destroyed or hid most of the official documents and
correspondence. ‘'I don’t suppose among her trunks,”’ Clark
wrote, ‘although they never was examined. She must have
expected the loss of eaven her cloaths from the idea she
entertained of us.”

In the meantime, the town—it had about 80 houses-—was secured
by what sounded like an army of a thousand men. ‘‘l don't
suppose” Clark wrote, ‘‘greator silence ever reagnd among the
inhabitants of a place than did at this at present.”

“Not a person to be seen, not a word to be heard by them for some time,
but designedly the greatest noise kept up by our troops through every
quarter of the town and patrools continually the whole night round it as
intercepting any information was a capitol object, and in about two hours
the whole of the inhabitants was disarmed.”

16

At daybreak Richard Winston and Daniel Murray, inhabitants “‘who
prooved to have been in the American interest” (they had
sheltered Linn and Moore a year earlier), appeared with food for
the entire company. ‘‘After the troops had regaled themselves they
whare withdrawn from within the town and posted in distant
positions on the borders of it.””

Clark now proceeded to put into operation the psychologica! plan
by which he would thoroughly terrify and then win over the
inhabitants, “as | conceived the greator the shock | could give
them at first, the more sensibly would they feel my lenity and
become more valuable friends; this | conceived to be agreeable
to human nature, as | had observed it in many instances. . . .
It was my interest to attach them to me, according to my first plan

. for | was too weak to treat them any other way." His troops
were forbidden to hold any but necessary official conversation with
the inhabitants. The villagers were permitted to walk on the streets
on their private business, but they could not congregate or talk
with one another. ‘After finding they was busy in conversation
| had a few of the principal malitia officers put in irons without
hinting a reason for it or hearing any thing they had to say in their
own defence. The worst was now expected by the whole. | saw the
consternation the inhabitants ware in."

Clark then sent for the leading citizens one by one, “who came in
as if to a tribunal that was to determine their fate forever."' They
were questioned, ordered not to discuss the meeting with anyone,
and released. He let it be known that his troops were only a small
detachmeni of the main American army forming at the Falls of the
Ohio. During the day, Father Pierre Gibault appeared at Clark’s
headquarters with a half dozen of the town’s elders and asked to
be heard. Gibault, vicar general for the region under the Quebec
diocese, had been sent to the Illinois Country 10 years earlier

He understood the American cause and, in Clark's words, ‘was
rather prejudiced in favor of us." Clark seems to have known this
from the first, but his plan called for him to be severe in the first
meeting. The story of the extraordinary interview and of the events


reported 3 weeks earlier. There were a good many Indians in

the town. The hunters had seen two empty canoes adrift on the
river. (A party sent out in search of them found one and brought it
back.) The hunters would be pleased to guide the regiment to
Vincennes.

That afternoon one of the soldiers killed a deer and brought it
into camp, where it was divided among the five companies. It was,
Bowman wrote laconically, ‘very acceptable."

Clark and his weary, hungry men now had to make the last great
effort—to cross the Wabash and almost 5 miles of flooded
countryside, with only a few canoes to help them. In the crossing
Clark would have to divide his army into two parts, one or both
of which could be easily wiped out by the enemy if discovered,
neither of which could come to the aid of the other in an
emergency. He decided to leave behind the horses, the excess
baggage, and a small rear guard. He would try to reach what
Bowman described as ‘‘a small little hill called the lower Mamell
(or Bubbie)" on the east bank of the Wabash.

The ferrying began at daybreak and was completed successfully.
The regiment was now, at least, on the same side of the river as
Vincennes. The next goal was another hillock, the Upper Mamell,
more than 3 miles away. Clark ordered the men forward. They
reached the second hillock by dusk, wading in water sometimes
up to their armpits, and made camp there. Bowman ended his
day’s entry, ‘Rain all this day and no provisions.” The French
guides said that the next land above water was at the Sugar
Camp, a grove of sugar maple trees several miles distant. The
regiment, they said, could not possibly reach it on foot.

Many writers have summoned up their best talent to describe the
events of the next two days. All have relied mainly on Clark’s
account, and none has told it more effectively than Clark himself,
describing a historic and heroic action in his homespun prose.

“A canoe was dispatch of and returned without finding that we could pass.
| went in her myself and sounded the water, found as deep as my neck.

“| returned with a design to have the men transported on board the canoes
to the Sugar Camp, which | new would spend the whole day and insuing
night, as the vessels would pass but slowly through the bushes. The loss
of so much time to men half starved was a matter of consequence. | would
have given now a good deal for a days provition or for one of our horses.
| returned but slowly to the troops, giving myself time to think. On our
arrival, all ran to hear what was the report. Every eye was fixed on me.
| unfortunately spoke serious to one of the officers. The whole was allarmed
without knowing what I said. They ran from one to another bewailing their
situation.”

37

Clark “viewed their confusion" fora moment and then whispered
to those men nearest him to do as he did. He immediately took
some gunpowder in his hands, poured water on it, blackened his


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10

we will exert every power within us for the defense of American
liberty." When Kentucky became a county of Virginia in December
1776 and a government was set up, Clark, now a major, was
placed in charge of the militia and of defending the county
against its enemies.

For two years after the war began there was little fighting on

the Pennsylvania and Virginia frontier, but in 1777 the British
government began a series of raids in the Trans-Appalachia
West to force Gen. George Washington to send troops from the
Continental Army to defend the “back country."” British com-
manders were ordered to use every means “‘that providence has
put in His Majesty's hands for crushing the rebellion’’; they

were told, in organizing Indian attacks, to urge the Indians to act
“with humanity.” Lt. Col. Henry Hamilton, lieutenant governor of
Canada and commandant at Detroit, was sent 150 dozen scalping
knives. In one month he reported that he had received 73 pris-
oners and 129 scalps from the Indians; in another month he
reported 34 prisoners and 81 scalps. He rewarded the Indians
with presents according to the number of victims, regardless of
their sex or age, for which activity patriot Americans branded him
with the name “Hair Buyer." Some settlers fled back to the east;
others huddled in the only three settlements left in Kentucky:
Harrodsburg, Boonesborough, and Fort Logan. To generations
of Kentuckians, 1777 was known as “the dark and bloody year.”

In October 1777, after months of terror on the frontier, Clark was
led "'to a long train of thinking” that eventually started him on a
700-mile journey to Williamsburg. There he presented a plan for
recruiting 500 men to carry the war to the British bases and to
conquer the northwest for Virginia.*

Governor Patrick Henry consulted a few “‘select gentlemen” about
Clark’s plan. The gentlemen approved, though they reduced the
size of the force he was to tead. On January 4, 1778, Clark “set
forward cloathed with all the authority | wished for.’’ He had the
rank of lieutenant colonel, £1200 in depreciated Continental
currency, the authority to recruit 350 men, and an order on the
commanding officer at Fort Pitt to give him boats, ammunition, and
provisions. He was publicly charged with the defense of the
Kentucky frontier, but his real orders called for him '‘to set on foot
the expedition against Kaskasky with as little delay & as much
secrecy as possible."' These were the orders Clark read to his
small force on Corn Island in June 1778.

* On the way to Williamsburg, Clark stopped for one day to visit his family.
Four of his five brothers were fighting with George Washington's forces.

At war's end, one was a general, one was a captain, and two were lieutenants.
Clark's youngest brother, William, born in 1770, was too young to serve in

the Revolution, but in 1804-1806 he and Meriwether Lewis would explore the
vast Louisiana Territory for President Thomas Jefferson and add to the
existing body of geographical and scientific knowledge about the new
American nation.


7

The Fruits of Victory

52

Clark learned from his French allies that a company of British
soldiers had recently been sent up the Wabash to the town of
Ouiatanon (which lay 4 miles below present-day Lafayette) to get
supplies stockpiled there for the spring campaign. He ordered
Captain Helm to take 50 volunteers from the Vincennes militia and
intercept the company on its return. Helm and his men left on
February 26, the day after the fall of Fort Sackville, in three armed
bateaux. They returned 10 days later, bringing with them as
prisoners two British officers and 38 enlisted men, captured near
the mouth of the Vermilion River while sleeping around their
campfires. They also brought seven boats loaded with 6 tons of
stores worth about $50,000—trade goods for the Indians, arms,
ammunition, six cannon, barrels of wine, kegs of brandy, gold and
silver coins, food, and clothing, including more than 500 shirts and
complete uniforms for 42 soldiers. According to the custom of the
time, al! this now belonged to Clark and his men. He turned the
food over to his quartermaster, distributed the clothing among his
half-naked Virginians, used the gold to make up arrears in pay,
and divided the rest of the booty, including the goods taken at
Fort Sackville, among his enlisted men. ''They were,” he observed,
“almost rich.”

Clark remained at Vincennes for almost a month. He gave the
name Patrick Henry to the fort. He freed the French-Canadian
militiamen, giving them boats for transportation to Detroit, a copy
of the French treaty to show to their friends there, and a letter to
the British commander at Fort Detroit in which he wrote: “‘I learn
by your letter to Govr Hamilton that you were busy making new
works. | am glad to hear it, as it saves the Americans some
expences in building.”


and Captain Helm. He was badly shaken by the executions he had
just witnessed. He gave Clark a list of conditions under which he
would surrender, a main one being that “officers and others of
the garrison who have families to be permitted to return to their
homes on parole.” Clark rejected the conditions. Hamilton asked
him to name his terms. Clark repeated his demand for uncon-
ditional surrender. It was foolish, he said, for Colonel Hamilton to
make conditions and to continue to resist. The capture of the fort
was inevitable. His cannon would arrive in a matter of hours.

His troops were “already impatient and called aloud for permis-
sion to tear down and storm the fort.”

“Hf such a step was taken [Clark later recounted], many of course would
be cut down, and the result of an inraged body of woodmen breaking
in must be obvious to him. It would be out of the power of an Amf[erJican
officer to save a single man. Various altercation took place for a
considerable time.

“We took our leave and parted, but a few steps before the Govr stopt
and politely asked me if | would be so kind as to give him my reasons
for refusing the Garison on any other terms than those | had offered. |
told him that | had no objections in giving him my real reasons, which
was simply those that | knew the greatest part of the principal Indian
partisans of De Troit was with him; that | wanted an excuse to put them
to death or other ways treat them as | thought proper; that the cries of
the widows and fatherless on the frontiers that they had occationed now
required their blood from my hands. . . .

“Some moments relapsed without a word passing on either side... .
| told him that we would return to our respective posts, that | would
reconsider the matter, and that | would let him know the result if we
thought of making any further prepotials.”

50

Clark finally agreed to moderate his terms in writing and gave
Hamilton a half hour to accept them, They contained no provision
for parole, but Hamilton accepted them, adding a postscript:
“Agreed to for the following reasons, the remoteness from
succours, the state and quantity of provisions, etc., the unanimity
of officers and men on its expediency, the honorable terms
allowed, and lastly the confidence of the enemy.”

Hamilton did not raise the British flag the next morning (February
25) and so was spared the humiliation of having to lower it.

He and his men marched out at 10 a.m. and stood in ranks on the
esplanade, wearing their knapsacks, their bayonets fixed. There
they stacked and surrendered their arms. Clark marched into

the fort at the head of two of his companies and ran up the
American colors. Hamilton looked at the handful of rough, ragged
men and turned to the American commander. ‘Colonel Clark,"
he asked, ‘where is your army?" When Clark indicated that his
army stood before him, Hamilton turned away, reportedly with
tears in his eyes. “‘All my past sufferings vanished,” wrote Clark to
George Mason. “Never was a man more happy.”




60

planters, and shipowners in the seaboard cities feared the
demands of and possible domination by the rough, brawling frontier,
and it was their strong intention to treat the western territories as
permanent provinces. The problem was taken up by the Congress
of the Confederation. That this utterly ineffectual governing body
could resolve the question was highly unlikely. For 9 months it had
met without being able ta muster a quorum of 9 States.

Its president, Gen. Arthur St. Clair, did not even bother to attend
its sessions or to notify the secretary of his whereabouts. But this
lame and dying institution, with only 14 congressmen present,
passed a piece of legislation that stands among the most
enlightened in human history—an act called by historian James
Truslow Adams “‘one of the greatest and most original of the
contributions of America to the modern world of political thought."

In a series of ordinances originally drawn up by Thomas Jefferson
a totally new concept was introduced and adopted. In the first
stage of territorial development, rule would be carried out by a
governor, a secretary, and three judges appointed by Congress.
During the second stage, when the free male population reached
5,000, the territory could send one representative to Congress;

it could also elect a legislature, but one over which the governor
had absolute veto powers. When the territory had 60,000 free male
inhabitants, it was to be admitted into the Union as a Stale ‘‘on an
equal footing with the original states in all respects whatever.”
The Northwest Territory, in accordance with the Ordinance of
1785, was to be developed in a gridiron township pattern, with

a grant of one section of land in each township for public
education. Slavery was prohibited. No fewer than three States and
no more than five were to be carved from the Territory.*

General St. Clair, appointed first governor of the Territory, with

his territorial capital at Marietta, Ohio, sent Winthrop Sargent,
territorial secretary, to Vincennes with instructions to settle
outstanding disputes over land titles, to organize the courts, and
to lay out a county around Vincennes. Knox County, created in
1790, comprised all of present-day Indiana and large parts of
Ohio, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin. A militia was formed under
command of Maj. Francis Vigo, who had moved from St. Louis to
Vincennes some time between 1780 and 1783.

President John Adams, a Federalist, approved a bill on May 7,
1800, to divide the Northwest Territory. The area to the east, Ohio,
was separated; it entered the Union as the 17th state in 1803.

The remainder of the region was named the Indiana Territory, with
Vincennes as the new capital and William Henry Harrison, a young
Virginia captain, as governor. The new governor arrived in
Vincennes in January 1801, When he learned that Thomas
Jefferson, a Republican, would retain him as governor, he

* Jefferson had proposed that the Territory be divided into States to be
named Sylvania, Michigania, Chersonesus, Assenisipia, Metropotamia,
Nlinoia, Saratoga, Polypotamia, Pelispia, and Washington.


on the Ohio. These, he supposed (mistakenly) were carrying
dispatches for him from Williamsburg—dispatches that Hamilton
might destroy. At 8 a.m. he called for a truce and sent one of his
French captains to the fort with a letter to Hamilton:

“Sir—In order to save yourself from the impending storm that now
threatens you, | order you to immediately surrender yourself up with all
your garrison, stores, etc. etc., for if | am obliged to storm, you may
depend upon such treatment justly due to a murderer. Beware of
destroying stores of any kind or any papers or letters that is in your
possession or hurting one house in the town, for by heavens if you do,
there shall be no mercy shewn you.”

Hamilton read the letter to his officers. He would, he said,
“undergo any extremity rather than trust to the discretion of such
sort of people.” The officers agreed. When this decision was
conveyed to the troops, Hamilton later said, the regulars declared
“they would defend the King's colors to the last, adding a homely
but hearty phrase, that they would stick to me as the shirt to my
back." The Canadians were not so resolute; they stood with their
heads bowed. Hamilton wrote his answer in one sentence:

“Govr Hamilton begs leave to acquaint Col. Clark that he and his garrison
are not disposed to be awed into any action unworthy of British
subjects.”

48

The firing then resumed, ‘‘very hot on both sides.” The attackers
began to dig a tunnel at the river bank, directed toward Hamilton’s
powder magazine, intending to mine and blow up the fort. As he
surveyed the situation, Hamilton felt that his position was hopeless.
He was 600 miles from Detroit and reinforcements. His casualties
were mounting. About half of his 80-man garrison were French,
and they were muttering within his hearing (no doubt encouraged
by Captain Bosseron) that “it was very hard to be obliged to fight
against their countrymen and relatives." He was surrounded by an
army estimated to number more than 500. He could see (as

Clark meant he should see) that the enemy was digging a tunnel
toward his powder magazine. To continue a defense, he would
have to burn the houses near the fort; but if he did so he woutd be
liable to “‘an extremity of revenge” from the inhabitants.

He decided he would ‘‘accept honorable terms if they could be
obtained.” (‘Not knowing the number of the enemy,” Clark said,
they "thought themselves in a worse situation than they really
was."’) Hamilton sent out a white flag and another letter, pro-
posing that the two commanders call a 3-day truce, during which
time they would hold a conference. If Colonel Clark did not

wish to come into the fort, they could meet before the gate.

Clark, of course, refused the request for a truce. Mr. Hamilton must
surrender himself and his garrison as prisoners “'without
discretion" (unconditionally). If Hamilton desired a conference,
he should come to the church.

While this exchange was taking place, some 15 to 20 Ottawa and
Delaware warriors, led by two French partisans, came down the
hill on the Buffalo Trace, Hamilton had sent them out on patrol as
far as the Falls of the Ohio. They had two Canadian prisoners




face, gave a war whoop, and, without saying a word, marched into
the water. The other men, he said, “gazed and fell in one after
another without saying a word, like a flock of sheep.”" He ordered
those nearest him to begin singing their favorite song. It soon
passed through the line of men “'and the whole went on
chearfully.”’

“I now intended [to] have them transported across the deepest part of
the water, but when geting about waist deep one of the men informed
me that he thought he felt a path. (A path is very easily discovered under
water by the feet.) We examined and found it so and concluded that it
[would] keep on the highest ground, which it did, and by pains to follow
it we got to the Shugar camp without the least difficulty ... whare their
was about half an acre of dry ground, at least not under water, where
we took up our lodgings.”

The French guides were alarmed at the situation. It was
impossible, they said, to march from that place and over the plain
ahead until the water fell. They begged that they might take their
canoe into town that night. They promised to obtain provisions
from their homes very quietly and return with canoes. Some of
Clark’s men could go with them as surety of their good conduct.
The request seemed a good gamble, and a number of the officers
favored it, but Clark refused.

“| would not suffer it, by no means. | never could well account for this piece
[of] obstinacy and give satisfactory reasons to myself or any body else why
I denied a proposition apparently so easy to execute and so much
advantage, but some thing seemed to tell me that it should not be done and
it was not.”

Bowman ended his journal that night, ''No provisions yet. Lord
help us."

Of Tuesday, February 23, Clark wrote:

“The most of the weather that we had on this march was moist and warm for
the season. This was the coldest night we had. The ice in the morning was
from Y2 to ¥% inch thick near the shoars and in still water. The morning was
the finest we had on our march

“A little after sun-rise | lectured the whole. What | said to them | forget, but
it may be easily imagined by a person that could possess my affections for
them at that time. Concluded by informing them that surmounting the plain
that was then in full view and reaching the oposite woods would put an end
to their fatiegue. That in a few hours they would have a sight of their long
wish for object, and amediately stept into the water without waiting for any
reply. A huza took place.

“As we generally march through the water in a line, as it was much easiest,
before a third entered | halted, and further to prove the men and having
some suspition of three or four, hollowed to Major Bowman, order him to
fall in the rear with 25 men and putto death any man that refused to march,
that we wished to have no such person among us. The whole gave a cry
of apperbation that it was right, and on we went.

38


1

Colonel! Clark Organizes an Army

It was June 1778, early in the fourth year of the American Revo-
lution. Lt. Col. George Rogers Clark, a young soldier-frontiersman,
was encamped with nearly 200 men on Corn Island at the Falls
of the Ohio (across from the site of present-day Louisville). In
his dispatch case he carried two sets of orders dated January 2,
1778, and signed by Patrick Henry, Governor of Virginia. His
“public orders," designed to keep the British unaware of his
true mission, instructed him to raise seven companies of 50

men each, with the pay and allowances of Virginia militia, for
the defense of the County of Kentucky. His secret orders, known
only to a few of Governor Henry’s principal advisers in Williams-
burg and to a few of Clark’s officers, called for him to carry

out a daring and hazardous campaign deep in enemy territory,
a campaign that would develop into one of the great epics of
American history.

Clark had arrived at the Falls of the Ohio on June 1 with 150
frontiersmen, many of them recruited with difficulty around Fort
Pitt (Pittsburgh) in Pennsylvania. He had expected four addi-
tional companies to be waiting for him at the Falls, but to his
“mortification’' he found only part of one company from
Tennessee and a small force from Kentucky. Each village on the
frontier, each valley, each region, was intent on keeping its

men at home for its own defense; some let it be known that any-
one who left to jain Clark would be pursued, apprehended, and
confined. The loss of these reinforcements created, as Clark
himself admitted, a ‘‘desperate” situation, for it meant that he
would have to confront a vastly superior enemy with a ludicrously
small force. Nevertheless, he was determined to go on.


)

The March on Vincennes

31

Because of the late afternoon start, the regiment marched only

3 miles the first day before it made camp. For reasons not known,
it spent the entire second day, Saturday, February 6, in camp,
There was a steady light rain, but the weather was unseasonably
warm

The regiment moved out early Sunday morning. The march was
over lowland plains flooded to a depth of several inches, the trail
being churned by the men and horses into a ribbon of slippery
mud. Clark called a halt at the end of 9 hours. For security, the
regiment made its camp in a square, the pack train in the middle,
each company being responsible for guarding its portion of the
square. (The camp was a short distance beyond where the town of
Sparta, Ill., now stands, 17 miles from Kaskaskia.)

The column progressed steadily for the next 5 days. At first the
march was over large and level plains. Captain Bowman, who kept
a daily journal on the expedition, observed, ‘From the flatness of
the country the water rests a considerable time before it draws off,
notwithstanding our men were in great spirits, tho much fatigued."”
(One of the prairies crossed was Grand Coté, northeast of present-
day Coulterville. The camp was a little north of Nashville, lll.)

The men reached Petit Fork (Casey Fork) on Wednesday,
February 10, and since the stream was too deep to ford, they
felled trees to span it. With their baggage still on the west side of
the stream, they spent a miserable night without their tents. They


that followed is best told in Clark's own words:

“How ever shocked they already ware from their present situation, the
addition was obvious and great when they entered the room whare | was
siting with other officers—a dirty savage apperance. As we had left our
cloaths at the river, we ware almost naked and torn by the bushes and
bryers. They ware shocked, and it was some time before they would
venture to take seats and longer before they would speak.

“They at last was asked what they wanted, The priest informed me (after
asking which was the principal) that as the inhabitants expected to be
separated, never perhaps to meet again, they begged through him that
they might be permitted to spend some time in the church to take their
leave of each other. (| knew they expected their very religion was
obnoxtious to us). | carelessly told them that | had nothing to say to his
church, that he might go their if he would; if he did, to inform the people
not to venture out of the town.

“They attempted some other conversation but was informed that we was
not at leisure. They went off after answering me a few questions that
| asked them with a very faint degree that they might [be} totally
discouraged from petitioning again, as they had not yet come to the
point | wanted.”

The whole town collected at the church, leading or carrying their
children, as if they expected to be deported en masse, as the
British had treated some 7,000 to 10,000 French Acadians in 1755.
Clark took precautions to see that none of their houses was
entered.

“They remained a considerable time in the church, after which the priest
and many of the principal men came to me to return thanks for the
indulgence shown them and beged permission to address me farther on
a subject that was more dear to them than any thing else: that their
present situation was the fate of war; that the loss of their property they
could reconsile, but was in hopes that | would not part them from their
families and that the women and children might be allowed to keep some
of their cloaths and a small quantity of provitions. . . . All they appeared
to aim at was some lenity shewn their women and families, supposing
that their goods would appease us.

“| had sufficient reason to believe that their was no finess in all this but
that they really spoke their sentimenis and the height of their
expectations. This was the point | wished to bring them to

“tasked them very abruptly whether or not they thought they were
speaking to savages, that | was certain they did from the tenor of their
conversation. Did they suppose that we meant to strip the women and
children or take the bread out of ther mouths? Or that we would
condesend to make war on the women and children or the church?
That it was to prevent the effution of innocent blood by the Indians
through the instigation of their commandants and enemies that caused
us to visit them, and not the prospect of plunder. That as soon as that
object was obtained we should be perfectly satisfied.”

17




19

a messenger to the Falls of the Ohio to summon a large body of
troops to join him in attacking Vincennes. As he expected, a
number of Kaskaskians appeared as advocates to save Vincennes.
He sent for Father Gibault, who assured him that when the
inhabitants of that town were told of what had happened in the
!Hinois Country and of the present happiness of their friends, they
too would join the Americans. Clark, in that case, would not have
“the trouble of marching troops.” He was so sure of it that if
Colonel Clark was agreeable, he would take the business on
himself and go to Vincennes. As a priest, Gibault said (surely
with an arched eyebrow), he had nothing to do with temporal’
business, but ‘he would give them such hints in the spiritual way
that would be very conducive to the business.” To speak on
temporal matters, he would like to take with him Dr. Jean Baptiste
Lafiant, the town physician.

Gibault and Laffant left on July 14 with letters of instruction, a flag,
a message and a proclamation to the people of Vincennes from
Clark, letters from friends to friends, and a small party (‘among
whom | had a spie”’). About two weeks later they returned, their
mission accomplished. They were accompanied by several of

the leading citizens of Vincennes. After a day or two spent
“explaining matters,” Father Gibault told Clark, “they universally
acceeded to the prepotial (except a few Europeans .. . that
ammediately left the Cuntrey) and went in a body to the church
where the oath of allegiance was administered to them in the most
solem manner.”

Capt. Leonard Helm was sent to occupy Vincennes with a platoon
of men. He took possession of Fort Sackville, wrapped the British
flag around a rock, and threw it into the Wabash. The Indians were
astonished, wrote Clark, “and every thing setled far beyond our
most sanguine hopes. . . . | now found myself in possession of the
whole, in a country where | could do more real service than

| expected.”

It was the only successful American campaign in the War for
independence in the year 1778.


Clark’s Approach March
to Vincennes
February 18-23, 1779

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14

lead it over the trail to Kaskaskia. Clark faced another major
decision. Should he accept the offer? The men could be agents in
the pay of the British and could lead him into a trap. They were
now aware of his reasons for being in the Illinois Country. If he
rejected their offer, should he risk sending them about their
business, or should he deplete his small force by sending them
back under guard? He decided to trust and accept the hunters,
and, as he reported later, ‘‘they proved valuable men."

The little army hid its boats and some of its equipment in a ravine
3 miles above Fort Massac and started off on foot behind
Saunders, each man carrying a minimum of supplies. They
marched in single file so as to leave as little trace as possible,
probably two to three yards apart, forming a column a quarter of
a mile long. For the first 50 miles, which they covered in 2 days,
they traveled through thick forest. Clark wrote, ‘Nothing
remarkable on this rout. The weather was favorable,” though

the march was ‘'very fatieguing.”’

They emerged on the third day onto a vast treeless plain, which
speeded their progress but exposed them to view for miles
around. At this point, Saunders, who had been following a trail of
blazed trees without difficulty, became “‘totally lost.’’ Clark, in a
fearful rage, told the man he ‘‘was suspicious of him from his
conduct and that if he did not discover and take us into the
Hunters Road . . . that he had frequently described that | would
have him immediately put to death.’ Saunders went off under
guard to reconnoitre and returned after several hours to announce
happily that he had found “‘a place that he perfectly knew, and we
discovered that the poor fellow had been as they call it
bewildered.”’ The march resumed.

The food gave out on the fourth day of the march, and for 2 more
days the men ate only the wild blackberries, raspberries, and
dewberries they found in patches along the trail. They crossed the
Big Muddy River on July 4—the second anniversary of the
Declaration of Independence—and that evening they came within
sight of Kaskaskia.

The company lay conceated until dark and then ‘‘took possession
of a house where in a large family lived on the bank of the Kaskias
River about three quarters of a mille above the town.” The head of
the family, when questioned, reported that the militia had been
called out some days earlier to face what turned out to be a false
alarm, and now it had been disbanded. There were a great many
men in town, but most of the Indians were away. A burst of revelry
that aroused Clark's suspicions was explained as that of a group
of Negroes at a dance. There was at the farmhouse ‘‘a sufficiency
of vessels in care to convey us across the river.” Historians have
debated whether Colonel Clark was incredibly tucky, or had taken
over the house of the town ferryman, or had agents in the
community who had done their work well

Clark revealed his plan of attack to his battalion. They would




2

A Dark and Bloody Land

Clark and his men were headed for land the French had dis-
covered and explored 100 years earlier—the "Illinois Country,”
made up, roughly, of modern Illinois, Indiana, and some of the
adjoining lands between the Ohio River and the Great Lakes.
The French fur traders, explorers, and missionary priests were
the earliest white men to set foot in the Upper Mississippi Valley.
Then came the settlers. The numbers were never large; prob-
ably no more than 5,000 French (perhaps as few as 2,000)

were living north of the Chio in 1760. Most of them occupied
the four principal villages—Kaskaskia, Prairie du Rocher,
Cahokia, and Vincennes—for they almost never built their homes
to stand alone in open country.

Kaskaskia, founded by Jesuit missionaries in 1703, stood on
the right bank of the Kaskaskia River, about 5 miles above the
point where it discharged into the Mississippi. (The old town
is now under water.) Prairie du Rocher lay some 17 miles to
the northwest. Cahokia was 40 miles farther north on the Missis-
sippi, a few miles south of and across the river from Spanish-
held St. Louis. These three small villages, originally settled by
missionaries, had evolved into fur trading posts; they had
been occupied only briefly by the British forces sent between
1763 and 1765. Vincennes, the one sizable community, lay to
the east on the left bank of the Wabash River, 100 miles
above its junction with the Ohio.

Vincennes, also known as Post Vincent, had been founded in
1732 by Francois Bissot, Sieur de Vincennes, a lieutenant in
the French-Canadian forces. It held about 80 Frenchmen and


at Kaskaskia, which was granted and completed before night. . . .

“The whole country . . . took fire and every order was executed with
chearfulness by every description of the inhabitants—preparing
provisions, encouraging volunteers, etc.—and, as we had plenty of
stores, every man was completely rigged with what he could desire to
withstand the coldest weather. .. .

“The ladies began, also, to be spirited and interest themselves in the
expedition, which had a great effect on the young men.”

The women busied themselves in sewing company, regimental,
and Virginia flags. They made enough flags for an army of 1,000
men, but the patriot commander insisted that he would need them
all in the campaign.

He had bought a large Mississippi bateau and within two days
had it converted and rigged into a row-galiey, armed with two
4-pounder cannon and 4 swivel guns, and manned by 46 men.
It was, he said, “much admired by the inhabitants, as no such
thing had been seen in the country before.” This vessel, named
the Willing, carrying ammunition and the other heavy supplies,
was to go down the Mississippi, up the Ohio, and north up the
flooded Wabash to within 10 leagues of Vincennes. There the men
were to conceal the craft and wait for orders. If Hamilton should
attempt to escape down the Wabash, they were to pursue and
take him. The Willing sailed on February 4, the inhabitants of
Kaskaskia lining the river bank to watch her go.

The next day at 3 p.m.—7 days after Vigo’s arrival in Kaskaskia—
Clark mounted a Spanish stallion and led his column out of the
village. He had 179 men in 5 companies—2 volunteer companies
“of the principal young men of the Iilinois'’ commanded by Capts.
Richard McCarty and Francois Charleville, and 3 companies of
Virginians commanded by Capts. Joseph Bowman, John Williams,
and Edward Worthington. They were accompanied as far as the
bank of the Kaskaskia by the villagers. While they were waiting to
cross the river, Father Gibault delivered ‘‘a very suitable discourse
to the purpose, gave us all absolution, and we set out on a forlorn
hope indeed.”

Clark left a letter to be forwarded to Governor Henry. ‘I am
resolved,” he said, ‘‘to take advantage of this present situation
and risk the whole on a single battle. . . . | know the case is
desperate, but Sir, we must either quit the country or attack

Mr. Hamilton. No time is to be lost.. .. We have this consolation,
that our cause is just and that our country will be grateful and
not condemn our conduct in case we fail.”

29


Bibliography

The most important sources by far for the events that took place in
the West from December 1776 through August 1779 are found in
The George Rogers Clark Papers, edited with an introduction and
notes by James Alton James and published in 1912 by the Illinois
State Historical Library. The four key documents contained therein
are Clark's Letter to George Mason (written November 19, 1779);
Joseph Bowman's Journal of the march to Vincennes, Jan.-Mar.,
1779; Lt. Gov, Henry Hamilton’s Report on his Vincennes
campaign (1781); and Clark’s Memoir, written at the suggestion

of James Madison in 1789-91

For further reading, we suggest John Bakeless, Background to
Glory (New York, 1957); August Derleth, Vincennes: Portal to the
West (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1968); Allan W. Eckert, The Fron-
tiersmen (Boston, 1967); William H. English, Conquest of the Old
Northwest, 1778-83 (2 vols., Indianapolis, 1896); James A. James,
The Life of George Rogers Clark (Chicago, 1928); Frederick A.
Ogg, The Old Northwest (The Chronicles of America, vol. 19, New
Haven, 1919); Reuben G. Twaites, How George Rogers Clark Won
the Northwest (Chicago, 1903); and Dale Van Every, A Company
of Heroes (New York, 1962).

Administration

65

George Rogers Clark National Historical Park is administered by
the National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior. A superin-
tendent, whose address is Vincennes, IN 47591, is in charge.

As the Nation’s principal conservation agency, the Department
of the Interior has responsibility for most of our nationally owned
public lands and natural resources. This includes fostering the
wisest use of our land and water resources, protecting our fish
and wildlife, preserving the environmental and cultural values of
our national parks and historical places, and providing for the
enjoyment of life through outdoor recreation. The Department
assesses our energy and mineral resources and works to assure
that their development is in the best interests of all our people.
The Department also has a major responsibility for American
Indian reservation communities and for people who live in Island
Territories under U.S. administration


26

supplies. Because of the unusually low waters, 18 days were
required to make the 9-mile portage from the rapids to Little Creek,
which flowed southwardly into the Wabash. During the portage
Hamilton met at Miamitown with several friendly Indian tribes.

He reached the Wabash on November 9th after a difficult 10-day
trip down Little Creek, and there he stopped to repair and caulk
his bateaux. During a practice drill of his troops, the Indians were
astonished to see the 6-pounder hit a small target at a distance
of 300 yards. The force descended the Wabash through snow and
ice, with patrols moving ahead on each side of the river. More
Indians were joining him on the march, and Hamilton now had an
army of about 500 men.

When he was within 2 days’ run of Vincennes, Hamilton sent
ahead one of his companies, accompanied by several Indian
chiefs, to negotiate the surrender of the French civilians at
Vincennes. Despite his reputation for cruel use of Indian terror on
the frontier, on this occasion he avoided an orgy of looting, and
perhaps a massacre, by holding his braves in check some miles
short of the town. When he arrived at Vincennes on December 17,
he found that the civilians had surrendered their arms without
resistance. He deployed his troops to surround Fort Sackville.

On.receiving word of the advance of the British and Indians, the
French militia had faded away, leaving Captain Helm with three
Virginians to defend the fort. He sent a letter to Clark (which never
arrived because the bearer was captured) declaring, “| am
determined to act brave,"' and waited for the enemy beside a
loaded cannon, legend has it, with a bottle of apple brandy in one
hand and a lighted slow-burning fuse in the other. Two of the
town's leaders, however, persuaded him not to fire the cannon,

as it would uselessly endanger the townspeople; and when
Hamilton promised to treat him with “humanity,” Helm opened the
gate and surrendered. The Indians were given 32 horses belonging
to the Virginians, and they were permitted to cut a lock of hair
from one of the American prisoners as a token of victory.

Hamilton now faced a major decision: should he march to the west
and attack Clark at Kaskaskia, or should he spend the winter at
Vincennes? He decided to stay. The Indians were restless, some
of the provisions were low, and the rivers between Vincennes and
Kaskaskia were too high to permit movement of troops by land.

He would remain at Fort Sackville and make the attack in 3 or 4
months, when spring came.

Except for this blunder, Hamilton was in every other respect a
dynamic and efficient commander and civil governor. He
assembled the inhabitants in the church at noon on the 19th,
reproached them for their disloyalty to the British crown, and had
them again swear an oath of allegiance. He took a census of the
village and registered 621 inhabitants, of whom 250 were found
able to bear arms and were formed into a militia company. He sent
30 men and an officer to the mouth of the Wabash to intercept any


his attack. The Americans must go on the offensive and cut

off the attacks at their source. This they could do by taking the
Northwest posts and separating the British from their Indian
allies. Seizure of Vincennes and Kaskaskia would bring control
of two great rivers into American hands and would open the
way for supplies from friendly Spaniards in New Orleans.

Two of his spies, Ben Linn and Lt. Sam Moore, had spent some
weeks at Kaskaskia posing as hunters with beaver skins to sell
They reported that the British did not expect and could not resist
a resolute, lightning-like thrust from the Americans. There was
artillery at Kaskaskia, but no one fo fire it. The fort was in bad
condition. There were no British regulars in the area, only French
militia. The French, after 14 years of British rule, were dissatisfied
and would not resist the Americans; they might be won over to
join the fight against their old enemy. Clark had friends among
the Indians and believed he could win over some of the tribes.

Clark read aloud a letter from three prominent members of the
Virginia House of Delegates, Thomas Jefferson, George Mason,
and George Wythe, promising that each volunteer would receive
300 acres “out of the lands which may be conquered in the
country now in the possession of the said Indians.” He bore
down hard on two convictions that dominated his thinking and
actions: ‘We must either quit this country or attack,” and "Great
things have been effected by a few men well conducted. "

Following the custom of frontier commanders of the time, Clark
laid his plan open to discussion, with the understanding that all
must obey the decision of the majority. “Almost every gentleman,”
he said, “warmly espoused the enterprise and plainly saw the
utility of it, and supposed they saw the salvation of Kentucky
almost in their reach, but surely repined that we were not strong
enough to put it beyond all doubt. The soldiery in general debated
on the subject but determined to follow their officers. Some

were alarmed at the thought of being taken at so great a distance
into the enemys country.” Despite their doubt and alarm, a
majority voted to make the attack.

A parly of about 50 Tennesseans from the Holston Country,
however, were not won over by Clark's oratory, personal mag-
netism, or arguments; they felt they had been tricked and dele-
gated one of their number, a Lt. Thomas Hutchins, to ask leave
to return home. Clark refused. He put guards on the boats and
sentinels “whare it was thought their was a possibility of their
waiding from the island," but the men found an unguarded
shallow crossing and, led by Hutchins, deserted shortly before
dawn’ Though Clark was willing to let such faint-hearted warriors
go, he feared the effect the desertions might have on his other

* Clark’s spelling habits were somewhat erratic by today's standards, and
numerous misspellings abound in the writings quoted herein. But to provide
some flavor of the man's personality, these have not been corrected to
conform to modern usage.


The Falls of the Ohio was ideally suited for a base camp and
control point because vessels moving up or down the river
usually had to unload to navigate the rapids. Clark chose the

7 acres of Corn Island (now long since washed or dredged
away) as his campsite because the channels of the rapids would
help to discourage those men who might choose to desert when
they learned where he planned to lead them.

At 26, Clark had a combination of qualities commonly found

in heroes of romantic novels and derring-do films but rarely met
with in real life. He was a striking figure of a man—6 feet 2
inches tall, hazel-eyed, handsome, agile, tough, with auburn-
reddish hair flowing to his broad shoulders. As an organizer

of the Kentucky militia and commander of its defenses over the
past two years, he was known to be a skilled and fearless fighter.
He had the gifts of a magnetic leader and persuasive orator,
both in the field and in the council chamber. He understood
Indian customs and habits of thought. And he had the capacity,
in a phrase he ofien used, of “‘reflecting on things in general'’—
to reason, to see far ahead, to think strategically.

It was Clark’s strategical ability that had brought him to Corn
Island. He had recruited this force with the announced purpose
of defending the Kentucky frontier, but his real intention was

to lead his men as far west as the Mississippi River and there
to strike and occupy the British base camps. It was Clark’s own
plan, which he had carried to Williamsburg and presented to
Governor Henry and a few other leading patriots of the com-
monweatth. When he found fewer than half the men he expected
at the Falls, Clark was disappointed but not disheartened. “I
knew my case was desperate,"’ he wrote, ‘‘but the more |
reflected on my weakness the more | was pleased with the
enterprise.”

One day in June he interrupted his training exercises on Corn
Island, assembled his men, and read his secret orders aloud.
He proposed, he said, to take them into the Illinois country
There they would seize three settlements: Vincennes on the
Wabash River, Kaskaskia on the Mississippi, 130 river miles
above the mouth of the Ohio, and Cahokia, up the Mississippi
near the mouth of the Missouri. He then hoped to obtain rein-
forcements, march north, and seize Fort Detroit on the neck of
land between Lake Erie and Lake Huron.

“was sensible," he said later, “‘of the impression it would have
on many, to be taken near a thousand miles from the body of
their country to attac[k] a people five times their number, and
merciless tribes of Indians their allies and determined enemies
to us."’ Point by point he gave his men the strong arguments

for such an action. The frontier settlements, he said, were trying
to defend themselves against the attacks of Indians stirred up
by British agents and led by British officers, but they could
never succeed if they remained on the defensive against an
elusive enemy that could always choose the time and place of


15

make the assault that night in full darkness and rely on taking
the enemy by surprise. A night attack was a difficult and
dangerous operation requiring the strictest discipline, and he
could not be sure that his column had not been reported and
would not be walking into an ambush. The risks, however, were
worth taking. The force would divide into three columns. He and
Simon Kenton would !ead the assault on Fort Gage. If they captured
it by surprise, they were to signal with ‘‘a general shout.” The
other two columns would then rush the town. Men who could
speak some French were to run through every street ordering the
inhabitants to remain indoors and threaten to shoot them if they
left their houses. Each man was to make the noise of at least four
others to convince the community that it was being attacked by
overwhelming numbers. Guards were to be posted at the roads
and fields to take any of those who tried to escape. There was to
be no looting and no unnecessary violence. All forces were to be
committed, none held in reserve. The men were to strip to the
waist, leaving their shirts on the river bank

With the orders given, discussed, and understood, the battaljon
divided, went to the Kaskaskia River, about 175 yards wide at that
point, and “with the greatest silence,"' began to cross. Within two
hours Clark's force was on the west shore. There is strong reason
to believe that several French militiamen friendly to the Virginians
had to guide the company.

The French commander, Phillippe de Rocheblave was unaware of
Clark's presence. He had spent July 4 in St. Genevieve, having
journeyed across the Mississippi to dine with the Spanish
commander there. He returned that evening to his house in the
fort and before retiring wrote a letter to his English superiors in
Quebec. He had written many such letters in recent months,
asking to be relieved and replaced by an English officer. He
wanted his back pay and repayment of the money he was
spending at his post for the presents he was obliged to give the
Indians, He complained that his letters were being ignored

This evening he wrote that a strong force of American patriots had
lately been sighted going down the Ohio; he thought they were
headed for the Spanish post at St. Genevieve. Having finished his
letier, he retired to his bedchamber with Madame Rocheblave.

Shortly after midnight, the Racheblaves were awakened by two
grimy, unshaven, half-naked young giants at the open door
announcing in English that they were now prisoners of the
Americans. Clark and Kenton had walked through the open and
unguarded gate, stealthily deployed their men, found Rocheblave's
house with the aid of one of the hunters, and let out a general
shout. Madame Rocheblave, born Marie Defresne, a Kaskaskian,
undoubtedly screamed, clutched a garment to her bosom, and
protested in rapid-fire French. Rocheblave, who understood a little
English, indignantly refused to come out of the room; he would not
leave his wife unprotected against such savages. At this point
Clark withdrew to allow the lady to dress. As it turned out, this was
a mistake, for during this time the Rocheblaves successfully




“Perhaps We Might Be Fortunate”

21

Clark was indeed ‘‘in possession of the whole,” but he now faced
the decisive question: Could he hold it? He had no supplies and
no money. The term of enlistment of many of his men was about to
expire, and there was no prospect of help or repfacements from
Virginia or Kentucky. He was vastly outnumbered by the Indians

in the region. And the English were certain to descend in force
from Detroit when they learned of the loss of their outposts.

Under the terms of his orders from Governor Henry, Clark could
have destroyed the English forts, gathered up their cannon, and
returned honorably and in triumph to Kentucky. Instead, he elected
to stay.

Characteristically, he made his decision serve his other planned
objectives. He announced that he would return to his base in
Kentucky. The British, he said, were defeated, and if troops were
needed he could always bring them on short notice from his main
army at the Falls of the Ohio. The French begged him to stay, and
with apparent reluctance he complied with their wishes

“| took every step in my power,” he wrote, ‘“‘to cause the people
to feell the blessings injoyed by an American citizen. . . . | caused
a Court of sivil Judicature to be established at Kohos [Cahokia],
elected by the peopte.” Captain Bowman was elected judge of the
Court in this first extension of American government to the Illinois
Country.

Clark made Kaskaskia his headquarters. He persuaded 100 of his
men to extend their enlistments 8 months, and from the villages


NATIONAL PARK SERVI
LIBRARY ce
Denver, Colorado

George Rogers Clark
and the
Winning of the Old Northwest

by
Robert C. Alberts

Office of Publications

National Park Service

U.S. Department of the Interior
Washington, D.C. 1975

LEGIS LATIVE COMPLIANCE


The garrison spent Tuesday, February 23rd, building the scaffold
and completing repairs to one of the blockhouses. Later in the
afternoon the men engaged in field sports.

Meanwhile, on Warrior's Island, 1¥2 miles away, Clark's men
searched for nuts (hickory and pecan), caught, killed, and roasted
a fox, dried their clothes, and readied their gear for the assault.
Clark and his officers lay at the edge of the woods studying the
village through their glasses. Clark later recorded his thoughts:
"Our situation was now truly critical. No possibility of retreating in case of
defeat in full view of a town that at this time had upwards of six hundred
men in it, troops, inhabitants, and Indians. The crew of the gally [Wil/ing],
though not fifty men, would have been now a reinforcement of imence
magnitude to our little army (if | may so call it), but we would not think of
them. We ware now in the situation that | had laboured to get
ourselves in

“The idea of being made prisoner was foreign to almost every man, as
they expected nothing but torture from the savages if they fell into their
hands. Our fate was now to be determined probably in a few hours.

We knew that nothing but the most daring conduct could insure sucksess.
| knew that a number of the inhabitants wished us well [and] many [were]
luke warm to the interest of either [the British or the Americans]. And also
learned that the Grand Chief [of the Piankashaws], the Tobacco's Son,
had... but a few days past openly declared in counsell with the British
that he was brother and friend to the Big Knife [Col. Clark]. These ware
favourable circumstances.”

When several mounted duck hunters appeared on the plain before
them, Clark “sent out as many of our active young Frenchmen to
decoy and take one of them prisoner in such a manner as not to
allarm the others, which they did.”’ By a remarkable coincidence,
the man taken was “‘known to be a friend, by which we got all the
inteligence we wished for: but would not suffer him to see our
troops, except a few.”

“A thousand ideas flashed in my head at this moment. | found that Govr.
Hamilton was able to defend himself for a considerable time, but knew
that he was not able to turn out of the fort; that if the seige continued
long, a superior number might come against us, as | knew there was a
party of English not far above in the river: that if they found out our
numbers [they] might raise the disaffected savages and harass us.
| resolved to appear as darring as possible, that the enemy might
conceive by our behaviour that we were very numerous and probably
discourage them. | immediately wrote to the inhabitants in general.

“GENTLEMEN: Being now within two Miles of Your Village with my Army,
determined to take your fort this night and not being willing to surprize
you, | take this step to request of such of you as are true citizens and
willing to enjoy the liberty | bring you, to remain still in your houses, and
those (if any there be) that are friends to the King, will instantly repair to
the fort and join the hair buyer Genl and fight like men. And if any such
as... do not go to the fort, shall be discovered afterwards, they may
depend on severe punishment. On the contrary, those that are true friends

44


their families and several times that number of Indians. An
English officer who was there about 1770 described the valley
and the community:

“The land on this river is remarkably fertile, and several parts of it are
natural meadows, of great extent, covered with fine long grass. The timber
is large and high. . .. They raise Indian corn, wheat, and tobacco of
an extraordinary good quality... . They have a fine breed of horses
(brought originally by the Indians from the Spanish settlements on the
western side of the River Mississippi) and large stocks of swine and
black cattle. The settlers deal with the natives for furrs and deer skins. . . .
Hemp of a good texture grows spontaneously in the low lands of the
Wabash, as do grapes in the greatest abundance, having a black, thin
skin, of which the inhabitants in the Autumn make a sufficient quantity
(for their own consumption) of well-tasted red wine. "

Vincennes had rows of whitewashed wooden houses, most of
them one-story, surrounded by picket fences, each house with
its own flowerbed and kitchen garden. The agricultural methods
were primitive. Farmers drove large wooden mouldboard plows
that were mounted on wheels and pulled by oxen. Each villager
had a strip of land for cultivation in the 5,000-acre Commons
that adjoined the village to the southeast. The Commons was
enclosed by a picket fence, each family having an assigned
stretch it was required to maintain. After the harvest the Commons
was generally used as a pasture for the cattle. A local magistrate
presided over village meetings at which decisions were made
when to plant the Commons and when to bring in the harvest.

Despite the primitive methods, no one had to work very hard.
As one historian has observed, these farmers did not need

to grub with the energy required of the New Englanders, who
were struggling to clear their fields of racks and stones. The
expanses of virgin lowland required only the easiest cultivation
to yield plentiful crops. Apple, peach, and pear trees and wild
plums provided fruit. Game, moreover, was abundant: wild
turkeys, wild hogs, deer, buffalo. In addition to its wheat, furs,
and pelts, the village had an excess of salted venison and
buffalo meat to float down the rivers to New Orleans.

Visiting and resident traders brought in goods for trading: cioth,
blankets, paint, edged tools, kettles, traps, and whiskey. The
French had to exchange their furs and skins for these goods

in a single community trading center, where the prices were
considerably higher than those charged at the British posts to
the east. The high cost of trade goods (in terms of the number
of skins required to buy a blanket or a kettle) was a constant
complaint of even the most pro-French Indian tribes.

About the middle of the 18th century, government leaders in
Versailles, France, embarked on a program to connect and
consolidate their holdings in New France (Canada) and Louisiana.
In so doing, they claimed ownership of the vast area lying
between those two possessions—all the land, in fact, between

the last range of the Appalachian Mountains in the east and the


Oe
BoE ot,

G

PLAN
des Villages
de la Contree)
ves Inurnois
et partie de la Rwiere?

de Miubitdipi
pur Hutchins

Pillage:
Tndeon



Epilogue: the Northwest Country in the New Nation: 1783-1816

57

In January 1782 Virginia gave in to pressure from other States,
especially from Maryland, and offered to cede the lands north of
the Ohio to the United States. Under the “league of friendship”
created by the Articles of Confederation, the central government
had no authority to rule or tax, and for the next 8 years the region
was subject to an ineffective, intermittent military control.

American settlers began to move into Vincennes—70 families by
1786, most of them squatters occupying land near the fort. With
them they brought an independent spirit, initiative, advanced
technology, and some small amount of capital with which to begin
to build and develop. But they also brought the problems inevi-
table to newcomers in a changing economy and in the clash of
dissimilar cultures. They distrusted and detested the indians, and
with no one to regulate the Indian trade, they debauched them
with their corn whiskey. They quarreled with the French habitants,
whom they considered lazy, whose ancient customs they scorned,
and whose local government they mocked. They corrupted the
economy with worthless Continental currency and claimed owner-
ship of more and more land, some of it devoted to communal use,
much of it occupied by the French for generations. Fort Patrick
Henry (old Fort Sackville) was stripped for buitding materials and
left in ruins. Vincennes was in a state of virtual anarchy, almost

in a reign of terror. There was, in the words of explorer-historian
John Filson, ‘‘a spirit of jealousy and aspersion” and ‘entire
disaffection” between the French and the Indians on the one hand
and the Americans on the other, ‘a hovering cloud pregnant with
innumerable evil.” Father Gibault. the best of friends to the




felt, to take Kaskaskia, the strongest of the American posts. At that
point, on January 29, 1779, ‘in the hight of our anxiety,” Francis
Vigo appeared in Kaskaskia

True to his word, Vigo had gone straight to St. Louis without
imparting any information to the Americans; but there, released of
his oath, he turned around and hurried back to Kaskaskia. He had
a great deal to report. ‘'We got every information from this
gentleman,”' Clark said, ‘that we could wish for as he. . . had
taken great pains to inform himself with a design to give
intelligence.”

With what Vigo told him, Clark knew he was “in a very critical
situation.’' He had fewer than 200 men, nearly half of them French
volunteers of unproved dependability, and he was cut off from
communication and probably from reinforcement from the east.
He now had three courses of reasonable action. He could attempt
to fight his way up the Ohio to Kentucky, but even if he succeeded
he would probably be too late to raise men and save that country.
He could wait in Kaskaskia until spring, when he would be
overwhelmed by a convergence of northern and southern Indians
and the British. Or he could retreat to the Spanish side of the
Mississippi and give up all he had won. “'! would have bound
myself seven years a slave,” he wrote later, “to have had

500 men.”

Clark turned his thoughts to an unlikely fourth possibility. He might
assemble his men, march on Vincennes, and take the British by
surprise. Vigo had said that Hamilton, while keeping a close
control on his people, did not expect a visit from the Americans.
The season of the year and the flooded lands were advantages,
not handicaps.

“The enemy could not suppose that we should be so mad as to attempt
to march 80 leagues [240 miles] through a drowned country in the depth
of winter. ... They would be off their guard and probably would not think
it worth while to keep out spies. If we fell through, the country would not
be in a worse situation than if we had not made the attempt. . .. Perhaps
we might be fortunate.”

Clark offered the proposal to his officers and “‘found it the
sentiment of every one of them and eager for it.’ He summoned
his company of volunteers from Cahokia and gave orders to
prepare for the march

“| conducted myself as though | was sure of taking Mr. Hamilton [and]
instructed my officers to observe the same rule. In a day or two the
country seemed to believe it.”

When the company arrived from Cahokia, Clark gave a banquet
and dance to which the Kaskaskians were invited. There he
revealed his intention to carry the war to Vincennes.

“By twelve o’clock the next day application was made to raise a company

28


to liberty may depend on being well treated and | once more request that
they shall keep out of the streets, for every person | find in arms on my
arrival | shall treat him as an enemy.”

“l had various ideas on the supposed result of this letter,” Clark
said. ‘| knew that it could do us no damage, that it would
incourage our friends, cause the lukewarm to be desided, and
astonish our enemies [among the French], that they would of
course suppose our information good and our forces so numerous
that we ware sure of sucksess.”’

The captured French duckhunter carried the letter into Vincennes
while Clark and his officers '‘anctiously” watched through their
glasses. Very soon there was “‘some stir in every street we could
penetrate into, and great number running or riding out into the
Commons, we supposed to view us, which was the case.” The
Frenchman, in what must have been one of the great moments of
his life, supplemented the letter with what he had seen, surmised,
and been told. An American army was on Warriors Island. It had
upwards of 1,000 men, and more were coming with artillery. The
army was from Kentucky. (No one, Clark felt, would have believed
it was from Kaskaskia.) He carried messages from a number of
officers to friends in Vincennes—friends who knew that the officers
lived and were lately in Kentucky. (Clark had borrowed their
names for this occasion.)

“But what supprised us was that nothing had yet happened that had the
appearance of the garisons being allarmed—no drum nor gun. We began
to suppose that the information we got from our prisoner false and that
the enemy already knew of us and was prepared.”

The facts were that houses screened the fort from Warriors Island
and that some of the British did ask the villagers what all the
excitement was about and were satisfied with the answer: the
people were gathered to watch Captain La Mothe and his patrol
march out. A Mrs. Moses Henry went into the fort to visit her
husband, who was being held there under suspicion of having
been in communication with the enemy. As she gave him the food
she carried, she whispered the great news. Henry at once told
Captain Helm and the other prisoners.

Clark assembled his force shortly before sundown.

“We had but little to say to our men except inculcating an idea of the
necessity of obedience, etc. We knew they did not want incourageing
and that any thing might be attempted with them that was possible for
such a number perfectly cool, under proper subordination, pleased with
the prospect before them, and much attached to their officers. They all
declared that they ware confinced that an implicit obedience to order was
the only thing that would insure suckcess.”’

The army marched at dusk in two battalions, one headed by Clark,
the other by Bowman. They moved slowly, “in the greatest order

45


of Clark’s boats going up or down the Ohio. To conserve supplies,
he sent all but 80 of his soldiers back to Detroit. He sent some of
the Indians out on scouting parties along the Ohio, others on war
parties to the Kentucky settlements, and 40 braves and 3 white
officers to try to waylay and capture Clark at Kaskaskia. The rest
of the Indians were permitted to return home to hunt game and
plant their spring corn. And he set about making Fort Sackville
into a stronghold that would dominate the whole region and
persuade the defecting Indian tribes to rejoin the British.

Hamilton described in his diary the weakness of Fort Sackville:

“In this miserable picketted work called a fort was found scarcely anything
for defense, the want of a well was sufficient to evince its being untenable
—two iron three pounders mounted . . . and two swivels not mounted
constituted its whole defense, for there were not even platforms for
small arms or even a lock to the gate.”

27

He put his men to work repairing and strengthening the structure.
He erected blockhouses at the northwest and southeast corners
of the rectangular stockade, each of them ‘'muskett proof’ and
with five ports for cannon, the lower story having loopholes for
the discharge of small arms. He built a powder magazine, a guard
house, and two barracks quartering 50 men each. He dug a well,
graveled the parade ground, and threw up platforms along the
11-foot-high palisade walls on which defenders might stand and
fire. By February 22, Hamilton reported that Fort Sackville was in a
“tolerable state of defense.”

While the work was progressing, Hamilton's scouts brought in a
prisoner—Francis Vigo, who said he was a Spanish merchant from
St. Louis traveling to Vincennes to visit his store there and conduct
some business. (Actually, he had been sent by Clark to arrange
for supplies for Captain Helm.) Vigo spoke freely about the pitiful
American army at Kaskaskia, ‘‘billited upon inhabitants” and with
“no discipline or regularity.” Hamilton talked with equal freedom;
he told (probably to frighten Clark and the French and to impress
the Spaniards and Indians) of the large army that would descend
on Kaskaskia in the spring. He released Vigo on his sworn oath
that he would give no information to the Americans on his way
back to St. Louis. It was Hamilton’s second blunder

For months on end, Clark received no word about these
developments at Vincennes. Moreover, he suffered throughout this
period from an almost total lack of information from Kentucky.

He did receive in November 1778 an expression of gratitude and
thanks from the Virginia House of Burgesses for his successful
campaign, but for almost a year he had heard nothing from
Governor Henry. He did not know if Gen. Lachlan Mcintosh had
led an army from Fort Pitt into the Ohio Country as planned, and
perhaps on to Detroit.

From a captured enemy agent, Clark finally learned that McIntosh
and his army had not marched and that Hamilton had moved south
in force—perhaps to attack Vincennes but more probably, Clark


LEGISLATIVE COMPLIANCE


men, and he sent out a strong party, some on horseback, some
on foot, with orders to kill any who did not surrender. Seven

or eight men were captured, brought back to camp, and appar-
ently reassigned to other companies. The soldiers that night
hanged and burned Lieutenant Hutchins in effigy. When the
deserters staggered into Harrodsburg, some 60 miles away

to the southeast, the indignant citizens for a time denied them
entrance to the town and refused to give them food.

When Gideon, liberator of Israel, prepared a night attack on the
hordes of Midianites and other desert raiders oppressing his
country, he stripped down his army of 32,000 to 300 chosen
soldiers. Despite his inadequate numbers and the loss of the
Tennessee contingent, Clark followed the same policy. He
selected only his hardiest men and left behind those ‘judged
not competent to the expected fatiegue.”” He now had 175 men,
which he divided into four companies under Capts. John Mont-
gomery, Joseph Bowman, Leonard Helm, and William Harrod
(brother of James, the founder of Harrodsburg). Young Simon
Kenion, an experienced frontiersman, served as chief scout.

Clark broke camp in the last week of June after a let-up in
training—‘‘a day of amusement." He loaded his men into flat-
boats, rowed a mile upriver, and swung into the main current

of the Ohio. While they were running the rapids, the eclipse of
June 24, 1778, darkened most of the sun. “This,” said Clark,
“caused various conjectures among the suspicious."’ Some took
it as a good omen, some as a bad, but all were impressed

that their departure was marked by such particular attention
from the heavens.

These were a special breed of men—skilled frontiersmen, tough
as leather, expert marksmen, completely at home in the forest.
Not all were young; some had been trained, tested and hardened
by years of experience. They supplied most of their own equip-
ment. They wore moccasins and linen or fringed buckskin hunting
shirts. Since it was summer, most had wide-brimmed felt hats,
though some wore coonskin caps. Each man carried a rifle,

a belt axe, a belt knife, a powder horn, a bullet pouch, flints,

a tinder box, and a salt horn. Each carried a “possible bag”

in which were stuffed patch materials, a handful of tow for
starting fires, snuff or smoking tobacco, and food—strips of
dried meat (“jerky”) and “pocket soup” (the ingredients of

thick soup boiled down into a dry, solid cake). Most men carried
a favorite medicine for injuries—perhaps toad salve. Some
carried bullet molds and ladles for lead, so that they might
reshape the bullets retrieved from the game they killed

It may be argued that no body of soldiers ever sent on a military
mission—not even Robert Rogers’ Rangers of French and
Indian War fame—was then or has since been beiter trained
and prepared to carry out its assignment. It may also be argued
that few troops have ever been sent on what appeared to be

so foolhardy a campaign.


Clark now played his ace. The King of France, he said, displaying
the copy of the Franco-American treaty, had given his support to
the United States, and even now arms and supplies were arriving.
France and the United States were now allies in the war against
Great Britain. They were at liberty, he said, to take whichever side
they pleased in the war without fear of losing their property or
having their families distressed. As for their church, all religions
would be tolerated in America, and anyone who offered insult to it
in Kaskaskia would be punished. The Americans were not savages
and plunderers, as they had thought. They might now return to
their families and inform them that they could conduct themselves
as usual with all freedom and without apprehension of any danger.
Their friends in confinement would be immediately released and
the guards withdrawn from every part of the town. He was
convinced from what he had learned since his arrival that they
had been influenced by false information from their leaders,

and so he was willing to forget everything in the past.

“They retired and in a few minutes the scene was changed from an almost
mortal dejection to that of joy in the extream. The bells ringing, the
church crowded, returning thanks, in short, every appearance of
extravagant confution Addorning the streets with flowers and
pavilians of different colours, compleating their happiness by singing,
etc.”

Clark drew up a proclamation about swearing allegiance to the
United States, but “wishing to prove the people farther | ommitted
it for a few days.” In due course, most of the inhabitants took

the oath.

With Kaskaskia secured, Clark ordered Capt. Joseph Bowman to
take 30 men, ride the 60 miles-to Cahokia, and “'if possible get
possession.” Accompanied by a body of armed Kaskaskian
volunteers, Bowman arrived at the unsuspecting village of 50
houses on the morning of July 6. When the Kaskaskians told their
story, “Liberty and Fredom and hozaing for Americans ran through
the whole town. In a few hours Major Bowman {was] snugly
quartered in the old British fort... . The whole of the inhabitants
took the oath chearfully.”

A major area was now under Clark's control, but Vincennes, the
largest community and the strongest center of enemy power, was
still unconquered. Were British troops garrisoned there? How
many and of what quality? Had they heard of the conquest of
Kaskaskia and Cahokia? To find out, Clark sent three men—Simon
Kenton, Shadrach Bond, and Elisha Batty. They made the 240-mile
journey without being discovered, boldly spent three nights
wandering about the town, and learned that there was no force of
British troops in Vincennes, no Sarge body of Indians, and no
knowledge of the American invasion. Bond and Batty returned to
Kaskaskia with this information. Kenton continued on to
Harrodsburg with news of the western victories.

Clark, meanwhile, had spread the word that he was about to send

18


55

Americans back to the Appalachian Mountains. Let us suppose
further that the British, in firm alliance with the Indians, had been
in control and possession of the lands north of the Ohio in 1782
If we make and accept these nat unreasonable assumptions, it
seems most likely that the British commissioners, with French con-
currence, would have held on to those lands as part of Canada.
The U.S. northwest boundary for decades to come, through and
beyond the disastrous defeats of the War of 1812, perhaps even
down to the present day, could have been the Ohio River. The
traditional claim would thus appear to be valid: that George
Rogers Clark and the men of the Illinois Regiment, American and
French, decided the future of more territory than all the armies
that raged back and forth in Europe’s wars, and added to the
United States a rich area almost as large as the Original Thirteen
Colonies.

The historian Dale Van Every put it eloquently in his book,

A Company of Heroes, when he wrote that in the storied role of
frontiersmen, there has not been one whose exploits and
achievements have approached those of George Rogers Clark.
Throughout the frontier’s 10 most dangerous years, he was the
defender toward whom ail turned in every recurrent crisis. It was
largely because of his tireless exertion and the extraordinary force
of his personality that, during the Revolution, the western frontier
was everywhere held in the face of odds that seemed to call for

a retreat. No one except Washington, Van Every holds, served the
Revolutionary cause with more enduring effect. Clark's defense of
Kentucky, his trans-Ohio conquests, and the defeats inflicted on
the western Indians gave weight to American postwar claims to
the West. Because of his efforts, the Mississippi boundary
conceded at the peace table “seems to us now an English
surrender somewhat less fantastic than it was then universally
considered.” One overriding fact was present at the peace
negotiations: The settlers, after 7 years of war, were still there.

it was upon them and their capacity to continue to endure their
increasingly fearful trials that depended the real issue of their
future and that of the nation


62

from taking over and developing the Indiana Territory.

Indiana, with a population of 64,000, became the 19th State in
1816. Illinois became the 21st State in 1818. Michigan became the
25th State in 1837. Wisconsin became the 30th State in 1848.

In his later years, George Rogers Clark experienced nothing but
misfortune, poverty, and unhappiness. He was for a time an Indian
commissioner but lost his post to Gen. James Wilkinson, a sinister
conspirator who (it was revealed decades later) was on the payroll
of Spain. Clark retired to his father's new estate at Mulberry Hill
near Louisville, his career ended at 35. Virginia commissioners
examined his accounts and approved payment of £1,092 in back
pay to January 1778 and £3,397 for debts he had incurred in the
service of his country. Both Virginia and the United States,
however, defaulted in payment. In the meantime, Clark was being
held personally responsible for thousands of dollars of bills of
credit he had signed in buying supplies for the Illinois Regiment.
The claims poured in, the lawsuits piled up, and Clark was
impoverished, his lands confiscated, his reputation ruined.

He moved to a simple 2-story log house on his grant of land in
Clarksville, across the river from and overlooking Corn Island,
where in 1778 he had set out with 175 men to conquer an empire
He was a penniless, prematurely aged, lonely bachelor. Like
Daniel Boone and Simon Kenton and others among the boldest
pioneers, he had fought to win lands for the nation and lost his
own to those for whom he had fought.

Thomas Jefferson had suggested to Clark in 1783 that he lead an
expedition across the North American continent in search of a land
route to the Pacific. Clark declined, but 20 years later Jefferson
named Capt. Meriwether Lewis to carry out that assignment.

Lewis chose as his second in command William Clark—the
youngest of Clark's five brothers and the only one who had not
fought in the War for Independence. At the start of his journey to
fame and immortality, William Clark stopped at Clarksville to ask
the advice and blessing of his older brother George

In 1808 Clark became partly paralyzed and, after a fall, suffered
the amputation of a leg. Virginia gave him another sword of
honor and a pension of $400 a year—half his pay as a general
officer. Twenty years after his death in 1818, his heirs received a
settlement of $30,000 as payment in full for Clark's claims and
services. Not until well into the 20th century did the United States
acknowledge the enormous debt of gratitude it owed to

George Rogers Clark.

The City of Vincennes, Knox County, and the State of Indiana
joined in the 1920s in a program to build a suitable memorial to
Clark and his company of heroes. They raised $900,000 with which
to buy the site of old Fort Sackville and some adjoining land,
totaling 22 acres, in downtown Vincennes. Congress appropriated
nearly $2 million to build the memorial and landscape the grounds.
The plans of Hirons and Mellor, New York architects, were
selected in a nationwide competition.


party in the canoe to the opposite shore of the Little Wabash
There, standing waist deep in water, the men built a platform to
hold the baggage. Another party then ferried the baggage across
and piled it on the platform. The horses were swum across and
reloaded with their packs. White this was being accomplished, the
rest of the men, a few at a time, crossed in the canoe, assembled
by companies on the east side, and started the march through the
water, following the blazed trees to the half acre of raised ground
Some of the men were sick and were placed in the canoe.

The regiment crossed the Fox River in the same manner, with the
help of a second baggage platform built on the far bank. The men
reached the hills by nightfall and made camp. Clark now issued
an order: no firearms were to be used except in self-defense or by
those detailed to procure meat. He wrote:

“By the eavening we found ourselves incamped on a pretty height in high
spirits each laughing at the other in consequence of something that had
happened in the course of this ferrying business as they called it and the
whole of the great exploit as they thought that they had accomplished this.
Alittle antick drummer afforded them great divertion by floating on his
drum, etc. All this was greatly incouraged and they really began to think
themselves superiour fo other men and that neither the rivers or seasons
could stop their progress. Their whole conversation now was what they
would do when they got about the enemy and now began to view the main
Waubash as a creek and made no doubt but that such men as they ware
could find a way to cross it. They wound themselves up to such a pitch that
(mentally] they soon took St. Vincennes, divided the spoil, and before bed
time was far advanced on their route to DeTroit.”

The men marched all the next day through the rain, though now for
the most part the ground was above water. They crossed Bompass
Creek. Much of the food had been lost or damaged on the march,
and there was little opportunity to replenish it, as wildlife had fled
from the flooded areas. Bowman wrote ominously, ‘Our provisions
began to be short.” On Wednesday, about an hour before night-
fall, they reached the flooded Embarrass River. Since there was

no high ground on which to camp, Clark's men continued on,
marching southeast along a ridge that paralleled the river and
would eventually lead to the Wabash. They ran into mud and
water and had to march for several hours in the dark before they
found a place to camp—on a hillock from which the water had
recently receded. Clark, in the meantime, had sent an officer and
three men to cross the Embarrass, if possible, and proceed to a
plantation known to lie on the Wabash across from Vincennes.
There they were to steal some boats or canoes and “‘get some
intelligence.” They came late into camp to report that they had
been unable to cross the river.

The men were wakened next morning (Thursday, February 18) by
a sound that stirred their hearts and raised their spirits: the boom
of the morning gun at Fort Sackville. The march continued down
the west side of the Embarrass, through what Bowman called
“some fine land.” At 2 p.m. they reached the Wabash, at a point
they estimated to be 9 miles south of Vincennes (actually 11 miles,

35


at present-day St. Francisvilie). There they made camp. Clark sent
out a party on a raft with orders to commandeer some boats,
obtain information, and (it has been suggested) to contact his
agents in or near Vincennes. The regiment went to sleep that night
with empty stomachs, for the food was now completely gone.

In a report on the expedition he sent to his friend George Mason
some 8 months later, Clark wrote of “‘our suffering for four days

in crossing those waters.’’ He would not describe in writing how

it was done, he said, but would tell the story when he saw Mason
personally, for ‘‘it is too incredible for any person to believe except
those that are as well acquainted with me as you are.’'

Friday was a bad day, with the men camped on the bank of an
impassable river, without boats and without food. Clark put out
a "water guard." He sent out another party in a small canoe built
on the spot with the same instructions given to the men sent on
the raft the day before. He dispatched two men down the Wabash
to find Captain Rodgers and the Willing and bring them upstream
as quickly as possible. That, Bowman wrote, was “‘our last hope.
Starving. Many of the men much cast down, particularly the
volunteers. No provisions of any sort now for two days. Hard
fortune.” The gloom deepened when the men on the raft returned
without boats or information; the raft had broken up and they had
lain all night in the river clinging to some logs. The men in the
canoe returned with word that they had turned back when they
saw the campfires of what appeared to be a large body of either
Englishmen or Indians, Clark described that day:
“Many of our volunteers began for the first time to despair. Some talked of

returning, but my situation... was such that | was past all uneasiness.

| laughed at them without perswading or ordering them but told them

| should be glad they would go out and kill some deer. They went confused

with such conduct. My own troops | know had no idea of abandoning an

enterprise for the want of provition while there was plenty of good horses

in their possession. [That is, the horses could be butchered.] And |new

that with out any violence the volunteers could be detained for a few days,

in the course of which time our fate would be known. | conducted myself

in such a manner that caused the whole to believe that | had no doubt of

suckcess, which kept up their spirits.”

The next day, Saturday, February 20, Clark turned his men to
making canoes “in a private place,’ both to keep them occupied
and to have the means of crossing the Wabash if the Willing did
not appear. The camp was unusually quiet that morning. Many of
the volunteers continued to talk of abandoning the expedition and
returning home

About noon, the water guard brought in a boat with five French-
Canadians from Vincennes heading south to join a hunting party.
The men were astonished, friendly, and eager to talk. The people
of Vincennes, they said, were well disposed toward the Americans
and would welcome them. The British were quite unaware of
Clark's advance. They had strengthened the fort. Hamilton had
the same number of regulars and militia that Francis Vigo had

36




he recruited and trained enough young French replacements to
make up his losses. To provision, supply, and pay his men, he
depended on the French merchants in the area, giving them bills
of credit drawn on Oliver Pollock, commercial agent of Virginia
{later of the United States) in New Orleans. Pollock, an Irish-born
merchant, was a dedicated patriot; he paid those and other such
bills with his own money; he sent additional supplies up the
Mississippi, including powder and some small cannon (swivel
guns); and he ruined himself in the process.

Francis Vigo, a St. Louis merchant, was no less generous. A native
of the Kingdom of Sardinia, he had enlisted as a private in a
Spanish regiment, served in Cuba and Louisiana, and when his
term of enlistment expired, decided to stay in America as a trader.
With St. Louis as his headquarters, he set up in the business of
buying furs from the Indians and selling supplies to settlers and
hunters. When Fernando de Leyba came to St. Louis as lieutenant
governor of Upper Louisiana, he became a silent partner in the
firm of Vigo and Yosti.

Vigo lent about $11,000 to Clark as a representative of Virginia
(which the State never repaid), and he acted as Clark’s advocate
with the lieutenant governor. De Leyba was friendly and even
indicated that he would step in with his own soldiers if the Indians
altacked the Americans. Clark wrote:

“He ommitted nothing in his power to prove his attachment to the
Americans with such openness as left no room for a doubt. As | was
never before in company with any Spanish gentleman, | was much
surprised in my expectations, for instead of finding that reserve thought
peculiar to the nation, | here saw not the least symptom of it; freedom,
almost to excess, gave the greatest pleasure.”’

De Leyba's sister Teresa had accompanied his wife to St. Louis.
Writers of biographies and historical novels have made much

of a romance that sprang up (or should have sprung up) between
Colonel Clark and Senorita de Leyba

Clark was less successful in winning over Rocheblave. “The
principals of the gentleman,” Clark said, “were fixed and violent."
When Rocheblave went to a private party and abused some of the
soldiers present, either Virginians or Kaskaskians, “in a most
intolerable manner as rebels, etc.,"’ Clark put him in iron manacles,
confiscated and sold his slaves, and distributed ihe proceeds—
$1,500—among his private troops. When a contingent of his men
left for the east, Clark sent Rocheblave with them as a prisoner of
war. (Madame Rocheblave remained in Kaskaskia with her
children. Governor Henry sent an order to reimburse her for the
loss of her husband’s property.)

In August, Clark began a 5-week conference at Cahokia with the
braves of a dozen Indian tribes, some of whom came from as far
away as 500 miles to attend. He found that his appearance in their
country

“had put them under the greatest consternation. They were generally at

24


54

Kaskaskia, and a new post, Fort Jefferson, just below the mouth
of the Ohio.

Clark set up his base at Fort Nelson at the Falls of the Ohio, and
for 3 years he energetically carried out the most difficult and
thankless of military tasks, that of defending thousands of square
miles of frontier country with inadequate supplies and insufficient
troops. Within a period of a few months in 1780 alone he traveled
up the Mississippi from Fort Jefferson to help drive off a British
assault on Cahokia, helped to repulse an attack on nearby

St. Louis, returned to Fort Jefferson, and rode overland to
Harrodsburg to organize and lead an attack that destroyed the
villages and crops of the Shawnees at Piqua and Chillicothe.

He declared martial law in Kentucky, closed the land office, and
put guards on the eastward trails to turn back men fleeing the
country, In 1782, now a brigadier general, he made plans again to
capture Detroit, but Virginia was a bankrupt State flooded with
worthless currency, and all effort had to be directed at defending
the frontier in what was forever after known as "The Year of
Sorrow.” Some settlers began to blame Clark for losses where

he was not present and for defeats where he was not in command.
He offered to resign, but Benjamin Harrison, now governor of
Virginia, refused to allow him. He commanded the last campaign
of the war late in 1782, leading 1,050 men against the Shawnees.
His attempt to surprise them failed and he was unable to bring the
warriors to an engagement, but he burned their villages and
destroyed their winter provisions

In the fall of 1782, British and American commissioners—
Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, John Jay, and Henry Laurens
for the United States—met in Paris and signed a preliminary
treaty of peace. The British reduced their support of the Indians
and the frontier raids stopped. The Treaty of Paris was completed
in January 1783 and signed on September 3. Britain recognized
American independence. In a stunning concession, it recognized
American rights to the lands north of the Ohio River to the Great
Lakes and west as far as the Mississippi.

Several modern American historians have held that Clark's
campaigns in 1778-1782 had no important influence on the British
decision to relinquish its claim to the northwestern country. They
emphasize that Clark's name was scarcely mentioned during the
peace negotiations, that he had withdrawn his troops to Kentucky,
and that the whole contested area was a ''no man’s land.” Was
Clark's campaign simply a heroic action by a brave body of men
that achieved no lasting result? Or did it have a decisive influence
at the peace negotiations in Paris? There can be no final “‘yes''

or “‘no”' on this question, since we are unable to enter into the
minds of the British negotiators at the peace table, but, through
an exercise of logic, a strong positive case can be made for the
influence of Clark's accomplishment. Let us suppose that Clark
and his men had not captured Kaskaskia, Cahokia, Vincennes,
and Colonel Hamilton; that they had not broken British power in
the northwest and had not upset Hamilton's plans to drive the


63

Construction began in 1931 of a massive Doric temple, circular in
shape, of granite and marble, with 16 columns, between the
Wabash and St. Xavier's Roman Catholic Church (built 1824-
1836). In the center of the monument under the dome stands

a bronze statue of Clark, larger than life size, done by the sculptor
Hermon A. MacNeil. It is mounted on a pedestal of mottled Italian
marble. On the circular wall around it are seven murals on Belgium
linen, each 16 by 28 feet in size, done by the artist Ezra Winter;
these tell the story and the significance of Clark's campaign in

the Northwest.

Nearby on the grounds are statues of Francis Vigo and Father
Pierre Gibault, to whom Clark, his men, and the country owed
so much.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt dedicated the George Rogers
Clark Memorial on June 14, 1936. In his address at the site he
said: “Events of history take on their due proportions when viewed
in the light of time. With every passing year, the capture of
Vincennes, more than a century and a half ago when the thirteen
Colonies were seeking their independence, assumes greater and
more permanent significance. . . . In the year 1778 the picture of
this Western country was dark indeed. The English held all the
region northwest of the Ohio, and their Indian allies were burning
cabins and driving fleeing families back across the mountains
south of the river. Three regular forts were all that remained in
Kentucky, and their fall seemed inevitable. Then, against this dark
background, stood forth the tall young Virginian, George Rogers
Clark. Out of despair and destruction he brought concerted action.
With a flash of genius the twenty-six-year-old leader conceived a
campaign that was a brilliant masterpiece of military strategy.”

The thousands of visitors who stop at the Clark Memorial every
year are, in the words of the Midwestern historian August Derleth,
“far more sensible of Clark's great contribution to the growth and
security of the United States than were the government and the
citizens of his own time.”






6

“Never Was a Man More Happy”

4

Between February 11, the 5th day of Clark's march, and February
23, Lt. Gov. Henry Hamilton sent out several patrols in an
unsuccessful search and pursuit of 7 deserters who had fled Fort
Sackville. All the patrols, by an extraordinary stroke of “Clark
luck,” missed the advancing army, partly because they detoured
to travel on high ground, partly because an army marching through
water leaves no trail. Capt. Francois Maisonville’s patro! returned
on February 22 with some results to show for their week on the
trail. They had taken two Virginia soldiers on the Ohio River who
claimed they were on the way west from Fort Pitt and knew nothing
of what was happening in the Illinois Country; and they had found
the ashes of 14 camp fires. They could not tell whether the fires
had been built by Indians or Virginians. Hamilton decided to send
Capt. Guillaume La Mothe, a lieutenant, and 20 men ona
reconnaissance patrol. They would leave the next day. Captain
Maisonville volunteered to accompany them.

Hamilton felt that the campfires were those of the enemy, but he
was not deeply concerned. The Wabash was in its worst flood in
years, and several of his patrols had returned with word that the
enormous lake southwest of Vincennes was impassable
Obviously, no American force of any size could get near the town.
Still, he took some routine precautions. He had ammunition issued
and stored in the blockhouse and he brought in extra provisions.
He called out the Vincennes militia. He asked the paroled
prisoners, including Captain Helm, to stay in the fort. And he put
his men to erecting a scaffold in the north and south angles of the
fort on which they might stand and fire over the 11-foot palisade.






53

The Willing and its crew, delayed by floods and swift currents,
finally arrived to find the battle already won, “to the great
mortification of all on board.” Clark put 26 prisoners in the Willing
under guard—Hamilton, Hay, McBeath, Maisonville, La Mothe,
three other officers, and 18 British enlisted men—and started them
on a 19-week journey to Williamsburg. (After 18 months of rough
treatment in Virginia, Maisonville committed suicide; the others
were eventually paroled or exchanged. Hamilton became governor
of Bermuda, giving his name to the island's capita! city.)

After appointing Captain Helm as civil governor of Vincennes and
Lieutenant Brashears as military commandant with a garrison force
of two lieutenants and 40 men, Clark set out on horseback for
Kaskaskia, the rest of the regiment returning in boats by way of
the rivers. Kaskaskians gave him a hero's welcome. In the months
that followed, he received a commendation from the Continental
Congress; an elegant Sword of Honor from the Virginia Assembly
“as a prool of their approbation of your great good conduct &
gallant behavior''; promotion to full colonel; a promise that he
would receive 500 Virginia militiamen in June for the march on
Detroit; and the welcome news that his friend, John Todd, Jr.,
would soon arrive as civil administrator of the new Virginia County
of Illinois.

The praise and good news were soon overmatched by misfortune,
Instead of 500 men, Clark received only 130, and these were
ill-trained, unpaid, unruly, unused to frontier life, and low in morale.
And he learned that payment had been refused in New Orleans on
$25,000 of his bills of credit. Oliver Pollock, he found, was
bankrupt and could no longer help him. Without the supplies or
men he needed, Clark postponed the attack on Detroit, “in the
execution of which my very soul was wrapt.'' He personally
guaranteed payment of his new bills of credit and sold or
mortgaged his Kentucky lands, some 8,000 acres, to raise money.

With the northwestern country in American hands and the Indians
seemingly pacified, easterners assumed that Kentucky was now
safe for settlement. They came over the trails and down the Ohio
on flatboats by the thousands in the summer of 1779. Their
assumption was wrong. The British were no longer waging war in
the New England and the central States, but in the years 1780-
1781 they mounted full-scale campaigns in the South and on

the western frontier. Hundreds of Indians led by British officers
and renegade Americans descended the Miami, Scioto, and
Muskingum rivers to the Ohio and attacked the Kentucky
settlements. Ruddle's Station on the Licking River was the first
attacked in the new campaign in June 1780 and the first to be
assaulted by cannon fire. The commander surrendered on the
British promise that the lives of the inhabitants would be spared,
but the Indians got out of hand and massacred at least 200 of the
350 people in the stockade, driving the others north as prisoners.
Kentuckians begged Clark to return and defend them; Governor
Thomas Jefferson ordered him to withdraw from the Illinois
Country, leaving only token forces and local militia at Vincennes,


59

Americans in 1778-79, now regretted his actions in those years
and lamented the loss of the mild absentee British rule

The inevitable conflict between Indian and American caugnt fire
again in the spring of 1786. Americans had to build and take
refuge in a blockhouse in Vincennes and work their cornfields
under arms. They charged the French with protecting the Indians
and with being pro-British, but in July, when 450 Indians
descended on Vincennes determined “to exterminate all the
Americans who might be in these lands,” it was the French who
persuaded the warriors to withdraw.

Once again George Rogers Clark was called upon to command
the defense of the frontier. He led 1,200 Kentucky militiamen—the
largest American force assembled on the frontier up to that time—
to Vincennes and on to attack the tribes of the upper Wabash.

But Clark’s fortunes, reputation, and strength had declined by

the fall of 1786, and he was subjected to shameful humiliation

by his troops. His authority to command was not clear-cut, his
officers disputed his decisions, and the supply route broke down
because of low water in the Wabash. One morning near the mouth
of the Vermilion, a contingent of his troops became mutinous and
chanted the refrain over and over, ‘Who's for home? Who's for
home?” Clark confronted the men. They complained of a shortage
of food. He stood before them with his hat in his hand, tears in his
eyes, and pleaded, ‘‘Go with me two days’ march, and if | can’t
furnish you with as much provisions as you want from the Indian
towns, | will return with you.” The men refused to listen; some in
the rear ranks made rude remarks about their commander. They
walked away, led by an ensign, and left him standing alone.

Some troops offered to continue the march, but their numbers
were too small and the expedition turned back to Vincennes.
There Clark was able in some degree, by skillful negotiations with
the Indians, to ''cover the disgrace of his people.”

The following year, Maj. John F. Hamtramck was sent with 100
men to establish a military post at Vincennes, with instructions to
build a fort and enlist the support of the French militia in case of
Indian attack. He built Fort Knox, named for Secretary of War
Henry Knox, about a half mile upstream from the site of Fort
Sackville (near the foot of Buntin Street).

Virginia had formally ceded the northwest lands to the United
States in March 1784. The Government agreed to reimburse
Virginia for all expenses of the conquest, to protect the personal
and property rights of the settlers, and to convey to General Clark
and the men of the Illinois Regiment the 150,000 acres promised
them bythe State. Accordingly, land around present-day
Clarksville was taken up, starting about 1781. This became the first
authorized American settlement in Indiana and the first in the
Northwest Territory.

The thorny problem of what to do about the northwestern lands
became a matter of national debate and dispute. The merchants,


13

departure, and Linn had volunteered to leave his family and
deliver it. France had recognized American independence, the
dispatch said. France was sending military aid. France would
open hostilities against England. This was indeed news of the
highest importance. It made Clark's mission even more vital to
the patriot cause, and it substantially improved the chances for
his success. Linn had a copy of the French treaty, and after it was
shown to the Illinois French with suitable explanation and
persuasion, they might well take up arms against the British.

Clark accepted Linn’s offer to join the expedition and conferred
on him the rank of major. The boats passed the mouth of the
Cumberland River and, on June 28, the fourth day of the journey,
the mouth of the Tennessee (at present-day Paducah). About 9
miles below the Tennessee stood Fort Massac, built by the French
in 1758. The British had never occupied the fort, and it had
become a crumbling ruin. Clark moored his boats there. In the
second of his major decisions, he decided to leave the Ohio 3
miles above Fort Massac and march 120 miles overland to
Kaskaskia, The water route down the Ohio and up the Mississippi
was faster and easier, but there was little chance of navigating it
without being seen by French patrols, unfriendly Indians, or
British agents. He would try to find and use an old military trail
that ran north-northwest from the fort to Kaskaskia. It was
essential to his plan that he avoid an engagement with the enemy,
for he could not afford to lose men or spread an alarm

While ithe companies were preparing for the march, a party of
hunters was seen on the river and was, in Clark’s words, ‘brought
too by one of our boats."' Their leader was a John Duff, their guide
a John Saunders, both Americans, and they had been in
Kaskaskia only 8 days earlier. They gave Clark—whose
information on that place was almost a year old—'‘all the
intelligence we wished for.’ By this stroke of fortune he learned
that Edward Abbott, French superintendent of Indian affairs for
the Ohio Country, hac left for Detroit in February. Philippe de
Rocheblave (a former French official appointed by the British to
continue in his post at Kaskaskia) had ordered spies, hunters, and
others in the area to keep a good lookout for rebels. Kaskaskia's
chief defense work, Fort Gage, was in good order, but “more from
the fondness of perade than the expectation of a visit.” There
were no British troops there. The chances of taking the town and
fort by surprise were good. The hunters warned him, however

that the French “were taught to harbour a most horrid idea of the
barbarity of the rebels, espetially the Virginians,” and so would be
likely to fight for their lives if forewarned. No part of their
information,” Clark said, ‘‘pleased me more than that of the
inhabitants viewing us as more savage than the. . . Indians. | was
determined to improve on [make use of] this if | was fortunate
enough to get them into my possession.” On that knowledge, in
fact, he based a remarkable program of psychological warfare
and civil control.

The hunters asked to join the expedition and Saunders offered to


Contents

1 Colonel Clark Organizes an Army Page 1
2 A Dark and Bloody Land Page 6
3 First Victory in the West Page 12
4 “Perhaps We Might Be Fortunate” Page 21
5 The March on Vincennes Page 31
6 “Never Was a Man More Happy” Page 41
7 The Fruits of Victory Page 52

Epilogue

The Northwest Country in the New Nation Page 57

Bibliography Page 65


forded more streams the next day: Horse Creek, Paddy Creek,
Skillet Fork (Saline River), and Brush Creek. They camped at a
spring (1% miles west of present-day Blue Point). They spent
Friday the 12th marching across Cot Plains (Long Prairie and
Six Mile Prairie). The company that had been detailed to hunt
game that day killed a number of buffalo. The rain had stopped,
but the Illinois Trace was so muddy that it became almost
impassable. Bowman wrote, ‘The men much fatigued, encamped
at the edge of the wood, this plain or meadow being fifteen or
more miles across—it was fate in the night before the troops and
baggage got together.’ (The camp was several miles north of
today’s Mount Erie.)

On Saturday the 13th, the ninth day of the march, Clark came upon
“the first obstruction of any consequence that | met with.””

He arrived at the western bank of the Little Wabash River. Three
miles of dry land normally separated the Little Wabash and the
Fox River to the east, but now the ground between them, known
as Sugar Grove Island, was flooded to a depth of 3 and sometimes
4 feet, never less than 2 feet. (The two river channels, of course,
were far deeper.) The hills to the east were nearly 5 miles

distant. “This,” Clark said, ‘‘would have been enough to have
stop’ed any set of men that was not in the same temper that

we was.”’

But he was worried:

“viewed this sheet of water for some time with distrust but accusing myself
of doubting | ammediately set to work without holding any consultation
about it or suffering any body else to do so in my presence.”

He had the men camp on the high ground and assigned a detail
of skilled woodsmen to fashion a large pirogue—a canoe hollowed
from the trunk of a tree.

“| acted as though crossing the water would be only a piece of divertion and
as but few could work at a time, pains was taken to find divertion for the
rest to keep them in high spirits but the men ware well prepared for this
attempt as they had frequently waided farther in water, but perhaps seldom
above half leg deep. My ancziety to cross this place continually increased
as | saw that it would at once fling us into a situation of a forlorn hope,
as all ideas of a retreat would in some measure be done away with.”’

34

The pirogue was completed and launched in the late afternoon of
the following day. A picked crew went out to reconnoiter the
flooded area; they returned to report that they had found about a
half acre of ground above water at the west or near bank of the
Fox River. They had blazed trees to mark a trail between the camp
and the high ground.

Early next morning Clark began the difficult maneuver of getting
his men and supplies across the two rivers and the miles of
flooded plain between them. The weather, fortunately, though wet,
was extraordinarily warm; even the peach trees were in bloom
and the apple trees had put out buds. He first sent a working




Cover Illustration by Mark English
Maps (pages 22-23, 32-33, 42-43, 58) by Elie Sabban

For Sate by the Superintendent of Documents
U.S. Government Printing Otfice

Washington, DG 20402

Stock Number 024-005-00597-7,

we GPO: 1975-587-145/6 NPS 145

Library of Congress Catatoging in Publication Data:

Alberts, Robert C
George Rogers Clark and the winning of the ofd Northwest.

Bibliography: p.
1. Northwest, Old~-History—Revelution, 1775-1783.
2 Clark, George Rogers, 1752-1818

I. Title,

E263.Ne4A42 —973.0'3'0924 76-2594


46

and regularity,” with banners streaming and drums beating, in

full view of the inhabitants gathered at the edge of town. The
battalions came to several ridges in the plain 7 to 8 feet high,
running obliquely to the town; and behind these they wheeled,
marched, and counter-marched, raising the extra banners on long
poles cut for the purpose, “as many of them as would be sufficient
for a thousand men.” Officers dashed back and forth on horses
taken from the captured duck hunters. His army, Clark thought,
“made no despicable appearance.” The exhibition went on until
dark. ‘We then suddenly altered our direction and crossed ponds
whare they could not have suspected us and about eight o’clock
gained the heights back of the town.” (The heights, southwest of
the village, were later named Bunker Hill.)

Incredibly, those in the fort still did not see or hear the flamboyant
maneuvers, and no one alerted them. Clark sent Lieutenant Bayley
with 14 Virginians to take up positions around the fort and to open
fire on a given signal, while the two battalions quietly occupied
the village. (Clark’s companies entered Vincennes along today’s
Main Street, Bowman's along Prairie Street.) There was no
disorder and no resistance. The British Indians fled from the
village. A number of the inhabitants appeared with plates of food,
which the famished troops ate as they stood guard or went about
their duties. It was the first ‘meal of victuals" they had eaten in

5 days. Francois Bosseron, one of Hamilton's militia captains, led
a detail of Virginians and volunteers to a cache of powder, hidden
3 months earlier when the British took Vincennes. He then hurried
to the fort to report for duty, apologizing for having been
unavoidably delayed.

Governor Hamilton that evening invited Captain Helm, whose
company he had come to enjoy, to join him in his quarters for a
game of cards. About 5 minutes after the candles were lighted,
the two men heard a shot. A few minutes later, a second shot was
fired, followed by a volley. Hamilton was startled but not alarmed,
for the Indians commonly fired off their weapons in celebrations
and on returning from a hunt. But when he heard another volley
of shots, he left his card game and descended to the parade
ground to find out what was happening. Several bullets whistled
by him and impacted. Sgt. John Chapman was struck in the chest.
Hamilton ordered the drummer to beat the call to arms. The
soldiers ran to occupy the two blockhouses, mount the firing
platforms, and man the cannon. At that point John McBeath,
regimental surgeon, having just worked his way back from the
village, came running in to report that Clark had surrounded the
fort and was attacking with an army of 500 men.

During the brisk fire fight that followed, Bowman's men erected a
barricade parallel to the main street about 120 yards from the
fort's main gate. Picked men were sent to take position on the
bank of the river about 30 yards from the northeast palisade.
Other troops from Clark's force deployed, mostly within 30 yards
of the fort, in ditches, behind houses and barns, behind solid,
well-made garden fences, and behind the church, which stood




“This was the most trying of all the difficulties we had experienced.
| generally kept 15 or 20 of the strongest men next myself, and judging from
my own feeling what must be that of [the] others. Geting about the middle
of the [Horseshoe] plain, the water about knee deep, | found myself sensibly
failing. As there was hear no trees or bushes for the men to support them
selves by, | doubted that many of the most weak would be drownd.””

Clark ordered the canoes to make for land, discharge the men they
carried, and to “ply backwards and forwards with all diligence and
pick up the men.” To encourage the others he sent his strongest
and tallest men forward with orders that when they got to a certain
distance; to pass the word back that the water was getting
shallower, and when they neared the woods to cry out at the top

of their voices, “Land!”’

"This stratagem had its desired effect, The men incouraged by [it] exerted
themselves almost beyond their abilities, the weak holding by the stronger
and frequently one with two others holt. This was of infinite advantage to
the weak, but the water never got shallower but continued deepening.
Geting to the woods whare they expected land, the water was to my
shoulders, but gaining those woods was of great consequence. All the low
men and weakly hung to the trees and floated on the old !ogs until they were
taken of by the canoes.”

Those who reached the shore immediately built fires. Many of the
others reached the shore and fell, unable to stand without the
support of the water. It was, Clark said, “a delightful dry spot of
ground of about ten acres."’ He found that the fires “answered no
purpose” in reviving the weaker men, unless the stronger took
them by the arms and made them walk up and down until they
recovered, “and being a delightful day it soon did.”

“But fortunately, as if designed by Providence, a canoe of Indian squaws and
children was coming up to the town and took through part of this plain as
a high way, was discovered by our canoes as they were out after the men
They gave chase and took them on board, of which was near half quarter
of buffaloe, some corn tallow, kettles, etc. This was a grand prise and was
invaluable. Broath was amediately made and served out to the most weak
[but] with great care most of the whole gota little, but a great many would
not tast it but gave their part to the weakly, jocosely saying something
cheary to their comrades.

“This little refreshment and fine weather by the afternoon gave new life to
the whole. Crossing a narrow deep lake in the canoes and marching some
distance we came to [a] copse of timber called the Warriours Island. We
ware now in full view of the fort and town, not a srub between us, at about
two miles distance. Every man now feasted his eyes and forgot that he had
suffered any thing, that all that had passed was owing to good policy and
nothing but what a man could bear, and that a soldier had no right to think,
etc., passing from one extream to another, which is common in such cases.

“ltwas now. that we had to display our abilities.”

39


war against us, but the French and Spaniards appearing so fond of us
confused them. They counseled with the French traders to know what
was best to be done, and of course was advised to come and solicit for
peace, and did not doubt but we might be good friends.”

25

Skilled in the difficult and tedious art of negotiating with Indians,
fully aware of the weaknesses of his position, Clark appeared
confident, brusque, even contemptuous; he affected to be totally
indifferent whether they wanted peace or war. He later confessed
that he ''was under some apprehension” among such a large
number of Indians. His concern was justified. On the second night
of the conference, a body of Puan (Meadow) Indians, dreaming of
the rich reward the British would give for Clark, charged his
quarters and attempted to seize him. He was awake “having to
much to think of to sleep much,” and well guarded, hawever, and,
with the help of the French volunteers, the Indians were captured
and their leaders put in irons. (They explained that they had merely
wanted to find out if the French would really come to the aid of the
“Big Knives."') After interminable speeches and pipe-smokings,
peace treaties were made with 10 or 12 different tribes. “‘Our
influence now began to spread among the nations,’ Clark wrote,
“even to the border of the lakes. | sent agents into every quarter.”

While Colonel Clark made treaties with the Indians and dreamed
of capturing Detroit, Lt. Gov. Henry Hamilton dreamed of capturing
Fort Pitt and of extending in one stroke British domination to
western Pennsylvania and the entire Ohio Valley. Hamilton was
organizing a force for that campaign when, on August 6, he
received word that the Americans had taken Kaskaskia and were
in control of much of the Illinois Country. He abandoned the Fort
Pitt venture and slowly, methodically, prepared to march on
Vincennes, 600 miles away. He dispatched messengers to various
Indian chiefs informing them of his plans and urging them to bring
their warriors to join the march.

Hamilton embarked from Detroit on October 6, 1778, with about
60 Indians, 4 regulars, 8 irregulars, 70 volunteer militiamen, and
one 6-pounder cannon, a heavier artillery piece than was.
commonly seen in the west. As a parting salute, the artillerymen
fired the cannon from the bateau on which it was carried. The
shock of the recoil caused the vessel to sink, and the departure
was delayed for rescue of the weapon. The force made its first
camp at River Rouge.

To save a hard overland march, Hamilton decided to risk a
dangerous passage across 36 miles of open water at the western
end of Lake Erie. Despite, rain, wind, early darkness, and a rock-
studded shore, the expedition arrived safely within 1 mile of the
objective, the mouth of the Maumee River.

The men pulled and poled the boats up the Maumee as far as the
rapids, where navigable water ended and a portage began
Arriving there on October 11, they met a force dispatched earlier,
made up of 33 regulars of the 8th Regirnent with 14 tons of


Mississippi River in the west. Their claim, and the military steps
they took to enforce it, led to the French and Indian War in
North America (1754-1763). France lost that war, and the British
and Spanish took over all French possessions on the North
American continent. The forts and villages of the Illinois Country
became a part of the British Province of Quebec.

The push of the colonial Americans to the west increased after
1760. In 1763 the Indians tried to stop it by force. In a general
uprising, they took eight frontier forts and killed or captured some
2,000 English-American soldiers, traders, and settlers. That
same year the British government also tried to stop the flow of
settlers by Royal Proclamation. The Americans repulsed the
Indians, ignored the Proclamation, and continued the push to
the west. Lord Dunmore, the last British governor of Virginia,
wrote his superior in London to deptore the American attitude:
“| have learnt from experience that the established authority of any
government in America and at home are both insufficient to restrain
ihe Americans; and that they do and will remove as their avidity and
restlessness excite them. They acquire no attachments to place; but
wandering about seems engrafted in their nature; they do not conceive
that Government has any right to forbid their taking possession of a
vast tract of country either uninhabited or which serves only as a
shelter to a few scattered tribes of Indians.”"

The Indiana historian Frederick A. Ogg, writing in 1904, described
the appeal of the western lands to the British-American immi-
grants, many of whom had recently arrived from countries where
all the land was taken. After crossing the Alleghenies the pioneer
settler ‘‘stood on the threshold of the most magnificent heritage
that has ever been vouchsafed to an enterprising people.” An
area of more than one and a quarter million square miles
stretched before him, extending to the Gulf of Mexico, the Rocky
Mountains, and the Great Lakes. It was an area whose economic
possibilities no region in the world equalled. No area in the

Old World or the New matched the Mississippi Valley for richness
of soil and variety of climate. “‘All the great countries of central
Europe—Germany, Austria-Hungary, France and Italy—could

be set down in it, and yet there would be room to spare."

George Rogers Clark put his admiration for this land more
simply in a letter he wrote to his brother after seeing Kentucky
for the first time: ‘A richer and more beautiful country than this
| believe has never been seen in America yet.’ And he con-
sidered it worth fighting for.

The chance came in the spring of 1775 when the long-smoldering
hostility between England and her American colonies erupted
into armed conflict. At that time Clark was a 23-year-old assistant
surveyor in Kentucky, working for £ 80 per year plus the privilege
of claiming land for himself. As a captain of militia, he joined

with other officers at Fort Gower to vote the resolution, “As the
love of liberty and attachment to the real interests and just rights
of America outweigh every other consideration, we resolve that


61

constructed a 13-room, Georgian-style brick mansion named
“Grouseland” on 300 acres he had bought (probably from Francis
Vigo), with a large chamber designed for council meetings,
outbuildings, and window glass brought from Great Britain.

The 1800 census showed a population of only 5,600 throughout all
the Indiana Territory, including 163 free Negroes and 135 slaves.
Many of the settlers lived under the protection of the Vincennes
post. At Michilimackinac, the extreme northern settlement, there
were 251 citizens. The fur traders scattered around the Great
Lakes were estimated to number 300. There were 50 people in the
setilement at Green Bay, 65 at Prairie du Chien. Lower down the
Mississippi the settlements were more numerous and more
populous. In and about Cahokia were 719 people; in Belle
Fontaine Township, 286; L'Aigle, 250; Kaskaskia and Prairie du
Rocher, 679; Mitchel Township, 334; Fort Massac on the Ohio, 90;
and in Clark's Grant, 929. in the interior there was nothing that
could be called a settlement except Vincennes, which had 714
inhabitants and 819 others in its near vicinity. But by 1805, land
offices had been opened at Vincennes and Kaskaskia, and vast
areas of new land were being surveyed and offered for sale.
Settlements now stretched along the Ohio from Cincinnati to
Evansville, and some were already situated far up the Whitewater,
White, and Wabash rivers.

In 1804 the 4,000 inhabitants of Wayne County (the northern
portion of the vast Indiana Territory) petitioned Congress for a
separate government, and 5 years later Kaskaskia and Cahokia
filed a similar petition. The Indiana legislature favored those
developments, believing that local governments in Illinois would
attract more settlers and increase land sales everywhere.

As Superintendent of Indian Affairs, Governor Harrison had been
instructed to obtain the public domain on Indian land claims and
open it to settlemeni. By a series of treaties signed with individual
tribes between 1802 and 1809, he succeeded in extinguishing the
indians’ title to much of the land south of the site of Indianapolis.
Tecumseh, chief of the Shawnees, and his brother, Tenskwatawa
(The Prophet), held that all the Indian land was the common
possession of all the Indian tribes, and that no individual tribe had
the right to sell or cede such land. The United States, of course,
refused to accept that principle. Tecumseh and The Prophet
sought to ally all the tribes in the Mississippi and Ohio valleys and
drive the American settlers across the Ohio River. At Harrison's
invitation, Tecumseh came to Vincennes for a conference, quietly
leading several hundred warriors to camp under the trees near
Grouseland. No agreement could be reached, and both sides
prepared for war. Harrison gathered a force of about 900 militia
and regulars to attack The Prophet's camp (near present-day
Lafayette). In November 1811, at Tippecanoe, some 700 Indians
attacked Harrison's force but were repulsed. While the battle was
not a clear-cut military victory for the Americans, Indian power to
resist white encroachment in the Old Northwest was broken
forever. Nothing but natural impediments now kept the settlers


47

about 80 yards from the southeastern wall. Clark held 50 men in
reserve, ready to move quickly if the British sallied from the fort

Those surrounding the fort fired into the gun ports and through
the spaces between the palisades, some of which were as

large as a man’s fist. The defenders were forced to shutter the
embrasures and virtually discontinue using their cannon, for the
barrels could not be depressed to hit the men near the walls, and
a hail of rifle bullets came through the embrasures when the
gunners, after loading, ran the piece out and attempted to aim
and fire. Six of the garrison—one-sixth of the regulars—were
wounded.

During the night, Tobacco's Son appeared at Clark's headquarters
in a house on the northeast side of Main Street near the river.

He led about 100 Piankashaw and Kickapoo warriors and
announced that he wished to take part in the attack on the British.
Clark thanked his old friend for the offer of help but suggested that
he hold his men away from the action until morning, as in a night
attack ‘‘some confution might happen if our men should mix in

the dark." He asked the chief to stay at his side throughout the
night as his advisor, ‘‘which was agreable to him.”

In the meantime, Captains La Mothe and Maisonville and their
Canadians, having heard the firing behind them, abandoned their
patrol, returned to Vincennes, and lay concealed in a barn
watching the action and hoping for an opportunity to enter the fort.
Two of their men, deciding to declare their own private peace,
slipped away. Captured by the Virginians, they revealed the
presence of La Mothe and his men in the village.

Capture of this force would have been easy, but Clark made a
characteristically unorthodox decision: he took steps to let the
men rejoin the garrison. Word was passed to cease firing and to
withdraw a little. La Mothe and his men crept to the wall, gave the
password, and began to ascend the ladders that were lowered.

As they reached the top of the palisade, some fun-loving Virginians
a few yards away let out a blood-curdling yell. The Canadians,

in a panic, tried to scramble over the wall in a body; some of them
fell or leaped to the ground inside or outside the wall. All but one
managed to struggle up the ladders and over the wall. Captain
Maisonville, betrayed by a cousin in the village, was captured.
Now Clark's worst fear was eased: La Mothe and his patrol were
penned up in the fort; they could not go into the countryside and
rally the Indians to attack his small force. The addition of 20 men
would add no great strength to the garrison. and it surely would
lead Hamilton to believe the Virginians were massed in great
numbers.

The moon went down at 1 a.m., but the firing continued
intermittently all night. At daybreak the defenders increased their
fire sharply, and the first Virginian was wounded; he was grazed
slightly on the head. From deserters or prisoners, Clark learned
during the night about the two Virginians Maisonville had captured


(presumably deserters). Clark was expecting them, for his
Kickapoo allies had told him they were coming. He assigned
Capt. John Williams to greet, salute, and capture them.

Because there was no exchange of fire between Clark's and
Hamilton’s forces at the time and the British flag was still flying
over the fort, the Indians and their French leaders assumed that
Williams and his men were a party sent out to escort them to the
fort, an honor commonly paid them on returning from a foray.
They gave a war whoop and, in Clark's words, “came on with all
the parade of sucksessful warriors. | was highly pleased to see
each party hooping, hollowing, and striking each other's breasts.
As they approached in the open fields, each seemed to try to out
do the other in the greatest signs of joy.’ The Indians discharged
their pieces in the air, as was the custom when meeting friends.
Williams discharged his rifle. When a few steps away, the French
leader stopped, suddenly suspicious. Williams immediately
seized him. The others, seeing their mistake, turned and ran.
Williams’ men opened fire, killing two, wounding three, and
capturing eight. Two of those captured were recognized as
prisoners and were released. Said Clark:
“| had now a fair oppertunity to make an impression on the Indians that

1 could have wished for; that of convincing them that Governor Hamilton

could not give them that protection that he had made them believe

he could. In some measure to insence the Indians against him for not

exerting himself to save their friends, [I] ordered the prisoners to be

tomahawked in the face of the Garrisson.”’

Captain Williams paraded the Indians in the main street opposite
the fort gate, their hands bound, and ordered them to sit ina
circle. The British were watching over the palisade. The first
Indian was tomahawked. The others began to sing their death
song. They were singing when they were killed.

“It had the effect that | expected: Instead of making their (Indian] friends
inviterate against us, they upbraided the English parties in not trying to
save their friends and gave them to understand that they believed them
to be liars and no warriors.”’

Clark also ordered the white partisan leader, painted and dressed
like an Indian, to be killed, and Lieutenant La Croix, an elderly
officer-volunteer from Cahokia, drew his sword to run the man
through if he tried to escape. Clark: “The wretch, on seeing the
executioner’s tomahawk raised to give the fatal stroke, raised his
eyes as if making his last addresses to heaven, cried out,

‘O save me.’ " La Croix at once recognized the voice of his own
son. Clark: ‘Knowing there would be the greatest selicitations
made to save him, that | immediately absconded myself: but by
the warmest selicitations from his father, who had behaved so
exceedingly well in our service, and some of the officers, | granted
him his life on certain conditions.”

About 2 p.m. the gate opened and Hamilton, in full dress uniform,
walked down the street, accompanied by his major, Jehu Hay,

49


3

First Victory in the West

12

Before Clark and his little army had gone many miles down the
Ohio, the invasion of the Illinois Country was no longer a secret;
it was being talked about in the settlements and on the trails
throughout Kentucky. His only hope now for success lay in his
ability to travel faster than the news. Pairs of men were put on
each oar, and for 4 days and nights they rowed continuously in
double shifts

The train of boats came to the mouth of the Wabash. Vincennes
lay 100 miles up that river, but Clark continued on down the Ohio.
He had decided to by-pass Vincennes and attack Kaskaskia first.

Leading a body of men on a dangerous military mission calls for

a series of such tactical command decisions. If all or most of the
decisions are right, and if he is lucky, the commander may
succeed. If one major decision is wrong, with or without luck, he
may fail. Clark knew that there were more armed Frenchmen in the
Kaskaskia area than in Vincennes, but he also knew that they were
scattered in different villages. If his attack failed, he and his men
might make a safe retreat to the Spanish side of the Mississippi.
Moreover, the influence of the Kaskaskians over the Indians was
so strong that their chiefs might be persuaded to avoid a clash
with the ‘Long Knives’’—the Americans.

They saw no one on the river for several days, but then a canoe
appeared behind them, drew nearer, and overtook Clark’s lead
boat. The canoe was manned by William Linn, the brother of
Clark’s agent in Kaskaskia a year earlier. A dispatch had been
brought into Corn Island from Fort Pitt shortly after Clark’s