Trees had to be cut.
Mud slowed wheels.
Streams had to be crossed.
Supplies had to remain connected to the rear.
Every mile forward made the column farther from Fort Washington.
The army built Fort Hamilton along the Great Miami River and then Fort Jefferson farther north.
Each fort provided another link in the supply chain.
Each also required men, provisions, and attention.
By November, bad weather and weak logistics had damaged morale.
Frost reduced forage available for animals.
Horses weakened.
Food problems continued.
Desertion increased.
Then St. Clair suffered a particularly damaging loss of combat strength.
Roughly sixty men deserted and threatened the supply line.
St. Clair detached the 1st U.S. Infantry Regiment, around 300 of his more experienced regulars, to protect supplies and deal with the problem.
The regiment was therefore absent when the main battle began.
It was an entirely rational response to a logistics emergency.
It also meant that the army reached its most dangerous position without one of its strongest elements.
The battlefield was not where St. Clair believed he was
On November 3, the exhausted column moved approximately nine miles and stopped in late afternoon.
St. Clair believed the small stream beside the camp was connected to the St. Marys River.
It was actually a branch of the upper Wabash.
The army had reached the area of present-day Fort Recovery, Ohio, roughly ninety-eight miles from Fort Washington.
The geographic mistake was not the main cause of the disaster.
It illustrates how uncertain the expedition's knowledge of the country remained.
Native warriors did not suffer from the same disadvantage.
The communities resisting St. Clair knew the wider landscape through hunting, travel, trade, war, family networks, and generations of movement.
They knew where his road led.
They knew where the forts stood.
They knew roughly how quickly the army could move.
They could watch his column without revealing the full strength gathering against it.
St. Clair's army had to discover the enemy.
The confederacy could observe St. Clair.
That difference shaped the battle before the first shot.
The camp looked temporary because it was temporary
St. Clair expected to continue marching.
The November 3 camp was therefore not transformed into a strong defensive position.
The army did not build substantial field fortifications around itself.
The main camp formed in two lines.
Artillery pieces stood inside the position.
The Kentucky militia camped separately, across the stream and several hundred yards forward of the main body.
That separation proved critical.
If the militia were struck first and broke, they had only one obvious direction of escape.
They would run toward the main camp.
That is exactly what happened.
The army also had warning signs.
Native warriors had been seen around the camp.
Shots were exchanged during the night.
A patrol or detachment reportedly returned with information suggesting a larger attack might come in the morning.
According to later U.S. Army reconstruction, the warning reached Major General Richard Butler, St. Clair's second in command, but was not passed to St. Clair before he went to sleep.
Whether every detail of that communication occurred exactly as later described has been debated.
The larger fact is clear.
The American camp was not prepared for the scale of the attack that arrived before sunrise.
The Native force had been preparing for exactly this opportunity
More than a thousand warriors had concentrated near St. Clair's route.
The exact total cannot be known.
Historical estimates commonly range from approximately 1,000 to perhaps 1,500.
The coalition included Miami, Shawnee, Lenape, Wyandot, Ottawa, Potawatomi, Ojibwe, Kickapoo, and other participants.
Little Turtle is often given overall command in older accounts.
Modern historical caution is useful here.
Native warfare did not always operate through one commander controlling every tactical movement in the European sense.
Little Turtle clearly held enormous military influence.
Blue Jacket and Buckongahelas were also significant leaders.
Other chiefs and war leaders directed their own people.
The attack succeeded because many groups coordinated effectively enough to strike the separated American camps almost at the same time.
Their plan exploited three weaknesses.
The first was surprise.
The second was terrain.
The third was the difference between soldiers fighting in organized lines and warriors fighting from surrounding cover.
The Americans had artillery and disciplined tactical concepts.