When the Revolutionary War ended in 1783, the newly independent United States savored its victory and hoped for a great future. And yet the republic soon found itself losing an escalating military conflict on its borderlands. In 1791, years of skirmishes, raids, and quagmire climaxed in the grisly defeat of American militiamen by a brilliantly organized confederation of Shawnee, Miami, and Delaware Indians. With nearly one thousand U.S. casualties, this was the worst defeat the nation would ever suffer at native hands. Americans were shocked, perhaps none more so than their commander in chief, George Washington, who saw in the debacle an urgent lesson: the United States needed an army. Washington and Alexander Hamilton, at enormous risk, outmaneuver Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and other skeptics of standing armies -- and Washington appoints the seemingly disreputable Anthony Wayne, known as Mad Anthony, to lead the Legion of the United States, our first true standing army. Wayne marches into the forests of the Old Northwest, where the very Indians he is charged with defeating will bestow on him, with grudging admiration, a new name: the Black Snake.

Prologue: The ruins of an old French fort -- The death of General Butler -- The turnip field -- Drive them out -- An inquiry into the causes of the late unfortunate defeat -- Standing armies -- Metropotamia -- Mad Anthony -- The peaceful intentions of the United States -- Legion Ville -- Recovery -- Fallen Timbers -- Black granite.