page_title: Samuel Brady
section_title: Battle for the Northwest Territory
hierarchical_section_title: Samuel Brady / After the Revolution / Battle for the Northwest Territory
caption_attribution_description: General Hugh Brady (1768-1851), United States Army, 1792-95, 1799-c. 1801, 1812-1851.
context_page_description: Captain Samuel Brady was an Irish-American Revolutionary War officer, frontier scout, notorious Indian fighter, and the subject of many legends, in the history of western Pennsylvania and northeastern Ohio. He is best known for reportedly jumping across a gorge over the Cuyahoga River to escape pursuing Indians in what is present day Kent, Ohio. This jump is still remembered as "Brady's leap".
context_section_description: From the Indian point of view, the British had been their allies during the American Revolution in their war to stop settler expansion into their lands bordering on the Great Lakes in parts of present-day Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin and Minnesota. This territory was known at the time as the "Northwest Territory".  Without bothering to consult their Indian allies, the British gave this territory to the United States in the Treaty of Paris that had ended the Revolutionary War. Not surprisingly the Indians, not having been made a party to the Treaty of Paris, did not recognize this land grant and actively fought the efforts of the United States to claim its prize. The Indians, united as the Western Indian Confederacy were led by Blue Jacket of the Shawnees and Little Turtle of the Miami tribe. The British also turned out to be "sore losers". They actively encouraged this Indian resistance, supplied it and even refused to give up forts ceded to the United States in the Treaty of Paris. In 1790 and 1791, the Western Indian Confederacy won devastating victories against the United States.
  Stung by these defeats, President George Washington organized an Army called the "Legion of the United States". He called his Revolutionary War comrade, General Anthony Wayne from retirement and gave him command of this Army. Wayne recruited, organized and trained this army at Legionville, Pennsylvania on the Ohio River down river from Pittsburgh. General Wayne had been Samuel Brady's Commander during the Revolution. He had been actively trying to recruit Samuel to lead the Army's spies. When the jury cleared Samuel of the charges of killing the Indians, General Wayne restored Samuels rank of Captain in his new army and gave him command of "all the spies in the employ of the government at that time. [Samuel] ordered his sixty or seventy men so judiciously, that the frontier was free from depredations." General Wayne took Samuel's brother Hugh into his Army as well and made him an ensign.
  General Wayne then moved his army into what is today Ohio and erected Fort Recovery as his headquarters for the campaign. On August 20, 1794, Wayne attacked the Indian forces in present-day Maumee, Ohio (south of what is today Toledo, Ohio). General Wayne won a conclusive victory over the Indians in what came to be called the Battle of Fallen Timbers. After this victory, the Indians were forced to make peace. On August 3, 1795, the Western Indian Confederacy entered into the Treaty of Greenville with the United States, which ceded most of present-day Ohio to the United States, and finally opened it to settlement.
  Samuel's brother, Hugh Brady went on to fight as an officer in the various Indian wars of his time and in the War of 1812.  In 1835 he was given command of the Northwest Department, headquartered in Detroit, Michigan. Eventually, Hugh rose to become a Major General in the United States Army.
caption: Gen. Hugh Brady, Samuel Brady's Brother
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