Bloodbath In The Northwest Territory

November 4, 1791:

At dawn on November 4, St. Clair's force was camped near the present-day location of Fort Recovery, Ohio, near the headwaters of the Wabash River. An Indian force consisting of around 1,000 warriors, led by Little Turtle and Blue Jacket, waited in the woods while the men stacked their weapons and paraded to their morning meals. The natives then struck quickly and surprising the Americans, soon overran their perimeter.
Little Turtle directed the first attack at the militia, who fled across a stream without their weapons. The regulars immediately broke their musket stacks, formed battle lines and fired a volley into the Indians, forcing them back. Little Turtle responded by flanking the regulars and closing in on them. Meanwhile, St. Clair's artillery was stationed on a nearby bluff and was wheeling into position when the gun crews were killed by Indian marksmen, and the survivors were forced to spike their guns.
Colonel Drake ordered his battalion to fix bayonets and charge the main Indian position. Turtle's forces gave way and retreated to the woods, only to encircle Drake's battalion and destroy it. The bayonet charge was tried numerous times with similar results and the U.S. forces eventually collapsed into disorder. St. Clair had three horses shot out from under him as he tried in vain to rally his men.
After three hours of fighting, St. Clair called together the remaining officers and faced with total annihilation, decided to attempt one last bayonet charge to get through the Indian line and escape. Supplies and wounded were left in camp. As before, Turtle's Army allowed the bayonets to pass through, but this time the men ran for Fort Jefferson.  They were pursued by Indians for about three miles before the latter broke off pursuit and returned to loot the camp. Exact numbers of wounded are not known, but it has been reported that execution fires burned for several days afterward.
The casualty rate was the highest percentage ever suffered by a United States Army unit and included St. Clair's second in command. Of the 52 officers engaged, 39 were killed and 7 wounded; around 88% of all officers became casualties. After 2 hours St. Clair ordered a retreat, which quickly turned into a rout. "It was, in fact, a flight," St. Clair described a few days later in a letter to the Secretary of War. The American casualty rate, among the soldiers, was 97.4 percent, including 632 of 920 killed (69%) and 264 wounded. Nearly all of the 200 camp followers were slaughtered, for a total of 832 Americans killed. Approximately one-quarter of the entire U.S. Army had been wiped out. Only 24 of the 920 officers and men engaged came out of it unscathed. Indian casualties were about 61, with at least 21 killed.
The number of U.S. soldiers killed during this engagement was more than three times the number the Sioux would kill 85 years later at Custer's last stand at the Battle of Little Big Horn. The next day the remnants of the force arrived at the nearest U.S. outpost, Fort Jefferson (then Fort Hamilton), and from there returned to Fort Washington.