Battle of Monguagon

On August 9, 1812, Lieut. Col. James Miller and a force of about 600 American regulars and militia moved down Hull´s Trace in an attempt to bring desperately needed supplies from Frenchtown (Monroe) to Detroit. A similar effort had failed at Brownstown on August 5. Near the Wyandot village of Monguagon, American scouts ran into a British and Indian force of about 400 men led by Capt. Adam Muir and Tecumseh. In the heavy fighting that followed, the Americans drove the British back through present-day Trenton and across the Detroit River, while Native forces withdrew into nearby woods. Despite this tactical victory, Miller returned empty-handed to Detroit, which American General William Hull surrendered to the British a week later.

[Back]: The Michigan Wyandot who fought at Monguagon were neutral at the beginning of the War of 1812. In the years leading up to the war, their villages at Monguagon and Brownstown had not joined the loose coalition led by the Shawnee brothers Tenskwatawa (The Prophet) and Tecumseh in its fight against American expansion onto Indian lands. However, in early August 1812, Tecumseh and Roundhead, his leading Wyandot supporter, convinced the Michigan Wyandot and their head chief, Walk-in-the-Water, to join them and the British. The Anglo-Native alliance was repulsed, but the Wyandot villages continued to block Hull’s Trace, the American’s supply route from Ohio to Fort Detroit.