Braddock's Road, a route for the hordes of Indians toward the frontiers. Their victory, so bloody, so overwhelming, gave confidence. Perhaps never before nor afterward did any battlefield present a scene equal to that Wabash slaughter field. The dying were tortured and the dead frightfully mutilated. On the theory that the army sought to conquer the Indian land, sand was crushed into the eyes of the dead in cruel mockery. Several scores of women followed the army—though contemporary records are singularly silent on this point.[1] Many of them, it is sure, fell into the hands of the savages and the first white visitors to the battleground found great stakes driven through many corpses.[2]
The two underlying causes for this terrible reverse of American arms were the long delay in getting the army on its feet, properly supplied; and the undisciplined condition of the troops. The immediate cause of the defeat was, without question, the failure of all the officers who knew of
