Fallen Timbers Battlefield

Fallen Timbers Battlefield

On August 20, 1794, Anthony Wayne's Legion routed a Native confederacy in storm-felled timber near Maumee, a defeat that led to the 1795 Treaty of Greenville.

At a glance

Fact	Value
Type	Historic site
County	Lucas
Established	1999
Coordinates	41.5442 N, 83.6975 W
Size of the battlefield unit	187 acres (2006)
Size of the Fallen Timbers State Monument park	9 acres (2006)
Warriors in the confederacy's ambush line	as many as 1,100 (1794)
People involved in the battle, all sides	about 3,000 (1794)
Legion losses	33 killed, about 100 wounded (1794)
Confederacy warriors killed, per British agent Alexander McKee	19 (Wayne's men reported finding 30 to 40 dead) (1794)
Battle artifacts recovered in the 1995 and 2001 surveys	about 345 and 387 (2001)
Height of the Wayne statue and its pedestal	10-foot bronze on a 15-foot granite pedestal (1929)

Overview

On August 20, 1794, Maj. Gen. Anthony Wayne's Legion of the United States, with mounted Kentucky militia, routed a confederacy of Shawnee, Ottawa, Wyandot, Lenape, Potawatomi, Miami and other warriors who had taken cover in a stretch of forest flattened by a tornado on the north bank of the Maumee, in what is now Maumee. The beaten warriors fell back on the British Fort Miamis, built that spring a few miles downstream, and its commander shut the gates on them; that refusal and the defeat led to the Treaty of Greenville in 1795, which opened most of Ohio to American settlement. Fort Miamis was abandoned under the Jay Treaty in 1796, served again as the British base during the 1813 sieges of Fort Meigs, and survives as earthworks. For two centuries the battle was placed on the river floodplain, where Ohio built a monument to Wayne in 1929; archaeologist G. Michael Pratt found the real battlefield in 1995, about 600 meters north on the upland. Since 1999 the 187-acre battlefield, the 9-acre monument park and the Fort Miamis site have formed a National Historic Site run by Metroparks Toledo with the Ohio History Connection, an affiliated area of the National Park System.

The name

The battle, and the place, are named for the forest trees a storm had blown down in rows across the ground the confederacy chose to fight from, which made a natural barricade against Wayne's mounted troops. The river, and so the fort, went by the name Miami, or Miami of the Lake, before 'Maumee' came into use. (source)

Native American history

No pre-contact site on the battlefield or at Fort Miamis turned up in published sources, and Metroparks Toledo speaks only generally of the land as ancestral to the Ojibwe, Odawa, Potawatomi, Lenape, Shawnee, Myaamia, Wyandot, Mingo and Wabash nations. The historic record is specific. In 1794 the confederacy that fought here included Shawnee under Blue Jacket, Odawa and Potawatomi under Egushawa and Little Otter, and Wyandot and Lenape with a small Canadian militia company; Pratt's archaeology and the Park Service plan put the warriors at about 1,100. The warriors gathered beforehand at Roche de Boeuf, the limestone rock in the Maumee near Waterville, and fasted through the days of waiting. The Odawa leader Me-sa-sa (Turkey Foot), whose people lived at Blanchard's Fork of the Auglaize, was killed during the retreat. The boulder associated with his death became a place of offerings, and representatives of the American Indian Intertribal Association told the Park Service that some people still leave offerings there. The defeat led to the Treaty of Greenville (August 3, 1795), which reserved a tract for the United States centered on Fort Miamis at the foot of the rapids, and the remaining Native title to the area was ceded at the Treaty of Fort Meigs in 1817.

Confederacy battle line in the fallen timbers: battle, Upland north of US 24 and west of I-475, Maumee (site 33Lu638), August 20, 1794
Roche de Boeuf (Roche de Bout): camp, Limestone outcrop in the Maumee River at Waterville, gathering place before the battle, 1794
Turkey Foot Rock: other, Originally at the base of Presque Isle Hill by the Maumee; moved to the Fallen Timbers monument park in 1953, offerings recorded from 1829 to the present
Treaty of Greenville reserve at the foot of the rapids: treaty, Tract centered on Fort Miamis, 1795

Stories

An hour in the fallen timbers

On the morning of August 20, 1794, Wayne's Legion left its camp at Roche de Bout in five parallel columns spread over 800 yards, with some 1,500 Kentucky militia behind. A screen of 150 mounted Kentuckians rode about 400 yards ahead. After about five miles they rode into the middle of an ambush line of as many as 1,100 warriors, broke, and fled back through the regulars of the front guard, who also gave way. A hastily formed skirmish line of light infantry and riflemen stopped the pursuit and pushed the warriors into the storm-felled timber, and a firefight followed while the rest of the Legion deployed into a battle line. Capt. Robert MisCampbell's dragoons charged across a narrow point into the timber, and he became the highest-ranking officer killed. Then the whole Legion charged and drove the confederacy from the field. (source)

The gates of Fort Miamis

The British had built Fort Miamis that spring partly to encourage the confederacy to resist, and retreating warriors ran to it expecting shelter. Maj. William Campbell had closed the gates as the firing came closer, and he would not open them, unwilling to start a war with the United States. Wayne camped in sight of the fort for three days. Knowing his howitzers were too light for a siege, he rode alone up to its walls and slowly inspected them, and his men burned Alexander McKee's trading post within view of the garrison. Neither commander fired, and the Legion left on August 26. (source)

Turkey Foot Rock, and how the story changed

The boulder now at the monument park once sat at the base of Presque Isle Hill by the river. The oldest written mention, by a Presbyterian missionary in 1829, records Native people saying a spirit in the form of a turkey came down on the rock during the battle. By the 1880s written histories had turned the spirit into an Ottawa chief named Turkey Foot who stood on the rock urging his warriors on and was shot down. That is the legend as later told, and it is how the rock is still labeled. The rock was moved in 1953 when the highway was relocated, and people still leave offerings there. (source)

The battlefield that was in the wrong place

For two centuries the battle was placed on the Maumee floodplain, and that is where the 1929 monument and the 1960 landmark went. In the 1980s, while excavating Fort Miamis, G. Michael Pratt noticed that participants described woods and a 'steep ravine,' not prairie bottomland. He compared more than 21 accounts, and only one ravine system, about 600 meters from the monument, fit. The land belonged to the City of Toledo, which had refused to allow digging, but a zoning dispute with Maumee led the two cities to fund a survey in 1995. Metal detectors turned up shot, uniform buttons, gunflint wraps and a U.S. bayonet, enough to map the right wing, MisCampbell's charge and some of the places men fell. The upland became the core of the National Historic Site four years later. (source)

Three days of fasting

On August 18 the confederacy captured one of Wayne's scouts, William May, and learned that Wayne meant to attack on the 19th, or on the 20th if he stopped to build a supply depot. The warriors fasted while they waited. Wayne did stop to fortify Fort Deposit, and when the Legion advanced on the morning of the 20th the warriors were in their third day of fasting. A council the night before had agreed they could eat the next morning, and because rain was falling many assumed there would be no battle and went back toward Fort Miamis to break their fast. The line Wayne struck was thinner than the one that had waited for him. Years later a warrior recalled Little Turtle's warning that the Great Spirit would hide in a cloud if they did not make peace, and read the rainy morning as the sign. (source)

Timeline

1783: The Treaty of Paris ended the Revolution but let the British stay in the Northwest Territory, and the Chippewa, Ottawa, Potawatomi, Shawnee, Delaware, Miami and Wyandot formed a federation to stop U.S. expansion. (source)
1790: Warriors defeated Gen. Josiah Harmar's expedition at the site of Fort Wayne. (source)
1791: The confederacy crushed Gov. Arthur St. Clair's army at the site of Fort Recovery; in 1792 Washington gave command in the West to Anthony Wayne. (source)
1794: In spring the British built Fort Miamis, a log stockade with four bastions and a deep ditch, on the bluff at the foot of the Maumee rapids to shield Detroit from Wayne. (source)
1794: On August 18 Wayne built Fort Deposit, a store camp at Roche de Boeuf about a mile above present Waterville, so the Legion could fight without its baggage. (source)
1794: On August 20 the Legion marched about five miles downriver in five columns and was ambushed by as many as 1,100 warriors in the tornado-felled timber; a charge by the whole Legion drove them from the field. (source)
1794: Retreating warriors found the gates of Fort Miamis closed against them by Maj. William Campbell and went on to Swan Creek, where their families were camped. (source)
1794: Wayne's men buried two officers and 15 to 17 soldiers, and the whole Legion marched back through the battlefield on August 23. (source)
1794: After burning Native villages and Alexander McKee's trading post within sight of Fort Miamis, the Legion left for Fort Recovery on August 26. (source)
1795: On August 3 the Treaty of Greenville was signed, opening most of present Ohio to settlement. (source)
1796: Under Jay's Treaty the British abandoned Fort Miamis; Wayne garrisoned it, and U.S. troops left it about 1799. (source)
1813: British troops landed at Fort Miamis and camped there, the fort being too decayed to occupy, as their base for the sieges of Fort Meigs across the river. (source)
1814: Fort Miamis was abandoned for the last time and later demolished, and the site went to farming. (source)
1829: A Presbyterian missionary made the earliest recorded mention of Turkey Foot Rock, saying Native people spoke of a spirit in the form of a turkey that came down on the rock during the battle. (source)
1886: James Averill's history of Fort Meigs described the boulder at Presque Isle Hill as carved with turkey feet in memory of the chief Turkey Foot, the form of the story written histories had taken by the 1880s. (source)
1929: The Fallen Timbers Monument, a 10-foot bronze of Wayne with a Native guide and a settler by sculptor Bruce Wilder Saville, was installed on a 15-foot granite pedestal. (source)
1929: On September 14 the Post Office issued a 2-cent stamp for the battle's 135th anniversary showing the new monument. (source)
1942: Several Ohio civic and patriotic organizations acquired part of the Fort Miamis site. (source)
1953: Turkey Foot Rock was moved from the riverbank to the monument park when Ohio Route 24 was relocated. (source)
1953: The Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Society made preliminary excavations at the Fort Miamis site. (source)
1960: The floodplain site then believed to be the battlefield was designated a National Historic Landmark. (source)
1975: The Fort Miamis site was added to the National Register of Historic Places. (source)
1981: Excavations at Fort Miamis from 1981 to 1984 found footing trenches, sill logs, wall fragments and wooden flooring still in place. (source)
1994: A monument to the American Indians who fought was added to the park for the battle's 200th anniversary. (source)
1995: A Heidelberg College survey led by G. Michael Pratt recovered about 345 battle artifacts on Toledo-owned land at US 23 and US 24 and located the true battlefield. (source)
1999: Public Law 106-164, signed December 9, created Fallen Timbers Battlefield and Fort Miamis National Historic Site. (source)
2001: After a 2000-2001 purchase agreement between Toledo and Metroparks, a second survey sampled about 10 percent of the 187-acre battlefield and recovered 387 more artifacts. (source)
2005: On November 7 the Maumee City Council voted to return ownership of the Fort Miamis site to Metroparks. (source)

Sources

Towns and ZIP codes

Water, health, jobs and history for the places on the shores and just downstream.

Towns

Maumee

ZIP codes

43537 Maumee

Questions

What happened at the Battle of Fallen Timbers?

At the Battle of Fallen Timbers on August 20, 1794, Maj. Gen. Anthony Wayne's Legion of the United States routed a confederacy of as many as 1,100 Shawnee, Ottawa, Wyandot, Lenape, Potawatomi, Miami and other warriors. The warriors had taken cover in tornado-felled forest on the north bank of the Maumee. The Legion lost 33 killed and about 100 wounded. The defeat led to the Treaty of Greenville in 1795.

Why is it called Fallen Timbers?

The battle is named for the forest trees a storm had blown down in rows across the ground where the confederacy chose to fight. The fallen trees made a natural barricade against Wayne's mounted troops. The warriors lay in ambush there on August 20, 1794, until a charge by the whole Legion drove them from the field.

Why did the British close Fort Miamis to the warriors?

Maj. William Campbell closed the gates of Fort Miamis as the firing came closer and would not open them, unwilling to start a war with the United States. The British had built the fort that spring partly to encourage the confederacy to resist. Wayne camped in sight of it for three days, rode up alone to inspect its walls, and left on August 26 without either side firing.

Where is the real Fallen Timbers battlefield?

The real battlefield is on the upland north of US 24 and west of I-475 in Maumee, about 600 meters (roughly a third of a mile) north of the 1929 Wayne monument on the river floodplain. Archaeologist G. Michael Pratt located it in 1995 after comparing more than 21 participant accounts that described woods and a steep ravine. Metal detectors there recovered about 345 battle artifacts, including shot, uniform buttons and a U.S. bayonet.

What is the legend of Turkey Foot Rock?

According to the legend as later told, an Ottawa chief named Turkey Foot stood on the boulder urging his warriors on and was shot down. The oldest written mention, by a Presbyterian missionary in 1829, instead records Native people saying a spirit in the form of a turkey came down on the rock during the battle. The rock was moved to the monument park in 1953, and people still leave offerings there.

When did Fallen Timbers become a National Historic Site?

Fallen Timbers Battlefield and Fort Miamis National Historic Site was created by Public Law 106-164, signed December 9, 1999. It joins the 187-acre battlefield, the 9-acre Fallen Timbers State Monument park and the Fort Miamis site. Metroparks Toledo runs it with the Ohio History Connection as an affiliated area of the National Park System.

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