Autumn of the Black Snake

“Hogeland breathes new life into a transformative conflict,” the crucial Native American war that led to the creation of the U.S. Army (David Preston, The Wall Street Journal).

In Autumn of the Black Snake, William Hogeland presents the overlooked tale of how the newly independent United States found itself losing a military conflict on its borderlands in the years following the Revolutionary War. In 1791, a confederation of Shawnee, Miami, and Delaware tribes inflicted the worst defeat the nation would ever suffer at native hands. With nearly one thousand U.S. casualties, this grisly event shocked Americans and convinced George Washington that the United States needed a standing army.

Hogeland conjures up the woodland battles and hardball politics that formed the Legion of the United States in evocative and absorbing prose. His memorable portraits of leaders on both sides, from the daring war chiefs Blue Jacket and Little Turtle to the doomed commander Richard Butler and a steely, even ruthless Washington, drive a tale of horrific violence, brilliant strategizing, stupendous blunders, and valorous deeds. Washington and Alexander Hamilton outmaneuvered Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and other skeptics of standing armies, appointing Anthony Wayne, known as Mad Anthony, to lead the legion. Wayne marched into the forests of the Old Northwest, where the Native Americans he was charged with defeating bestowed on him, with grudging admiration, a new name: the Black Snake.

Autumn of the Black Snake is a dramatic work of military and political history that offers an original interpretation of how greed, honor, political beliefs, and vivid personalities converged on the Ohio valley killing fields. There, the U.S. Army won its first victory, destroying the Native American coalition that came closer than any, before or since, to halting the nation’s westward expansion.