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Field of Corpses: Arthur St. Clair and the Death of an American Army by Alan D. Gaff (review)

2024; Indiana University Press; Volume: 120; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2979/imh.00005

1942-9711

R.M. Owens,

World Wars: History, Literature, and Impact

Reviewed by: Field of Corpses: Arthur St. Clair and the Death of an American Army by Alan D. Gaff Robert M. Owens Field of Corpses: Arthur St. Clair and the Death of an American Army By Alan D. Gaff (New York: Knox Press, 2023. Pp. 416. Illustrations, map, bibliography. Paperbound, $22.00.) In Field of Corpses, Alan D. Gaff provides a nearly blow-by-blow account of an infamous—yet relatively unknown—American military disaster. In late 1791, Major General Arthur St. Clair led his army of regulars, Kentucky volunteers, and militia towards the heart of the Miami Indian nation in what would become northeastern Indiana. His mission was to defeat a confederation of tribes and force them to sell the Ohio Valley to the U.S. Instead, he lost more than 600 men and his reputation in the single worst defeat the U.S. ever suffered at the hands of American Indians—more than twice the casualties of Custer at Little Big Horn. Further, he became the subject of the first congressional investigation in American history. Officially, he was cleared of wrongdoing, but his military career was over. Gaff's analysis of the campaign, from the American perspective, proves exceptionally detailed. Exhaustive without being exhausting, he lays out the numerous challenges in St. Clair's path. Rather than avoid the mistakes made by his predecessor, Josiah Harmar, St. Clair and the Washington administration repeated and exacerbated them. The appointed quartermaster proved incompetent, and the army never acquired enough pack horses for such an undertaking. As Gaff points out, while St. Clair proved a reasonably effective politician in his role as governor of the Northwest Territory, his military career was marked by mediocrity. For example, he had not held a field command since 1777. He stood little chance of inspiring confidence in frontier volunteers, or instilling discipline in the sketchy Kentucky militia, many of whom deserted the army as he marched into the Ohio Country. Finally, while the administration made General Richard Butler second in command as something of a hedge—St. Clair's health, especially vicious bouts of gout, made it likely he might not finish the campaign—this led to a predictable friction between the men, with disastrous results. By the night of November 3, 1791—as the army bedded down at modern Fort Recovery, Ohio, without the simplest of fortifications or defenses—the two officers communicated only by notes. By the time the Northwestern Indians, motivated and led by skilled commanders, launched their dawn assault on November 4, they had already won. For an academic, this book presents a puzzle. Gaff produced a fine chronicle of Anthony Wayne's 1794 campaign in his Bayonets in the Wilderness (2004). Inescapably, this newer project resulted from a staggering amount of effort. The primary source research, both archival and in [End Page 76] period newspapers, is outstanding, and it would be difficult to imagine a more thorough investigation of the American side of the campaign. Though densely detailed, the prose moves swiftly and deftly through its sometimes gruesome topic. But while the author mentions the two standard treatments of the battle, Colin Calloway's The Victory with No Name (2014) and Wiley Sword's President Washington's Indian War (1993), in the introduction, he ignores them for the rest of the book. He offers, almost impishly, that as the Indians left no written records (not entirely true) this "military history . . . can only be told one-sided" (p. xi). That does not keep him from briefly discussing Chickasaw chief Piomingo's efforts to aid the U.S. Indeed, the three main chiefs leading the native army, Blue Jacket, Little Turtle, and Buckongahelas, receive literally no mention in the text. These oversights are a shame, as so much of the book is truly worth reading. Robert M. Owens Wichita State University Copyright © 2024 Trustees of Indiana University