Captain Leslie Combs' Ill-fated Canoe Trip

Very few motorists crossing the Maumee River today on the Interstate 475 Bridge may realize, if they glance downriver towards Maumee and Perrysburg and the Buttonwood Recreational Area, that they are looking at the site of a terrifying adventure during the Siege of Fort Meigs. This is an extract from the Narrative of the Life of General Leslie Combs, a veteran of the battle:

When they reached St. Mary's Blockhouse, General Clay divided his brigade, sending Colonel Dudley's regiment across to the Auglaise River, and descending the St. Mary's himself, with Colonel Boswell's, intending to united them again at old Fort Defiance. Captain Combs was attached to the former... It was fifty miles from Fort Defiance, where they expected to meet General Clay, to Fort Meigs; and it was deemed extremely hazardous for any one to attempt to open a communication between the two points, especially as no one present, except Captain Combs, knew the exact position of Fort Meigs, or had any knowledge of the intervening country.... (At a council of officers Captain Combs volunteered) "Colonel Dudley," said he, "General Clay has thought proper to entrust me with an important command, attached to your regiment. When we reach Fort Defiance, if you will furnish me a good canoe, I will carry your dispatches to General Harrison, and return with his orders. I shall only require four or five volunteers from my own company, and one of my Indian guides to accompany me..." 

The troops encamped at Fort Defiance (Fort Winchester) on the afternoon of the first of May. General Clay, meanwhile, had not arrived. Captain Combs immediately prepared for his perilous trip. The two Walkers, Paxton, and Johnson, were to accompany him, as well as the young Shawanee warrior Black Fish. As they pushed off from shore at the mouth of the Auglaise, the bank was covered with their anxious fellow-soldiers; and Major Shelby remarked, looking at his watch, "Remember, Captain Combs, if we never meet, it is exactly six o'clock when we part;" and he had since told Mr. Combs that he never expected to see him again alive.

 Captain Combs would have started some hours earlier, could his frail craft have been gotten ready for he knew it would require hard work, even with the aid of a strong current, to reach Fort Meigs before daylight the next morning. Placing his Shawnee in the stern, with a steering-oar, and two men at the side-oars, alternately relieving each other, the Captain took his position in the bow, to take care of their rifles and direct the course to be pursued; keeping as nearly as possible in the center of the stream, for fear of Indians on either side. By dark they had come within distinct hearing of the distant roar of heavy artillery in their front, and knew that General Harrison's apprehensions of an early assault upon his enfeebled position were verified.... 

It was late in the night when they struck the head of the rapids, and it seemed every moment as if their light canoe would be dashed in pieces. By lying flat on his face, the Captain could from some idea of the course of the deep channel, amid the war of waters which nearly deafened them, by seeming the foaming breakers glistening in the starlight. When they approached Roche debout, where they were informed there was a considerable perpendicular fall in low water, they were forced to land and haul their bark along the margin of the southern bank till they had passed the main obstruction; and daylight dawned upon them before they were again afloat. They were still some seven or eight miles above the fort, and well knew that the surrounding forests were alive with hostile savages...

(The next morning) If he should determine to remain where he was during the day, they would most probably be discovered and tomahawked before night. He therefore resolved resolved instantly to go ahead, desperate as the chances seemed against him, and risk all consequences. Not one of his brave companions demurred to his determination, although he told them they would certainly be compelled to earn their breakfasts before they would have the honor of taking coffee with General Harrison.

 (As they rounded the last bend in the river before Fort Meigs, not knowing if the fort had surrendered...) the first object that met their sight was the British batteries belching forth their iron hail across the river, and the bomb-shells flying in the air; and the next moment they saw the glorious stars and stripes gallantly floating in the breeze. "Oh, it was a grand scene," writes Captain Combs. "We could not suppress a shout; and one of my men, Paxton, has since declared to me, that he then felt as if it would take about a peck of bullets to kill him." Captain Combs had prepared every thing for action, by handing to each man his rifle freshly loaded, and in the mean time, keeping near the middle of the river, which was several hundred yards wide, not knowing from which side they would be first attacked.

He hoped that General Harrison might now and then be taking a look with his spyglass up the river, expecting General Clay, and would see them and send out an escort to bring them in... At first they saw only a solitary Indian in the edge of the woods on the American side, running down the river so as to get in hail of them; and they took him for a friendly Shawanee, of whom they knew General Harrison had several in his service as guides and spies. His steersman himself was for a moment deceived, and exclaimed, in his deep guttural voice, "Shawanee," at the same time turning the bow of the canoe towards him. A moment afterwards, however, when he raised the war-whoop, and they saw the woods full of red devils, running with all their speed to a point on the river below them, so as to cut them off from the fort, or drive them into the mouths of the British cannon, Captain Combs' young warrior exclaimed, "Pottawatomie, God damn!" and instantly turned the boat toward the opposite shore. 

The race between the little water party and the Indians was not long doubtful. The latter had the advantage in distance, and reached the point before the former. Combs still hoped to pass them with little injury, owing to the width of the river and the rapidity of the current, and therefore ordered his men to receive their fire without returning it, as he feared an attack also from the near shore, which would require all their means of resistance to repel. If successful, he should still have time and space enough to recross the river before he got within range of the British batteries, and save his little band from certain destruction. The first gun fired, however, satisfied him of his error, as the ball whistled over the canoe without injury, followed by a volley, which prostrated Johnson, mortally wounded, and also disabled Paxton; not however, before they had all fired at the crowd, and saw several tumbling to the ground. Captain Combs was thus, as a last hope, forced to run his craft ashore, and attempt to make good his way to Fort Meigs on the north side of the river. 

To some extent they succeeded. The two Walkers soon left the party, by the Captain's order, to save themselves; the Indian nobly remained with Paxton, and helped him along for six or seven miles, until he was so exhausted with the loss of blood as to be unable to travel farther. Captain Combs was less fortunate with poor Johnson, who, with all his aid, could barely drag himself half a mile from their place of landing, and both he and Paxton were very soon captured and taken to General Procter's head-quarters. They even reported, as was afterwards learned, that they had killed the Captain, and showed as evidence of the fact his cloth coat, which he had thrown off, putting on in its stead an old hunting-shirt, after he left Johnson, so as to disencumber himself of all surplus weight. 

His woodcraft, learned in the previous campaign, now did him good service as it enabled him to elude his pursuers; and after two days and nights of starvation and suffering, he again met Major Shelby and his other friends, at the mouth of the Auglaize, on the fourth of May, in the morning, after all hope of his return had been given up. The two Walkers were a day ahead of him, and his brave young Indian succeeded in making his way to his native village.

By the time Captain Combs made it to Defiance, a courier from the Fort had also arrived-- Captain William Oliver, who had already made a name for himself by slipping through the Indian lines to deliver a message during the Siege of Fort Wayne (from an anonymous account written by a veteran):

The necessary preparations were made, and at the hour of midnight (a dark & dismal night in Apr. 1813) a young soldier was seen to issue from one of the Gates of Ft. Meigs then closely besieged by a numerous Army of savages,"who environed the Ft. and through whose encampment our young friend had to pass; He moved on with slow, steady, but cautious steps, frequently in his passage through the almost numberless camp fires of his wary foe at the breaking of a stick by his horse tread or any, even the slightest noise, Indian warriors would be seen on every side, springing half up, is listening attentively, to learn from whence the noise had come, Intense indeed must have been the feelings of our friend; thus surrounded by vigilant and deadly foes; He told me, in conversing lately about this interesting moment ""that his horse seemed to feel the responsibility of the situation in which they were placed —and stopped when a twig would crack"soon the Indians would become satisfied & again lie down; when suspicion was lulled he would again proceed - & thus by slow cautious movements this miraculous passage through the Indian encampment was effected, and the dispatches, so important to our Garrison delivered to Genl. Clay, who by the same intrepid messenger, returned an answer to Genl. Harrison; He descended the river in a canoe with muffled oars, accompanied. by Col. David. Trimble of Ky. afterwards, aid to Genl. Harrison, & subsequently a distinguished Member of Congress from Ky. The writer had command of the guard, who were stationed at the center gate of the front line of the Fort and had the pleasure of receiving his friends at a late hour of the night & conducting them to the Genls. headquarters.

Combs was barely recovered from his ordeal when General Clay, having by now arrived with Colonel Boswell's Regiment from the St Mary's River, ordered his troops into 18 flat bottomed boats, to descend through the rapids and land around Fort Meigs. He lay sick in the boat, but when Dudley's Regiment landed on the opposite side of the river, he again took command of the scouts and provided a light infantry screen for the regiment as it captured the British batteries. Subsequently his company was drawn into a fire fight in the woods behind the British batteries by Indians there. Colonel Dudley, unwilling to leave them behind, ordered his disorganized regiment to support them, and was trapped by British and Indian reinforcements in what became known as "Dudley's Massacre". Captain Combs survived the battle, and capture by the British, to return home to Kentucky, where he died in 1881.