object, that they opened to us and ran to the right and left without firing. I think about two hundred of our men passed through them before they fired."[1] An opening being made, the army poured heedlessly along. No order or semblance of order existed, save in a remnant of Clark's command which essayed to cover the rear. In the very rear, on a horse which could not be pricked out of a walk, came St. Clair, unmindful of the bloody tumult behind him where the old men and wounded were being killed.
This awful battle was a fitting close for such a campaign. In almost every sense it was the greatest defeat suffered by white men on this continent at the hands of aborigines. St. Clair's army numbered on the eve of November 3 one thousand four hundred and eighty-six men and eighty-six officers. Of these, eight hundred and ninety men and sixteen officers were killed or wounded. The army poured back to Fort Jefferson and then on to Fort Washington. The path hewn northward became, like
- ↑ Albach's Annals of the West, p. 584.
