25% ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 
During this time the boats of the Queen Charlotte continued to 
patrol the river nearly as high as Sandwich, and on the night of the 
ist of August took possession of a raft which had been partly fitted 
up as a floating battery and had got adrift. General Hull had an- 
nounced his intention of securing his line of communication with the 
Miami River by a chain of blockhouses about ten miles apart. The 
first of these was commenced at the Rivière aux Ecorces, and orders 
were given for the construction of others at Brownstown and River 
Raisin. 
No time was therefore to be lost in effecting the removal of the 
Wyandots, and on the night of the 2nd of August Captain Muir with 
one hundred men of the 41st, a detachment of Essex militia under 
Captain Caldwell, and nearly two hundred Indians led by Tecumseh 
and Roundhead crossed the river under cover of the guns of the Queen 
Charlotte and surrounded the village of Brownstown. They found its 
inhabitants in a great state of alarm and excitement. Mounted patrols 
from Detroit had been riding about all day and some of the Indians _ 
who had decided to remain neutral had already taken to the woods. 
The remainder, with their families, household effects and cattle, were 
at once removed to Amherstburg, while Tecumseh and Captains Elliott 
and Livingston with a picked band of about forty warriors remained 
behind to interrupt the communication between Detroit and the River 
Raisin, where the 2nd Regiment of Michigan militia was being assem- 
bled. Next morning the mail was intercepted on its way to Detroit 
and its escort killed or taken. 
When the defection of the Wyandots was reported to General Hull 
he is said to have turned pale and displayed signs of violent agitation. 
He had distributed presents among them and seems to have entertained 
little suspicion of their good faith. When he saw them arrayed in 
arms against him, he felt that his troops were actually in a critical 
position and that not only the advance of reinforcements and the move- 
ments of supplies from Ohio might be seriously impeded, but that his 
own retreat might eventually be endangered. Already he began to con- 
template the withdrawal of the troops at Sandwich, but when this 
proposal was discussed at a meeting of the principal officers, many of 
them still declared themselves strongly in favour of an advance against 
Amherstburg. But as the bridges over Turkey Creek and the Canard 
River had both been destroyed, the artillery officers stated that it would 
be difficult to move the siege artillery by land, and it was then decided 
by the vote of Quartermaster-General Taylor to await the completion 

*McKenney, Tour to the Great Lakes, p. 121. 
