FORT RECOVERY, Ohio — One of the biggest disasters in U.S. military history occurred an hour's drive northeast of Muncie, when a confederacy of nine Native American tribes attacked an Army camp at sunrise more than 200 years ago.

Archaeologists from Ball State University have made the drive dozens of times in the past decade, partly in search of new evidence about the battlefield.

President George Washington had appointed Major Gen. Arthur St. Clair to lead the U.S. Army and build a series of forts from Fort Washington (Cincinnati) to Kiihkayonki (Fort Wayne).

On the night of Nov. 3, 1791, St. Clair's Army, moving north, made camp on the banks of the Wabash River at what is now the village of Fort Recovery, though he thought he was actually on the St. Mary's River, much closer to Kiihkayonki.

► How to spend a day in Fort Recovery

He couldn't have picked a worse place to spend the night, Ball State researchers say.

In addition, it was cold and snowy, the troops were ill-trained (some had joined the Army to avoid criminal prosecution, some were militia dressed not in uniform but more like Daniel Boone), they were not well fed, and they were tired after having spent another day chopping their way through the forest. And they didn't bother to make any fortifications that night because they weren't expecting an army of Indians.

"That's true, but what we have come to learn is the Indians had a clever strategy and executed it quite well," Ball State archaeologist Christine Thompson said during a public presentation in nearby Portland, Ind., on the rainy night of April 25. 

In other words, the Indian victory wasn't an accident.

A native of Fort Recovery, Thompson grew up hearing that the battle took place in modern-day uptown Fort Recovery.

That's true, too. But the research has found that "they weren't just uptown the whole time," Thompson said. For starters, there were perhaps 1,400 people on each side, or 2,800 combatants total, who couldn't all fit uptown.

The research — including terrain analysis, historic maps, large-scale metal detector surveys, GIS (geographic information system) data modeling, excavations, and location of battle-era artifacts like lead shot, musket parts, buckles and a possible bayonet piece — led to new findings about the battlefield size and battle strategy.

The battlefield is not just the 11 acres that are currently preserved and protected, and it's not just the 97 acres that encompassed St. Clair's encampment, Thompson and colleague Kevin C. Nolan wrote in Indiana Archaeology Journal last year.

The battlefield is 787 acres and includes the American Indian crescent-shaped attack formation and "avenue of approach."

Maps and images created by the researchers are now being used in public outreach activities and Fort Recovery State Museum tours.

"The population of Fort Recovery is now approximately 1,400 people," Thompson and Nolan wrote. "Visitors are asked to imagine everyone in town camped in tents where the downtown area is …

"Now imagine a second set of the town's population assembled on the high ridge to the northwest, shoulder to shoulder … That's how large of an area the battle encompassed."

► Muncie's founder deceived Native Americans

The university has received more than $500,000 in grants for its Fort Recovery research projects, including funding from the National Park Service's American Battlefield Protection Program for a KOCOA terrain analysis.

That's an acronym for Key and decisive terrain, Observation and field of fire, Cover and Concealment, Obstacles, and Avenues of approach and retreat.

The idea in diaries of the survivors and historical accounts is that 1,400 American Indians magically appeared and surrounded the Army in 15 minutes without being seen.

What happened before sunrise on Nov. 4 was the Indian alliance formed into a crescent shape on a high ridge half a mile northwest of town, Thompson said during her talk in Portland.

"If you go out there in the farm field, it's higher," she said. "You can look down into where the fort replica is today. You can see what they saw. They could look down and see St. Clair's Army. To me, it's almost like they had a spotlight. I can't imagine what that looked like."

One of the KOCOA maps shows a line representing the least visible path that the Indian alliance in their crescent formation could have taken to totally surround the Army within 15 minutes without being detected.

General chaos ensued, Thompson said, imagining war cries, war paint, weapons firing on both sides, soldiers who were trying to man the cannons getting picked off, camp followers (perhaps as many as 250 women and children) screaming and hiding under wagons, and St. Clair's horses being shot out from under him at least twice.

The day remains as the biggest-ever defeat of the U.S. Army at the hands of Native Americans.

At least 632 soldiers were killed (more than double the number who died in the more famous Battle of the Little Bighorn) and more than 250 were wounded. Nearly all of the camp followers were killed or taken prisoner, Thompson said. The women would have included wives of officers as well as women paid to do laundry, cooking, and so forth.

The death toll among the Native Americans, whose leaders included Little Turtle and Blue Jacket, has been estimated at 20 to 50.

Lasting three hours, the battle became known as St. Clair's Defeat, aka the Battle of the Wabash and the Battle of a Thousand Slain.

What was left of the Army, including St. Clair, retreated on what is now Ohio State Route 49 back to Fort Jefferson, 20 miles away.

A second concept emphasized in public outreach as a result of Ball State's research was a comparison of cultures.

"This territory was home to the nine tribes of the alliance," Thompson and Nolan wrote. "They lived here, hunted here, and had trails here. The American Indian Alliance used the landscape to their advantage before and during the battle, as they used the high ridge for protection and visibility …

" … when they saw that St. Clair had located his camp in a position to be greatly hindered by the landscape, they knew they had their opportunity.

"On the other hand, the U.S Army saw the landscape as something to be conquered. Imagine the noise the army made coming north from Fort Jefferson, cutting down trees to get wagons and cannons through the forest. They couldn't have picked a worse spot to camp on Nov. 3 and had no plan to defend their camp if necessary. The landscape was a hindrance to them before and during the battle, and certainly was not a part of their strategy."

► Video: New Discoveries at Fort Recovery

Ball State's research to determine the exact location of the battlefield is ultimately about battlefield protection, Nancy Knapke, director of the Fort Recovery State Museum, told The Star Press. It can't be protected if you don't know where it is.

"When you think about 700 acres, you're getting outside the community and into the farms, so that's a revelation for me that I certainly didn't know," said Knapke, a retired Fort Recovery elementary school principal.

The university's research also resulted in a 1.5-mile walking tour loop through town that includes 15 wayside exhibits throughout the battlefield.

One of the stops is at Monument Park, the site of a 101-foot-tall obelisk atop the burial vault of those soldiers killed in the Battle of the Wabash and the Battle of Fort Recovery.

In 1908, President William Howard Taft signed a bill that called for construction of the memorial.

"It marks the sacred spot where lie buried the fallen heroes who so bravely met and gallantly fought the savage foe; who as advance guards entered the wilderness of the west to blaze the way for freedom and civilization; who sacrificed home and life to the great duty of securing for a future inheritance vast dominions and great institutions," reads a plaque on the monument.

"Calling them savages was a sign of the times, that's what it was at that time, and look how far we've come," Knapke said in an interview at the museum. "I think this museum portrays them very fairly. One of our goals is appreciation for what the Native Americans sacrificed here on the grounds, what a great victory they had here because of the strategies they used, not just because they were lucky or had a lot of people.

"It was very even in that battle, probably around 1,200 soldiers and around 1,200 to 1,500 warriors."

After his defeat, St. Clair was replaced by Major General "Mad" Anthony Wayne, who returned to the scene of St. Clair's Defeat to build Fort Recovery in December of 1793. Indian forces attacked the fort during a second historic battle, the two-day battle of Fort Recovery, in June of 1794. That siege ended in U.S. victory. 

Later that year, Wayne built Fort Defiance, motto: "I defy the English, Indians, and all the devils of hell to take it."

► See a Ball State video: 'New Discoveries at Fort Recovery'

►Find out more at Ball State's Fort Recovery Research Page

While the Fort Recovery fort was abandoned in 1796 and later destroyed, a replica was built in the 1950s.

The Battle of the Wabash battlefield was disturbed when the town of Fort Recovery was built and when the Wabash River was rerouted, more than once, by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

"Probably some of the things that disturbed the landscape the most, unfortunately, were when the fort replica and the museum were built," Thompson said. "That probably destroyed more archaeology than anything else."

On a downtown lot, Ball State archaeologist using field methods including a metal detector and a magnetometer discovered what is most likely a 17-foot portion of an original wall of Fort Recovery — aligned exactly with the Greenville Treaty Line. It redefined the boundary between the United States and Indian lands.

While the remains of the soldiers under the commands of St. Clair and Wayne during the two battles lie beneath the 101-foot-tall monument in Fort Recovery, the skull and bones of a Native American remained in a display case at the town museum until the 1980s.

A visitor who claimed to be an American Indian told the town that the spirit of the person in the showcase was destined to wander the earth until the remains were buried. Ball State archaeologists determined the remains were those of an Indian with a ballistic wound.

The visitor advised the museum to bury the remains under a white oak tree.

A large natural stone on a shady hill just outside the museum marks the burial site. A plaque on the stone reads:

"Beneath the white oak rests an unknown Sha'anoe warrior. To his memory and in memory of his brothers killed here in the battles at Fort Recovery we erect this monument. September 10, 1983. 'Weshecatweloo Keweshelawaypa' (Let us always do good)"

"We would never do it like that now," Knapke said. "We would let a tribe remove the remains from here. We were novices. We did the best we could do at the time.

Until now, the story of the Battle of the Wabash has been for the most part one-sided, focusing on U.S. military actions and intent, not on American Indians protecting their homeland from Euro-American encroachment, according to Ball State's Applied Anthropology Laboratories.

The lab has received a $75,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to consult and collaborate with tribes to create a Battle of the Wabash/St. Clair's Defeat museum exhibit that would travel to tribal museums.

Thompson recently returned from a trip to Oklahoma for that purpose.

The federally recognized tribes whose tribal ancestors participated in the Battle of the Wabash were the Wyandots, Seneca, Cherokee, Ojibwe, Ottowa, Potawatomi, Shawnee, Delaware and Miami.

That project is being called "A New View of the Battle of the Wabash," created with tribal communities for tribal communities.

One of the biggest outcomes of Ball State's research is that people are starting to refer to the site of the Battle of the Wabash as "a battlefield."

"This may seem like a simple word choice, but it is a huge paradigm shift, as visitors and community members are seeing the site very differently," Thompson and Nolan wrote.

The 11 acres comprising the area of the museum and fort replica is owned by the Ohio History Connection/state of Ohio, and has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 1971.

One of the grants Ball State received explored adding more of the battlefield acreage to the National Register. 

"Because the remainder of the battlefield is private land, landowners have to agree to have their property listed," Thompson said. "We had some landowners that were interested in this, but not enough to move forward to formally expand that National Register acreage.

"Having more of the battlefield acreage listed in the future is something that we always keep in mind as we continue our research and discuss preservation and protection opportunities with the community."

Contact Seth Slabaugh at (765) 213-5834 or

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