Two hundred years ago, Ohio was the frontline in an epic struggle to control the destiny of the young nation. A generation after the original American patriots declared victory over Great Britain in the revolution for liberty, life on the frontier felt far from free. The British still cast a long shadow from their strongholds just across the border in Canada. The native Americans still posed a threat to settlers, despite being pushed to the far northwest corner of Ohio by the 1795 Treaty of Greenville.

On the national stage, American ships were being harassed by British naval vessels. American sailors were being plucked from their ships and forced to serve in the British navy. Farmers who tried to trade with French customers were frustrated by British interference. British troops stirred up the Indian resistance with promises to fight side-by-side against the Americans.

William Henry Harrison, who was just a tot when his father Benjamin Harrison signed the Declaration of Independence, earned his soldiering credentials in General “Mad” Anthony Wayne’s army. The young Harrison served as Wayne’s aide-de-camp in his campaign against the Ohio Indians, which concluded in 1794 with the Battle of Fallen Timbers, and resulted in the Treaty of Greenville.¹  Harrison aspired to a career in politics and he left the army a few years later, but his talent was for battle, and his early military service under Wayne’s leadership proved to be one of the most valuable learning experiences of his life.

Following in Wayne’s footsteps, Harrison led his own successful campaign against the Indian refugees who had moved into the Indiana territory, where Harrison was serving as territorial governor. By 1811, the Shawnee Chief Tecumseh had established a bustling new town on the Tippecanoe River, and was piecing together a coalition with the western and Great Lakes tribes. While Tecumseh was away on a recruiting mission that fall, Harrison and his militia marched to the village. Harrison’s troops suffered heavy casualties in the ensuing Battle of Tippecanoe, but they succeeded in destroying the town and damaging Tecumseh’s fragile confederation.

Although the official declaration by Congress would not come for several months, the war on the frontier effectively started at Tippecanoe, with a victory for the Americans and fame for Harrison.

In June 1812, President James Madison asked Congress to declare war on Great Britain.

Gung-ho Ohioans eagerly enlisted for one of the opening campaigns to attack British outposts in Canada. They were led by General William Hull, a Revolutionary War veteran and governor of the Michigan territory, on their march up western Ohio. Along the way, they established small forts and supply depots at strategic spots from Urbana to Lake Erie. As Hull and his Ohio militia were crossing the border into Canada, British Major General Isaac Brock and his Shawnee ally, Tecumseh, were amassing a force of British soldiers, Indian warriors and Canadian militiamen. Hull began to panic at the prospect of the inevitable battle, and ordered his men to retreat to the safety of the fort at Detroit.² Brock and his troops pursued them and surrounded the fort. The Ohioans’ enthusiasm turned to bitter disappointment when Hull surrendered without a fight.

On the heels of Hull’s disgrace, Harrison was named Commander of the Army of the West. At the close of 1812, the theater of war shifted to the Maumee River Valley, and Harrison selected a strategic spot on the Maumee River to establish Fort Meigs (near present day Mary Jane Thurston State Park). With the war in their backyard, every Ohioan could play a role in the war effort, helping to sew uniforms, grow food, and pack supplies.

The anticipated attack on the well-built fort came on May 1, 1813. A force of 2,200 Indian warriors and British soldiers led by Tecumseh and the infamous British General Henry Proctor, who was despised by the Americans for his treatment of American prisoners of war,³ assaulted the fort with a variety of cannon shots and showers of sniper fire. Harrison and his army were outmanned two-to-one, but they withstood the relentless week-long siege. Casualties within the walls were light, although Kentucky regiments that approached the fort to provide reinforcement were outmaneuvered, dozens were killed, and the majority were taken prisoner. Proctor conceded defeat, but vowed to return another day. Having already earned fame as the valiant hero of the Battle of Tippecanoe, Harrison bolstered his reputation as a skilled leader and defender of American freedom.

Proctor, accompanied by Tecumseh and some 500 soldiers and 2,000 warriors, returned to Fort Meigs in July hoping to catch the fort’s new commander off guard. Instead, the Americans were well prepared, and the fort well defended. Proctor backed off, opting to harass a smaller fort on the Sandusky River, Fort Stephenson (near present-day Fremont, Ohio).

The commander of Fort Stephenson was a gutsy 21-year-old, Major George Croghan. Like William Henry Harrison, George Croghan had an impressive pedigree - his uncle George Rogers Clark was a famous Revolutionary War hero, and another uncle, explorer William Clark, teamed up with Meriwether Lewis on the epic Lewis and Clark expedition. Croghan also enjoyed the finest of mentors - just as Harrison had followed in Anthony Wayne’s footsteps, George Croghan had followed in Harrison’s footsteps. Croghan had served as Harrison’s aide-de-camp at the Battle of Tippecanoe while he was still a teenager, and was promoted to captain for his bravery. Croghan distinguished himself again as a fierce defender of Fort Meigs, and was promoted to major with his own leadership post at Fort Stephenson just weeks before Proctor’s attack.

Fort Stephenson was a modest trio of pioneer blockhouses enclosed by a wooden stockade and defended by 160 men and a single old cannon. When Harrison realized the fort’s peril with Proctor on the march, he ordered Croghan and his men to move out. For his part, Croghan recognized that the fort’s vulnerable location was strategically important for the security of the region, and he believed that it was too late to retreat safely. Croghan ordered his men to reinforce the walls with sandbags and sacks of flour, dig a trench around the perimeter, and balance heavy logs atop the stockade, which could be pushed over the edge to crush any enemy soldiers attempting to scale the walls.

Proctor opened fire on August 1, 1813. Against staggering odds, Croghan relied on his ingenuity and sheer gumption to defend Fort Stephenson. He moved the sole cannon, nicknamed “Old Betsy,” to different locations inside the fort to give Proctor the impression that the Americans had several pieces of heavy artillery. When the ammunition ran out, Croghan loaded the cannon with grapeshot, shards of pottery, scraps of metal and sharp objects to inflict severe wounds on the attacking soldiers. In two days, the British and Indians suffered 150 casualties to the Americans’ tally of one dead and seven wounded. The victory was decisive, and Croghan was a hero. He was awarded a gold medal by Congress and promoted to lieutenant colonel.

While Harrison and Croghan were defending forts, another turn of events brightened the prospects for the Americans. A coalition of Indian tribes still living in western Ohio had a change of heart about their relationship with their Ohio neighbors. The Wyandot Chief Tarhe, better known as the Crane, was considering a new alliance.

Over the course of his long life, Tarhe had seen his share of conflict, and felt his share of resentment over the invasion of his home by the pioneers, as well as the broken promises of the British. Tarhe had just reached manhood when, in 1763, the British king declared that the colonists were forbidden from settling in the native American lands west of the Appalachian mountains. Like his fellow Wyandot warriors, Tarhe grew concerned about the growing number of frontier settlements in the Indian lands, and was prepared to take action.

By the time the royal governor of Virginia, Lord Dunmore, had organized a militia to confront the Indians in the Ohio territory in 1774, Tarhe had become an influential leader. Tarhe helped unite the tribes in a collective effort to drive away the Virginia military. He fought bravely alongside Chief Cornstalk and his Shawnee warriors in their bloody surprise attack on Dunmore’s Captain Lewis at Point Pleasant on the Ohio River. Although Lewis lost nearly one-fifth of his men in the grueling Battle of Point Pleasant, he held his ground and the fight was counted as a defeat for the Indians, who eventually retreated.

Tarhe honored the peace agreement that followed the battle, which called for the Indians to yield the land south of the Ohio River to the settlers. Tarhe was a man of his word, and he expected the same of others. He was a passionate defender of his tribe’s interests, but he was also reasonable and pragmatic. He held no personal animosity toward the white settlers – his wife was French Canadian, and his son-in-law, Isaac Zane,⁴ was a Virginia captive who had been adopted into the tribe.

During the 1780s, tensions on the frontier escalated. The Indian lands in the Ohio territory continued to shrink as the U.S. Congress negotiated treaties with various tribes. Incoming settlers continued to violate the treaty terms, the Indians continued to retaliate, and the lingering British continued to stir the pot. A series of campaigns against the Shawnee, Miami and Wyandot towns led by Colonel William Crawford, then General Arthur St. Clair, and finally General Josiah Harmar failed to reign in the tribes.

In 1792, General Anthony Wayne embarked on the war path. He set out on a slow and deliberate march up western Ohio, building forts along the way. The expected confrontation came in August 1794 at Fallen Timbers (near present day Mary Jane Thurston State Park), a forest along the Maumee River that had been toppled by a tornado. Tarhe joined forces with the Shawnee Chief Blue Jacket in a scheme to hide amid the jumble of tree trunks and ambush the soldiers as they passed through. Wayne responded nimbly to the attack, turning the Indians’ advantage of heavy cover into a trap without an escape.

Now a seasoned warrior of 52 years, Tarhe fought with gusto. He and his fellow Wyandots were in a particularly vulnerable position near the river bank. Tarhe was seriously wounded in the arm during the fierce fighting, and at the end of the day, he was the only Wyandot chief to survive. Despite his injuries, Tarhe helped ensure that the Wyandot women and children were evacuated from their camp on the Sandusky River to the relative safety of Sandusky Bay.

Tarhe recognized that the Battle of Fallen Timbers was a decisive win for the Americans, and that, with Wayne in charge, it was better to be friends than adversaries. When Wayne initiated the Treaty of Greenville in 1795, Tarhe offered his signature and his sincere pledge to uphold it. The treaty terms drove the tribes out of their towns along the southern reaches of the Muskingum, Tuscarawas, Scioto, Great Miami and Little Miami Rivers, leaving the northwest territory along the Sandusky and Maumee rivers for Indian occupation.

More than a dozen years later, when Tecumseh sought to enlist neighboring chiefs in his resistance movement, Tarhe refused. Tarhe was no coward and he did not shrink from his duty as a warrior, even as an old man. However, the counsel of years and experience had taught Tarhe that resistance had come at too dear a cost. He believed that sustaining the peace was now in the best interest of his people.

Unfortunately, the peace was fleeting. When the war clouds gathered over Ohio in 1812, Tarhe decided to cooperate with William Henry Harrison, and fight alongside his fellow Ohioans to secure the region. After successfully defending Ohio forts in the summer of 1813, Harrison went on the offensive in the fall, on the heels of the stunning defeat of the British navy on Lake Erie by the feisty Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry.⁵ Harrison resumed his chase of Proctor and Tecumseh into Canada. He caught up to them at the Thames River (in Ontario, east of Detroit). When Tecumseh was struck a fatal blow in the ensuing Battle of the Thames, his confederation crumbled and the specter of the Indian menace was laid to rest.

In Ohio, hostilities with the British and the Indians quickly faded as the theater of war shifted to strategic ports at New York, New Orleans and Chesapeake Bay. The War of 1812 raged on for more than a year until it officially ended in December 24, 1814 with the signing of the Treaty of Ghent between the United States and Great Britain. Meanwhile, life in Ohio achieved a new equilibrium.

Tarhe retired quietly to the Wyandot village of Upper Sandusky, where he lived in peace and comfort until he died in 1818 at the age of 76. A monument to Tarhe was erected in 1915 in rural Wyandot County (north of Upper Sandusky near the intersection of State Route 67 and County Road 47).

George Croghan continued to serve in the military, fought in the Mexican-American War, and settled in New Orleans where he died of cholera in 1849. Today, history buffs can pay their respects at Croghan’s grave and monument at Fort Stephenson Park in Fremont.

William Henry Harrison made his home in North Bend, Ohio and continued to serve Ohioans as a State Senator, Representative in Congress, and U. S. Senator. Three decades after his first military victory, “Old Tippecanoe” honed his image as a feisty frontiersman, capable commander, and savvy statesman in a presidential campaign with the catchphrase “Tippecanoe and Tyler too.”

William Henry Harrison was elected ninth President of the United States in 1840. He died shortly after his inauguration in 1841. Harrison’s tomb and monument are located outside the town of North Bend, west of Cincinnati, on a scenic hill overlooking the Ohio River.

- Jean Backs, Editor

¹ For more information on Anthony Wayne see the feature article “Not So Mad After All” in the Fall 2009/Winter 2010 issue of Ohio State Parks.

² Fort Pontchartrain was originally built by a French explorer in 1701 along the Detroit River at the gateway to Lake Erie. The British took control of the fort in 1760 during the French and Indian War, and renamed it Fort Detroit. It remained in British hands until 1796, when it was seized by General Anthony Wayne.

³ In the winter of 1812-13, a detachment of Americans under the leadership of General James Winchester was attacked by Proctor and his Indian allies at Frenchtown on the Raisin River (near present-day Monroe, Michigan). Proctor stood by as the Indians scalped and murdered the wounded Americans, despite his promise to protect them.

⁴ Isaac Zane was the brother of Ebenezer Zane, who built a road across the Ohio wilderness and founded Zanesville, and Betty Zane, the teenager who saved Fort Henry when she dashed past Indians and British soldiers to retrieve gunpowder.

⁵ See the feature article “Don’t Give Up the Ship” in the Spring/Summer 2005 issue of Ohio State Parks.

References

• Howe, Henry, Howe’s Historical Collection of Ohio, The Laning Printing Company, 1896.
• Knepper, George W., An Ohio Portrait, Ohio Historical Society, 1976.
• Millett, Allan R., Caesar and the Conquest of the Northwest Territory, The Second Harrison Campaign-1813, Timeline Magazine, Ohio Historical Society, September-October 1997
• Roberts, Carl H. and Cummins, Paul R., Ohio Geography, History, Government, Laidlaw Brothers, 1969.

On-line Resources

• Access Genealogy, www.accessgeneaology.com
• Ohio Historical Society, www.ohiohistorycentral.org
• Sandusky County Scrapbook, www.sandusky-county-scrapbook.net
• Touring Ohio, www.touringohio.net