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Editorial by John Switzer
The Dispatch (Columbus, OH)
03-29-98
The whole affair took place on a hot, steamy August day in 1794 in what is now Maumee, Ohio.
More than 1,000 warriors in an Indian confederation attacked the leading elements of an American army under Gen. Anthony Wayne. At first the Indians pushed back the front of the 2,500- to 3,000-man army. A bayonet charge, however, drove the Indians from the battlefield, which from then on was known as Fallen Timbers.
"We have one of those bayonets," said G. Michael Pratt, an archaeologist at Heidelberg College in Tiffin, Ohio. Pratt did a survey of the battlefield in 1995.
The battle resulted in the Treaty of Greeneville, which opened more than half of Ohio to white settlement.
Pratt said his study found 48 buttons from uniforms worn only by Wayne's army and more than 30 balls that had been fired from muskets. He also found musket flints and the bayonet.
The area studied is now a field and a woods next to a freeway interchange.
Some of the buttons were from soldiers' coats, vests and trousers. They were grouped together indicating that a soldier had fallen there.
"All the dead were not buried. There was only a half-hearted attempt to bury the dead after the battle," Pratt said. After 200 years in a plowed field, there would be nothing left of a soldier, except his buttons, he said.
"The evidence we found was pretty conclusive that that was the battlefield," Pratt said. He said historical accounts say the American army was drawn up with a ravine at its rear. Pratt did his survey using the ravine as a guide.
There is movement to preserve the battlefield. Recently a $10,000 grant from the National Park Service was given to the Fallen Timbers Battlefield Preservation Commission. The commission will use the money to produce a video designed to help raise money to buy the battlefield.
The city of Toledo owns the 185 acres, but the land is in Maumee. Maumee has pledged $500,000 and another donor has promised another $500,000. Toledo Area Metroparks said it would operate the park.
At least several million more dollars must be raised, if Toledo and the battlefield commission can agree on a price.
Today will be partly cloudy, warm and less windy.
NOTICE: This article, which may be copyrighted, is reprinted with specific permission granted to Heidelberg College. Further reprint rights must be secured from the publisher.
Heidelberg College / Office of College Relations
/ webmaster@heidelberg.edu