[CRUIKSHANK] HARRISON AND PROCTER 131 
unsolicited volunteers eager to join him. His movement was conducted 
with characteristic cireumspection and vigilance and difficulties of 
transport delayed him; but Fort Wayne was relieved without firing a 
shot on September 12th. Strong columns of mounted men were then 
sent out in every direction to destroy all Indian villages within sixty 
miles. Harrison himself accompanied one of these which marched to 
the forks of the Wabash.! These villages were all deserted at their 
approach and few prisoners were taken. The cabins were burnt and 
the standing corn was cut and piled in heaps to rot. Graves were 
ransacked and the bones they held scattered wantonly abroad. Little 
was accomplished by these raids except the infliction of untold misery 
upon a number of wretched women and children and the consequent 
exasperation of the warriors who were forced to seek refuge at Amherst- 
burg or Brownstown. 
During their absence Simrall’s regiment of Kentucky dragoons and 
a troop of mounted riflemen arrived in charge of a supply train, adding 
five hundred men and rendering possible a further advance. But on 
September 18, General Winchester came up and assumed command 
much to the disgust of many of the Kentuckians with whom Harrison 
had become a general favourite, while his successor seemed distant and 
supercilious. Winchester prepared to move forward to the Miami 
rapids and Harrison returned to Piqua with the intention of attempting 
a simultaneous advance with all the mounted troops he could assemble 
by way of St. Joseph’s River to the River Raisin.” The infantry regi- 
ments of Jennings, Barbee, and Poague, in all about fifteen hundred 
strong, were directed to move down the Au Glaize in charge of a supply 
train, clearing the road and building blockhouses to protect the line of 
communication as they advanced. Winchester wrote confidently to 
Meigs that he still hoped to winter at Detroit or its immediate vicinity 
and asked him to push forward two regiments of Ohio Volunteers to 
join him at the Miami Rapids between the 10th and 15th of October, 
and a third to keep the road open from Piqua to Fort Defiance. On 
September 22, he marched from Fort Wayne with about 2,500 men, but 
seldom advanced more than five milesinaday. Scouting was performed 
by a small band of Indians led by a half-breed Shawanese chief known 
as Captain Logan, said to be a nephew of Tecumseh and a company 
of white spies under Ruddle, a veteran frontiersman.? Apprehending 
an attack from Muir, Winchester crossed over to the right bank of the 
Miami at a little known ford and fortified his camp. Messages request- 
ing reinforcements and supplies were sent off to Harrison and Meigs. 

? Harrison to Meigs, Aug. 28, 1812. 
? Harrison to Eustis, Sept. 11 and 18, 1812. 
# Harrison to Meigs, Sept. 22, 1812. 
