cover image The Victory with No Name: The Native American Defeat of the First American Army

The Victory with No Name: The Native American Defeat of the First American Army

Colin G. Calloway. Oxford Univ, $24.95 (224p) ISBN 978-0-1993-8799-1

In this compact story centering on a single battle, historian Calloway (The Scratch of a Pen) puts a new spin on the old adage about the winners writing history. St. Clair’s Defeat, or the Battle on the Wabash, was a vital 1791 military confrontation between Native Americans in northwestern Ohio and a still green U.S. Army, which has been all but written out of history books by its loser, the United States. The battle was widely written about in its day, analyzed for what it meant in terms of the very survival of a new country still threatened by not only the indigenous population but the land-grasping English and Spanish. Calloway crisply covers the battle in one chapter, framing it as part of a larger conflict over real estate that played out in the Ohio country during 1790–1791. This single issue—land ownership—drove an irreconcilable wedge between Native Americans and whites, cutting off any hope for interracial community and cooperation. Though this emphasis on land conflict isn’t new, Calloway presents keen observations on the link between business interests and the government’s land policy that, underpinned by its racial assumptions, made Gen. Arthur St. Clair’s 1791 defeat a complex event. B&w illus. [em](Oct.) [/em]