In 1793, Anthony Wayne marched his army into an intact wilderness forest that would prove dangerous and harsh yet was appreciated as exciting, unique, and beautiful by the many comments in soldier’s Journals. Deep within the forest were bogs, swamps, wet prairies, and low-wet wooded areas that would need to be skirted. Scouts were used to pick the direction, and road cutters cleared the way. Even the best routes were often soggy. Pulling wagons and driving herds of cattle over the muddy roads was a difficult tedious task.
As the length of the war trace increased, the distance from any support center increased, and the complexity and expense of supplying the army increased. In addition, hostile Indians lurking in the distance posed a constant threat. They watched every movement, waiting for the opportunity to ambush a scout or hunter.
To a lesser degree, the environment was threatened by dangerous animal encounters with panthers, bears, wolves, and rattlesnakes, and medical care as we know it today was non-existent.
Some of the most lethal and least understood enemies affecting soldiers on both sides of the conflict were the microbes of yellow fever, smallpox, venereal disease, and malaria which took their toll on both armies. More Indians and soldiers died from these diseases than died in battle. Those who did not die from diseases were often left in such a weakened condition they could not fight.
Despite all the threats mentioned, the men wrote about the wilderness’s magnificence and beauty in their journals. They enjoyed watching the wild game, identifying and sizing trees, seeing the variety of flowering plants, and listening to the different calls of the birds.
The army traveled through a majestic virgin climax forest. The canopy of trees was over a hundred feet high, allowing almost no sunlight to penetrate the ground in the summer. It was common for someone to walk all day in this forest and never see the sun.
The men wrote of oak trees four to six feet in diameter and 50 to 80 feet to the first lower limb. These giants were cut down in the following years, revealing as many as five hundred annual rings. These colossal trees were living two hundred years before Columbus discovered America. The trees most often mentioned in the men’s diaries were oaks, maple, ash, hickory, beech, sycamore, poplar, and walnut. At Greene Ville an amazing sycamore tree was measured at 40-50 feet in circumference. (Wilson,1914).
On occasion, the army would encounter a prairie in the wilderness. It was a welcome sight described as beautiful, fragrant, and delightful. The prairies and the forest were waging their own war to control the ground. Wherever a tree could take root, the forest won out. Areas that were too wet or lacked clay in the soil prevented a foothold for the trees. These were the terrains covered by the prairies.
The prairies were swampy, and while a footpath might be found across one, it was impractical for an army to try to cross. Prairies offered diversity to the wilderness. Here, grasses grew five to eight feet tall. Big blue stem, Indian grass, cord grass, and the forb prairie dock were standard and could be used for forage for the animals.
The grasses waved with the wind and were compared to seas with infrequent islands of trees. The islands of trees referred to in diaries were, no doubt, glacial kames of gravel left behind by the last ice age. These natural elevations might be overrun with trees, causing them to look like copses, and were often favored camping areas for the Indians. The flowering plants in summer and fall were a welcome contrast to the dark forest.
At the edge, between the forest and the prairie, were zones of overlapping plant communities. These ecotones were good places for a settlement. They were where the highest diversity of plants and animals could be found. Wild food crops and large concentrations of animals could be hunted to supplement the always-short daily rations.
Wild plums, crab apples, blackberries, mandrakes, grapes, wild cherries, haws, and pawpaw would grow in the fringe areas and often in astonishing quantities. Men of the Kentucky Militia reported, “There were plenty of apples, of which we made some excellent apple toddy”(Filson Club Letters, Kentucky Historical Society, Louisville.
Along the wet prairie fringes, medicinal plants such as hyssop, boneset, and aromatic mints could also be found. Onions grew wild in great numbers and were used as spices to flavor foods.
Deer, bears, turkeys, geese, ducks, doves, rabbits, squirrels, turtles, raccoons, beavers, and buffalo were hunted to help stretch provisions. Other wildlife mentioned were polecats, foxes, minks, otters, partridge, parakeets, wood-cocks, owls, eagles, cranes, and opossums. In Greene Ville two otters became pets. They were playful as cats and would come and go as they pleased, both in and out of the fort (Wilson, 1914).
The army was well aware of the advantage of building its fort or camp near a fresh supply of water. Water was needed for drinking, cleaning, and cooking. The streams in the wilderness rose and fell more gradually than in modern times, and the forest had springs that never dried up. One reason the military campaigns were conducted in the fall was the forest floor would be easier to traverse after the spring rains had dissipated.
The streams were full of fish. One reference (Daniel Bradley’s Journal 1793) mentions the army catching over 1750 pounds in one night and 800 pounds of fish the following night in a trap on the Miami River. The fish were identified as buffelow, catfish, pearch, and ells (Bradley’s original spelling). More fish were caught than the garrison could use.
It was determined that supplying the fort by boat would be much less expensive and easier at Greene Ville. Fifteen boats were made at Greene Ville and used to bring supplies from Fort Washington (today known as Cincinnati) (Knopf, 1960). Nine boats were dropped below the falls at Ft. Rowdy(Covington), and six remained above the falls. Supplies were portaged around the falls. Only during a long dry spell would there be any difficulty floating the boats to Greene Ville. Today’s loaded boat would be grounded and could not make the journey. Deforestation, tiling, and silting have made the creeks and rivers in this area much more shallow and less navigable today.
