easures having failed, there should
be war and a settlement in some fashion.

Accordingly, in the fall of 1790, soon after his successful Creek
negotiation, he ordered out some three hundred regulars and eleven
hundred militia from Pennsylvania and Kentucky, and sent them under
Harmer into the Miami country. The expedition burned a village on the
Scioto; and then Colonel Hardin, detached with some hundred and
fifty men in pursuit of the Indians, was caught in an ambush and
his regulars cut off, the militia running away apparently quite
successfully. Thereupon Harmer retreated; but, changing his mind in a
day or two, advanced again, and again sent out Hardin with a larger
force than before. Then the advance was again surprised, and the
regulars nearly all killed, while the militia, who stood their ground
better this time, lost about a hundred men. The end was the repulse
of the whites after a pretty savage fight. Then Harmer withdrew
altogether, declaring, with a strange absence of humor, if of no more
important quality, that he had won a victory. After reaching home,
this mismanaged expedition caused much crimination and heart-burning,
followed by courts-martial on Hardin and Harmer, who were both
acquitted, and by the resignation of the latter.

This defeat of course simply made worse the state of affairs in
general, and the Six Nations, who had hitherto been quiet, became
uneasy and were kept so by the ever-kind incitement of the English.
Various mediations with these powerful tribes failed; but Colonel
Pickering, appointed a special commissioner, managed at last to
appease their discontents. To the southward also the Cherokees began
to move and threaten, but were pacified by the exertions of Governor
Blount of the Southwest Territory. Meantime an act had been passed to
increase the army, and Arthur St. Clair was appointed major-general.
Washington, who had been greatly disturbed by the failure of Harmer,
was both angered and disheartened by the conduct of the States and of
the frontier settlers. "Land-jobbing, the intermeddling of the States,
and the disorderly conduct of the borderers, who were indifferent as
to the killing of an Indian," were in his opinion the great obstacles
in the way of success. Yet these very men who shot Indians at sight
and plundered them of their lands, as well as the States immediately
concerned, were the first to cry out for aid from the general
government when a war, brought about usua