While the councils were sitting and while the Americans were preparing for the treaties, outrages of the most flagrant kind occurred.  One, out of many; was noteworthy as showing both the treachery of the Indians, and the further fact that some tribes went to war, not because they had been in any way maltreated, but from mere lust of blood and plunder.  In July of this year 1788, Governor St. Clair was making ready for a treaty to which he had invited some of the tribes.  It was to be held on the Muskingum, and he sent to the appointed place provisions for the Indians with a guard of men.  One day a party of Indians, whose tribe was then unknown, though later they turned out to be Chippewas from the Upper Lakes, suddenly fell on the guard.  They charged home with great spirit, using their sharp spears well, and killed, wounded, or captured several soldiers; but they were repulsed, and retreated, carrying with them their dead, save one warrior. [Footnote:  St. Clair Papers, ii., 50.] A few days afterwards they imprudently ventured back, pretending innocence, and six were seized, and sent to one of the forts as prisoners.  Their act of treacherous violence had, of course, caused the immediate abandonment of the proposed treaty.

The remaining Chippewas marched towards home, with the scalps of the men they had slain, and with one captured soldier.  They passed by Detroit, telling the French villagers that “their father [the British Commandant] was a dog,” because he had given them no arms or ammunition, and that in consequence they would not deliver him their prisoner, but would take the poor wretch with them to their Mackinaw home.  Accordingly they carried him on to the far-off island at the mouth of Lake Michigan; but just as they were preparing to make him run the gauntlet the British commander of the lonely little post interfered.  This subaltern with his party of a dozen soldiers was surrounded by many times his number of ferocious savages, and was completely isolated in the wilderness; but his courage stood as high as his humanity, and he broke through the Indians, threatening them with death if they interfered, rescued the captive American, and sent him home in safety. [Footnote:  State Dept.  MSS., No. 150, vol. iii.  William Wilson and James Rinkin to Richard Butler, August 4, 1788; Wilson and Rinkin to St. Clair, August 31, 1788.]

The other Indians made no attempt to check the Chippewas; on the contrary, the envoys of the Iroquois and Delawares made vain efforts to secure the release of the Chippewa prisoners.  On the other hand, the generous gallantry of the British commander at Mackinaw was in some sort equalled by the action of the traders on the Maumee, who went to great expense in buying from the Shawnees Americans whom they had doomed to the terrible torture of death at the stake. [Footnote:  Do., Rinkin to Butler, July 2, 1788; St. Clair to Knox, September 4, 1788.]