Page:Historic highways of America (Volume 8).djvu/182

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178
MILITARY ROADS

"out of the reach of whisky, which baneful poison is prohibited from entering this camp," as Wayne wrote the Secretary of War,[1] winter quarters were established, houses for the soldiers being erected first and those for officers afterward. Severe daily drilling was the order of the day at Legionville, the result of which, though delayed, was sure.

While Wayne was whipping an army into shape on the upper Ohio two events were on the tapis at opposite corners of the Black Forest of the West to which the officials at Philadelphia were paying much heed. At Vincennes, on the twentieth of September, Putnam was scheduled to meet the delegates of the Wabash Nations for a treaty of peace, and early in October the commissioners from the Six Nations were to meet the chiefs of the disaffected northwestern tribes at the mouth of the Auglaize on the broad Maumee. At Vincennes Putnam accomplished all that could have been expected, and a treaty was signed by thirty-one Wabash chiefs on September 27. The treaty, finally, was not ratified by the United

  1. March 30, 1793.