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Fifty years and more had passed since the disappearance of little Frances, when news came to the surviving members of the bereaved family that she was still alive. She had been adopted into the tribe of the Miami Indians, and was passing her days as a squaw in the lodges of that people.
It was no time for the whites to be idle. They soon rallied in large numbers at Fort Washington, the present site of the city of Cincinnati. General Clarke was at once made commander-in-chief, and Colonel Logan was placed next under him in command. Clarke immediately started with a thousand men to attack the Indian towns on the Miami.
On the third of November 1792, it encamped fifteen miles south of the Miami villages. Having been rejoined by Major Hamtranck, General St. Clair proposed to march immediately against them. Half an hour before sunrise, the militia was attacked by the savages, and fled in the utmost confusion. They burst through the formed line of the regulars into the camp.
Their goal was the Shawnee village of Paint Creek in southern Ohio east from the town of Little Chillicothe on the Little Miami. They were not far from Paint Creek, when Simon Kenton, scouting before, stole upon two Indians riding a pony through the brush and laughing heartily.
Then he looked curiously at the three. He never would have known any one of them anywhere. They were savages in every aspect painted and garbed like them, and with their hair drawn up in the defiant scalp lock. "What are you going to do?" he asked. "Deliver the belts at the Miami village," replied Henry Ware, "but they will be peace belts, not war belts." "It is death," said Paul in protest.
The agent at fort Wayne was accordingly directed by the governor to require the Delaware, Miami and Potawatamie tribes, to prevent any hostile parties of Indians from passing through their respective territories. This they were bound to do, by a stipulation in the treaty of Greenville.
He sat immobile and silent, watching the daring young warrior making off not only with his private property, but with that which belonged to others. The Miami must have thought to himself more than once "Ah, if my comrades would only appear at this moment! They would make you change your tune very soon." All at once the warrior uttered a whoop which plainly was meant as a signal to his friends.
"Well, yes; the air seems fresh and healthy, but we have a touch of malaria now and then in this Miami Valley." Hon. John Smith, having chopped down a hickory sapling to make a coupling pole, put his axe-craft to further use by cutting off a forked bough, crooked by Nature, in the exact shape for a pack-saddle.
From information obtained from the Indian scouts, it however appeared that, far from being discouraged by their recent disaster, they had moved forward a third Army to the Miami, where they had strongly entrenched themselves, until hitting opportunity should be found to renew their attempt to recover the lost district.
The center of the English trade was Pickawillani on the Great Miami. In 1749 Celoron de Bienville, who had been sent out to vindicate French authority in the valley, reported that each village along the Ohio and its branches "has one or more English traders, and each of these has hired men to carry his furs."
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