Before they began to eat, the Indians had divided themselves, I must observe, into three divisions, in order to march to another quarter, where they hoped to surprise the army of the States. In this situation, however, they were themselves surprised by General Wayne. He had received intelligence from his scouts, now equally cunning with those of the Indians, of their proceedings, and having made some motions as if he intended to move to another part of the country, in order to put them off their guard, he suddenly turned, and sent his light horse pouring down on them when they least expected it. The Indians were thrown into confusion, a circumstance which with them never fails to occasion a defeat; they made but a faint resistance, and then fled with precipitancy. [Sidenote: AMERICAN GENERAL.] On his arrival at Philadelphia, in the beginning of the year 1796, I was introduced to General Wayne, and I had then an opportunity of seeing the plan of all his Indian campaigns. A most pompous account was given of this victory, and the plan of it excited, as indeed it well might, the wonder and admiration of all the old officers who saw it. The Indians were represented as drawn up in three lines, one behind the other, and after receiving with firmness the charge of the American army, as endeavouring with great skill and adroitness to turn its flanks, when, by the hidden appearance of the Kentucky riflemen and the light cavalry, they were put to flight. From the regularity with which the Indians fought on this occasion, it was argued that they must doubtless have been conducted by British officers of skill and experience. How absurd this whole plan was, however, was plainly to be deduced from the following circumstance, allowed both by the general and his aides de camp, namely, that during the whole action the American army did not see fifty Indians; and indeed every person who has read an account of the Indians must know that they never come into the field in such regular array, but always fight under covert, behind trees or bushes, in the most irregular manner. Notwithstanding the great pains that were taken formerly, both by the French and English, they never could be brought to fight in any other manner. It was in this manner, and no other, as I heard from several men who were in the action with them, that they fought against General Wayne; each one, as soon as the American troops were descried, instantly sheltered himself, and in retreating they still kept under covert. It was by fighting them also in their own way, and by sending parties of his light troops and cavalry to rout them from their lurking places, that General Wayne defeated them; had he attempted to have drawn up his army in the regular order described in the plan, he could not but have met with the same fate as St. Clair, and general Braddock did on a former occasion.