374 The Winning of the West 



who belonged to the visionary school which always 

 denounced the army and navy, was given a legiti 

 mate excuse to criticise the tactics of the regulars; 1 

 and of course he never sought occasion to comment 

 on the even worse failings of the militia. 



The truth was that the American military authori 

 ties fell into much the same series of errors as their 

 predecessors, the British, untaught by the dreary and 

 mortifying experience of the latter in fighting these 

 forest foes. The War Department at Washington, 

 and the Federal generals who first came to the 

 Northwest, did not seem able to realize the for 

 midable character of the Indian armies, and were 

 certainly unable to teach their own troops how to 

 fight them. Harmar and St. Clair were both fair 

 officers, and in open country were able to acquit 

 themselves respectably in the face of civilized foes. 

 But they did not have the peculiar genius necessary 

 to the successful Indian fighter, and they never 

 learned how to carry on a campaign in the woods. 



They had the justifiable distrust of the militia 

 felt by all the officers of the Continental Army. In 

 the long campaigns waged against Howe, Clinton, 

 and Cornwallis they had learned the immense supe 

 riority of the Continental troops to the local mi 

 litia. They knew that the Revolution would have 

 failed had it not been for the Continental troops. 

 They knew also, by the bitter experience common to 

 all officers who had been through the war, that, 



1 Draper MSS., G. R. Clark Papers. Jefferson to Innes, 

 March 7, 1791. 



