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By Lisa Fatzinger, Staff Writer
The Advertiser-Tribune (Tiffin, OH)
07-23-95
Amid a row of small plastic cups that contain bullets unearthed from the battlefield at Fallen Timbers, Heidelberg anthropologist Michael Pratt retrieves an unfired musket ball riddled with what seems to be 200-year-old teeth marks.
"Most of these are lightly chewed," he says, rolling the small lead ball between his index finger and thumb.
Pratt can merely speculate why the soldiers under Major General "Mad" Anthony Wayne's command would have stored a musket ball in their mouths during the pivotal, 2-hour skirmish near Maumee on Aug. 20, 1794.
"I think some of the men might have done it to keep the spit going during the battle. They carried canteens, but there was no time to stop and take a drink, and chewing gum wasn't invented yet. Some of the soldiers also might have wanted an emergency musket ball," he says, adding that 270 bullets -- both fired and unfired -- were found at the site of last month's archaeological dig.
"Some of the bullets were actually bitten down on. Those were found mainly in the hospital areas."
More than 480 artifacts have been found on the Maumee battlefield. For Pratt, the dig culminated 10 years of research. The recovery of the artifacts prove what he had suspected all along: that the field between Jerome Road and I-475 was the actual site at which Wayne's army defeated a force of Ohio Valley Indian tribes and their British allies 201 years ago.
The confrontation at Fallen Timbers -- involving more than 3,000 individuals -- ultimately opened the way for America's expansion of the Northwest Territory.
Twenty-three days before the skirmish, Wayne's army began marching north from Greenville with the intention of occupying the Maumee River valley and overtaking the British-occupied Fort Miamis, a garrison constructed about four miles from Fallen Timbers.
According to Pratt's research of eyewitness accounts of the battle, Wayne's troops arrived at the Maumee River two days prior to the attack. Two small fortifications were built, strategies were discussed, and by 7 a.m. Aug. 20, the U.S. forces began the march down river.
Several miles below, a number of British soldiers and more than 1,100 Indians from the Shawnee, Wyandot, Delaware, Potawatomi, Ottawa and Chippewa tribes laid in wait, hoping for an ambush.
They got their wish. The battle of Fallen Timbers erupted after two U.S. privates -- Thomas Moon and William Steele -- rode ahead as point men and "were shot from their saddles."
The Maumee River valley was a wilderness with which the Indians were familiar. The enemy warriors took advantage of the situation as they advanced, pushing Wayne's army deep into the denseness of Fallen Timbers, "a large area where tornado-felled timber clogged the forest."
Pratt suspects that was the area in which the coveted socket bayonet was unearthed.
His eyes light up and his face brightens as he gingerly holds the rare, rusty piece of metal that once was affixed to an American musket.
"At the time the battle was fought, this was the main weapon," he says.
The bayonet was found in the wooded area of the dig, off the field now planted with soybeans.
"We knew we were in the wooded area where a lot of the heavy fighting had taken place," Pratt continues. "I had paced off a survey area into the woods. Larry Hamilton (a remote sensing specialist from Historic Archaeological Research) was running a metal detector and I told him, 'The American line should be running through your square.' Just then, the metal detector beeped."
Historical accounts state that U.S. forces rallied at Fallen Timbers, countering the warriors' charge with one of their own. They fought their way through the thickets, driving the enemy back across the underbrush.
Although Pratt had organized the dig at Fallen Timbers under the assumption he'd find bullets, it was an extra bonus when he pinpointed Wayne's line of attack from the array of U.S. army buttons recovered.
"There were 30-40 buttons on each uniform," Pratt says, explaining that the uniforms were similar to the ones worn during the Revolutionary War.
He opens a miniature zip-lock bag to reveal a partially decayed pewter button upon which the faint, raised outline of an eagle is evident.
"If you look close, you can see his scrawny wings and chicken legs," Pratt says. "We found 47-some buttons and we knew it was Wayne. These types of buttons were found elsewhere where Wayne's army was. No one else wore them."
Pratt assumes the brambles that tore at the soldiers on the charge through Fallen Timbers caused many of the buttons to loosen and fall off.
"We found all the buttons concentrated in a specific area," he says. "It took 10-15 minutes to find the first bullets, and a half-hour to find the first Anthony Wayne button."
Pratt has every reason to be thrilled with the outcome of his work on the Fallen Timbers project.
"My biggest concern was not finding anything," he says in retrospect. "I knew I was right. I knew that's where the battle really was. I knew we'd find bullets, but I had no idea we'd find all this."
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