ner. Procter was unable to
control the Indians, who ran wild. They hated the Westerners
who made up Winchester's force, as the men who had deprived
them of their lands, and they now wreaked their vengeance
on them for some time before they could be again brought
within the bounds of civilized warfare. After the battle
Procter retired to Amherstburg; Harrison began to build
Fort Meigs on the Maumee; and a pause of three months
followed all over the western scene.

But winter warfare was also going on elsewhere. A month
after Procter's success, Prevost, when passing through
Prescott, on the upper St Lawrence, reluctantly gave
Colonel Macdonell of Glengarry provisional leave to attack
Ogdensburg, from which the Americans were forwarding
supplies to Sackett's Harbour, sending out raiding parties,
and threatening the British line of communication to the
west. No sooner was Prevost clear of Prescott than
Macdonell led his four hundred regulars and one hundred
militia over the ice against the American fort. His direct
assault failed. But when he had carried the village at
the point of the bayonet the garrison ran. Macdonell then
destroyed the fort, the barracks, and four vessels. He
also took seventy prisoners, eleven guns, and a large
supply of stores.

With the spring came new movements in the West. On May
9 Procter broke camp and retired from an unsuccessful
siege of Fort Meigs (now Toledo) at the south-western
corner of Lake Erie. He had started this siege a fortnight
earlier with a thousand whites and a thousand Indians
under Tecumseh; and at first had seemed likely to succeed.
But after the first encounter the Indians began to leave;
while most of the militia had soon to be sent home to
their farms to prevent the risk of starvation. Thus
Procter presently found himself with only five hundred
effectives in face of a much superior and constantly
increasing enemy. In the summer he returned to the attack,
this time against the American position on the lower
Sandusky, nearly thirty miles east of Fort Meigs. There,
on August 2, he tried to take Fort Stephenson. But his
light guns could make no breach; and he lost a hundred
men in the assault.

Meanwhile Dearborn, having first moved up from Plattsburg
to Sackett's Harbour, had attacked York on April 27 with
the help of the new American flotilla on Lake Ontario.
This flotilla was under the personal orders of Commodore
Chauncey, an excellent officer, who, in the previo