Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 1.djvu/310

 

Indiana Missionary Station—Gen. Arthur St. Clair—Indian surprises—The terrible war-whoop—One hundred women join the army, and are killed fighting bravely—Prairie schooners—Manufactures in the hands of women—Admitted to the Union in 1816—Robert Dale Owen—Woman Suffrage Conventions—Wisconsin—C. L. Sholes' report.

earliest settlement of Indiana was a missionary one, in 1777, though it was not admitted as a Territory until 1800, then including the present States of Michigan and Illinois. A number of Indian wars took place in this part of the country during the twenty-five years between 1780 and 1805. What was known as the Northwest Territory was organized in 1789, and General Arthur St. Clair appointed Governor, an office he held until 1802. In 1790 a war of unusually formidable character broke out among the Indian tribes of the Northwest, and in 1791, St. Clair was created General-in-Chief of the forces against them. Many of the settlers of this portion of the country joined his army, among whom were one hundred women, who accompanied their husbands in preference to being left at home subject to the surprises and tortures of the savages with whom the country was at war. In giving command of these forces to St. Clair, Washington warned him against unexpected assaults from the enemy; but this general who was of foreign birth, a Scotchman, was no match for the cunning of his wily foe, who suddenly fell upon Mm, November 4th, near the Miami villages (present site of Terra Haute), making great havoc among his forces.

When the terrible war-whoop was heard, the heroism of these hundred women rose equal to the emergency. They did not cling helplessly to their husbands the women of those early days were made of sterner stuff but with pale, set faces, they joined in the defense, and the records say, were most of them killed fighting bravely. They died a soldier's death upon the field of battle in defense of home and country. They died that the prairies of the West and the wilderness of the North should at a later period become the peaceful homes of untold millions of men and women. They were the true pioneers of the Northwest, the advance-guard