by Allan Eckert
The trial lasted four days, and when Judge McKean gave the jury their charge, those men did not even leave the courtroom, but simply discussed the matter quietly among themselves for less than half an hour before announcing to Judge McKean that they had reached a verdict. McKean directed Brady to stand and face the jury and called for their finding. Breaths were gathered and held, and there was barely a sound in the crowded room as the jury spokesman spoke.
“We the jury find the defendant, Captain Samuel Brady, on the charge of murder, and in view of the mitigating circumstances involved, not guilty.”774
The courtroom went wild with cheers, and some of Brady’s Rangers thumped him on the back as Brady shook hands with Ross and Reddick and thanked them for their good job of defending him. Then they all retired to the nearby Patrick Murphy’s Tavern, Kyashuta accompanying them. When the old Seneca was asked why he had testified so strongly in Brady’s behalf, Kyashuta said Brady was his friend, and he would have said anything, truth or not, to get him off—it was the end that justified the means—but, nevertheless, what he had said was truth.775
Now, at last, a whole flotilla of boats with flags waving and carrying some 300 people accompanied Brady back downriver, singing, playing music and at intervals firing a small swivel. The riverbanks at several places were lined with people who cheered lustily as they passed, and in the areas of Van Swearingen’s Landing and Wellsburg, having learned of the verdict and Brady’s pending return, several hundred people had come from miles around to join in the celebration of his return, playing music and firing their small arms and a booming blast of their cannon as the boats appeared. The salute was triumphantly returned by the boat party.
Drusilla Brady and her boys were on hand to greet Samuel as he stepped ashore. Brady smiled at her and said, “Well now, Dusy, I told you I’d be back.” Their embrace was long and heartfelt and cheered greatly by the crowd—a gratifying close to a long ordeal.776
Lewis Wetzel had now been incarcerated in the Spanish jail in New Orleans for just over two years. The confinement of his bold, free spirit had been very hard on him and he was gaunt, pale and haggard, a dismal shadow of his former robust, fierce and confident self. In recent months he had begun to realize that he actually might spend the rest of his life in this jail. He had not thought things could get worse, but he was wrong.
For weeks he had been working to escape, digging at the heavy three-inch-thick plank walls of his cell with a large spoon, whose handle he had laboriously sharpened on the stone floor. He had been overjoyed when he finally carved a hole all the way through, but his joy was short-lived when he discovered it opened only into an adjoining empty cell. Nevertheless, he continued to enlarge it on the chance that the door to that cell would be unlocked. Just as he had made the hole as large as his head, a new prisoner was brought in and thrown into that cell and the door locked. It was very dark in both cells, and after they had been left alone, Wetzel hailed the new inmate, who came close and put his face near the hole.
“Who is it?” the new prisoner asked. “Is there a way out of here? I have been thrown in here for making money in a way the government does not like.”
Wetzel stiffened, thinking he recognized the heavily accented voice. Disguising his own, he asked, “What is your name?”
“Pedro,” came the reply. “Pedro Hermoso. Who are you? How long have you been in here?”
“Two years, you son of a bitch!” Wetzel snarled and thrust the sharpened spoon through the hole with all his strength. The point caught Hermoso high in the cheek, drove through skin and tissue and emerged just in front of his ear. Hermoso screamed and reeled back, jerking the embedded spoon out of Wetzel’s grasp and then lurching to his cell door, where he beat upon it with his fists and continued screaming.
The guards came quickly, took Hermoso away and then threw Wetzel, wholly naked, into a dungeon that was dank, windowless, stone-walled and less than half the size of his previous small cell. He didn’t really care. His regret was not that this had happened but that his weapon had not entered the eye and penetrated the brain of the man who was responsible for his being here.
[September 15, 1793—Sunday]
The months of treaty negotiation with the Indians had now come to a deadlock, and there was only one recourse left: Maj. Gen. Anthony Wayne should launch his campaign against the tribes at once.
It was not a decision the President and War Department had wished to make. The United States Treaty Commissioners—Timothy Pickering, Beverley Randolph and Benjamin Lincoln—had undergone many hardships and weeks of unsatisfactory meetings throughout the summer.777 When first they had arrived at the western end of Lake Erie, escorted by British representatives, a massive council of some 2,400 confederated Indians from 16 different tribes was in progress on the lower Maumee River, at the mouth of Swan Creek.778 The American commissioners asked to be allowed to attend that council and address the tribes, but they were not permitted to do so, the British being fearful the American emissaries would be hurt or killed if they appeared there. Instead, they were taken to the residence of Indian agent Matthew Elliott, near the mouth of the Detroit River, and kept there for over a month in relative comfort and safety while a stream of messengers passed back and forth between them and the Indians, who were counciling under the direction of Elliott’s superior, Col. Alexander McKee.
The American commissioners had received instructions from the government to conclude the negotiations by the first of August, so that if no satisfactory agreement had been reached, there would still be time for Gen. Wayne to push forward his campaign against the Indians while the weather remaining in 1793—during September, October and November—would allow him to do so. However, after weeks of delays and inconclusive talks at Elliott’s place, the three commissioners were finally taken by boat to the British Fort Erie, on the west side of the Niagara River, for a more formal conclusion of the talks.
Those talks and the messages preceding them had begun poorly and continually degenerated as time passed. The Indians first questioned why, if the Americans truly wanted peace, there was now an army of soldiers on the Ohio River near the mouth of the Great Miami, preparing to attack them. The commissioners replied that Gen. Wayne’s army, in its encampment at Hobson’s Choice, was there solely for defensive reasons and that so long as there remained any possibility of concluding a peace between the tribes and the United States, that army would take no offensive action. To that, the Indians replied that they had their own army of spies on the Ohio and knew all about what Wayne was doing there. They believed their spies far more than they trusted the words of the commissioners, who, the chiefs pointed out, made a habit of bending the truth whenever it was of benefit to them to do so.
Dropping that subject as quickly as possible, the commissioners then got into the matter of the concessions the United States was now willing to make to bring about peace. For the first time they admitted that the American government had erred in its initial belief, following the Treaty of Paris, that because they had defeated the British, they had also defeated the tribes and had thus rightfully acquired the Indian lands through conquest. The United States government now realized, they said, that the various Indian tribes were sovereign nations, undefeated and unsubdued, and that the lands north and west of the Ohio River were theirs. They confirmed the invalidity of previous land agreements made by them with the British as well as with the Indians and gave their word that any future agreements would be made with the tribes who rightfully owned the land, in which negotiations the United States would be honest in its bargaining and would be willing to pay amounts for the land that would be more than fair.
To prove their faith and good intentions, the commissioners went on, the United States was now willing to withdraw from the Ohio country and cede to the Indians all their claims of lands there except for the British posts the Americans had won, including those they were not yet occupying, such as Niagara, Detroit and Michilimackinac, as well as certain designated sites in th
e area of Cincinnati and along the Muskingum and Scioto rivers, where rather extensive tracts had come into possession of land developers and were already so heavily populated by Americans that it would be prohibitively expensive and inappropriate to make any effort to remove them. However, they added, the United States government was willing to compensate the tribes for these lands already occupied by paying to the tribes who had owned the lands an initial outright sum of $50,000 and an additional perpetually continuing sum of $10,000 per year. In return for this, all the Indians had to do was live in peace with the settlers already on the lands and those on the American side of the Ohio River.
Alexander McKee, continuing to act as adviser to the Indians and as translator, helped the Indians with their response to the American offer. It took another fortnight to frame the written reply in a manner agreeable to all the tribes represented. This document was presented by McKee to the United States commissioners on August 15. After a few preliminary remarks, the document continued:
You agreed to do us justice, after having long and injuriously withheld it. We mean in the acknowledgement you have now made that the King of England never did, nor ever had a right, to give you our Country by the Treaty of Peace, and you want to make this act of Common Justice a great part of your concessions and seem to expect that, because you have at last acknowledged our independence, we should, for such a favor, surrender to you our country. Money, to us, is of no value and, as no consideration whatever can induce us to sell the lands on which we get sustenance for our women and children, we hope we may be allowed to point out a mode by which your settlers may be easily removed, and peace thereby obtained. We know these settlers are poor or they would never have ventured to live in a country which has been in continued trouble ever since they crossed the Ohio; divide, therefore, this large sum of money which you have offered to us, among these people, and we are persuaded they would most readily accept it in lieu of the lands you sold them. If you add, also, the great sums you must expend in raising and paying Armies, with a view to force us to yield you our Country, you will certainly have more than sufficient for the purposes of repaying these settlers for their labor and improvements.
In carefully constructed sentences, the reply went on to state that the Indians simply would not give up any of the Ohio lands, including those upon which American settlers had now already made improvements.
Although this was not the sort of response the commissioners anticipated or wanted, it gave the Americans what the President would now be able to portray as a just reason for launching Wayne’s campaign to bring the Indians to their knees.779 The commissioners, having missed the August 1 deadline for concluding the talks, finally received instructions and replied to the Indians in a terse message that chided them for their refusal to be reasonable in view of the concessions the United States was willing to make and concluded with:
We sincerely regret that peace is not the result; but knowing the upright and liberal views of the United States which, as far as you gave us an opportunity, we have explained to you, we trust that impartial judges will not attribute the continuance of the war to them.
By then it was the end of August, and the commissioners sent a coded message to the secretary of war that said they had failed to effect a peace treaty. Henry Knox immediately sent express dispatches to the governors of Pennsylvania, Virginia and Kentucky to inform and warn them. His message to Gov. Thomas Mifflin of Pennsylvania set the tone for all three letters:
War Department September 3, 1793
Sir,
I am intrusted by the President of the United States to state to your Excellency that information has this day been received by express that, notwithstanding the utmost efforts of the Commissioners, the pacific overtures to the hostile Indians north of the Ohio have been rendered abortive by their insisting upon the Ohio as a boundary.
That the Commissioners arrived at the mouth of the Detroit river on the 21st of July, and waited there till the 17th Ulto. when, having received the definitive answer of the Indians, the Commissioners sailed for Fort Erie, where they arrived the 23 ulto.
The Commissioners were not even admitted to an interview with the body of hostile Indians, but the communications were carried on by deputations from them.
It appears that the tribes most determined for War are the Wyandottes, Delawares, Shawanese and Miamis, although it is said a considerable proportion of these were for peace.
It is understood that the six Nations, including Captain Brandt and his Mohocks, strongly urged the hostile Indians to make peace with the United States.
Affairs being thus circumstanced, it is probable that the sword only can afford ample protection to the frontiers.
It is understood that the Militia embodied on the frontiers of Pennsylvania, under your orders, together with the patrols called Scouts, are deemed sufficient for their defence. But it may be proper to caution the people immediately, that every measure necessary to guard against surprise should be adopted.
I am, Sir, with great respect,
Your Obedient Servant,
H. Knox
News of the failed peace talks reached Gen. Wayne on September 11 but did not surprise him. He had been receiving irregular reports from a spy who had been in attendance at the Indian councils on the Maumee as they were negotiating with the commissioners through deputations, so he actually knew more about what went on in that major council than the commissioners themselves, Henry Knox or President Washington. Practically coincident with the news of the failed treaty talks, his spy reported to him, and Wayne personally took his deposition in secret. As soon as this was finished, he at once he wrote out a detailed report based on that spy’s report of what had occurred in the Grand Council and sent it on September 15 to both the President and the secretary of war:
N. Western Territory
Personally appeared before me a certain_____ _____, aged twenty-four years, born in the State of Pennsylvania on the Monongahela and employed as one of my Emissaries at the private council of the hostile Indians lately held at the Rapids of the Miami of the Lake; who deposes and saith that he arrived at the Rapids on the 10th day of July last, where he sat in Council with the hostile Indians, being adopted and considered one of them.
That he was captured by the Weeaws [Weas] at 14 years of age and has resided with them for 9 years; and has frequently been passing from Post Vincennes into the Indian Country; that he went with a message from General Putnam last fall as far as the Rapids to invite the hostile Indians to a treaty.780
At his arrival on the 10th of July last at the Rapids of the Miami [Maumee] there were about 1,400 Indians assembled, and continued to arrive daily until about the 20th, when they amounted to 2,400, eighteen hundred of whom were warriors.
That they continued to council daily until they sent their Order, to the Commissioners to go home, that they would not treat with them; that they then continued to meet in Council daily for ten days after they had sent that message to the Commissioners.
That they demanded the Ohio as a boundary and in their private conversation they also said they ought to be paid for all the lands in the State of Kentucky.
That Simon Girty sat constantly with them as one of the Council—that Governor Simcoe’s aide-de-camp and a Lt. Silvy of the 5th British Regiment, and one other British Officer, with Colonel McKee, remained in Colonel McKee’s house at about 50 or 60 yards distant.
That every night several of the principal head chiefs—particularly the Shawanese and Delawares—used to meet in private council at McKee’s house with the aforesaid aide-de-camp and British Officers.
That Colonel McKee always promised that the King, their Father, would protect them and afford them every thing they wanted in case they went to war, such as arms, ammunition and provisions at that place; but that they must come there for it—that he could not carry it any farther. That they ought not to make Peace upon any other terms than to make the Ohio the boundary line; but to defend their lands at all ev
ents, and that the King, their Father, would not suffer them to be imposed upon.
That Colonel McKee furnished the whole of the Indians with arms, ammunition, scalping knives, tomahawks, as soon as the treaty was over and promised them clothing when they wanted it. That the supply of ammunition was very abundant, even more than they could use this winter. That the arms furnished were partly rifles and partly fusees; the rifles carried an ounce ball and have three sights behind, two to lift up in proportion to the distance at which they fire: that the chiefs were furnished with horseman’s swords and pistols.
That the number of warriors who would immediately operate against the Legion would be about 1,500, provided the army moves with rapidity; but if they advance as slow as they did in the campaign of 1791, the Indians will certainly collect to at least 2,000 warriors; they appear to be confident of success.
That the Indians separated on the 28th ultimo, and were to assemble again at Auglaize twenty-five days from that time, in order to operate as circumstances may then be, i.e., to watch the motions of the Army and wait a favorable moment to strike.
Signed _____
Sworn before me this 15. Sept. 1793
Signed Ant. Wayne
Extract
It was now being left to Gen. Wayne’s discretion as to whether his army was adequately prepared to undertake the campaign against the Indians on the Maumee this fall. So far as the discipline he had wrought in his force was concerned, he had no doubt they were ready for such an enterprise. The principal drawback, however, was the same one that had plagued Gen. St. Clair two years earlier: Promised supplies had not been delivered by the contractors—whom he suspected of corruption—and he had no intention of making the same mistakes St. Clair had made by pushing ahead in spite of such difficulties. So, in his communications to the President and secretary of war, he announced that he would move his army forward to an advanced post, where he would continue to drill and train his men, and it would be from there, when fully supplied as necessary, that he would launch his campaign against the Indians next year.