Little Turtle
Little Turtle, known as Michikinikwa, was a prominent war chief of the Miami tribe in the late 18th century. His leadership was marked by his exceptional military tactics and ability to forge alliances among various indigenous nations, particularly during a time of increasing Euro-American settlement in the Ohio Valley. Little Turtle led a coalition against U.S. forces during conflicts such as Little Turtle's War (1790-1794), achieving significant victories against American troops, including a devastating defeat of General Arthur St. Clair's forces in 1791.
Despite his military prowess, Little Turtle advocated for peace negotiations after realizing the overwhelming advantages of the settlers in terms of numbers and technology. His calls for diplomacy were met with resistance from other tribal leaders, leading to his eventual decline in influence. Following a decisive defeat at the Battle of Fallen Timbers in 1794, which led to the Treaty of Greenville in 1795, Little Turtle's efforts to protect Miami lands were ultimately unsuccessful.
In his later years, he lived near the Eel River trading post, and upon his death in 1812, he was honored with a military burial, reflecting the respect he garnered from both indigenous and non-indigenous communities. Little Turtle's legacy highlights the complexities of resistance against colonial expansion and the challenges faced by Native American leaders during a transformative period in U.S. history.
Little Turtle
Native American Leader
- Born: c. 1752
- Birthplace: Near Fort Wayne, Indiana
- Died: July 14, 1812
- Place of death: Fort Wayne, Indiana
American Indian military leader
Little Turtle united a coalition of American Indians in the Ohio Country to defeat the U.S. Army in a 1791 battle. Little Turtle’s twelve hundred warriors, aided by the element of surprise, killed nearly one thousand U.S. soldiers and many of their wives, marking the largest single battlefield victory by an American Indian force in history.
Areas of achievement Warfare and conquest, military
Early Life
Very little is known of Little Turtle’s early life. It is likely, although not without contention, that he was born in present-day Whitley County, in northeastern Indiana. The name of Little Turtle’s mother is unknown, but she was probably part Mohican. Little Turtle’s father, Michikinikwa (the name Little Turtle inherited after his father’s death), was a renowned war chief among the Miamis who played a major role in organizing his people in battles against the Iroquois to the east and the Sioux to the west during the eighteenth century.
Some accounts say that Little Turtle inherited from his father a network of alliances that covered much of Indiana and western Ohio. (Indeed, it was the elder Michikinikwa who was the first Miami to meet with European immigrants when he traveled in 1748 to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, to attend a treaty council.) Little Turtle would become a war chief of the Miamis—with alliances—because of his extraordinary personal abilities; under ordinary circumstances, the matriarchal nature of the culture would have prohibited a leadership role for him because his mother was not Miami.
Life’s Work
In 1787, the hunting grounds that the Miamis and their allies had been guaranteed “in perpetuity” by the U.S. Congress were being invaded by Euro-American settlers. Little Turtle and his principal allies, the Shawnee Blue Jacket and the Delaware Buckongahelos, centered a military alliance in an attempt to stall the settlers’ advance. This alliance first defeated a one-thousand-man force under Josiah Harmer during October, 1790. Harmer dispatched an advance force of 180 soldiers, which was drawn into a trap and annihilated. Harmer then dispatched 360 more men in an attempt to punish the American Indians. This force was drawn into a similar trap, in which about one hundred of them were killed. The remainder of Harmer’s force then retreated to Fort Washington, on the present-day site of Cincinnati.
Harmer’s defeat stunned the Army, whose commanders knew that the Old Northwest would remain closed to legal settlement as long as Little Turtle’s alliance held. General Arthur St. Clair, who had served briefly as president of the Continental Congress during the middle 1780’s, gathered an army of two thousand soldiers during the summer of 1791 and marched into the Ohio Country. About a quarter of the men deserted en route. To keep the others happy, St. Clair permitted about two hundred soldiers’ wives to travel with them.
St. Clair’s army was plagued by problems from the start, including the low quality of recruits (many of them were local militia and untrained volunteers), shoddy equipment, and other problems, including roughly nine hundred desertions and consistently wet weather. Tecumseh and other American Indian scouts spotted St. Clair’s force long before the U.S. forces spotted the American Indians. Little Turtle’s forces obtained support from several other indigenous nations in the area and were well supplied by British traders. Impatient with St. Clair’s progress, on October 28, 1791, the American Indians broke camp and moved south to meet St. Clair’s force in battle.
On November 4, 1791, Little Turtle and his allies lured St. Clair’s forces into the same sort of trap that had defeated Harmer’s smaller army near St. Mary’s Creek, a tributary of the Wabash River. A total of 38 officers and 598 men died in the battle; 242 others were wounded, many of whom later died. Fifty-six women—soldiers’ wives—also were killed, bringing the death toll to about 950, the largest defeat of a U.S. Army force during a single battle in all American Indian wars and a death toll higher, for example, than any inflicted on the United States by the British during the American Revolution. After the battle, St. Clair resigned his commission in disgrace.
Little Turtle was a military tactician of superior talents and intuition. He also was a sensitive man and a gentleman. He was revolted by the slaughter of St. Clair’s forces and sought a negotiated peace after the battle, reasoning that the immigrant Americans would eventually overpower the Miamis and their allies because of their larger numbers and advantages in war-making technology. Little Turtle advocated negotiation from strength, but the majority of the Miamis whom he was leading disagreed with him. Instead of negotiating, members of the alliance forced Little Turtle to resign; Blue Jacket assumed the primary leadership role. Those who supported Blue Jacket refused to cede land.
In 1794, “Mad” Anthony Wayne was dispatched with a fresh army, visiting the scene of St. Clair’s debacle. According to Wayne, about five hundred skull bones lay in a space of 350 yards. The woods were strewn with skeletons, knapsacks, and other debris for five miles, artifacts of St. Clair’s forces’ pell-mell retreat. Little Turtle had more respect for Wayne than Harmer or St. Clair, calling him the chief who never sleeps. On August 29, 1794, Wayne’s forces defeated the indigenous alliance at Fallen Timbers. On August 3, 1795, the American Indians gave up most of their land west of the Ohio River following the defeat by signing the Treaty of Greenville.
For almost two centuries, local historians placed the site of the Battle of Fallen Timbers along the Maumee River flood plain adjacent to what is now U.S. Highway 24 near Toledo, Ohio. A monument was erected at the site, even as American Indians contended that the battle had occurred a mile away in what is today a soybean field. In 1995, to settle the issue, G. Michael Pratt, an anthropology professor at Heidelberg College in Tiffin, Ohio, organized an archaeological dig in the soybean field. He organized teams that included as many as 150 people who excavated the site, which yielded large numbers of battlefield artifacts, indicating conclusively that the American Indian account of the site was correct.
Little Turtle spent the last years of his life in a house built for him by the U.S. government near the Eel River trading post. He died on July 14, 1812, at the Fort Wayne home of William Wells, near the junction of the St. Joseph River and St. Mary Creek. Little Turtle was buried with full military honors by Army officers, who knew his genius. William Henry Harrison, later a U.S. president and who had been an aide to Wayne and had later defeated Tecumseh, was among several nonindigenous speakers at Little Turtle’s tribute.
Significance
As Euro-American immigration began to explode across the Appalachians into the Ohio Valley and Great Lakes region around 1790, American Indian resistance expressed itself in attempts at confederation along lines of mutual interest. A confederation that included elements of the Shawnees, Delawares, Wyandots, Miamis, and Ottawas told representatives of the United States in 1790 that settlers were not to transgress beyond the Ohio River. Thousands of settlers were surging into the area, ignoring governmental edicts. The settlers, who were squatters in the eyes of the indigenous, sought military help after members of the American Indian confederacy began attacking their settlements.
For seventy-five years, from the “conspiracy” of Pontiac during the early 1760’s to the defeat of Black Hawk during the 1830’s, American Indians in the Old Northwest (roughly, the Ohio Valley northward and westward to the Great Lakes) formed confederations to protect their land against the rising tide of Euro-American immigration. The best-known alliance-builder was Tecumseh, who maintained that American Indian land was occupied and therefore “owned” in common and could not be sold or traded by individuals. Tecumseh assembled his alliance after the defeat of Little Turtle’s alliance. After much suffering and struggle, both Little Turtle and Tecumseh were forced to surrender and sign away much of the Ohio Valley.
Bibliography
Carter, Harvey Lewis. The Life and Times of Little Turtle: First Sagamore of the Wabash. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987. This biography of Little Turtle presents what is perhaps the most comprehensive portrait of his life.
Edel, Wilbur. Kekionga!: The Worst Defeat in the History of the U.S. Army. Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1997. Edel considers the battles of Little Turtle and other American Indians in the context of the history of armed conflict between American Indians and the U.S. military, before, during, and after the revolutionary period. Chapter 2, “Native Americans Versus Settlers: A Continuing Confrontation,” is an especially apt examination of this history.
Johansen, Bruce E. Shapers of the Great Debate on Native Americans: Land, Spirit, and Power. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2000. Johansen examines the issue of American land “ownership,” alliances between American Indian nations to ensure indigenous land sovereignty, and the ties between place and culture. Includes illustrations, bibliographical references, and an index.
Porter, C. Fayne. Our Indian Heritage: Profiles of Twelve Great Leaders. Philadelphia: Chilton, 1964. The profiles in this work place Little Turtle’s life in the context of other notable American Indian leaders, including those, such as Tecumseh, who were influenced by his life.
Van Tine, Warren, and Michael Pierce, eds. Builders of Ohio: A Biographical History. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2003. A history of Ohio with a chapter on Little Turtle and Blue Jacket. Includes illustrations, bibliographical references, and an index.
Winger, Otho. Last of the Miamis: Little Turtle. Indianapolis, Ind.: Lawrence W. Shultz, 1935. A notable early biography of Little Turtle, which provided a foundation for the later work by Harvey Lewis Carter.
Related Articles in Great Events from History: The Eighteenth Century
Great Events from History: The Eighteenth Century, 1701-1800: May 28, 1754-February 10, 1763: French and Indian War; October 5, 1759-November 19, 1761: Cherokee War; May 8, 1763-July 24, 1766: Pontiac’s Resistance; May 24 and June 11, 1776: Indian Delegation Meets with Congress; October 22, 1784: Fort Stanwix Treaty; May 20, 1785: Ordinance of 1785; October 18, 1790-July, 1794: Little Turtle’s War; August 20, 1794: Battle of Fallen Timbers; 1799: Code of Handsome Lake.