Page:Historic highways of America (Volume 8).djvu/112

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CHAPTER III

ST. CLAIR'S CAMPAIGN

HARMAR wrought wide destruction but of the kind that made the Indians of the Maumee irrevocably and bitterly angry. The main boast of the returning campaigners was that the enemy did not pursue them—which, after all, was more significant than we can realize today. It illustrates in a word the exact effect of the raid; the Indians were dumbfounded at the arrival of a white army so far within their forests. They knew as well as the whites that the punishment administered to the frontiersmen was almost wholly due to the rash boldness of the latter, who, rushing heedlessly after the scurrying savages, made ambuscades possible. Yet Harmar's actual success was only in burning villages and crops, and sending crowds of old men and women and children fleeing to the swamps and forest