The Columbian Highway: A military history of the Natchez Trace - part 1

An Uncertain Beginning

In the last years of the 18th century, the fledgling United States of America found itself in the unenviable position of trying to establish notoriety on the world stage while at the same time guarding against growing unrest along a frontier that stretched from the Great Lakes in the Old Northwest to Natchez in the southern Mississippi Territory.   Under the Articles of Confederation, Congress was unable to levy taxes and had no independent method of raising revenue.  As such, Congress could not pay it’s domestic or foreign debts.  Such a sad state financially and an intrinsic mistrust for a standing military force, were both contributing factors in the disbanding of the Continental Army shortly after the official end of the Revolutionary War in 1783.  At it’s start, the United States of America possessed neither riches nor the means to defend them.  However, the one thing that the young nation did possess as enshrined in the Treaty of Paris between England and the United States was land.

 

Early Americans pushed westward carving out their homes on

land opened up to settlement by the Northwest Ordinances. 

The resulting clash of arms between Indians and Whites would

last  for 30 years

In 1784, and subsequently in 1785, and 1787, the government issued a series of ordinances that opened up the Northwest Territory for settlement and laid the foundation for the method of growth for the nation, westward expansion fueled by the government sell of seemingly boundless stretches of untamed land.









 “Too few to fight and too many to die.”  

Beginning with the formation of the tiny standing army of the United States, occurred a series of events that would haunt the nation and shape it’s development for the next one hundred years.  The First American Regiment and the United States Constabulary Force of 1,000 men was the sole regular military maintained by the government in the 1780’s.  The task it was given, pacification of a wild and vast frontier, coupled with the resources it lacked, set the stage of what would become the worst disaster in the history of the U.S. Army.  After suffering a series of defeats under General Josiah Harmar in the Autumn of 1790, a second military push into the Northwest Territory under General Arthur St. Clair came to a bloody halt a year later along the banks of the Wabash River in present day Ohio.  There on November 4, 1791, a confederation of Miami, Shawnee, and Lenape Indians attacked and overwhelmed St. Clair’s force of roughly 1,000 men of which only 24 escaped unhurt.  The casualty rate of over 97% in St. Clair’s  army still remains the highest rate ever suffered by the United States Army on campaign in any single action.  The Indian victory was complete but short-lived.  Federal troops returned just over two years later.  In August of 1794 soldiers of the United States Legion under the command of General Anthony Wayne soundly defeated the Northwest Indians at the Battle of Fallen Timbers near present day Toledo, Ohio.  The subsequent signing of the treaty of Greenville ensured two things to the participants in those early years of our nations founding.  At least for the present, the Northwest Territory would be pacified and as a result, the attention was now shifted toward present day Tennessee, Mississippi, and Alabama collectively know then as the Southwest Territory.