to have left the village throughout 1786. There is strong tradition and evidence to support that a secret society of prominent Miami warriors periodically met at the Miamitown to burn a captive and eat their flesh around this time. In 1790, the Canadian Governor Guy Carleton warned the government in London that the loss of Kekionga would result in grave economic hardships to Detroit. He estimated that Kekionga annually produced 2000 packs of pelts, worth about £24,000 sterling. This was twice the value of the next most important trade area, between Detroit and Lake Huron. During the winter of 1789/1790, the traders Henry Hay and John Kinzie stayed in Kekionga. Hay kept a daily journal, which recorded their regular routines of drinking, dancing, and parties, as well as weekly Mass. Hay played the flute and Kinzie played the fiddle, which made them popular with the inhabitants of Kekionga. Although Hay and Kinzie stayed primarily in the French-speaking village in Kekionga, they also described some of the Miami villages. They frequently talked with the chiefs Pacanne, Little Turtle, Blue Jacket, and Le Gris, as well as brothers James, George, and Simon Girty, who lived only three miles away. The new President of the United States George Washington, as early as 1784, had told Henry Knox that a strong U.S. post should be established at Kekionga. The large Native American city was important to the British trade economy, and protected a strategic portage between the Great Lakes Basin and Mississippi watershed. Knox, however, was concerned that a U.S. fort at Kekionga would provoke the Indians and denied the request to build a fort there from NorthWest Territory governor Arthur St. Clair. St. Clair, in 1790, had told both Washington and Knox that "we will never have peace with the Western Nations until we have a garrison there." Western native leaders, meanwhile, met at Kekionga to determine a response to the Treaty of Fort Harmar. United States General Josiah Harmar was ordered to invade Kekionga. In 1790, his army counted seven distinct villages in the vicinity of Kekionga, known collectively as "the Miami Towns" or Miamitown, in spite of large villages of Shawnee and Delaware also located there. The collected villages of Kekionga had advance knowledge of the army, and most of the people evacuated the area, carrying as many of their food stores as possible. The traders took their trade goods to