k, in Warren County, Indiana, near
the place where Harrison crossed 371

17. Judge Isaac Naylor. From an old portrait in
the Court Room at Williamsport, Indiana 387

PREFACE

In presenting this book to the general public, it is the intention of
the author to present a connected story of the winning of the Northwest,
including the Indian wars during the presidency of General Washington,
following this with an account of the Harrison-Tecumseh conflict in the
early part of the nineteenth century, ending with the Battle of
Tippecanoe.

The story embraces all of the early efforts of the Republic of the
United States to take possession of the Northwest Territory, acquired
from Great Britain by the Treaty of 1783 closing the Revolutionary War.
The whole western country was a wilderness filled with savage tribes of
great ferocity, and they resisted every effort of the government to
advance its outposts. Back of them stood the agents of England who had
retained the western posts of Detroit, Niagara, Oswego, Michillimacinac
and other places in order to command the lucrative fur trade, and who
looked upon the advance of the American traders and settlers with
jealousy and alarm. They encouraged the savages in their resistance,
furnished them with arms and ammunition, and at times covertly aided
them with troops and armed forces. In other words, this is a part of
that great tale of the winning of the west.

We are well aware that there is a very respectable school of historians
who insist that the British took no part in opposing the American
advance, but the cold and indisputable facts of history, the words of
Washington himself, contradict this view. England never gave up the idea
of retrieving her lost possessions in the western country until the
close of the War of 1812.

An attempt has also been made in this work to present some of the great
natural advantages of the Northwest; its wealth of furs and peltries,
and its easy means of communication with the British posts. The leading
tribes inhabiting its vast domain, the Indian leaders controlling the
movements of the warriors, and the respective schemes of Brant and
Tecumseh to form an Indian confederacy to drive the white man back
across the Ohio, are all dwelt upon.

The writer is confessedly partial to the western frontiersmen. The part
that the Kentuckians played in the conquest of the Northwest is se