#i love living in this history-rich area altho it can be a little dark

[clove-pinks]

After a lot of driving back and forth on Anthony Wayne Trail—named for General "Mad" Anthony Wayne himself, Revolutionary War hero and apparently a Founding Father—we made it to the Fallen Timbers Battlefield and monument.

Our first stop (by accident) was the actual battlefield site, which has a plaque, a few nature trails, and a visitor's center that wasn't open.

I know this is the battlefield site, because it's right next to a mall called "The Shops at Fallen Timbers." Yeah, they built a shopping center adjacent to/basically on top of one of the most important sites commemorating the Northwest Indian War (1785-1795), which saw the United States defeating a confederacy of Indigenous peoples and their British allies, opening a huge territory to US settlers.

It prefigures the War of 1812, which involved the same Chippewa, Lenape, Ottawa, Potawatomi, Miami, Shawnee, Wyandot, United States, and British belligerents. The 1795 Treaty of Greenville, which followed Fallen Timbers, set aside large tracts of northwest Ohio for Indigenous use.

It was edifying to read the 1795 Treaty of Greenville, which names the Indigenous nations I've included from a list on a monument at the site as well as "Eel Rivers, Weas, Kickapoos, Piankeshaws, and Kaskaskias." (Make of the spelling what you will, because the Treaty even spells European names wrong e.g. Fort Lawrence instead of Fort Laurens). The Treaty carves out a number of exceptions for land in the territory ceded to U.S. forts, and a guarantee of free passage between the forts.

Obviously this is very significant in the War of 1812, which mostly took place in a region of Ohio that was granted to Indigenous people not even a generation earlier. William Henry Harrison, military leader and politician, was known for his manipulative and deceptive agreements that kept putting lands into U.S. hands without honoring past treaties. It's a lot of interconnected conflicts between opponents who are already familiar with each other (Harrison, Tecumseh, and Procter come to mind, but it goes even deeper).

I feel a lot of sympathy for the settlers and even the U.S. military personnel engaged in these conflicts; but this park is a rather one-sided presentation of a complicated history. There is an attempt at including more of the Indigenous perspectives, which is something that I think needs a lot more attention in Western War of 1812 history. They wouldn't make a monument like the 1929 Anthony Wayne memorial again.

Fallen Timbers Battlefield is confusing to locate because the historic site with the 1929 monument is also in the wrong place. Only in 1995 did researchers uncover the real location of the battle (near the present-day shopping center).

The GPS took me on some unnecessary adventures, but as you can see, people have been getting this wrong for over 200 years.

We didn't go walking on the trails (at either park), although it was a warm sunny day. I would like to do that in the future. I think you can still see some of the actual fallen timbers (trees knocked over by a tornado) on the real battlefield 230 years later!