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They passed through western Virginia, crossed the Ohio near the mouth of the Scioto, and visiting the Machichac towns on the head waters of Mad River, from thence proceeded to the Auglaize, which they reached in the fall of 1790, shortly after the defeat of general Harmar, having been absent from Ohio upwards of three years.
This tribe is nearly equally divided between the Crane, at Sandusky, who is the grand sachem of the nation, and Walk-in-the-Water, at Brownstown, near Detroit. They claim the lands bounded by the settlements of this state, southwardly and eastwardly; and by lake Erie, the Miami river, and the claim of the Shawanoes upon the Auglaize, a branch of the latter.
On the 8th of April, colonel Ball arrived with two hundred dragoons; and on the 12th general Harrison reached the fort with three hundred men from the posts on the Auglaize and St. Mary's. Vigorous preparations were now made for the anticipated siege.
When the last captive was taken is not certainly known, but two white boys were captured so late as 1791, and one of these was adopted by the Delawares in Auglaize County. His name was Brickell, and he was carried off from the neighborhood of Pittsburg when nine years old. He wrote a narrative of his life among the Indians, and gave an account of his parting with them which is very touching.
In 1794, at the meeting of the Auglaize and Maumee, twenty miles from the last post, which he named Fort Defiance, he finally met the tribes in great force, and defeated them so thoroughly that for sixteen years they never afterwards made head against the Americans. At this day we can hardly imagine the dismay that the rout of St. Clair and the slaughter of his men spread through the Ohio country.
Meanwhile Harrison had come back from a recruiting mission; and a new brigade of Kentucky militia, twelve hundred strong, under Brigadier General Green Clay, was to follow in boats down the Auglaize and Maumee rivers. Procter's guns were already pounding the walls of Fort Meigs on the 5th of May when eight hundred troops of this fresh American force arrived within striking distance.
The Miami chief Richardville is on record as often asserting that Pontiac was born by the Maumee at the mouth of the Auglaize. In any event, Pontiac, like his great successor, the incomparable Shawano chief, Tecumseh, was a native of Ohio. The Ottawas, Ojibwas, and the Pottawottomis had formed a sort of alliance of which Pontiac was the virtual head.
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