John C. Calhoun had worked hard to save the government’s system of trade, and he must have been incensed when the military court acquitted Chunn of the charges of defrauding the government. Not only did Calhoun withhold payment on a balance owed the contractor, Hugh Glenn, but he also ordered that the prior payments be returned. Ultimately, the government sued Hugh Glenn in U.S. District Court at Frankfort, Kentucky to reclaim the $37,792.76 that Glenn had already been reimbursed. Glenn retained Henry Clay as his counsel and the jury ultimately found for Glenn and ordered the Treasury credit him for the whole amount in question. 25 The Secretary of War still maintained that “that the amount charged [for Fort Harrison’s goods] was beyond what could have been required for that purpose,” and he suspended payment on the final $6,971.26. To seek final resolution of the matter, the U.S. Senate Committee on Military Affairs conducted an investigation.
      Ironically, by the time the matter came before the Senate in 1826, William Henry Harrison, now a U.S. Senator from Ohio, chaired the committee on military affairs. The committee reviewed all of the related documents and ascertained that Chunn was arrested, “for neglect of duty in not requiring the Indian agent at the post to make daily reports to him of the number of Indians present.” The committee found that the only real fraud resulted from the actions of the sub-agent, Mitchel Brouillet, “who, it appears, had been authorized by Governor Posey, Indian Agent in 1817, to make requisitions on the officer commanding for a liberal supply of provisions in favor of Indians visiting that station.” 26 The matter of a “liberal supply” of goods came up in Chunn’s court-martial.
      One of the witnesses in John Chunn’s court-martial reported that he had actually heard the Indian agent, Thomas Posey, tell Brouillet “he must be liberal in issuing provisions.” The conversation had occurred in February or March of 1818. One of the lawyers at the court-martial asked if Posey meant, “that it would be expedient to issue to the Indians much more than the ordinary allowance of rations?” The witness responded that he had “understood [Posey] to mean, that on that particular occasion, it was necessary to be more liberal than usual.” 27
      So why did Posey, the Indian agent, feel it necessary to instruct his sub-agent “to be more liberal than usual” in 1818? William Henry Harrison suggests a reason in the concluding sentence of his committee’s investigation of Fort Harrison. The chairman wrote, “Good reason, too, for a liberal treatment of the Indians in that quarter existed, in the prospective which afterwards was held at St. Mary’s.” 28 On October 3, 1818, Jonathan Jennings, Benjamin Parke, and Lewis Cass signed a treaty with the Delaware, Miami, and other Indian tribes at St. Mary’s in Ohio. 29 The Delaware surrendered their occupancy rights to all land in Indiana and the Miami ceded more than seven million acres of land in Ohio and Indiana. It is quite likely that Thomas Posey and his sub-agent, Mitchel Brouillet, were aware of the negotiations. Certainly John T. Chunn knew about the negotiations, since he was present at the signing of the Treaty of St. Mary’s.