Fort Defiance (Ohio)

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Fort Defiance was ordered built by General "Mad" Anthony Wayne in August 1794 at the confluence of the Auglaize and Maumee rivers. It was the last of a line of forts built by American forces leading up to the Northwest Indian War's Battle of Fallen Timbers on August 20, 1794.

Work began on August 9, 1794 and was completed by August 17, 1794. The name is reportedly derived from a declaration Wayne made upon surveying the land aroung the fort: "I defy the English, Indians, and all the devils of hell to take it." The fort was considered to be one of the strongest fortifications built in that period of conflict with the Native Americans.

After the Battle of Fallen Timbers, Wayne used the fort as his base of operations and ordered the destruction of all Native American villages and crops within a 50-mile radius of the fort. Under terms of the Treaty of Greenville, signed in August 3, 1795, the native nations ceded six square miles around the fort and allowed the Americans to maintain a trading post there, even though it was within the area of land defined by the "Greenville Treaty Line", beyond which whites had agreed not to settle.

Until the War of 1812, the fort was one of the westernmost outposts in Ohio affording protection from Native American attacks. In the 1810s, William Henry Harrison used the fort as one base for his attacks against Native Americans during what is sometimes called Tecumseh's War and it played a role in the War of 1812 as well.

The contemporary city of Defiance, Ohio, was founded at the fort's location. In 1904, the ground of the fort was chosen as the site for the Defiance Public Library.

The fort later served as a reference point for defining the boundary line of land cession in the Treaty of Detroit in 1807. This north-south line would later be used again as the Michigan Meridian in the survey of lands in Michigan.