The Victory with No Name: The Native American Defeat of the First American Army By Colin G. Calloway

Abstract

On November 4, 1791, General Arthur St. Clair lost more than 900 men along the Wabash River, near the present-day border between Ohio and Indiana. In contrast, just 250 members of George Armstrong Custer’s Seventh Cavalry perished in battle against the Lakota and Cheyenne at Little Big Horn, in 1876. Nevertheless, few Americans, much less midwesterners, recall the Battle on the Wabash, or understand how the Americans’ stinging defeat shaped the United States for years to come. Colin G. Calloway’s The Victory with No Name is both compellingly written and critically important. The Native and non-Native conflict over land and culture was just as dramatic and important as the western conflicts most Americans choose to memorialize.