In September 1811 John Gibson, secretary of the Indiana Territory, called out the militia in response to rising tensions with Native American tribes in the region. The Yellow Jackets were one such company to respond to the call. The company gained its name from the uniforms provided by the county for the men. The cuffs and fringes of their buckskins and wool coats were dyed a bright yellow. [1]
The militia of Harrison County was organized into a company of sixty men commanded by Captain Spier Spencer, the county sheriff. Spencer was a veteran of at least forty prior engagements with Native Americans. The second in command was 1st Lieutenant Richard McMahan, a new settler living near Corydon. The company had four sergeants and four corporals, one of each from each township in the county. Among them was Pearse Chamberlain, Henry Batman, and William Pennington, the younger brother of Dennis Pennington the speaker of the territorial legislature. Dennis Pennington was also a member of the company, but was unable to join the expedition because he was overseeing the construction of the new county courthouse and had to attend a meeting of the legislature who were called into an emergency session. The company had eight ensigns including future U.S. Senator John Tipton. Tipton kept a detailed journal of the company's activities and it is from that source that most knowledge of the company is known. The company contained two musicians, Daniel Cline serving as a drummer and Isham Stroud as a fifer. Both boys were fifteen years old, the youngest men in the company. There were forty-three privates enlisted, including many of the prominent men in the county. [2]
The privates were paid between $8 and $6.66 for the duration of their four-month enlistment. The officers were paid between $50 and $26. All the men were required to supply their own horses and were paid forty cents a day for their horses' fodder. The company first met at Harrison Mill on the western edge of the county. After camping there a night waiting for the entire force to come together the company set out to join the primary camp of the territorial militia. [3]
Tippecanoe expedition
On September 8 the company set out down the Buffalo Trace towards the capital in Vincennes. Traveling along the road they met up with other companies of infantry militia traveling by wagon who they accompanied the remainder of the journey. By the 16th they crossed the White River and met up with the main army commanded by Governor William Henry Harrison on the 18th. For the next twelve days the company remained in camp just north of Vincennes. On September 30 they received orders to march to Maria Creek with the rest of militia gathered in the camp to meet the army regulars already stationed near Maria Creek. Upon reaching their destination the Yellow Jackets were removed from the normal chain of command and moved to only answer to Harrison. [3]
Harrison intended to use the company as scouts and foragers. He put them in a wide formation around the main body of the army where they kept watch for enemies and gathered wild game to bring back to the main army. The company was successful and was even able to find beehives and bring back ten gallons of honey. On October 3 the army reached the site of modern Terre Haute, a strategic location on the Wabash River. The company continued to scout the countryside and forage while the rest of the army constructed Fort Harrison. A small detachment of mounted men under the command of Lieutenant Thomas Berry was added the Yellow Jackets. [4]
On October 10 a small group of Indians ambushed sentries at the fort, wounding a man. The Yellow Jackets quickly drew up around the fort preparing to drive off an attack, but it never materialized. On October 22 the company held elections for additional officers, and Tipton was promoted to Lieutenant. The army soon resumed its advance, and by the end of the month they had arrived in modern Vermillion County. On November 2 Harrison ordered the entire army to parade so he could inspect them. The entire force did so, except the Yellow Jackets, who were off foraging. Harrison threatened to demote all of their officers, but never carried through on the threat for fear they would desert. [5]
On November 3 the army moved out again and the Yellow Jackets along with the dragoons were put out in a skirmishing formation in front of the army to clear any possible enemies. By November 6, they reached the village of Prophetstown, the center of the native resistance. That night the army camped on a hill near the edge of the settlement. The army was camped in a battle formation and the Yellow Jackets were placed on the far right flank. Early on the morning of November 7, the Indians in Prophetstown launched a preemptive strike on the army. [6]
The attack took the army by surprise and the brunt of the attack came down on the right flank. Captain Spencer was among the first to be killed, being shot in each thigh. Governor Harrison later recorded his death in a dispatch to Washington. Of Spencer he said, "...Spencer was wounded in the head. He exhorted his men to fight valiantly. He was shot through both thighs and fell; still continuing to encourage them, he was raised up, and received a ball through his body, which put an immediate end to his existence..." Lieutenants McMahan and Berry were also soon wounded and killed. As the Yellow Jackets were quickly overwhelmed a reserve company of regulars came to reinforce their line and turned the tide. The battle lasted three hours before the Native forces withdrew. The Yellow Jackets suffered the highest casualties of the army, over 30%. Eleven were killed in the battle or died from wounds and thirteen wounded. The dead were buried in a mass grave on their campsite, but after the army withdrew, the Indians returned, dug up the graves and scattered their remains. [7]
A few days after the battle, and successful conclusion of the campaign, the militia was released from duty and returned to their homes. The militia reached Corydon on November 27 and disbanded after seventy-four days campaigning. The town later constructed a memorial on the town square for the fallen soldiers in the battle. [7]
The Battle of Tippecanoe was fought on November 7, 1811, in Battle Ground, Indiana, between American forces led by then Governor William Henry Harrison of the Indiana Territory and Native American forces associated with Shawnee leader Tecumseh and his brother Tenskwatawa, leaders of a confederacy of various tribes who opposed European-American settlement of the American frontier. As tensions and violence increased, Governor Harrison marched with an army of about 1,000 men to attack the confederacy's headquarters at Prophetstown, near the confluence of the Tippecanoe River and the Wabash River.
Corydon is a town in Harrison Township, Harrison County, Indiana. Located north of the Ohio River in the extreme southern part of the U.S. state of Indiana, it is the seat of government for Harrison County. Corydon was founded in 1808 and served as the capital of the Indiana Territory from 1813 to 1816. It was the site of Indiana's first constitutional convention, which was held June 10–29, 1816. Forty-three convened to consider statehood for Indiana and drafted its first state constitution. Under Article XI, Section 11, of the Indiana 1816 constitution, Corydon was designated as the capital of the state until 1825, when the seat of state government was moved to Indianapolis. During the American Civil War, Corydon was the site of the Battle of Corydon, the only official pitched battle waged in Indiana during the war. More recently, the town's numerous historic sites have helped it become a tourist destination. A portion of its downtown area is listed in the National Register of Historic Places as the Corydon Historic District. As of the 2010 census, Corydon had a population of 3,122.
The Indiana Territory, officially the Territory of Indiana, was created by a congressional act that President John Adams signed into law on May 7, 1800, to form an organized incorporated territory of the United States that existed from July 4, 1800, to December 11, 1816, when the remaining southeastern portion of the territory was admitted to the Union as the state of Indiana. The territory originally contained approximately 259,824 square miles (672,940 km2) of land, but its size was decreased when it was subdivided to create the Michigan Territory (1805) and the Illinois Territory (1809). The Indiana Territory was the first new territory created from lands of the Northwest Territory, which had been organized under the terms of the Northwest Ordinance of 1787. The territorial capital was the settlement around the old French fort of Vincennes on the Wabash River, until transferred to Corydon near the Ohio River in 1813.
Tecumseh's War or Tecumseh's Rebellion was a conflict between the United States and Tecumseh's Confederacy, led by the Shawnee leader Tecumseh in the Indiana Territory. Although the war is often considered to have climaxed with William Henry Harrison's victory at the Battle of Tippecanoe in 1811, Tecumseh's War essentially continued into the War of 1812 and is frequently considered a part of that larger struggle. The war lasted for two more years, until 1813, when Tecumseh and his second-in-command, Roundhead, died fighting Harrison's Army of the Northwest at the Battle of the Thames in Upper Canada, near present-day Chatham, Ontario, and his confederacy disintegrated. Tecumseh's War is viewed by some academic historians as the final conflict of a longer-term military struggle for control of the Great Lakes region of North America, encompassing a number of wars over several generations, referred to as the Sixty Years' War.
Tenskwatawa was a Native American religious and political leader of the Shawnee tribe, known as the Prophet or the Shawnee Prophet. He was a younger brother of Tecumseh, a leader of the Shawnee. In his early years Tenskwatawa was given the name Lalawethika, but he changed it around 1805 and transformed himself from a hapless, alcoholic youth into an influential spiritual leader. Tenskwatawa denounced the Americans, calling them the offspring of the Evil Spirit, and led a purification movement that promoted unity among the Indigenous peoples of North America, rejected acculturation to the American way of life, and encouraged his followers to pursue traditional ways.
Fort Harrison was a War of 1812 era stockade constructed in Oct. 1811 on high ground overlooking the Wabash River on a portion of what is today the modern city of Terre Haute, Indiana, by forces under command of Gen. William Henry Harrison. It was a staging point for Harrison to encamp his forces just prior to the Battle of Tippecanoe a month later. The fort was the site of a famous battle in the War of 1812, the siege of Fort Harrison in Sept. 1812 that was the first significant victory for the U.S. in the war. The fort was abandoned in 1818 as the frontier moved westward.
The Battle of Corydon was a minor engagement that took place July 9, 1863, just south of Corydon, which had been the original capital of Indiana until 1825, and was the county seat of Harrison County. The attack occurred during Morgan's Raid in the American Civil War as a force of 2,500 cavalry invaded the North in support of the Tullahoma Campaign. It was the only pitched battle of the Civil War that occurred in Indiana, and no battle has occurred within Indiana since.
Sanford Wesley Ransdell was an early American pioneer and soldier in the Battle of Tippecanoe. Ransdell was born in Orange County, Virginia, on September 11, 1781. He was a descendant of Edward Ransdell, a signer of the historic Leedstown Resolutions written up in defiance of the Stamp Act.
John Tipton was from Tennessee and became a farmer in Indiana; an officer in the 1811 Battle of Tippecanoe, and veteran officer of the War of 1812, in which he reached the rank of Brigadier General; and politician. He was elected to the Indiana General Assembly in 1819, and in 1831 as US Senator from the state of Indiana, serving until 1838. He was appointed as US Indian Agent and was selected to lead the militia in removing Menominee's band of Potawatomie in 1838; they were relocated to Kansas, Indian Territory.
Major Joseph Hamilton Daveiss, a Virginia-born lawyer, received a mortal wound while commanding the Dragoons of the Kentucky Militia at the Battle of Tippecanoe. Five years earlier, Daviess had tried to warn President Thomas Jefferson about Aaron Burr's plans to provoke rebellion in Spanish-held territories southwest of his Kentucky district. Several places in the United States are named for Daveiss, but though he spelled his name "Daveiss", these places all have the spelling "Daviess".
The Indiana National Guard (INNG) is a component of the United States Armed Forces, the United States National Guard and the Military Department of Indiana (MDI). It consists of the Indiana Army National Guard, the Indiana Air National Guard, and the Adjutant General's Office.
During the 18th and early 19th centuries, the French, British and U.S. forces built and occupied a number of forts at Vincennes, Indiana. These outposts commanded a strategic position on the Wabash River. The names of the installations were changed by the various ruling parties, and the forts were considered strategic in the French and Indian War, the American Revolutionary War, the Northwest Indian War and the War of 1812. The last fort was abandoned in 1816.
Captain Spier Spencer was an Indiana militia officer who commanded a company of mounted riflemen known as the Yellow Jackets at the Battle of Tippecanoe. Spencer County, Indiana was named in his honor.
During the War of 1812, Indiana Territory was home to several conflicts between the United States territorial government and partisan Native American forces backed by the British in Canada. The Battle of Tippecanoe, months before the war officially began, was one of the catalysts that caused the war. The fighting in the territory is often considered a continuation of Tecumseh's War, and the final struggle of the Sixty Years' War.
The Indiana Rangers, also known as the Indiana Territorial Mounted Rangers, were a mounted militia formed in 1807 and operated in the early part of the 19th century to defend settlers in Indiana Territory from attacks by Native Americans. The rangers were present at the Battle of Tippecanoe, and served as auxiliaries to the army during the War of 1812. At the peak of their activities they numbered over 400 men.
The Battle of Tipton's Island was an engagement between a Shawnee war party and Indiana militia under command of John Tipton in April 1813 on the White River near present-day Seymour, Indiana.
White caps were groups involved in whitecapping who were operating in southern Indiana in the late 19th century. They engaged in vigilante justice and lynchings. In modern times, they are often viewed as engaging in terrorism. They became common in the state following the American Civil War and lasted until the turn of the 20th century. White caps were especially active in Crawford and neighboring counties in the late 1880s. Several members of the Reno Gang were lynched in 1868, causing an international incident. Some of the members had been extradited to the United States from Canada and were supposed to be under federal protection. Lynchings continued against other criminals, but when two possibly innocent men were killed in Corydon in 1889, Indiana responded by cracking down on the white cap vigilante groups, beginning in the administration of Isaac P. Gray.
The following units of the U.S. Army and state militia forces under Indiana Governor William Henry Harrison, fought against the Native American warriors of Tecumseh's Confederacy, led by Chief Tecumseh's brother, Tenskwatawa "The Prophet" at the battle of Tippecanoe on November 7, 1811.
The Battle of Wild Cat Creek was the result of a November 1812 punitive expedition against Native American villages during the War of 1812. It has been nicknamed "Spur's Defeat", which is thought to refer to the spurs used by the soldiers to drive their horses away from the battle as quickly as possible. The campaign is sometimes referred to as the Second Battle of Tippecanoe.
United States Rangers were originally raised for Tecumseh's War, but they continued to serve against hostile Indians after the United States declaration of war against Great Britain. A total of 17 independent companies were authorized from Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Missouri. The Rangers were neither militia, nor regulars, but formed part of the war establishment of the United States as volunteers.
