LB, DLC:GW.

In his instructions of 21 Mar., Henry Knox authorized Arthur St. Clair to undertake desultory expeditions of mounted Kentucky militia against the Indians in order to discourage incursions against frontier settlements (ASP, Indian Affairs, description begins Walter Lowrie et al., eds. American State Papers. Documents, Legislative and Executive, of the Congress of the United States. 38 vols. Washington, D.C., Gales and Seaton, 1832–61. description ends 1:171–74; see also Knox to GW, 22 Feb., n.9). After the success of Brig. Gen. Charles Scott’s expedition against the Ouiatanon (Wea) towns on the Wabash River of early June (see Knox to GW, 6, 8, 27 June, 6 Aug., n.2), St. Clair directed the Kentucky board of war on 24 June to prepare another foray, and it selected James Wilkinson, a Kentucky militia lieutenant colonel who was second in command of Scott’s expedition, to lead 500 Kentucky cavalry troops against the villages at the junction of the L’Anguille or Eel River and the Wabash, near present-day Logansport, Indiana. St. Clair’s instructions to Wilkinson of 31 July noted: “It is the positive orders of the President of the United States, that all such captives be treated with kindness, and that they be carried and delivered to the commanding officers of some post of the United States upon the Ohio” and concluded: “To you, sir, I know I have no occasion to recommend clemency, but am under the express command of the President of the United States. The luster that is shed upon success by generosity, and the reputation that accrues to a country from a temperate use of victory, is clearly understood and appreciated by you, to whom nothing could be more contrary to your own natural disposition than an act bordering upon inhumanity. I beg you, sir, to oblige the people under your command to refrain from scalping the dead. It is an act which, though it does no injury to the dead carcass, debases the persons who commit it. Should they be disposed to it, you have a powerful argument to adduce from the example set in the former expedition, and the very general approbation it has met with” (Smith, St. Clair Papers, description begins William Henry Smith, ed. The St. Clair Papers. The Life and Public Services of Arthur St. Clair: Soldier of the Revolutionary War; President of the Continental Congress; and Governor of the North-Western Territory with his Correspondence and other Papers. 2 vols. Cincinnati, 1882. description ends 2:222–23, 227–29). Wilkinson left Fort Washington on 1 Aug. and reported to St. Clair on 24 Aug. from Frankfort, Ky., at the conclusion of his mission (ASP, Indian Affairs, description begins Walter Lowrie et al., eds. American State Papers. Documents, Legislative and Executive, of the Congress of the United States. 38 vols. Washington, D.C., Gales and Seaton, 1832–61. description ends 1:133–35). See Knox to GW, 22 Sept. (second letter).