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By Mitch Weiss
The Associated Press (Toledo, OH, Bureau)
07-23-95
MAUMEE (AP) -- Michael Pratt always thought the monument commemorating the Battle of Fallen Timbers was in the wrong place.
But until he joined an archaeological dig this summer, the Heidelberg College anthropology professor had no proof.
"I was right, exactly right," said Pratt, gazing at the battlefield -- about a mile northwest of the marker.
Pratt's discovery may have opened a can of worms.
Much of the battlefield is on 180 acres the city of Toledo owns in this suburb -- land the city plane to sell to a developer. Part of it is dissected by U.S. 24 and Interstate 475 and some sections lie under a soybean field.
Sections of the battlefield are still thickly wooded, much as they were 201 years ago when Gen. Anthony Wayne led a battle that opened the Midwest to white settlement and closed it to American Indians.
Pratt and other historians want to turn the battlefield into a national park, but American Indian activists want no part of it. They say a national park would glorify a man who was no friend of the Indians, and they fear it would disturb the remains of Indians -- and soldiers -- still buried on the grounds.
The city of Toledo also is considering its options. City administrators say they won't make any decisions until they see Pratt's report on the dig. Toledo and Maumee paid $19,000 for the study.
"It's premature to talk about the final disposition of this thing until the facts are in," Toledo spokesman Hiram Sachs said.
Pratt spent 10 years researching the battle, reading eyewitness accounts of the fight and pouring over government records and old maps. He said he was worried that the land could be developed and an important part of U.S. history would be lost.
Isaac Group Holdings Inc. of Maumee plans to build a $100 million mall on part of 1,187 acres Toledo bought in Maumee in 1987 but was unable to annex because of Maumee's opposition.
Toledo let Maumee annex 560 acres last year in return for setting up a joint economic zone, where the municipalities would split tax revenues.
Isaac Group has taken an option to buy 480 acres for $7.2 million to build the mall. That land is close to, but not on, the battlefield.
But Isaac also would like to buy an additional 180 acres for $9 million. Pratt said that land is where the battle took place. Other developers also have expressed interest in the area.
Because of all the interest, both cities agreed that the first step was to find out which land should be marked as historical grounds.
That is where Pratt and his volunteers stepped in. For three weeks in June, they scoured the area, using Defense Department satellites, metal detectors and computers.
They found 320 battle-related artifacts, including 39 U.S. Army buttons, a musket flint, musket and rifle shot of varying caliber, and a socket bayonet.
So how did the marker end up in the wrong place?
When historians began researching the battle in the 1840s, they looked at the land and speculated that the battle was probably fought in a flood plain along the Maumee River rather than in the woods, Pratt said.
Historians have long studied what Pratt considers one of the most important battles in U.S. history.
In the summer of 1794, Wayne forced a confrontation with a confederacy of Indian warriors over control of the Northwest Territory, which included what is now Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois and Wisconsin.
Under the Treaty of Paris, which ended the American Revolution, British forces were not required to vacate the Northwest Territory until the United States settled its differences with the Indians, who were allied with the British.
Between 1784 and 1790, the United States had failed to reach a settlement and twice was defeated by the Indian army.
In 1792, President Washington appointed Wayne to force the Indians out. Two years later, Wayne's army of 900 regulars and 1,500 Kentucky militiamen marched to the Maumee River near Waterville to fight.
In what is now Maumee, Wayne's advance unit on Aug. 20, 1794, was ambushed by 1,200 Indians. Wayne was driven back about 500 feet before regrouping and surging forward, forcing the Indians to retreat.
The battle took less than two hours. Fifty people were killed and 100 wounded.
The spirit of the Indian resistance was broken and within a year, Wayne had negotiated the Treaty of Greenville, which opened about two-thirds of Ohio to settlers.
Until the battle, the government had been negotiating with Indians for use of the Northwest Territory. If the Indians had won the battle, the United States may have given up a lot of the territory, Pratt said.
After the battle, there was no turning back.
"The government learned that you could defeat the Indians by force and take their land. The Native Americans may have lost the country here. They gave away military control of the Northwest Territory," he said.
Joyce Mahaney of the Toledo-based American Indian Intertribal Association called the battle a "dark day for Native Americans."
"To us, it doesn't matter where the battle happened. The fact that it happened, we accept it. I think it should be left the way it is," Ms. Mahaney said.
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