In the Northwest matters culminated sooner than in the Southwest.  The Georgians, and the settlers along the Tennessee and Cumberland, were harassed rather than seriously menaced by the Creek war parties; but in the north the more dangerous Indians of the Miami, the Wabash, and the Lakes gathered in bodies so large as fairly to deserve the name of armies.  Moreover, the pressure of the white advance was far heavier in the north.  The pioneers who settled in the Ohio basin were many times as numerous as those who settled on the lands west of the Oconee and north of the Cumberland, and were fed from States much more populous.  The advance was stronger, the resistance more desperate; naturally the open break occurred where the strain was most intense.

There was fierce border warfare in the south.  In the north there were regular campaigns carried on, and pitched battles fought, between Federal armies as large as those commanded by Washington at Trenton or Greene at Eutaw Springs, and bodies of Indian warriors more numerous than had ever yet appeared on any single field.

    The United States Government Driven to War.

The newly created Government of the United States was very reluctant to make formal war on the northwestern Indians.  Not only were President Washington and the National Congress honorably desirous of peace, but they were hampered for funds, and dreaded any extra expense.  Nevertheless they were forced into war.  Throughout the years 1789 and 1790 an increasing volume of appeals for help came from the frontier countries.  The governor of the Northwestern Territory, the brigadier-general of the troops on the Ohio, the members of the Kentucky Convention, and all the county lieutenants of Kentucky, the lieutenants of the frontier counties of Virginia proper, the representatives from the counties, the field officers of the different districts, the General Assembly of Virginia, all sent bitter complaints and long catalogues of injuries to the President, the Secretary of War, and the two Houses of Congress; complaints which were redoubled after Harmar’s failure.  With heavy hearts the national authorities prepared for war. [Footnote:  American State Papers, iv., pp. 83, 94, 109, and III.]

    Raid on the Marietta Settlements.

Their decision was justified by the redoubled fury of the Indian raids during the early part of 1791.  Among others the settlements near Marietta were attacked, a day or two after the new year began, in bitter winter weather.  A dozen persons, including a woman and two children, were killed, and five men were taken prisoners.  The New England settlers, though brave and hardy, were unused to Indian warfare.  They were taken completely by surprise, and made no effective resistance; the only Indian hurt was wounded with a hatchet by the wife of a frontier hunter in the employ of the company. [Footnote:  “The American Pioneer,” II., 110.  American State Papers,