Caldwell's Western Rangers

From Wikipedia  "Canadian Units in War of 1812."

Known as Western Rangers or Caldwell's Rangers.  Unit named after its leader, William Caldwell, noted Loyalist and Indian trader,   The unit was a relatively small one, probably not more than fifty men, normally organized into two companies.  

They worked in conjunction with the Indian Department and often fought alongside the Indians (chiefly the Ojibwe, Wyandotte and Pottowottomi).

The unit, or parts of it fought at the Battle of Moraviantown,  the Battle of Longwoods,  the Battle of Lundy's Lane and in several actions on the Niagara Peninsula.

--Brock-Perry

How the Horrors of the River Raisin Became a Rallying Cry-- Part 5: The Second Battle at the River Raisin

Arriving before dawn on January 22, 1813, and unnoticed by the American sentries, a force of 600 British Canadians and 800 Native warriors gathered into battle positions along the Mason Run Creek, about 250-350 yards to the north of the settlement.  

British regulars and artillery were positioned in the center, a dispersed clustering of Native warriors made up mostly of Anishinaabeg (Odawa, Ojibwe and Potawatomi) and Miami, accompanied by some Canadian militia were to the west, and to the east was a large number of Native warriors, mostly Wyandot and Shawnee, in the forward position, supported by Canadian militia and artillery to their rear.

Reveille sounded, and an American sentry spotted the British in the pre-dawn light. He fired a shot into the forward line that killed the lead grenardier, and the report of his musket sent 1,000 just awakened soldiers scrambling for their battle positions.

Almost immediately, the British opened with their artillery and the infantry pushed forward from its center position.  As they drew within range of the settlement, the British infantrymen fired a powerful volley at what, in the still dark distance, had seemed to be a line of soldiers.

Well, It Wasn't a Line of Soldiers.  --Brock-Perry

The War of 1812 in Illinois-- Part 1

From Free Pages Roots Web."

Upon the declaration of war  in June 1812, the Potawatomies and most other Indian tribes in the Illinois Territory strongly sympathized with the British, whom they saw as valuable allies in keeping the intruding American settlers from taking their land.ar of 1812."

They had been  hostile and restless for some time previous and blockhouses and small family forts were the order of the day for American settlers who were mostly in the southern part of the future state. There were often Indian  attacks on them.

Territorial Governor Ninian Edwards, becoming apprehensive of an outbreak of Indian hostility as the situation between the United States and Britain worsened, constructed Fort Russel a few miles from the present-day city of Edwardsville (named for him).  Sadly, the exact location of this fort is not known today (probably north of the city).

Taking the field in person, he made Fort Russell his personal headquarters and collected a force of 250  mounted volunteers who were later reinforced by two companies of rangers, under  Col. William Russell, numbering about 100 men.

--Brock-Perry

The Hargrave Family and War of 1812-- Part 2: Ninian Edwards Attacks

Following the massacre at Fort Dearborn (present-day Chicago), Illinois Territory Governor Ninian Edwards Became convinced that  the Potawatami and Kickapoo Indians were going to launch a major attack on settlements in southern Illinois.  In his capacity as commander-in-chief in the Territory, he took it upon himself to launch a campaign against them.

The force of 400 that he assembled included mounted militia volunteers commanded by  Charles Rector and Benjamin Stephenson.  On October 18, 1812,  Edwards and his force marched out of Fort Russell (near present-day Edwardsville).  Near present-day Springfield, he burned  two Kickapoo villages on  the Saline Fork of the Sangamon River.

From there, they turned west and marched to present-day Peoria where they attacked villages associated with the Kickapoo, the Miami and the Potawatomi.  According to Edwards' account to the U.S. Secretary of War, they burned the villages and large amounts of provisions.  They also captured 80 horses, killed more than  two dozen Indians and captured 4 prisoners.

That accomplished, they returned to Fort Russell in November 1, 1812.  There Edwards proclaimed that the Indian problems had been solved and he released the militia.

Two of the men with Benjamin Stephenson were Robert Hargrave (son of John Robert) and Joseph Palmer (son-on-law of John Robert.)

--Brock-Perry

About That Captain Thomas E. Craig-- Part 2

Gillum Ferguson explained the Indian situation in Central Illinois back then, saying that Gomo, an Indian chief who had years earlier traveled to Philadelphia to meet George Washington, sought peace for his village near present-day  Chillicothe, Illinois.  Meanwhile, across Peoria Lake to the south was the village of Shequenebec whose chief was a mystic -- and increasingly hostile to the settlers.

About fifteen miles south of Peoria, on the  Mackinaw River was a  mixed village of Kickapoo, Potawatomi,  Ottawa and Chippewa, with about sixty warriors, "all desperate fellows and  great plunderers."

At this point in his research on Illinois in the War of 1812, he found that the last thing written about the future state was a long article in  1904.

For the record, Ferguson said that the United States declared war on Britain in June 1812.  A peace treaty was signed in December 1814, but the Battle of New Orleans (made famous by singer Johnny Horton) took place in January 1815.

While doing research for his book, Ferguson visited Peoria and other sites across the Midwest (Illinois Territory stretched into parts of Wisconsin and Michigan).    The staff at the Peoria Historical Society collection at Bradley University were very helpful to him.

--Brock-Perry

Detroit's Fort Wayne-- Part 9: The Treaty of Spring Wells

From Wikipedia.

Even though Fort Wayne was not there yet, it did have a role at the beginning and end of the War of 1812.

Early in the war. this is where General Isaac Brock crossed his army over from Canada to attack Fort Detroit.  And, after the Treaty of Ghent, the future site of the fort was where the Treaty of Spring Wells (which is the name of the area the fort is located) was signed there. 

Well, next question is, what was the Treaty of Spring Wells?

It was an agreement between the United States and the Wyandot, Delaware, Seneca, Shawnee, Miami, Chippewa, Ottawa and Potawatomi Indians, ending the conflict between the two groups.  It was signed on September 8, 1815, at the present site of Fort Wayne in Detroit. Michigan.

The signing of the Treaty of Ghent had ended the war between Britain and the United States, but not the Indians and the United States.  These tribes had fought on the British side against the Americans.

--Brock-Perry

What Tecumseh Fought For-- Part 5: Aftermath of Tecumseh's War

The Battle of Moraviantown (Battle of the Thames) produced a considerable array of elected officials, among them three Kentucky governors, a vice president (Richard Johnson), and a president, an aging William Henry Harrison, who campaigned in 1840 under the slogan of "Tippecanoe and Tyler Too").

And because Tecumseh had died in a British fight, near a river that borrowed its name from England, his doomed war was  easily swallowed up by the larger War of 1812 between the British and Americans.

And then, an unrelenting stream of Americans poured into the Old Northwest Territory and Indians began fighting an increasingly lost war to delay them.  Tecumseh's War presaged  the Black Hawk War of 1832 in Illinois and Wisconsin; the deadly removal of Potawatomi people from Indiana to the Great Plains in  1838; the Dakota Uprising of 1862, in Minnesota.

Trace such conflicts back to Pontiac's Rebellion and what emerges  is not a picture of  innocent pioneer settlement in the continental heartland but a full century of Midwestern dispossession and resistance.

--Brock-Perry

What Tecumseh Fought For-- Part 2: An Indian Confederation

Tecumseh's 1811 diplomatic mission among the various Indian tribes rallied the Upper Creeks, but  most of the southern tribes rejected it. As a result, most of his efforts  remained centered in the Old Northwest, where he drew together the Shawnee, Delaware, Miami, Potawatomi, Wyandot, Kickapoo, Saulk, Meskwaki, Ottawa and Ojibwe.

To Tecumseh, the Americans were set on domination of the continent and the Indians were in the wat and must be removed.

William Henry Harrison's victory at the Battle of Tippecanoe might have ended the Indian conflict, but it didn't.  He was sure of it, but was very wrong about it.  Tecumseh and his brother, The Prophet, regrouped their people around a powerful ally, Britain, America's opponent in the approaching  maritime war.

Again, Tecumseh's aspirations were frustrated by circumstance.  Still hoping for an Indian confederacy, Tecumseh found his hand forced by the War of 1812.

For the next three years, the incomplete Indian alliance challenged American armies across the Native homelands.  They pummeled the Americans at the River Raisin, took Fort Dearborn (Chicago), chased settlers out of the borderlands, and orchestrated a three-pronged  offensive against the remaining American forts.

--Brock-Perry

George Ronan-- Part 9: George Ronan and the Fort Dearborn Massacre

From the Together We Served site.

From August 19, 2009, WLS AM  "Historian wants recognition for forgotten hero."  Frank Mathie.

Almost all Chicagoans have heard about the Fort Dearborn Massacre.  But very few of us have ever heard of Ensign George Ronan.

Ronan was a hero of that battle in the War of 1812, and now a Chicago historian, Victor Giustino, wants recognition for that forgotten man.

In this age of political correctness, the Fort Dearborn Massacre is now referred to as the Battle of Fort Dearborn.  And at 18th and Prairie along the lakefront, a new historical marker tells the story of how 91 people - soldiers, men, women and children - who were fleeing Fort Dearborn were attacked by 500 Potawatomi Indians.  More than half the Americans were killed.

--Brock-Perry

George Ronan-- Part 6: His Death

On the morning of August 15, 1812,  Nathan Heald and George Ronan led their force and civilians out of Fort Dearborn, 93 persons in all.  And, they ran into the Potawatomi ambush.  It quickly turned into a massacre.

Witnesses said they saw Ronan continuing to fight even after he was mortally wounded.  They say he killed two warriors before he died.

Survivors believe the spot where he was struck down was at or close to what is now  the intersection of 21st Street and Indiana Avenue in the Prairie Avenue neighborhood of Chicago's Near South Side.

--Brock-Perry

George Ronan-- Part 5: Ronan and His Commander Did Not Get Along

Although he didn't know it at the time, George Ronan had been posted to one of the hottest spots on the frontier.

Ronan was described by survivors of the massacre as a high-spirited young man who did not get along well with the fort's commander, Captain Nathaniel Heald.  It is thought this was the reason Heald kept assigning Ronan increasingly dangerous operations outside the fort's walls.

One of the things Ronan was to do was to try to knit the diverse inhabitants of the area into a group, but some were French-speaking, others English-speaking and still others  were Indians.

When war broke out, Nathaniel Heald received orders to evacuate the post and move to Fort Wayne, Indiana.  News of this evacuation, scheduled for August 15, 1812,  emboldened the Chicago "British" band of Potawatomi who took a position two miles south of the fort along the shore of Lake Michigan where they planned to attack  the Americans.

--Brock-Perry

George Ronan-- Part 4: Setting the Stage for the Fort Dearborn Massacre

One of the most threatened American forts on the Frontier  was a small stockaded fort associated with a fur-trading post near the southern tip of Lake Michigan.  Although the Chicago River and the area is flowed through was officially a part of the United States, the Fort Dearborn soldiers and fur traders were tremendously outnumbered by adjacent bands of Indians.

The predominant Indian group in the area was the Potawatomi nation, who remained allied with the British though their land had been ceded to the United States at the end of the American Revolution at the 1783 Treaty of Paris.

On the Great Lakes, the years before the War of 1812 saw increasingly embittered competition between British-Canadian fur traders and American merchants and fur traders, many of whom were in alliance with the interests of the powerful John Jacob Astor and his American Fur Company.

--Brock-Perry

Illinois' 200th!!!!-- Part 2: Fort Dearborn Massacre and Peoria

The first major engagement in the war in the Illinois Territory took place at Fort Dearborn in present-day Chicago.  In August 1812, a force of Indians, primarily Potawatomis, attacked soldiers and civilians as they evacuated the fort in what is generally called the Fort Dearborn Massacre.

In October 1812, Americans launched and expedition against the Indian center in the Peoria area.  It wa sled by Governor Ninian Edwards and Colonel William Russell.  They attacked  and destroyed Potawatomi and Kickapoo villages, prompting the Indians to leave the area.

Raids between the two sides, however, continued.

--Brock-Perry

Leslie Combs of Kentucky-- Part 2: Fort Meigs Besieged

He was born in Clark County, Kentucky in 1793, the youngest of 12 children of Benjamin Combs and officer in the Continental Army during the American Revolution.

At the outbreak of the War of 1812, Combs enlisted in the First Regiment Kentucky Volunteers under general William Henry Harrison, but was soon transferred to the command of Green Clay.  By April 1813, he was the captain of a scouting group.

On the evening of May 1, 1813,  Combs and a six-man detachment was  dispatched by Colonel William Dudley from Fort Defiance (present-day Defiance, Ohio)  to the besieged Fort Meigs.  As they canoed down the Maumee River, they were ambushed by Potawatomi, and two of Combs' men were killed.

The remaining men of Combs' force returned to Fort Defiance to say that Fort Meigs  was under siege and in need of aid.

--Brock-Perry

Benjamin Stephenson of Illinois-- Part 8: The American Attack on the Peoria Villages

On October 18, 1812, Gov. Edwards and 400 mounted troops marched out of Fort Russell and burned two Kickapoo villages on the Saline Fork of the Sangamon River, present-day Springfield, Illinois.

They then turned west and marched to Peoria where they attacked Kickapoo, Miami and Potawatomi villages.  They burned the villages down and destroyed all the provisions, making prospects for winter survival much less.  They also captured 80 horses, took four prisoners and killed between 24 and 30 Indians.

They returned to Fort Russell on November 1 and the militia was released.

--Brock-Perry

Benjamin Stephenson-- Part 7: Edwards Organizes Punitive Expedition Against Indians

Ninian Edwards negotiated with the Potawatomie Chief Gomo, but these negotiations broke down.  Raids and confrontations between small groups of settlers and Indians continued through 1811.  In 1812, the fall of Fort Dearborn (Chicago) and subsequent massacre galvanized public opinion and outrage.

Governor Edwards decided there should be an expedition against the Indians at Peoria Lakes.  Troops from Kentucky were expected to join the expedition but didn't show up.  Edwards had mounted rangers under Col. William Russell of Kentucky, hero of the Battle of King's Mountain during the American Revolution.

Fort Russell by Edwardsville was named for him.

Also in Edwards' force were militia commanded by Charles (Nelson?)  Rector and the newly promoted to colonel Benjamin Stephenson.

--Brock-Perry

Richard M. Johnson-- Part 4: War Hawk and Colonel

The War of 1812 was a received a lot of support from the people of Kentucky who feared the British would stir up the Indians.  Richard Johnson became a War Hawk, along with Henry Clay.  These were men in Congress who were pushing for a war with Britain.

After the declaration of war in June 1812, Johnson returned to Kentucky to recruit volunteers.  He recruited 300 men and was elected their major.  Then his group merged with another one and he was elected colonel.

His command was supposed to join General Hull at Detroit, but Hull surrendered before they got there.  He then reported to General William Henry Harrison, the territorial Governor of Indiana, who ordered him to relieve Fort Wayne in the northeastern part of the state which was under attack by the Indians..  Johnson and his men reached the fort on September 18, 1812 and lifted the siege.

They then returned to Kentucky and disbanded, burning Potawatomi villages along the Elkhart River on their way.

--Brock-Perry

A Frontier in Flames-- Part 11: Fort Dearborn Surrender and Massacre

A few days before he surrendered Detroit, William Hull had sent orders to Captain Nathan Heald at Fort Dearborn (present-day Chicago) to abandon the outpost because Hull did not think it could be defended against the enemy (and especially the Indians).

When Hull's orders arrived, Fort Dearborn was surrounded by about 500 hostile Potawatomi warriors.  Heald was reluctant to surrender, but also did not want to disobey orders.  Like Hull, he also asked for, and was promised safe passage.

But, before leaving the fort, Heald had his men destroy stores of whiskey and guns.  Furious at losing these prizes, the Potawatomi ambushed the departing Americans.  there were about 65 soldiers and militia and two dozen women and children.

Most were killed outright, but some were taken prisoner only to be viciously tortured and killed later.

--Brock-Perry

Fort Dearborn: Battle or Massacre?-- Part 2

On July 17, 1812, 600 British regulars, Canadian militia and Indians took Fort Mackinac on the strategic Lake Huron and Michigan.  The American garrison surrendered without firing a shot.

Loss of this post made it impossible to supply Fort Dearborn.  The ranking American commander in the region, General William Hull, at Detroit, ordered the fort abandoned.  Arms and ammunition that couldn't be carried were to be destroyed.

As far as being a massacre, detractors say that only a small number of women and children were killed, perhaps just one.  It is reported that one Potawatomi, Black Partridge saved one of the women.

In retaliation, American troops raided a Potawatomi villages and burned several to the ground, including that of Black Partridge.  This caused him to cease being a part-time friend of the Americans to a full-time British ally.

Simon Pokagon, a Potawatomi several generations removed from the event said, "When whites are killed, it is a massacre, but when Indians are killed, it is a fight."

Still Calling a Massacre.  --Brock-Perry

Fort Dearborn: Battle or Massacre?-- Part 1

From the August 15, 2012, Carolina (NC) Journal "A Battle or a Massacre?" by John Hood.

On August 15, 1812, the garrison surrendered and left Fort Dearborn, on the shore of Lake Michigan (current-day Chicago).  There were 55 soldiers, 12 militiamen, 27 women and children and 30 Miami Indian allies.  They were ordered to Fort Wayne, Indiana territory and had been granted safe passage by the Potawatomi Indians.

A short distance from the fort, they were attacked by 400-500 Potawatomi Indians.  The Miami Indians fled.  What took place next is a matter of debate.

The Potawatomi refer to it as the Battle of Fort Dearborn, a victory in their continuing war against encroachment and treaty violations by the United States.  Americans call it the Fort Dearborn Massacre.  Women and children were bludgeoned to death.  Some American soldiers were tortured, executed and mutilated.  Captain William Wells was killed and had his heart ripped out and eaten.

I Call It a Massacre.  --Brock-Perry