The Land of the Miamis: An Account of the Struggle to Secure Possession of the North-West from the End of the Revolution until 1812Barce, Elmore
History
The Land of the Miamis: An Account of the Struggle to Secure Possession of the North-West from the End of the Revolution until 1812
Barce, Elmore
Indians of North America -- Wars -- 1750-1815; Miami Indians; Northwest, Old -- History
"Awake from dreams! The scene changes. The morning breath of the first
day of summer has kissed the grass and flowers, but it brings no evil
omen to the Kickapoo villages on this shore, nor to the five Wea towns
on the adjacent plain. High noon has come, but still birds and grass and
flowers bask in the meridian splendor of a June sunshine, unconscious of
danger or the trampling of hostile feet. One o'clock! And over High Gap
hostile horsemen are galloping. They separate; one division wheels to
the left led by the relentless Colonel Hardin, still smarting from the
defeat of the last year by the great Miami, Little Turtle. But the main
division, led by the noble Colonel Scott, afterward the distinguished
soldier and governor of Kentucky, moves straight forward on to
Ouiatenon."
Scott's advance since the morning has been swift and steady. He fears
that the Indian horseman will give the alarm. At one o'clock he comes
over High Gap, a high pass through the hills to the southwest of the
present town of Shadeland. To the left he perceives two Indian villages.
One is at a distance of two miles and the other at four. They were
probably situated in the prairie groves. He now detaches Colonel John
Hardin with sixty mounted infantry and a troop of light horse under
Captain McCoy, and they swing to the left. Scott moves briskly forward
with the main body for the villages of the Weas, at the mouth of Wea
creek. The smoke of the camp fires is plainly discernible.
[Illustration: Showing the Wea Plains and the Line of Scott's March,
Tippecanoe County, Indiana. Drawing by Heaton Map]
As he turns the point of timber fringing the Wea, and in the vicinity of
what is now the Shadeland Farm, he sees a cabin to the right. Captain
Price is ordered to assault it with forty men. Two warriors are killed.
Scott now gains the summit of the eminence crowning the south bank of
the Wabash. The Wea villages are below him and scattered along the
river. All is in confusion and the Indians are trying to escape. On the
opposite shore is a town of the Kickapoos. He instantly orders his
lieutenant-commandant, James Wilkinson, to charge the Weas with the
first battalion, and the eager Kentuckians rush to the river's edge,
just as the last of five canoes loaded with warriors, has pushed from
the shore. With deadly and terrible aim the riflemen empty the boats to
the last man.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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