Our Loss Was Heavy: Brigadier General Josiah Harmar's Kekionga Campaign of 1790

In the fall of 1790, Brigadier General Josiah Harmar led the nascent US Army on a campaign designed to defeat a confederation of Indians blocking white settlement north of the Ohio River. Over the course of a month, Harmars forces travelled over 350 miles along widely separated axes, destroyed hundreds of Indian homes and over 20,000 bushels of agricultural goods, and killed between 100-120 warriors in two major engagements. Yet, Harmar ended the campaign having failed impose a peace on the frontier. While many histories assign blame for the US Armys failure in the Harmar campaign to poor leadership, unreliable militia, or faulty logistics among others--these reasons may fail to identify and explain the impact of a commanders understanding of his strategic guidance and the ensuing planning and execution of a campaign. This monograph evaluates the Harmar campaign against the current US Army operations process and the concepts of understand, visualize, describe, and direct. In doing so, it argues that the US Army lost against the Northwest Indian Confederation in 1790 due to Brigadier General Harmars construction of a campaign plan that failed to recognize its strategic context, while also neglecting to account for the limitations of American organization and capabilities.