Sign up to receive email notices of recent acquisitions.

Greenville, [Ohio], 11 Feb. 1795. Document signed, 5.5” x 7.75”. 1 p. Docketed on verso “Thomas Stephenson certificate of Ras. 1795.” CONDITION: Very good, short separations along old folds, some foxing.

A fascinating document issued by an army captain serving in the Northwest Territory who attempts here to procure a soldier’s back-rations after the formerly-captured soldier was released by Native Americans in a prisoner exchange. 

One “A. Prior” certifies here that one of his former soldiers, Thomas Stephenson, was a prisoner of the Native Americans—he calls them “savages”—for a year during the Northwest Indian War. Prior thus attempts to secure Stephenson’s back rations: 

I certify that Thomas Stephenson formerly a soldier of company was captured by the savages on or about the 17th day of October 1793, that he remained with them until the 10th of October 1794, at which time he was exchanged for a prisoner of the Enemies, at that time in the hands of the American Army as he has not been held or any provision Return during that time I think him entitled to the amount of rations allowed by law. Given at Greenville this 11st of Feby 1795.

A Prior Capt.

Lasting from 1786 to 1795, the Northwest Indian War involved the U.S. Army and a Native American coalition known as the Northwestern Confederacy. The two groups fought over control of lands in the Great Lakes region. The Treaty of Greenville, signed in 1795 near the final sites of battle in Ohio, formally ended the war, and several prisoner exchanges took place in the final year of the war.

An evocative survival of the Northwest Indian War.

Item #8251

Price: $1,250.00