[CRUIKSHANK] HARRISON AND PROCTER 153 
“would be, I am convinced, of the highest utility, both in restraining 
and directing the hostility of the Indians to the proper objects of it.” 
It might also prove an efficient substitute for the militia, which had 
few good officers. He proposed the enlistment at first of a single com- 
pany as an experiment, and recommended that it should be placed under 
Colonel William Caldwell, who possessed great influence among the 
Indians and had commanded a company of Butler’s Rangers at the 
Blue Licks and Sandusky thirty years before. 
With the exception of the Wyandots of the River Canard and 
Brownstown and some Pottowatomies and Miamis, who had been 
driven in by the destruction of their villages, few Indians remained 
in the vicinity of Amherstburg. 
Procter had directed the construction of two gunboats at Chatham 
and laid the keel of a ship at the Amherstburg dockyard to ensure his 
supremacy on Lake Erie Two blockhouses were also projected at 
important points. But he lacked carpenters and artificers, as well as 
officers and seamen to man these vessels when they were launched. 
On January 13, a party of Indians came in who reported that the 
enemy had advanced to the foot of the Miami Rapids with a thousand 
men. Two days before they had encountered their scouts, of whom 
they had killed two and wounded several, bringing off three captured 
horses. Procter promptly issued orders for calling out the militia and 
assembling the Indians. If it became necessary to dislodge the enemy 
he foresaw that he must employ his whole force.! 
Two flank companies of the Essex militia, under Major Ebenezer 
Reynolds, accompanied by a band of Pottowatomies, were dispatched 
next day to break up the settlement at the River Raisin and remove 
the inhabitants. To enable him to maintain his position until this 
could be effected, he took with him a three-pounder mounted on a sled, 
in charge of Bombardier Kitson, of the Royal Artillery. Not unnat- 
urally these people were very reluctant to leave their homes and 
sacrifice much of their property, and they bitterly resented the in- 
solent conduct of the Indians, who killed or drove off their cattle with 
scant ceremony. As the Pottowatomies were constantly going and 
coming, their numbers fluctuated greatly, sometime rising above a 
hundred and sometimes falling as low as twenty. 
About noon on January 18, Reynolds learned that a large body of 
men had been seen approaching along the lake a few miles distant, and 
made every effort to collect the Indians. The river was solidly frozen 
and presented no obstacle to an attack from the southward. Three 
hours later the enemy appeared in force in the skirt of the woods and 


? Procter to Sheaffe, 13 January, 1813. 
