Talk:St. Clair's defeat

Indian Casualties

"General Arthur St. Clair sent to attack the Amer Indians, forcing them to a peace. George Washington told St. Clair to "Beware of Surprise". St. Clair attacked the villages of Miami, Shawnee and Delaware Indians near modern Fort Wayne Indiana. His troops consisted of 2 regiments of regular army troops and militia from Kentucky and some of the original 13 states. Arthur St. Clair was governor of the Ohio territory. Much of the militia deserted, the soldiers were sick, there were no pack horses and the tents leaked. By the 4th of November 1791, the army was down to 1400 men. They camped along the Wabash River. Before sunrise, "Little Turtle", the great Miami Indian war chief, led 1200 warriors into battle. They took St. Clair's army completely by surprise. Before noon, half of the army was dead on the field. The remainder ran for their lives, leaving the dead and the wounded and 8 cannons, 1200 muskets, horses and wagons. "Little Turtle" lost 21 braves. It was one of the greatest Indian victories. President George Washington heard what had happened and purportedly shouted to his secretary "St Clair suffered that army to be cut to pieces, butchered, tomahawked by surprise. How can he answer to his country. The curse of widows and children is upon him."

As a reference Tribal Document Collection Consolidated Dockets no: 15-H 29F 3-17 Doctors Ermine Wheeler-Doeglin, Emily J Blasingham and Dorothy R Libby. 1997 Glenblack laboratory Indianapolis." InternetHero 15:51, 15 April - 2007 (UTC)

Indian Strength

``...the greatest victory ever won by Indians over English-speaking opponents. On 4 November 1791, in a cold inclement dawn, one thousand warriors under Blue Jacket, Little Turtle, and Buckongahelas intercepted the United States Army under Arthur St. Clair, as it came to attack their towns. Although inferior in strength, the Indians overran the American camp on the Wabash and inflicted almost a thousand casualties, putting the survivors into a panic-stricken flight. —John Sugden, Tecumseh: A Life, Owl Books, 1997. InternetHero 15:51, 15 April - 2007 (UTC)

U.S. casualties

The infobox doesn't match "The Campaign" section of the text. NTK (talk) 21:27, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Name of battle

Where did we get "Battle of the Wabash"? Is there a reference for it? Every reference I have to this battle calls it "St. Clair's Defeat." There's even an old folk song by the same name. I don't doubt that it has been called "Battle of the Wabash," I just have no sources that use that name, and I'm unclear why that's the version we've settled on for the article's title. Mingusboodle (talk) 03:51, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Let me ask again. Would anyone here be opposed to moving the article to "St. Clair's Defeat"? I don't want to do this without some input from others, but it seems to me that St. Clair's Defeat is the more common name by far. I could be wrong, though, which is why I'm asking. Mingusboodle (talk) 04:11, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Since there have been no objections in 7 months, I moved all the content from Battle of the Wabash to St. Clair's Defeat and made the former article a redirect. If you disagree, we can move it back, but let's discuss it first so we're not just moving articles back and forth. Mingusboodle (talk) 18:39, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

Uh oh, it looks like you did a forbidden cut-and-paste move, which screws up the edit history, instead of an actual page move. If so, this will need to be fixed; see Wikipedia:Cut and paste move repair holding pen. —Kevin Myers 15:22, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

I've moved this article back to Battle of the Wabash for two main reasons. First, because the name receives nearly three times as many Google hits as St. Clair's defeat (even despite its recurrence in Wikipedia page names and in Wikipedia forks). I receive a count of 169,000 for "St. Clair's defeat", and 477,000 for "Battle of the Wabash". Second, the name better reflects Wikipedia's NPOV policy. "St. Clair's defeat" clearly suggests an American perspective on the event (the article might just as fairly be titled "Little Turtle's Victory"). Owen (talk) 21:12, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

I disagree, but I won't revert just yet. I think you need to go by more than a simple Google search. Look it up at some libraries. I have read many books about "St. Clair's Defeat," one about "Sinclair's Defeat," but never "the Battle of the Wabash." Upon trying a Google search for "Battle of the Wabash," I received 1,320,000 results, but a quick scan over the pages show a BIG problem with this method. 1) Many of the pages are copies of an older Wikipedia article of the same name. 2) Many of the original articles score Google hits, but then actually refer to the battle as "St. Clair's Defeat." 3) Many of the hits have nothing at all to do with this particular battle. Let's talk about this before we have an edit war, but if the change is based on nothing more than Google hits, I'm going to revert. Canute (talk) 13:15, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

I concur, I have never seen this referred to as the "Battle of the Wabash" in literature. The only battle I know to have been refered to as the "Battle of the Wabash" was the Battle of Tippecanoe. I know a google search returns results, but I bet most of those are that are legitimate are referring the far more widely known Battle of Tippecanoe, not this battle. I also not the first few pages of results are almost entirely wikipedia mirrors. —Charles Edward ^{(Talk | Contribs)} 14:12, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Revert to St. Clair's Defeat. This was previously resolved, and no new scholarship has been presented. Owen, I understand your concern about NPOV, but it isn't the place of Wikipedia to make up new names for events. Even if that were our goal, history records at least 3 major battles on the Wabash, and a couple of others that are sometimes confused as being on that river. I actually like your suggestion of "Little Turtle's Victory," but that name is impractical because Little Turtle had many victories. Incidentally, Little Turtle's major victories are all named for the defeated commanders. Mingusboodle (talk) 16:32, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

New names? As I said, it is the more common name given by Google search results. The earliest source I can find using the name for the battle dates back to a volume of National Republic published in 1934 [1], and it was later used by the Ohio Historical Society in 1940: "The flying wedge, it should not be forgotten, was used by the Shawnee to cut the force of General Arthur St. Clair in twain at the Battle of the Wabash..." [2]. The name is historic, NPOV, and also the most commonly used reference to the battle on the internet. Owen (talk) 17:01, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Actually, I have found some even earlier sources. A century and a half of Pittsburg and her people, Volume 1 used it in 1908. [3]. It was used in What to see in America, published in 1919. [4] There are many others, old and new. Owen (talk) 17:08, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

I don't think you can say thats is most common name on the internet. Battle of the Wabash can refer to more than one battle. You are assuming all the hits are referring to this one battle - but they are not. —Charles Edward ^{(Talk | Contribs)} 17:04, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Battle of the Wabash only loses 100,000 hits when Tippecanoe is removed. [5], with a total of nearly 400,000. St. Clair's defeat gets 169,000. [6] (or 155,000, if you remove Tippecanoe [7].) Owen (talk) 17:16, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

For that matter, Battle of the Wabash still gets 347,000 hits when both "Wikipedia" and "Tippecanoe" are removed. [8] Owen (talk) 17:22, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Check this out [9] - on GoogleBooks, Battle of the Wabash refers to the Battle of Tippecanoe more than it does to St. Claire's Defeat. Or look at it this way: "Battle of the wabash"[10] - less than 300 mentions. "St.Clair's Defeat" [11] - over 9000. Google books is a much better survey of scholarly literature than a straight google search, IMO. —Charles Edward ^{(Talk | Contribs)} 17:07, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

That is not quite true. Compare [12] and [13]. Also, it is not clear how many of those results refer to the ballad rather than to the battle. In general I won't disagree that "St. Clair's defeat" is the older and more prevalent historical name. But it isn't the only historical name, it doesn't seem to be the most common contemporary name, and it's clearly not the most neutral name. Owen (talk) 17:37, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Honestly, I don't think you have a case with NPOV. As stated before, all of Little Turtle's historically significant battles are named for those whom he vanquished. You're actually trying to establish an exception, if you look at it that way. As far as Google searching, I'm just not buying it. Google hits has never been a valid method to determine historic terms or names. "Little Turtles" brings up more hits than "Little Turtle," but that doesn't mean we should change his name. And You're also ignoring the issues we've already had with your Google searches, namely that it's bringing up web pages that have absolutely nothing to do with St. Clair's Defeat, not to mention those ridiculous Wikipedia clone sites. (Eliminating the term "Wikipedia" in a boolean search won't eliminate them. They're not mirror sites, they literally steal content from Wikipedia, which is why you're finding so many hits on the old "Battle Of The Wabash" wiki that we eliminated years ago.) Canute (talk) 03:47, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Your first point is not true. In fact this was the only battle involving Little Turtle that was still using the format "[Name's] defeat". "Hardin's defeat" and "Harmar's defeat" are both incorporated in the article "Harmar Campaign". And we use "Battle of Fort Wayne" rather than "McGready's defeat". And of course there was the Battle of Fallen Timbers (in which Little Turtle himself was defeated.) So there is no exception. This would be the exception. Besides, that argument doesn't address NPOV so much as naming consistency. (And it's somewhat dubious that Wikipedia should have a unique standard simply for battles waged by Little Turtle.)

Also, it's a deceptive sleight of hand to say that "Little Turtle" vs "Little Turtles" is a fair comparison to "Battle of the Wabash" vs "St. Clair's defeat", since "little turtles" can obviously refer to little turtles, whereas "Battle of the Wabash" and "St. Clair's defeat" are far more clear. The first can only be confused with the Battle of Tippecanoe, but I showed above that even when you remove all entries relating to Tippecanoe, and all articles relating to Wikipedia, you receive twice as many search results as you get for "St. Clair's defeat" with no search results removed. (And the margin is even greater when you remove Wikipedia search results from this search as well.) And even then there are references in "St. Clair's defeat" to the popular 19th century ballad which cannot be satisfactorily removed. Owen (talk) 18:00, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Just to ensure all Tippecanoe results are removed, I've done another search with all results relating to Wikipedia, Tippecanoe, Prophetstown, and Tenskwatawa removed. And I still receive 331,000 hits, [14] against 159,000 for St. Clair's defeat with only Wikipedia pages removed. [15] Owen (talk) 18:13, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Correction, Owen. The Battle of Tippecanoe did not actually occur on the Wabash, that's just a common error and something easily corrected on Wikipedia with a disambiguation. The Illinois Campaign (1779), Harmar Campaign (1790), and the Seige of Fort Wayne (1812), on the other hand, could all appropriately be called the Battle of the Wabash. (So, too, could the Siege of Fort Harrison (1812)). In fact, the Battle of Vincennes probably has the best claim to the title, since the river played a major role in the conflict. By contrast, the Wabash played virtually no role in St. Clair's Defeat. The combatants were not fighting for control of the river, nor was it utilized to gain an advantage. It was, in fact, little more than a landmark that helped identify the location of the battle.

Concerning the Google search, I guess I haven't explained my objection. First and foremost, I reject the use of Google hits as a method to name historical events. I understand why you used it; it's quick, simple, and relatively objective. My objection is that it does not reflect academic or historical consensus, nor is it in any way accurate. Even if it were, when I tried the same Google search, I brought up many pages that had absolutely nothing to do with Little Turtle, Blue Jacket, or General St. Clair. In addition, the Wikipedia clone pages (there are many) cannot be edited out with a boolean operative because they're NOT Wikipedia pages, they simply steal content. If you want a more objective method for changing the name of this article, you'll need to find a way that more editors find acceptable. Canute (talk) 18:24, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

Whether the Battle of Tippecanoe took place on the Wabash or not, it's so far as I know the only other battle that has been called by that name, which is why I was focusing on it. As for the name itself, I'm not suggesting it because it's the best description for the battle, but rather because it's a popular name, doesn't take the perspective of either party involved, and has a significant history. And it's not a wholly inaccurate name since it is accurate as to the location of the battle. I agree that Google search quantification is hardly an end-all-debate tool, but I do think it can be one useful measure. You're correct to point out that not all spiders will cite Wikipedia in their summaries. So in order to weed them out, I've also removed articles containing the line "The Indian tribes in the Old Northwest, however, were not parties to this treaty". This line is contained within the first two paragraphs of every Wikipedia version of the article since December 6, 2005, so it should fairly eliminate any sources that have spidered the article any time since then. And since the article had only existed for a week at that point, it should almost entirely eliminate any Wikipedia bias. With this line removed, a huge number of search results disappear from both articles' searches, particularly combined with the search removals listed above. Battle of the Wabash now receives only 5,150 hits, and St. Clair's defeat receives 3,990. I'm not going to say that you can conclude one or the other is popular from a search like that, but it does suggest that both are considerably well-used, in approximately the same frequency. Which says to me that we aren't under any compulsion to use "St. Clair's defeat", since there is a name that is equally viable and, I believe, more even-handed. Owen (talk) 04:03, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

Owen, you found a pretty clever way to weed out the Wikipedia clones, and it confirms my suspicion that there aren't nearly so many websites out there with information on this particular engagement. I've been taking a slower approach and simply looking at websites that might have some authority on the subject. Interestingly enough, the Army has a streamer for the "Miami Campaign," which covers all the battles from Harmar to Wayne. The Center for Military History has articles on St. Clair's Defeat, but not for the Battle of the Wabash. (I then searched for just "Wabash" and got articles on Tippecanoe and Harmar.) I then checked the Ohio Historical Society. They have some records for St. Clair and St. Clair's Defeat, but the records listed for battle of the wabash were, again, mostly about other topics. Ditto for the Indiana Historical Society, and to be fair, many articles were simply referring to "St. Clair's defeat," but did not give the battle a name. I tried the Fort Wayne Historical Society (since that was St. Clair's destination) and found really nothing that helps us. FortRecovery.org refers to "St. Clair's defeat" on their homepage, but interestingly enough, they have an article about the "Battle on the Banks of the Wabash" that refers to the Battle of Fort Recovery, 1794. I also checked my local library this weekend. They have 1 book titled "St. Clair's Defeat," which is really an extraction from Theodore Roosevelt's The Winning of the West series. They have nothing on the Battle of the Wabash, but that search did bring up some songbooks and a book on the Battle of Fort Harrison (which I now have reserved). In summary, I found these three things. 1) There are very few people that care about this battle. We're in a very small minority. 2) The battle has no official name. It is more often referred to "St. Clair's defeat" (meaning the defeat of St. Clair) as a generic term than a proper name. 3) The name "Battle of the Wabash" can refer to almost anything else, and usually does. Canute (talk) 12:26, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

I just tried this again while shopping on Amazon. "St. Clair's Defeat" brought up books. "Battle of the Wabash" brought up a few unrelated books, and a lot of unrelated postcards.Canute (talk) 15:16, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

I don't particularly like this option, but what do you think about renaming the article "St. Clair Campaign," like we did with Harmar Campaign? The actual battle could be a subsection, and could list various names by which the battle has been called. The rest of the article would give the context around the battle. The wiki link St. Clair's Defeat would be a redirect, and Battle of the Wabash could be a disambiguation page listing various battles that have been called by that name. Canute (talk) 13:52, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

I'd considered that as well, but I think I don't know that I would like that any better. To say that battle itself was just one aspect of the campaign again takes the American point of view in the conflict. Also the focus in this article is on the battle and not on the campaign itself, and I think it's better that way. I agree with you generally that the historical record favors "St. Clair's defeat". I just don't know that that automatically requires that we use the name. After all, the historical record also used to favor "Custer's Last Stand" for the Battle of the Little Bighorn. And although both terms are widely used (and the former actually receives considerably more hits on Google), we use the latter title for the battle on Wikipedia. In part because it's the more neutral title, and in part because the U.S. government somewhat officialized that name when it renamed the battlefield in 1991. But in general I think this comes down to Wikipedia's NPOV policy regarding article titles. Unfortunately, the policy as given seems a bit unclear for this example. First of all, because it says that an article can be given a name that expresses a point of view if "the commonality of the name overrides our desire to avoid passing judgment". Unfortunately it doesn't give any sort of guideline as to what that threshold is. The guidelines also say that it's better to use a POV title than one not reflected in sources. But in this case there are many good sources for either name. So I don't think we necessarily have to use a title that expresses a point of view in this case.

As a bit of an aside, I have come across one source that specifically criticizes the naming of the battle: "Americans named the battle 'St. Clair's defeat,' thereby depriving Indians of the mantle of victory and placing responsibility for the debacle squarely on the shoulders of the incompetent commanding general. What might better be called the Battle of the Wabash was one of the most complete military humiliations ever suffered by American armed forces." [16] Owen (talk) 16:33, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

I don't really see a NPOV issue in the article title, so long as the article content is NPOV. This battle will always be a bit of a struggle because the US simply has more documented history, and we have to make many educated guesses about the Native American coalition. From a NPOV perspective, conflicts are ideally named for their location or date, but that simply doesn't work here becaues we have 40 years of battles along the entire length of the Wabash. Battles are frequently named for the victors or the vanquished, but as stated earlier, we can't name this "Little Turtle's Victory" because he had many victories. Consider the effect on the combatants. The Northwest Indian coalition's brilliant victory defended it's land, but their coalition fell apart and their war was lost at a relatively minor battle at Fallen Timbers. By contrast, the US was completely rocked, as you can see in the "Aftermath" subsection of this article, and the US had to create an entirely new Army from scratch. The effect of this battle was much greater on the loser. That, and general historical consensus, justifies the name "St. Clair's Defeat." Mingusboodle (talk) 17:26, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

This NPOV discussion is reminiscent of the small controversy over what to name the Northwest Indian War article. That was never really resolved to everyone's satisfaction, either, but they ultimately just had to pick a name. I suggest we do the same. Canute (talk) 01:36, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

We've been talking in circles, so I'm biting the bullet and reverting. Owen, you point out some valid issues, but there are only three of us who seem to care about this article, and you have the minority opinion this time. However, you've caused me to do some research, and I do agree that we have some real NPOV issues on the Northwest Indian War articles. I'm going to get to work on those articles, and I hope we can work together to make them better. Canute (talk) 01:55, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I just disambiguated 40 links to Battle of the Wabash, and all of them were referring to St. Clair's Defeat, except for a handful referring to the dab. Nick Number (talk) 21:14, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

Challenging a contention

The article makes the following point:

"indeed, in proportional terms of losses to strength it was the worst defeat that United States forces have ever suffered in battle."

The casualty rate, according to the article was 97% and the death rate was 69% so thats not too hard to believe ... especially for a land battle. The USA has been very successful on land and has more often then not being on the offensive meaning that it would be unlikely an entire unit would be over-run without recieving reinforcements.

BUT

In WW2 there were numerous sea battles involving individual ships or small groups of ships (if I'm not mistaken) where for example Japanese naval or air forces destroyed the entire American contingent. Perhaps these were smaller engagements and only part of a larger campaign or battle but I suspect that some ships lost at sea might have lost nearly everyone if they were far enough away from support. I don't have any clear examples to back myself up on this but I do believe it is possible there were naval battles in WW2 where US forces had higher casualty rates. If someone can find such an example, perhaps they should change the articles contention to "suffered in a land battle".--Senor Freebie (talk) 12:15, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

The Union and Confederate armies each lost 23,000 men in the Battle of Gettysburg. That's far more casualties than St Clair's Defeat. The specific point about casualties at St Clair's Defeat is that the army lost more men in a battle against a Native American force that any other battle in U.S. history. Once you take the American Indian qualifier out of that statement, it ceases to be true. Mingusboodle (talk) 18:24, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

I don't think "worst defeat in proportional losses" is true even among Native American battles. The Battle of the Hundred Slain (Fetterman Massacre) had no U.S. survivors. Then there's the other two no-survivors battles at the Little Bighorn and the Alamo, which also surely count? Mwistey (talk) 01:30, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

Colonel Drake

This is the first mention of Colonel Drake in the article: "Colonel Drake ordered his battalion to fix bayonets and charge the main Native position."

I think he needs a bit more of an introduction than that!

How does the cited source present this information?

--Demiurge1000 (talk) 04:10, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

Location

Is the location accurate? Shouldn't it be in Ft. Recovery? --Dana60Cummins (talk) 22:01, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

Popular Culture section

I first heard of this battle in a song of the same name by the Modern Folk Quartet, on their 1964 album "Changes" which I own (I'm a big folk revival fan). It seems appropriate to add this cover of Bob Gibson's tune to the list of references (the only other of which I'm aware), given that the Apollo's Fire reference is already there. With this addition, there seemed to be enough material to justify creating a Popular Culture section, which also creates consistency with other Wikipedia articles having cultural references to a historical event. Also, folk ballads aren't really "aftermath" of an event, as the section header suggests (although they may be seen as such from an extremely technical perspective!), so a Popular Culture section is more accurate.

In the reference, I linked to an Allmusic album page. The Modern Folk quartet does have a web page of sorts where the album does appear (http://www.themfq.com/discography/list3.htm) but it's in Japanese and not all that useful to a reader looking to learn more about or to purchase the album. Allmusic is as comprehensive and authoritative a music database as any, and I didn't think it proper to link directly to something like an Amazon.com page. Feel free to remove the link if you disagree. Kabeyun (talk) 18:08, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

Position of Little turtle and St. Clair portraits

Shouldn't the top picture in the infobox go to the winner? Smerdis of Tlön - killing the human spirit since 2003! 14:58, 4 November 2019 (UTC)

If you think that's a better presentation, feel free. Consider the name of the battle, though. It isn't "Little Turtle's Victory," it's "St. Clair's Defeat." I don't think it's really on us to rename the battle, but I think that may have something to do with the photo at the top. Canute (talk) 13:19, 9 April 2020 (UTC)

Hardin

Who is Hardin?

Large sections of this article are not properly sourced.

It may well be that the information given is accurate but these sorts of casualty figures and allegations of misconduct should be sourced.

Trying to give this article's tone the benefit of the doubt (because it seems like pretty obvious POV pushing IMO) and then I read "Hardin"

Uhm...who is that? Name never shows up before or after in the article.

Pretty sure they meant to say "Harmar".

Can't prove it buy I would bet my last dollar this garbage was typed up by someone with political and/or racist motivations.

Stay classy, Wikipedia. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.135.144.123 (talk) 21:10, 29 January 2021 (UTC)

Take your crap somewhere else. People worked to develop this article over the last 15 years. Yes, it has opportunities for improvement, but it's a significant improvement over the 2005 version, or the nothing that was here before that. I take umbrage with your condescending attitude, the flippant remarks (bordering vandalism) you threw into the article, and your baseless accusations of racism, which flies against Wikipedia's fundamental principles (AGF). You want to fix the article? Try acting like a decent human being and treating people with the respect they deserve. Or better yet, chip in and make some valuable edits to improve the article. Canute (talk) 21:34, 29 January 2021 (UTC)

Buckongahelas

I understand why Buckongahelas is an important name in this article, but why is he suddenly given full credit for the battle and the victory? I understand the debate regarding who was "in charge," but I've never read in a book or article that Buckongahelas and his Lenape were primarily responsible for the victory, any more than Little Turtle and his Miami or Blue Jacket and his Shawnee. I guess what I'm asking for is a source / citation for his sudden promotion in this article. Canute (talk) 16:29, 15 March 2021 (UTC)

I'ved reverted the changes and put the article back to the last stable revision, per WP:BRD. I agree with concerns about the changes, as the only source added to support them (linked here) is WP:PRIMARY and does not name Buckongahelas as the leader of the Western Confederacy. Pending the citation (or if they are already present, a call-out) of sources which cite Buckongahelas as the leader of the confederacy's forces, there is no reason to dilute the contributions of other leaders. SamHolt6 (talk) 17:22, 15 March 2021 (UTC)

@Ushistory442: if they wish to comment. SamHolt6 (talk) 17:36, 15 March 2021 (UTC)

If memory serves, we used to have a small section regarding the debate over the confederacy's command. It mentioned how Little Turtle is often credited, but that this may be due to the influence of William Wells. Currently, the only mention I see is the sentence "Both Little Turtle and Blue Jacket claimed to have been in overall command..." Is it worth expanding on this? I could do some research, but I don't want to build an entire paragraph on this topic if we purposely removed it. Canute (talk) 13:40, 17 March 2021 (UTC)

I tried a small paragraph under St._Clair's_defeat#Command_structure, which I like because it helps balance the article (before it only discussed U.S. forces). Let me know if you think this is an improvement or if I should revert. Thanks. Canute (talk) 18:02, 17 March 2021 (UTC)

Maps

I realized the maps in this article are not facing North. The first one does not indicate direction, but if North is up (like most modern maps), then it is backwards. The second map has an N on the right side of the map, so it is correct, but still turned 90° to the right from what most readers would be used to seeing. These are scans of old maps. My question is whether it would be acceptable to edit the images to reduce confusion on directions? We could either add a more obvious direction indicator in them, or perhaps even rotate them so North is up. I've never altered a map on Wikipedia like that, so I'm not sure if that's better or worse. What are your opinions? Canute (talk) 16:00, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

I don't mind if the maps face north or not, but it is unfortunate these two side-by-side maps are not oriented in the same direction, which can be confusing. Someday we'll have better maps, drawn in color by a volunteer using Inkscape or something. In the meantime, perhaps the easiest remedy is to mention the orientation in the caption, which is what Winkler does in his Wabash book. Kevin1776 (talk) 21:40, 5 November 2021 (UTC)

Good idea, thanks! Canute (talk) 00:39, 6 November 2021 (UTC)

Something doesn't seem right about the directions in the captions in the maps. Looking at Fort Recovery, OH on modern maps (National Map viewer), the Wabash appears to flow east-to-west. It does turn to flow nearly due north a few miles near the OH/IN border.

Map_of_St.Clair's_Encampment.jpg clearly has flow arrows indicating the Wabash flowing bottom-to-top. If north is truly down on this map, then that seems to indicate that at the site of the battle the Wabash was flowing to the south. Now, the watercourse is labeled "Eastern Branch of the Wabash" so it's possible that it's not what we currently call the "Wabash", but there also don't appear to be any major tributaries that join from the right in the vicinity of Fort Recovery that would be plausible candidates to be the "Eastern Branch".

According to Wikipedia (the three most trusted words in information!), the article on Fort Recovery says it was established almost directly on the site of the battle where they were burying bodies. That would be consistent with north being right on "Map_of_St.Clair's_Encampment.jpg" and to the top of "St._Clair's_Defeat.jpg". How sure are you that north is to the bottom and right of these maps? If that's definite, then the battle was quite distant from Fort Recovery and that article is wrong. CatCube (talk) 02:19, 15 December 2024 (UTC)

The new recruits were poorly trained and disciplined,

The line "The new recruits were poorly trained and disciplined"- was that meant to be "undisciplined"? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:1C2:4E00:2100:5D1B:57B2:2ACD:5F56 (talk) 08:28, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

The "poorly" is modifying both "trained" and "disciplined", but if you found it confusing, then there are undoubtedly others. I'll change it to "undisciplined". Indyguy (talk) 16:30, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

Librivox

I listened to the opening of the Librivox book that was added to the bottom of the article. Sounds like it's this book?

• St. Clair's Defeat 1791. United States: Public Library of Fort Wayne and Allen County. 1954.