Lochry's Defeat, also known as the Lochry massacre, was a battle fought on August 24, 1781, near present-day Aurora, Indiana, in the United States. The battle was part of the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783), which began as a conflict between Great Britain and the Thirteen Colonies before spreading to the western frontier, where American Indians entered the war as British allies. The battle was short and decisive: about one hundred Indians of local tribes led by Joseph Brant, a Mohawk military leader who was temporarily in the west, ambushed a similar number of Pennsylvania militiamen led by Archibald Lochry. Brant and his men killed or captured all of the Pennsylvanians without suffering any casualties.
Lochry's force was part of an army being raised by Brigadier General George Rogers Clark for a campaign against Detroit, the British regional headquarters. Clark, the preeminent American military leader on the northwestern frontier, worked with Governor Thomas Jefferson of Virginia in planning an expedition to capture Detroit, by which they hoped to bring an end to British support of the Indian war effort. In early August 1781, Clark and about 400 men left Fort Pitt in Pennsylvania by boat, floating down the Ohio River a few days ahead of Lochry and his men, who were trying to catch up.
Joseph Brant's force was part of a combined British and Indian army being raised to counter Clark's offensive. Brant had too few men to challenge Clark, but when he intercepted messengers traveling between Clark and Lochry, he learned about Lochry's smaller group bringing up the rear. When Lochry landed to feed his men and horses, Brant launched his overwhelmingly successful ambush. Because Clark had been able to recruit only a fraction of the men he needed for his campaign, the loss of Lochry's men resulted in the cancellation of Clark's expedition.
Background In the Ohio River valley, the American Revolutionary War was fought primarily between American colonists south and east of the Ohio River (in present-day Western Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Kentucky) and American Indians with their British allies north of the river (now the Midwestern United States). From Detroit, the British recruited and supplied Indian war parties to attack American forts and settlements, hoping to divert American military resources from the primary theater of war in the East as well as keep the Indians—and the lucrative fur trade—firmly attached to the British Empire. Indians of the Ohio Country, primarily the Shawnee, Mingo, Delaware, and Wyandot, hoped to drive American settlers out of Kentucky and reclaim their hunting grounds, which they had lost in the Treaty of Fort Stanwix (1768) and Lord Dunmore's War (1774).For more background on the war in the West, see Western theater of the American Revolutionary War. A standard academic history of the Ohio River border war is Downes, Council Fires.
The Americans sought to hold on to Kentucky and to secure territorial claims to the region by launching sporadic expeditions against hostile Indian settlements north of the Ohio River. George Rogers Clark, a Virginia militia officer in Kentucky, believed that the Americans could ultimately win the border war by capturing Detroit. He laid the groundwork for this objective in 1779 by seizing the British outpost of Vincennes and capturing the British commander of Detroit, lieutenant governor Henry Hamilton.James, George Rogers Clark, 147–48. "This stroke", said Clark, "will nearly put an end to the Indian War."James, George Rogers Clark, 151. Clark prepared for a Detroit campaign in 1779 and again in 1780, but each time called off the expedition because of insufficient men and supplies. "Detroit lost for want of a few Men", he lamented.James, George Rogers Clark, 171–72; Downes, Council Fires, 247.
Planning Clark's campaign
In late 1780, Clark traveled east to consult with Thomas Jefferson, the governor of Virginia, about an expedition in 1781. Jefferson devised a plan which called for Clark to lead 2,000 men against Detroit, with the hope of preventing a rumored British offensive against Kentucky.James, George Rogers Clark, 229. To avoid potential conflicts over rank with Continental Army colonels while organizing the campaign, Clark requested that Jefferson promote him to brigadier general in the Continental Army. Army rules precluded Clark from receiving a Continental commission, however, because Clark held his colonel's commission from Virginia rather than the United States. Jefferson instead promoted Clark to the Virginia rank of "Brigadier General of the forces to be embodied on an expedition westward of the Ohio".Clark's promotion was worded this way because the state of Virginia only appointed generals to serve special purposes. Bakeless, Background to Glory, 272; James, George Rogers Clark, 231–32. In January, Clark left for Fort Pitt in western Pennsylvania to assemble his men and supplies. His goal was to have the expedition ready for departure from Fort Pitt by June 15.English, Conquest, 717.
As with earlier campaigns, recruiting enough men was a problem. Jefferson called for the western counties of Virginia to provide militia manpower for Clark's campaign, but county officials protested that they could not spare the men.James, George Rogers Clark, 232–33. Militiamen did not want to set out on a lengthy expedition—they would be gone for six months to a yearVan Every, A Company of Heroes, 258.—while their families and homes were threatened by Lord Cornwallis's army in the east, by Indian raids from the north, and by Loyalists at home.Downes, Council Fires, 266–67. Because of this resistance, Jefferson called for volunteers rather than ordering the militia to accompany the expedition.James, George Rogers Clark, 233.
In addition to volunteers, Jefferson also arranged for a regiment of 200 regular Continental soldiers under Colonel John Gibson to accompany Clark.James, George Rogers Clark, 234. Longstanding tensions between Continental Army officers and the militia made such cooperation problematic, however. Colonel Daniel Brodhead, the Continental Army commander at Fort Pitt, refused to detach men for Clark's campaign because he was staging his own expedition against the Delaware Indians, who had recently entered the war against the Americans.James, George Rogers Clark, 237–38; Downes, Council Fires, 265–67. Brodhead marched into the Ohio Country and destroyed the Delaware Indian capital of Coshocton in April. This resulted in the Delaware becoming more determined enemies, and deprived Clark of badly needed men and supplies for the Detroit campaign.Downes, Council Fires, 265–66.
Clark also had problems recruiting men from Pennsylvania: lingering resentment due to the recently settled border dispute between Virginia and Pennsylvania meant that few Pennsylvanians were willing to participate in an expedition headed by a Virginian.Downes, Council Fires, 267–68; Hassler, Old Westmoreland, 133. Clark's controversial attempt to draft Pennsylvanians into service created even more ill will.Hassler, Old Westmoreland, 135–37. One Pennsylvanian who supported Clark was Colonel Archibald Lochry, commander of the Westmoreland County militia. On July 4, Lochry wrote to Joseph Reed, the President of the Supreme Executive Council of Pennsylvania:
We have very distressing times Here this summer. The Enemy are almost constantly in our County Killing and Captivating the Inhabitants. I see no way we can have of defending ourselves other than by offensive operations. General Clarke has Requested our assistance to Enable him to carry an Expedition into the Indian Country.Archibald Lochry to Joseph Reed, July 4, 1781. Pennsylvania Archives, 1st series, 9:247.
With Reed's approval, Lochry began recruiting men for Clark's expedition. Many Westmoreland men did not want to leave their homes undefended, and so Lochry was only able to enlist about 100 volunteers for the campaign.Downes, Council Fires, 268–69.
When Clark finally left Fort Pitt in August, he was accompanied by only 400 men,James, George Rogers Clark, 241; Downes, Council Fires, 269. although he expected to meet Lochry and his Pennsylvanians at Fort Henry (present Wheeling, West Virginia). Clark was angry about the lack of support given his campaign,Downes, Council Fires, 269. but he still hoped that the Kentucky militia, who were to rendezvous with him at Fort Nelson (Louisville, Kentucky), would provide additional men. He intended to at least carry out an expedition against enemy Indians if he did not have enough men to attack Detroit.James, George Rogers Clark, 242; Bakeless, Background to Glory, 276.
Indian and British preparations
Thanks to an effective intelligence network, British officials and their American Indian allies were aware of Clark's planned expedition as early as February. In April, a council was held at Detroit in order to prepare a defense.Nelson, Man of Distinction, 118. The commander at Detroit was Major Arent DePeyster, Henry Hamilton's replacement, who reported to Sir Frederick Haldimand, the Governor of the Province of Quebec. DePeyster used agents of the British Indian Department such as Alexander McKee and Simon Girty, both of whom had close relations with American Indians of the Ohio Country, to coordinate British and Indian military operations.Bailey, "British Indian Department", 173.
Joining the Detroit conference was an Iroquois delegation headed by Joseph Brant (or Thayendanegea), a military leader of the Mohawks, one of the Six Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy.Brant's birth name was Thayendanegea, but like other Indians who had been baptized into Christianity, he also used a Christian name; Taylor, Divided Ground, 3. Brant was a minor war chief when the war began, but his ability to speak English and his connections with British officials made him prominent in British eyes.Taylor, Divided Ground, 90. When Brant traveled to London in 1775 to discuss Mohawk land grievances, Lord George Germain, the colonial secretary, vaguely promised him that if the Iroquois supported the Crown during the war, native land grievances would be redressed after the rebellion had been suppressed.Kelsay, Joseph Brant, 166; Taylor, Divided Ground, 88. Brant returned home and encouraged the Iroquois, who lived mostly in upstate New York, to enter the war as British allies. Four tribes of the Six Nations eventually did so.
Brant became a skilled partisan commander during the war, initially leading about 100 men known as "Brant's Volunteers". Because the traditional Iroquois leaders regarded Brant as an upstart who was too closely connected to the British, most of his volunteers were white Loyalists.Kelsay, Joseph Brant, 190–92; Taylor, Divided Ground, 90–93. Brant gained additional native followers during the war and was perhaps the only Indian to be commissioned as a British captain,Kelsay, Joseph Brant, 290. but he was not, as has sometimes been claimed, the head war chief of the Iroquois.Sugden, "Joseph Brant", 84. Brant took part in a joint British-Indian invasion of New York in 1777, which for the British ended in a disastrous surrender at Saratoga. Afterwards, he led numerous frontier raids, both before and after the massive American invasion of 1779, which left the Iroquois lands devastated.