Little Turtle and Kentucky’s 1790 militia disaster

In the fall of 1790 Gen. Josiah Harmar marched north from Fort Washington, at present Cincinnati, against the Miami towns at Kekionga, present Fort Wayne, Indiana, with 320 regulars and 1,133 militia from Kentucky and Pennsylvania.

On October 19 a patrol under Col. John Hardin, the Kentucky militia leader whose own story is told here, chased a lone rider who proved to be a decoy into a swampy meadow by the Eel River, about 13 miles northwest of Kekionga, where the warriors opened fire; among the dead was the son of Kentucky militia leader Charles Scott. The fight is sometimes called Hardin’s Defeat, and more costly clashes near Kekionga followed on October 22.

In November 1791 the confederacy Little Turtle helped lead destroyed Gen. Arthur St. Clair’s army. When he could not persuade the confederacy to negotiate, he stepped down as war chief; after Fallen Timbers he went to Greenville and spoke before signing the treaty of 1795. The 1790 battles were fought in present Indiana, so this story has no map pin.