Great Britain had made no mention of their native allies in the Treaty of Paris (1783), although many of the native peoples had fought in the war on the British side.

According to Joseph Brant, a Mohawk chief who is one of the early architects of the Western Confederacy, the British had "sold the Indians to Congress."

The confederacy first comes together in 1786 at a conference at the Wyandot town of Upper Sandusky, with the intention of forming a common front in dealing with the Americans.

Members of many different native tribes are involved in the Western Confederacy.

The confederacy is sometimes known as the "Miami Confederacy" because U.S. officials overestimate the influence and numerical strength of the Miami tribe within the confederation.

Because most tribes are not centralized political units at this time, involvement in the confederacy is usually a village rather than a tribal basis.

The confederacy consists of members of the following tribes: Council of Three Fires Iroquois Confederacy Seven Nations of Canada Wabash Confederacy (Wea, Piankashaw, and others) Illini Confederacy Wyandot Mississaugas Menominee Shawnee Lenape Miami Kickapoo Kaskaskia Chickamauga/Lower Cherokee Upper Muscogee.

Some British agents in the region of the Northwest Territory, still opposed to the United States, sell weapons and ammunition to the natives and encourage attacks on American settlers.

War parties had launched a series of isolated raids in the mid-1780s, resulting in escalating bloodshed and mistrust.

In the fall of 1786, General Benjamin Logan leads a force of Federal soldiers and mounted Kentucky militia against several Shawnee towns along the Mad River.

These are protected primarily by noncombatants while the warriors are raiding forts in Kentucky.

Immediately before the raid commenced, Logan had ordered his men not to kill any of the Shawnee that might choose to surrender.

Logan burns the native towns and food supplies, and kills or captures numerous natives, including the chief of the Mekoche division of the tribe, Moluntha, who had fought at the Siege of Boonesborough on the side of the British in 1778.

In 1786, threatened with war by Richard Butler and George Rogers Clark, he was among the Shawnee leaders who signed the Treaty of Fort Finney.

During the battle, Moluntha is cornered by William Lytle and surrenders to him.

Moluntha is brought into the custody of Hugh McGary, and Logan reiterates his order that the prisoners not be harmed.

McGary, who is still bitter about his defeat at the Battle of Blue Licks, asks Moluntha, "Were you at the defeat of the Blue Licks?"

The aged chief misunderstands the question and answers in the affirmative.

McGary immediately kills Moluntha with an axe.

Logan relieves McGary of command and court-martials him.

Moluntha's son, Spemica-Lawba, surviveds Logan's raid.

He is brought back to Kentucky and raised by Benjamin Logan, eventually becoming known as Captain Logan.

Tecumseh will cite Moluntha's death as an example of broken promises by the United States.

Logan's raid and the execution of the chief angers the Shawnees, who retaliate by escalating their attacks on American settlers.

Native raids on both sides of the Ohio River result in increasing casualties.

American settlers south of the Ohio River in Kentucky and travelers on and north of the Ohio River have suffered approximately fifteen hundred casualties during the mid- and late-1780snative

Settlers retaliate with attacks on natives.

The Federal government sends General Harmar on expeditions against Native Americans and remaining British in the Northwest Territory in 1790.

After a few initial military successes, his force of fifteen hundred militiamen is defeated in October by a tribal coalition led by Little Turtle, in an engagement known as the "Harmar's defeat", "Battle of the Maumee", Battle of Kekionga", or "Battle of the Miami Towns".

Later, Harmar returns with a somewhat larger force and engages the coalition, but fights to a draw.

Josiah Harmar, relieved of his command as a consequence of his defeat at the hands of Little Turtle and his warriors, is replaced in 1791 by Arthur St. Clair as the senior general of the United States Army.

Harmar is subsequently court-martialed, at his own request, on various charges of negligence, and exonerated.

St. Clair personally leads a punitive expedition involving two Regular Army regiments and some militia.

This force advances to the location of Miami settlements near the headwaters of the Wabash River, but on November 4 they are routed in battle by a tribal confederation led by Miami Chief Little Turtle and Shawnee chief Blue Jacket.

More than six hundred soldiers and scores of women and children are killed in the battle, which has since borne the name "St. Clair's Defeat, also known as the "Battle of the Wabash", the "Columbia Massacre," or the "Battle of a Thousand Slain".

It remains the greatest defeat of an US army by natives in history, with some six hundred and twenty-three American soldiers killed in action, contrasted with about fifty Native American dead.

After this debacle, St. Clair resigns from the army at the request of President Washington, but continues to serve as Governor of the Northwest Territory.

The Miami will later be gradually forced to give up more and more of their land and will eventually lose control of the settlement entirely.

The site will later becomes the city of Fort Wayne, Indiana.

The Western Confederacy, an alliance of native nations, had been formed to fight to retain their traditional lands.

It had achieved several victories over United States military forces in 1790 and 1791, alarming the administration of President George Washington.

Washington realizes that the settlers were to blame for much of the violence; nevertheless, he makes preparations to defeat the alliance as the battles became more serious.

In April 1792, Washington sends word to veteran militia captain John Hardin, the “Indian Killer,” asking him to negotiate a peace with the Shawnees.

Soon thereafter, in the area that is now Shelby County, Ohio, Hardin meets with a party of the Shawnee, who offer to escort him to their village.

Instead, they attack him and murder him as he sleeps.

Also killed is a servant of Hardin's, identified simply by his last name, Trueman.

Another of the party, a guide named John Flinn—who had lived among the natives after being captured by them as a boy—survives, and will later settle in Miami County, Ohio.

Washington, after St. Clair's disaster, had ordered Revolutionary War hero General "Mad" Anthony Wayne to form a well-trained force and put an end to the situation with the belligerent natives in the Northwest.

Wayne takes command of the new Legion of the United States late in 1793.

Wayne can see that previous campaigns had failed because of poor training and discipline.

He has time to train his volunteers, since peace negotiations are undertaken in the summer of 1793.

Shawnee war chief Blue Jacket and Delaware (Lenape) leader Buckongahelas, encouraged by their previous victories and the hope of continued British support, argue for a return to the Treaty of Fort Stanwix of 1768.

They have rejected the subsequent treaties, on which they had never been consulted, that cede the land north of the Ohio River to the United States.

A faction led by the influential Mohawk leader Joseph Brant attempts to negotiate a compromise, but Blue Jacket will accept nothing less than an Ohio River boundary, which the United States refuses to concede.

The American government thus fights a war over the possession of the Ohio area native land under the direction of Secretary of War Henry Knox.

Wayne commands more than forty-six hundred men, with Choctaw and Chickasaw natives serving as his scouts.

After extensive training, Wayne’s troops advance from Fort Washington (Cincinnati, Ohio) into ...

...native country and build Fort Recovery at the site of St. Clair's defeat.

Wayne hopes to demonstrate that the United States Army can recover from this crushing defeat and emerge victorious in what is now termed the Northwest Indian War or "Little Turtle's War."

A supply column under the command of Major William McMahon and escorted by ninety riflemen under Captain Asa Hartshome and fifty dragoons under Lieutenant Edmund Taylor leaves Fort Recovery for Fort Greenville on June 30, 1794.

It has only gone about a quarter mile when it is attacked by a native force, commanded by Blue Jacket and including a young Tecumseh.

The dragoons cut a retreat back to the fort, but thirty-two men are killed, including Captain Hartshome and Cornet Daniel Torrey.

Thirty more men are wounded.

An unknown number of natives are killed.

During the night, a scouting company under Captain William Wells reports that there are British officers behind the native lines, and that they have brought powder and cannonballs, but no cannons.

The natives are looking for U.S. cannons that had been buried after St. Clair's Defeat, not knowing that they had already been recovered by the Legion of the United States.

The Native American forces attack the fort again the next day, July 1, 1794, but begin to withdraw by noon and are gone by nightfall.