the settlers with consternation and sometimes with awe. When this enchanting vision vanished to Legonier more than one sturdy youth who had filled a sentry box in Campus Martius might have owned to a natural regret.

But none of her exploits gave Louisa St. Clair so romantic a relation to the simple yet momentous annals of early Marietta as that exploit in which it is fancifully claimed that she influenced the fortunes of the State. Tradition credits her with having inspired the love of a young chief, a son of Brant, the famous Mohawk leader, by riding alone to an Indian encampment on the Upper Muskingum in some freak of concern for the welfare of the colony. Young Brant, whom the governor's daughter was said to have met in Philadelphia, protected the girl from injury, offered his personal escort on the return journey, and afterward proposed marriage. St. Clair had no wish for a Mohawk son-in-law, though the suitor might be the educated son of an educated chief, and even the union result in a powerful alliance. As it was, Brant threw his influence against the settlers of the territory, and it was his father who drew the Indians together into a war confederacy only rivaled by that of Pontiac.

CHAPTER VI.

PATHFINDING.

THOUSAND

treaties could

not make the

sight of the

white man's

farm on the

northern side of

the Ohio any

thing but intol

erable to the

Indian. It was

bad enough to

see this white interloper shooting the red man's game. But less welcome still was the picture of the white man's corn ripening on the Indian's hunting grounds. The French had incited Pontiac; the British now helped to arouse the followers of Brant. The fiat was doggedly uttered: "No white man shall plant corn in Ohio." That the threat was not an empty one soon became apparent. The planter fell in his tracks. The crops were burned and

mangled by unseen hands.

It was a petty, but

a depressing species of warfare.

Death lurked on the Kentucky frontier, and the flatboats on their way to Maysville or the rapids came daily into greater danger. At the mouth. of the Scioto skulked a band of Shawanees and Miamis, who openly assailed the passing "broadhorn," or lured it to the bank by the aid of a white confederate who appealed to the boatmen as an escaped prisoner. Sometimes this confederate was a low wretch who had joined the Indians for purposes of plunder; but often it was an actual prisoner who made his decoying speech with several muskets leveled at his head. In the summer of 1790 a boat was fired upon at the mouth of Blue River, and the Indians were confident they had killed the Governor. But St. Clair was not in the boat. In the vicinity of Marietta surveying parties were attacked, horses and cattle carried off, and mills burned. The quarrel could not much longer continue in this fashion. There must be war.

There was joy among the Canadian agents of Great Britain. This was the result for which they had unceasingly labored. War between the Ohio settlers and their Indian neighbors meant an increase of English influence and eventual control, if but these settlers could be driven off. The

relations of the British authorities to the northern and western tribes had not been altered by the close of the Revolution.

Understanding the sympathies and interests of the English across the line, St. Clair sent a messenger to the Governor of Detroit imforming him that General Harmar was to administer a rebuke to offending tribes. British posts he declared were not to be disturbed, and the British Governor was asked to withhold any support from the hostile Indians.

This futile communication was carried to Detroit by Return Jonathan Meigs, Jr. He was an ambitious young lawyer, who afterwards filled the chair of Chief Justice, entered the national Senate, and returned to become Governor of the State. Meigs' journey proved more dangerous than that made by Washington in an earlier day. That it was barren of result was due to no fault of the messenger. The British continued to load the Indians with muskets and supplies and did their utmost to inflame and hold together the tribes of the Confederacy.

From Fort Washington at Cincinnati on the thir tieth of September, 1791, General Harmar marched toward the Maumee with thirteen hundred men. Both Pennsylvania and Kentucky were represented in the little army, which was expected to accomplish much, but which was in fact a most inefficient body.

The men were miserably equipped and scorned anything like discipline. Descrtion began soon after the start, the troops were moved but a few miles a day and there were many discouragements.

When the Miami villages were reached not an Indian was to be seen. The hundred houses and wigwams were burned, but not even a squaw appeared. The work of destruction went on without interruption, and by the twenty-first of October the wreckage was complete.

Had Harmar now retired quickly to Cincinnati he might have received the credit of accomplishing the rebuke he was sent to administer. But after leaving the ruined towns the commander, to make the rebuke more complete, sent back a detachment in the hope of taking unawares such of the Indians as might have returned. The detachment, led by Major Wyllys, did meet returned Indians, but the militia scampered at the first fire of the red men, and most of the regulars, including Wyllys, were killed. The remnant of his army which Harmar led back to Cincinnati had the unsubdued savages almost continually at their heels. As a rebuke to the hostile tribes the expedition was an utter failure, a fact which was soon made manifest.

Indian attacks on the settlers immediately became bolder. The station on Mill Creek, north of Cincinnati, was set upon, but without success. Simon