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On November 4, 1791, on the banks of the Wabash River in what is now western Ohio, the United States Army suffered its worst defeat of the entire U.S.-Indian Wars. The battle itself remains little known among most Americans and has been researched and written about very little in academia. Although three times more Americans lost their lives in this [https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000SHPTG0/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B000SHPTG0&linkCode=as2&tag=dailyh0c-20&linkId=709579ee412a47132bf55a75a34753ac battle than at Little Bighorn], it is usually referred to as [https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0190614455/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0190614455&linkCode=as2&tag=dailyh0c-20&linkId=b6750a7411c6c9cef6bc3091b217137a “St. Clair’s Defeat” ] instead of being named for the nearest town or geographical marker.  Some academics attribute the lack of interest in the battle to the American commander, General Arthur St. Clair, who as governor of the Northwest Territory was more of a politician than a general. Others point to the apparent anonymity of the Indian leaders – modern scholars believe they know what chiefs led the warriors in battle, but are not sure about their roles. Whatever the reasons for the lack of interest in the battle, all scholars agree that it played a pivotal role in the Northwest Indian War (1785-1795), setting the stage for future American-Indian conflicts.

Many of the eastern Indian tribes supported the British during the American Revolution because they were told the British would stop or severely limit white migration and settlement west of the Appalachian Mountains and south of the Great Lakes. Whether that would have actually happened is irrelevant because the Americans won and the British allied tribes were forced to move farther west. The Miami, Shawnee, and Delaware tribes ended up in what are now the states of Ohio and Indiana, but was in the late eighteenth century the Northwest Territory. The tribes formed a number of semi-permanent communities, one of which was comprised of seven villages at the headwaters of the Maumee River near what is today the city of Fort Wayne, Indiana. Farther up the Maumee River, where it meets the Auglaize River near the modern city of Defiance, Ohio, there was another Indian community known as “The Glaize.” The Glaize was established in 1789, becoming a home and meeting place for the different western tribes. The Glaize was also home to British and French trading posts and became the headquarters of the Western Indian Confederacy. <ref> Tanner, Helen Hornbeck. “The Glaize in 1792: A Composite Indian Community.” <i>Ethnohistory</i> 25 (1978) p. 16</ref> The Americans viewed this strong Indian presence in the Northwest Territory as an impediment to their long-term goals. With that said, many members of President Washington’s administration believed the tribes could be dealt with peacefully, as long as the British were not in the picture.