Page:Historic highways of America (Volume 8).djvu/216

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212
MILITARY ROADS

of encampment was the site of the present city of Defiance on the commanding point between the rivers, and here in the three days succeeding, Fort Defiance was erected. To the Indians the name of the spot was Grand Glaize.[1] Wells's rangers reported that the Indian army was lying two miles above the British fort, on the west bank of the Maumee. According to Posey, Wayne on the eleventh despatched an old Indian to the hostile camp with offers of peace; two days later an old squaw was posted off with a similar message. Neither returned. On the sixteenth, the fort being nearly completed, Major Hunt was left in command, and the grand advance began. The route was down the left bank of the Maumee straight toward the painted lines of Little Turtle's army. Christopher Miller—the red-man made white by that plunge in the creek—met the army today with a message from the chieftain White Eyes, Clark records, asking Wayne to remain ten days at Grand Glaize, not erecting a fort, and the Indians would perhaps treat with him.

  1. Glaize was from the French meaning "clay;" Auglaize River was the "river of the clay banks."