Stinging from St. Clair's defeat and hoping to avoid another campaign, George Washington asked Joseph Brant to facilitate peace negotiations. After the discovery of United States espionage operations, Washington sent out peace emissaries. The first was Major Alexander Truman, his servant William Lynch and guide/interpreter William Smalley. Truman and Lynch were killed; Truman was apparently killed prior to 20 April 1792 at what later became Ottawa, Putnam County, Ohio. A similar mission in May 1792 under Colonel John Hardin also ended in Hardin and his servant Freeman being mistaken for spies and killed on the site of modern Hardin, Ohio.