b'were the artillerymen, who quickly unlimbered their cannons and steadily poured fire on the onrushing Indians. But as smoke consumed the camp, the artillerymen found themselves unable to discern targets even as the Indians massed around them.Amidst the chaos, the personally brave Arthur St. Clair, wounded after his horse was shot from under him, tried in vain to restore order and rally his men for a counterattack even as bullets flew through his coat (he was miraculously unharmed by the gunfire), but in the confusion, the smoke, and the screams, he failed to do so. Gathering about 300 men, one militia commander, Lieutenant Colonel Darke was able to advance about 300 yards across the Wabash before his attack petered out in the face of concentrated Indian fire. The Indians swarmed over Darke\'s command into the center of the camp and in the ensuing mayhem, killed all but three of the women present and almost all of the children (Palmer, 1794, pp. 198-199).And propped up against an oak tree stump, mortally wounded, was General Butler, the same veteran Indian fighter who didn\'t act on a subordinate\'s warning and paid the ultimate price. "Around the wounded Butler, a group of men and officers crouched in the hurried conference. Butler started laughing. Evidently, he had registered the shrieks of a cadet nearby and was struck by the sheer intensity of the noise. A beloved general, he\'d been shot in the arm while trying to rally troops from their outright flight in the face of a surprise attack from all sides. Getting his arm in a sling, he mounted a horse to take charge of the collapsing front line, shot again, he fell from the saddle. Four soldiers had lugged and carried him in a blanket to his tent in a row of tents, but he found his wound to be too painful to allow him to lie down, so they propped him against the oak, an especially huge, spreading tree, and stacked two knapsacks on either side to hold him up. Butler was a heavy man, and as he laughed, his sides shook his coat" (Hogeland, Autumn of the Black Snake, pp.11-12).A very short time later, as the Indians closed in, Butler ordered his two brothers Edward and Thomas to get away as best they could while he awaited the inevitable. How he died is still relatively unknown. There is a woodcut of him in front of the oak raising his hand as a Shawnee warrior was about to dispatch him with a tomahawk, but the possibility exists that as gravely wounded as he was, he may have expired just before the Shawnee approached his corpse but by this time the surviving Americans had fled the carnage.At 9 a.m. just three hours after the beginning of Little Turtle\'s surprise attack, St. Clair could see that the survivors of his command were exhausted, worn out, and in danger of being slaughtered. He gave the order to Darke\'s militia and the remnants of the 2nd regulars, about 100 men, to get away as best they could. In the end St. Clair and approximately 400 men were able to get away, but at least 2/3 of his command were shot, hacked, or stabbed to death on the banks of the Wabash in the worst American military defeat up until the Second World War. It is said that Washington shook with rage upon receiving the news of the disaster, repeating again and again that he had warned St. Clair to "beware of surprise" - and St. Clair was surprised. In the end, Washington not only allowed St. Clair to remain as governor of the Ohio territory but surprisingly refused to have the old general court-martialed (perhaps realizing that he had pushed St. Clair to do so much with so little), insisting that St. Clair resign his military command for his good and the good of the nation.Washington now turned to one of his most daring general officers of the Revolution. That man was Major General Anthony Wayne - better known as Mad Anthony Wayne. He was a man who wasn\'t afraid to lead his men Major General Mad Anthony Wayne into the gates of hell, as he proved at the battles of Stony Point and Monmouth, but also a man who also tasted the bitterness of a surprise attack on his men. Unlike the St. Clair he knew well and loathed (Wayne had served under St. Clair in the aborted 1775-1776 Canadian campaign) Wayne had learned his lessons well. Here was a man who would drill the life out of his men but in the end would also make certain that they were well-fed, well-paid, well-equipped, and in the best of spirits before he would send them into harm\'s way (Hogeland, Autumn of the Black Snake, pp. 190-194). ENTER ANTHONY WAYNE"We have beaten the enemy twice under different commanders . . . the Americans are now led by a chief who never sleeps . . . we have never been able to surprise him . . . it would be prudent to listen to his offers of peace"Little Turtle on Mad Anthony Wayne (Utley, Robert M., and Washburn, Wilcomb E., The American Heritage History of the Indian Wars,963RealCountry.comcontinued on page 46ArizonaRealCountry.com December 2020 45'