Fort Miami: The Fort That Shut Its Gates
Near Toledo, Ohio
In the spring of seventeen ninety-four the British built a fort here at the Maumee rapids, in territory they were supposed to have evacuated years earlier under the Treaty of Paris. Fort Miami was a deliberate provocation: four bastions, a deep ditch, and a battery of cannon, meant to hold the valley and bolster their Native allies against American expansion.
On August twentieth, seventeen ninety-four, General Anthony Wayne's forces shattered the Northwest Indian Confederation at the Battle of Fallen Timbers, just a few miles away. The retreating warriors ran to Fort Miami's gates expecting shelter. The British commander, not wanting war with the United States, refused to open them. That moment of abandonment broke the Confederation's will. Britain soon agreed in the Jay Treaty to evacuate all its Northwest Territory posts, and the Maumee Valley passed into American hands in seventeen ninety-six.
