That made the coalition difficult for American officials to understand.
Washington's government preferred agreements that could be signed by a few recognized representatives and then treated as binding upon large territories.
Native politics did not always work that way.
A treaty signed by one delegation did not automatically silence every village affected by it.
The United States often treated continued resistance as disobedience to agreements already made.
Native opponents often treated those same agreements as invalid.
War emerged from that gap.
The British had lost the Revolution but had not disappeared from the Northwest
The conflict also contained an international problem.
Britain had recognized American independence, but British forces remained at several frontier posts that the United States believed should have been evacuated.
British traders and officials maintained strong economic and political relationships with Native nations in the Great Lakes region.
Weapons, ammunition, and trade goods continued moving through those networks.
The National Park Service describes the Native confederation that resisted U.S. expansion as receiving British support, and British power remained an important part of the strategic situation until the mid-1790s.
This did not mean Native leaders were simply fighting Britain's war.
They had their own objectives.
The British connection mattered because it provided another source of material support and because Britain remained a possible counterweight to American expansion.
For Washington's administration, that possibility made the Ohio country more than a frontier problem.
If the United States failed to control the Northwest, British influence might remain permanently south of the Great Lakes.
The struggle therefore became connected to national sovereignty.
Washington believed the new republic could not simply accept a large Native and British-influenced buffer zone between the existing states and the Mississippi River.
That strategic belief would help explain why the government responded to St. Clair's defeat by increasing military power rather than retreating.
The first federal campaign had already failed
St. Clair's disaster was not Washington's first warning.
In 1790, Brigadier General Josiah Harmar led more than 1,400 regular soldiers and militia north from Fort Washington, located at present-day Cincinnati.
His objective included Native communities near Kekionga, the important Miami center at the headwaters of the Maumee River near present-day Fort Wayne, Indiana.
Harmar's expedition destroyed villages and food stores.
It did not destroy Native resistance.
Instead, detachments from his force were badly defeated during fighting in October. National Park Service history describes Little Turtle and allied warriors outmaneuvering Harmar's troops, producing what became known as Harmar's Defeat.
The failure embarrassed the young federal government.
Washington and Secretary of War Henry Knox did not respond by abandoning the Northwest.
They planned a larger effort.
That decision created St. Clair's campaign.
The government authorized additional troops, including short-term levies and militia, because the standing Regular Army remained extremely small.
This choice solved one problem and created another.
Men could be raised relatively quickly.
They could not be turned quickly into experienced soldiers.
St. Clair received an army on paper before he received one in reality
Building an army in 1791 was far harder than issuing an order in Philadelphia.
Men had to be recruited.
Officers had to be appointed.
Clothing had to be manufactured or found in storage.
Muskets needed repairs.
Powder, lead, tents, tools, wagons, horses, saddles, food, medicine, artillery equipment, and thousands of other items had to move across bad roads and rivers.
The U.S. Army's own historical studies emphasize that many of St. Clair's men were hastily recruited, poorly trained, badly supplied, and often unpaid.
The calendar became another enemy.
The expedition was supposed to begin early enough to operate before winter.
Delays accumulated.
Supplies arrived late.
Equipment arrived damaged or incomplete.
Transportation failed.
Recruiting proceeded slowly.
Some soldiers deserted before the campaign reached its objective.
The quartermaster and contractor systems proved particularly weak.
Years later, this would become one of the central findings of the congressional investigation.
At the time, St. Clair could do little except wait, complain, and eventually move with the force available.
The army that left Fort Washington was not the army planners had imagined months earlier.
It contained Regular Army soldiers, federal levies enlisted for limited service, and Kentucky militia.
Those categories mattered.
The regulars had the strongest institutional connection to the Army.
The levies had been raised for a specific period.
The militia came from another military tradition and often elected or followed their own officers.
Training, discipline, experience, and expectations varied sharply between units.
St. Clair had numbers.
He did not have unity.
The march itself began consuming the army
St. Clair's force moved northward in September 1791.
The campaign had two related purposes.
The army was expected to strike Native military power and establish American forts that would allow the federal government to hold the country after the column passed.
That required road building.
A wilderness army could not simply march as quickly as infantry moving along a modern highway.
Artillery and wagons needed a usable route.