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By Chase Clements
The Blade (Toledo, OH)
09-22-95
The location of the pivotal Battle of Fallen Timbers has been pin-pointed definitively: on the flat uplands above the Maumee River floodplain just west and north of the current I-475 and U.S. 24 interchange.
For years, local myth has placed the battle on the Maumee River floodplain, below the Fallen Timbers Memorial on the bluff overlooking the river.
But a summer-long archaeological study has uncovered more than 300 artifacts that date to the 1790s that placed the location of the heaviest fighting about 2,000 yards east and north of the state monument.
In that fight, Gen. "Mad" Anthony Wayne's Legion of the United States defeated a confederacy of Indian warriors and opened the Maumee Valley and northwest Ohio to white settlers.
The study was conducted by The Maumee Valley Heritage Corridor, Inc., a local historic preservation group, and is the first phase of an effort to secure some sort of federal park service recognition of the importance of the site in the history of Ohio and of the United States.
"We feel like we are rewriting history," Ted Ligibel, president of Maumee Valley Heritage Corridor, said. "One of the great mysteries of the valley has been solved."
The site of the study was a 160-acre parcel owned by the city of Toledo, and an enthusiastic group of professionals and amateurs under the direction of Michael Pratt of Heidelberg College, Tiffin, carefully surveyed about 23 per cent of the total land looking for artifacts.
In all, the task force found 496 items in the search area, but 90 of them were hunting or farming items of recent vintage. Of the 406 items that were cataloged for further study, 345 are associated or possibly associated with the Battle of Fallen Timbers. Twenty-two are of prehistoric origin, and 39 are either unidentified or also of more recent origin. They include such items as 67 cents in change and a Boy Scout knife.
Most of the artifacts from the 1794 period are either musket balls and lead buckshot (245 items) or federal army buttons of the period with a U.S. eagle motif (38 items). Found in a still-forested part of the search area was a socket bayonet of a pre-1770 French design that was probably brought to this country during the Revolutionary War. A small number of other items, such as a fork, a buckle, two horseshoe nails, and musket flints also were uncovered and cataloged.
Approximately 75 per cent of the ammunition was found in the search corridor closest to and roughly parallel with the I-475 exit ramp to the westbound Anthony Wayne Trail, indicating that might be the area of the heaviest firing. Curiously, eight of the ammunition artifacts exhibit human teeth marks, hinting that they were either carried between the teeth as an emergency round or were chewed to prevent dryness on what was historically a hot day.
Most of the buttons also were found in five button clusters in the same general area, hinting that they possibly were the locations where soldiers fell and their uniforms rotten away over the years, leaving only the brass buttons.
No human remains were found in the study, but Mr. Ligibel said the searchers were digging down only 12 to 18 inches - "plow-zone depth" - and that he considers the tract "hallowed ground."
The next step in the process is to determine how the artifacts are going to be preserved and safeguarded, but it also is hoped they will be displayed in an appropriate manner.
Mr. Ligibel regards the Ohio Historical Society as a likely candidate, but "not if they are going to ship everything to Columbus and put them in boxes in their temperature-controlled vault."
Walter Edelen, city planning director who has been Toledo's point man on the project, said in a memo to Mayor Finkbeiner that he would like to see some sort of mobile display that could be used in both Toledo and Maumee.
Maumee Mayor Stephen Pauken said he is forwarding a copy of the survey to Roger Kennedy, director of the National Park Service, with a request that the Fallen Timbers site be considered for "affiliated status," with the Park Service.
Affiliated status means that the National Park Service does not own the land or operate the facility (unrealistic in these times), but the landmark still carries National Park Service prestige.
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