The army with which General Harmar marched out of Fort Washington in the latter days of September, 1790, to strike the Indian towns, was a motley array. Pennsylvania had only partly filled her quota. She had sent forth substitutes, old and infirm men, and boys. The troops from Kentucky had seemingly brought into camp every old musket and rifle in the district to be repaired. There was a scarcity of camp kettles and axes. The commissariat was miserably deficient. To add to the confusion, the Kentucky militia were divided in their allegiance between a certain Colonel William Trotter and Colonel John Hardin. Hardin was fearless, but extremely rash; Trotter was wholly incompetent. In two or three days the Kentuckians were formed into three battalions, under Majors Hall, McMullen, and Ray, with Trotter at their head. Harmar, an old army officer of the revolution, who felt a contempt for all militia, was in sore dismay, for the hasty muster was totally lacking in discipline, and impatient of restraint. In numbers, as Colonel Roosevelt observes, this army was amply sufficient to do its work. It consisted of three battalions of Kentucky militia, one battalion of Pennsylvania militia, one battalion of light troops, mounted, and two battalions of the regular army under Major John Plasgrave Wyllys, and Major John Doughty; in all, fourteen hundred and fifty-three men. There was also a small company of artillery, with three small brass field pieces, under Captain William Ferguson. But to fight the hardy and experienced warriors of the wilderness in their native woods, required something more than hasty levies, loose discipline, and inexperienced Indian fighters. Harmar was not a Wayne. The expedition was doomed to failure from the very beginning. The details of the march along Harmar's trace to the site of the present city of Fort Wayne it is not necessary to give. The army moved slowly, and gave the British agents under Alexander McKee plenty of time to furnish the redskins with arms and ammunition. The star of the Little Turtle was in the ascendant. He was now thirty-eight years of age, and while not a hereditary chieftain of the Miamis, his prowess and cunning had given him fame. The Indians never made a mistake in choosing a military leader. He watched the Americans from the very time of their leaving Fort Washington and purposed to destroy them at the Indian town.