brush that
grew in the swampy district, the army suddenly drew out into a beautiful
level meadow, every corps of the army having the first view of all the
other divisions. This day Clark affirms that the army crossed the trace
followed by General Harmar in 1790 to the Miami village. Tonight the
army encamped by the St. Mary and on the morrow the erection of what was
first called Fort Randolph and later Fort Adams was begun.[154] This was
the seventh fortified post in the chain from the Ohio and was located on
the south bank of the St. Mary, four miles above Rockford (the old
Shane's Crossings), Mercer County, Ohio.
On the fourth the army hurried on about eleven miles to "a small, dirty
water," as Clark described it, "a branch of the Glaize [Auglaize]
River," where camp was fortified for the night. The day after, a march
of equal length "down the creek" to the camp described by Boyer as "Camp
forty-four miles in advance of Fort Recovery." Wayne's camps were each
proof against insult from the enemy, which accounts for his encamping
early each afternoon. On the afternoon of August 6, the army reached the
banks of the celebrated "Glaize," the Auglaize River. Here, according to
Posey, a stronger encampment than usual was built, named Fort Loramie.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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