20. George Rogers Clark launched a retaliatory campaign in November, 1782
If anyone deserved blame for the disaster at Blue Licks it was Hugh McGary, who survived the debacle in which most of his men were killed. In Kentucky, most of the blame was directed at George Rogers Clark, for not destroying the Shawnee during his 1780 campaign along the Little Miami and Mad Rivers. In November, 1782 Clark again crossed the Ohio River with a militia force of about 1,000 men. They advanced up the Great Miami River, where the Shawnee had relocated several of their towns. The 1782 campaign included the destruction of five abandoned Shawnee towns, but little actual fighting. The Shawnee simply receded further into the Ohio and Indiana country.
Clark destroyed the Shawnee town at Piqua, killing at least five Shawnee, at the loss of one man of his own, before turning back to the Ohio River. The campaign was the last of the American Revolutionary War, but not the last against the Indians of the Ohio Country. Nor was it the end of British support of the Indians in what became known as the Northwest Territory. The British attempted to create a state held by the Indians as part of the Treaty of Paris, to serve as a buffer between the new United States and British Canada. Failing in that, they continued to support the Indians in hopes of deterring rapid American settlement of the west.
