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By Michael D. Sallah, Blade Staff Writer
The Blade (Toledo, OH)
09-06-96
Were the legends right after all?
Local historians last year made news when they said the Battle of Fallen Timbers actually was fought about a mile from where it was believed to have been waged.
But a local researcher claims the famous battle in 1784 might have occurred in both places.
"People are so quick to say that history was wrong all along, and that's just not true," said Dr. David Stothers, an anthropology professor at the University of Toledo.
The scientist said he unearthed artifacts in the original battle site, a floodplain between U.S. 24 and the Maumee River, which suggests that previous legends might have been partly correct.
The items he found include 16 musket balls and at least one American military button that can be tied to the same time frame as the historic event, he said.
His findings are the latest in a series of discoveries by local researchers that have placed the battle in the spotlight - once again raising questions about an event that has been steeped in folklore for two centuries.
U.S. Sen. Mike DeWine (D.,O.) is pushing for legislation to preserve the newly discovered battle site as a National Park Service affiliate area.
The battle between federal troops, commanded by Gen. "Mad" Anthony Wayne, and a coalition of Indian warriors eventually led to the Treaty of Greenville, and the opening of the rest of the nation to westward expansion.
But the stories of the battle were clouded in legend over the years and no one knew exactly where the fighting took place.
Most people this century believed the battle took place on the floodplain along the Maumee, where a monument was erected in 1929 to commemorate those who died, say local historians.
Then, last year, a team of scientists led by G. Michael Pratt made a startling discovery; the fight was never in the floodplain - at least as far as the evidence showed.
The scientists said the battle was fought about a mile north of the other site on what is now a farm field and woods. The land is owned by the city of Toledo but is in Maumee.
The team of researchers, using metal detectors, uncovered more than 400 artifacts in the area, including musket balls, rifle shot, uniform buttons, and a bayonet.
Mr. Pratt said the most detailed historic records of the period never said the fighting occurred in the floodplain. "The primary accounts, especially a diary I was able to study, were the best historic references."
But Dr. Stothers said he conducted more than a dozen digs in the original battle site from 1972 to 1983. He and others turned up numerous items, including musket balls and at least one "frog- legged eagle" uniform button that was issued only to General Wayne's legion, he said.
The lead balls were of the same caliber used by the American military at the time.
"That battle was fought all over the area and, yes, I believe part of it did take place in the floodplain," Dr. Stothers said.
There were historic references to troops in the floodplain during the battle, he pointed out.
He credits Mr. Pratt, a Heidelberg College anthropology professor, with being the first to define some of the main perimeters of the battle, and possibly identify the most fierce "hot spot."
But he said that to suggest the battle did not take place in the floodplain is simply "an attempt to revise history" in an extreme way.
He said that no major excavations of the kind that Mr. Pratt conducted in the upland area last summer have ever been done in the floodplain.
But Mr. Pratt strongly disagrees. He and others have performed digs in the floodplain and never found the concentrations of artifacts traced to the Wayne campaign that they found in their dig in 1995.
Mr. Pratt's research into historical accounts also says otherwise, he says.
He agrees that there may have been soldiers in the floodplain, but there is no evidence of any fighting. At one point, some of the soldiers fled to the floodplain during the battle.
Mr. Pratt's discovery in 1995 led to numerous national news stories, including a feature in U.S. News & World Report.
Several local historians back Mr. Pratt's work, and say no one has done as much research as him.
"The area that was searched covered 180 acres," said Ted Ligibel, president of the Maumee Valley Heritage Corridor.
He said that some of the battle could very well have taken place in the floodplain.
"No one is really saying it didn't happen down there," he said. "It was a running battle. Action was taking place all over."
For now, local officials just want to make sure the entire area is protected from encroaching development.
The floodplain is preserved since a large portion is now part of Side Cut Metropark.
But the newly discovered battle-ground is adjacent to an area now under option by local developers who want to build a shopping mall.
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