meet a detachment of volunteers from Ohio, with a convoy
of provisions for Hull’s army. The Indians,
firing suddenly, killed 20, including 5 officers,
and wounded about the same number of the Americans,
who hastily retreated, and were pursued seven miles
by the warriors alone, not a British soldier being
engaged. In this affair, General Hull’s
dispatches and the correspondence of his troops fell
into the hands of Tecumseh, and it was partly the
desponding nature of their contents which afterwards
induced Major-General Brock to attempt the capture
of the American army. Foiled in the reduction
of Fort Amherstburg; disappointed in his hope of a
general insurrection of the Canadians; and, “above
all, dismayed at the report of General Brock’s
resolution to advance against him,"[62] Hull’s
schemes of conquest vanished; and he who, less than
a month before, had landed in Canada boastful of his
strength and with threats of extermination, now saw
no other alternative than a hasty return to Detroit,
under the pretence of concentrating his forces; and
after re-opening his communication with the rivers
Raisin and Miami, through which he received his supplies,
of resuming offensive operations. Accordingly,
on the 7th and 8th of August the American army re-crossed
the river, with the exception of a garrison of 250
men left in charge of a small fortification they had
thrown up on the British side, a little below Detroit,
and which they evacuated and destroyed before the
arrival of Major-General Brock.[63] On the 9th of
August, a body of 600 Americans, sent to dislodge the
British from Brownstown and to open a communication
with the Rivers Raisin and Miami, was met by the white
troops and Indians under Captain Muir, of the 41st,
at Maguaga, between Brownstown and Detroit, but, after
a severe conflict, Captain Muir was compelled to retreat.
From the moment that Major-General Brock heard of
the invasion of the western district, he determined
on proceeding thither in person after he had met the
legislature and dispatched the public business.
Having expressed a wish of being accompanied by such
of the militia as might voluntarily offer their services,
500, principally the sons of veteran soldiers who
had settled in the province, cheerfully came forward
for that purpose. The threatening attitude, however,
of the enemy on the Niagara frontier, obliged the
general to content himself with half this number;
and he left York on the 6th of August for Burlington
Bay, whence he proceeded by land for Long Point, on
Lake Erie. In passing the Mohawks’ village,
on the Grand River, or Ouse, he desired the Indians
there to tell him who were, and who were not, his friends;
and at a council held on the 7th of August, they promised
that about 60 of their number should follow him on
the ensuing Monday, the 10th. At Long Point,
a few regulars and nearly 300 militia embarked with
him on the 8th of the same month in boats of every
description, collected among the neighbouring farmers,