While this cache does not fulfill the New Mandate of 2014, it is significant in that it helps to elucidate the story of the forgotten frontiersman Big Cedar James. Everyone knows Kenton and Boone...but who really remembers Big Cedar James?
The significance of the small stone pyramid you see at Ground Zero has long since been forgotten by the county and community around it. Fortunately, we know that a splendid historical marker once accompanied that stone pyramid and detailed a significant event in the life of the forgotten frontiersman Big Cedar James known as the Miami Mule Train Ambush of 1792.
Among the many occupations undertaken by Big Cedar James was that of scout for the United States Army. In late 1791, some 20 miles to the northwest as the crow flies, the Miami and Shawnee tribes inflicted the worst defeat the US ever suffered at the hands of the Indians. General Arthur St. Clair, who marched out of Fort Hamilton on the banks of the Great Miami river, lost an astounding 1200+ soldiers and camp followers who were killed on the battlefield near present day Fort Recovery, Ohio. The town was so named because of all the corpses recovered when the US Army finally returned there the following year. In the wake of that frontier-shattering defeat, the terrified remnants of St. Clair's army retreated south about ten miles and built Fort Jefferson. It immediately became the furthest outpost in to Indian territory, and was the destination of the 50 mule train out of Fort Hamilton for which Big Cedar James agreed to scout.
The morning of March 12, 1792 was an uncommonly warm one. Big Cedar James was at the head of the mule train, which was flanked on either side by six Federal soldiers, and was approaching your current location from the southwest. After Big Cedar James and then 20 or so mules passed your spot at Ground Zero, more than 30 Miami braves led by Red Crow rose from their hiding places in the surrounding tall grass and began firing on the train. The Miami musket and arrow fire quickly dropped five of the six soldiers and over half of the mules. Big Cedar James and the surviving soldier ran to the exact spot marked by the stone pyramid and took cover behind several fallen mules. For the next 30 minutes the Miami braves felt the sting of James' accurate Kentucky rifle and their numbers dwindled; but their courage did not fail them. As James' rate of fire diminished, they began to move in to finish off the survivors. Big Cedar James had, in fact, fired his last bullet. He was laying prone behind the fallen mules cooly pondering what to do as the Miami braves approached. Next to him was the surviving soldier, one Gabriel P. Anderson, now badly wounded; who was about to become the only living witness to one of the great moments in the life of Big Cedar James and the history of the Northwest Territory.
Anderson recounted what happened next as follows: "As them Indians began to close in from all sides, James began throwing some of them arrows intended for us like spears back at 'em, and then all the rocks he could grab nearby. As these ran out, James became still, paused a moment and shut his eyes. When they opened again, everything began to happen right quick. James lurched to his feet and grabbed two legs of the nearest downed mule. He hefted that mule with a tornado quick spinning motion that ended with that mule flying through the air some 50 feet and hitting a group of them Miami braves squarely in the chest, crushing 'em to death. Immediately he tossed a second mule, and then a third, a fourth, and a fifth! The astounding sight and ungodly sound is something I can't unsee or unhear on my feet or in my sleep!" Not a single Miami brave walked off the battlefield alive, the fifth and final mule crushing Red Crow himself. When Big Cedar James was asked about the event several years later at Fort Greenville, he only had this to say," I learnt that day that sometimes, a mule'll do."