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PRESIDENTIAL EDITION

THE WINNING OF THE WEST

BY

THEODORE ROOSEVELT

VOLUME TWO

FROM THE ALLEGHANIES TO THE MISSISSIPPI 1777-1783

WITH MAPS

THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED WITH HIS PERMISSION TO

FRANCIS PARKMAN

TO WHOM AMERICANS WHO FEEL A PRIDE IN THE PIONEER HISTORY OF THEIR COUNTRY ARE SO GREATLY INDEBTED

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER

I.—THE WAR IN THE NORTHWEST, 1777-1778.

II.—CLARK'S CONQUEST OF THE ILLINOIS, 1778.

III.—CLARK'S CAMPAIGN AGAINST VINCENNES, 1779.

IV.—CONTINUANCE OF THE STRUGGLE IN KENTUCKY AND THE NORTHWEST, 1779-1781.

V.—THE MORAVIAN MASSACRE, 1779-1782.

VI.—THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE CONQUERED FRENCH SETTLEMENTS, 1779-1783.

VII.—KENTUCKY UNTIL THE END OF THE REVOLUTION, 1782-1783.

VIII.—THE HOLSTON SETTLEMENTS, 1777-1779.

IX—KING'S MOUNTAIN, 1780.

X.—THE HOLSTON SETTLEMENTS TO THE END OF THE REVOLUTION, 1781-1783.

XI.—ROBERTSON FOUNDS THE CUMBERLAND SETTLEMENT, 1779-1780.

XII.—THE CUMBERLAND SETTLEMENTS TO THE CLOSE OF THE REVOLUTION, 1781-1783.

XIII.—WHAT THE WESTERNERS HAD DONE DURING THE REVOLUTION.

APPENDICES:

APPENDIX A—To CHAPTER I.
APPENDIX B—To CHAPTER II.
APPENDIX C—To CHAPTER III.
APPENDIX D—To CHAPTER IV.
APPENDIX E—To CHAPTER VII.
APPENDIX F—To CHAPTER VII.
APPENDIX G—To CHAPTER X.
APPENDIX H—To CHAPTER XII.
APPENDIX I—To CHAPTER XIII.
APPENDIX J—To CHAPTER XIII.

INDEX

[Illustration: The Colonies in 1774, when the First Continental Congress assembled. The heavy line marks roughly the extension of population westward. Based on a map by G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York and London.]

[Illustration: The States in 1783, when peace was declared. Based on a map by G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York and London.]

CHAPTER I.

THE WAR IN THE NORTHWEST, 1777-1778.

The Tribes Hold Councils at Detroit.

In the fall of 1776 it became evident that a formidable Indian war was impending. At Detroit great councils were held by all the northwestern tribes, to whom the Six Nations sent the white belt of peace, that they might cease their feuds and join against the Americans. The later councils were summoned by Henry Hamilton, the British lieutenant-governor of the northwestern region, whose head-quarters were at Detroit. He was an ambitious, energetic, unscrupulous man, of bold character, who wielded great influence over the Indians; and the conduct of the war in the west, as well as the entire management of frontier affairs, was intrusted to him by the British Government. [Footnote: Haldimand MSS. Sir Guy Carleton to Hamilton, September 26, 1777.] He had been ordered to enlist the Indians on the British side, and have them ready to act against the Americans in the spring; [Footnote: Do., Carleton to Hamilton, October 6, 1776.] and accordingly he gathered the tribes together. He himself took part in the war-talks, plying the Indians with presents and fire-water no less than with speeches and promises. The headmen of the different tribes, as they grew excited, passed one another black, red or bloody, and tomahawk belts, as tokens of the vengeance to be taken on their white foes. One Delaware chief still held out for neutrality, announcing that if he had to side with either set of combatants it would be with the "buckskins," or backwoodsmen, and not with the red-coats; but the bulk of the warriors sympathized with the Half King of the Wyandots when he said that the Long Knives had for years interfered with the Indians' hunting, and that now at last it was the Indians' turn to threaten revenge. [Footnote: "Am. Archives," 1st Series, Vol. II., p. 517. There were several councils held at Detroit during this fall, and it is difficult—and not very important—to separate the incidents that occurred at each. Some took place before Hamilton arrived, which, according to his "brief account," was November 9th. He asserts that he did not send out war parties until the following June; but the testimony seems conclusive that he was active in instigating hostility from the time of his arrival.]

Lt-Gov. Henry Hamilton. Scalp Buying.

Hamilton was for the next two years the mainspring of Indian hostility to the Americans in the northwest. From the beginning he had been anxious to employ the savages against the settlers, and when the home government bade him hire them he soon proved himself very expert, as well as very ruthless, in their use. [Footnote: Haldimand MSS. Germaine to Carlton, March 26, 1777.] He rapidly acquired the venomous hatred of the backwoodsmen, who held him in peculiar abhorrence, and nicknamed him the "hair-buyer" general, asserting that he put a price on the scalps of the Americans. This allegation may have been untrue as affecting Hamilton personally; he always endeavored to get the war parties to bring in prisoners, and behaved well to the captives when they were in his power; nor is there any direct evidence that he himself paid out money for scalps. But scalps were certainly bought and paid for at Detroit; [Footnote: See the "American Pioneer," I., 292, for a very curious account of an Indian, who by dividing a large scalp into two got fifty dollars for each half at Detroit.] and the commandant himself was accustomed to receive them with formal solemnity at the councils held to greet the war parties when they returned from successful raids. [Footnote: Haldimand MSS; passim; also Heckewelder, etc.] The only way to keep the friendship of the Indians was continually to give them presents; these presents were naturally given to the most successful warriors; and the scalps were the only safe proofs of a warrior's success. Doubtless the commandant and the higher British officers generally treated the Americans humanely when they were brought into contact with them; and it is not likely that they knew, or were willing to know, exactly what the savages did in all cases. But they at least connived at the measures of their subordinates. These were hardened, embittered, men who paid for the zeal of their Indian allies accordingly as they received tangible proof thereof; in other words, they hired them to murder non-combatants as well as soldiers, and paid for each life, of any sort, that was taken. The fault lay primarily with the British Government, and with those of its advisers who, like Hamilton, advocated the employment of the savages. They thereby became participants in the crimes committed; and it was idle folly for them to prate about having bidden the savages be merciful. The sin consisted in having let them loose on the borders; once they were let loose it was absolutely impossible to control them. Moreover, the British sinned against knowledge; for some of their highest and most trusted officers on the frontier had written those in supreme command, relating the cruelties practised by the Indians upon the defenceless, and urging that they should not be made allies, but rather that their neutrality only should be secured. [Footnote: E. g. in Haldimand MSS. Lieut.-Gov. Abbott to General Carleton, June 8, 1778.] The average American backwoodsman was quite as brutal and inconsiderate a victor as the average British officer; in fact, he was in all likelihood the less humane of the two; but the Englishman deliberately made the deeds of the savage his own. Making all allowance for the strait in which the British found themselves, and admitting that much can be said against their accusers, the fact remains that they urged on hordes of savages to slaughter men, women, and children along the entire frontier; and for this there must ever rest a dark stain on their national history.

Hamilton organized a troop of white rangers from among the French, British, and Tories at Detroit. They acted as allies of the Indians, and furnished leaders to them. Three of these leaders were the tories McKee, Elliot, and Girty, who had fled together from Pittsburg [Footnote: Haldimand MSS. Hamilton's letter, April 25. 1778. "April the 20th-Edward Hayle (who had undertaken to carry a letter from me to the Moravian Minister at Kushayhking) returned, having executed his commission—he brought me a letter & newspapers from Mr. McKee who was Indian Agent for the Crown and has been a long time in the hands of the Rebels at Fort Pitt, at length has found means to make his escape with three other men, two of the name of Girty (mentioned in Lord Dunmore's list) interpreters & Matthew Elliott the young man who was last summer sent down from this place a prisoner.—This last person I am informed has been at New York since he left Quebec, and probably finding the change in affairs unfavourable to the Rebels, has slipp'd away to make his peace here.

"23d—Hayle went off again to conduct them all safe through the Villages having a letter & Wampum for that purpose. Alexander McKee is a man of good character, and has great influence with the Shawanese is well acquainted with the country & can probably give some useful intelligence, he will probably reach this place in a few days.">[ they all three warred against their countrymen with determined ferocity. Girty won the widest fame on the border by his cunning and cruelty; but he was really a less able foe than the two others. McKee in particular showed himself a fairly good commander of Indians and irregular troops; as did likewise an Englishman named Caldwell, and two French partisans, De Quindre and Lamothe, who were hearty supporters of the British.

The British Begin a War of Extermination.

Hamilton and his subordinates, both red and white, were engaged in what was essentially an effort to exterminate the borderers. They were not endeavoring merely to defeat the armed bodies of the enemy. They were explicitly bidden by those in supreme command to push back the frontier, to expel the settlers from the country. Hamilton himself had been ordered by his immediate official superior to assail the borders of Pennsylvania and Virginia with his savages, to destroy the crops and buildings of the settlers who had advanced beyond the mountains, and to give to his Indian allies,—the Hurons, Shawnees, and other tribes,—all the land of which they thus took possession. [Footnote: Haldimand MSS. Haldimand to Hamilton, August 6, 1778.] With such allies as Hamilton had this order was tantamount to proclaiming a war of extermination, waged with appalling and horrible cruelty against the settlers, of all ages and sexes. It brings out in bold relief the fact that in the west the war of the Revolution was an effort on the part of Great Britain to stop the westward growth of the English race in America, and to keep the region beyond the Alleghanies as a region where only savages should dwell.

All the Northwestern Tribes go to War.

All through the winter of '76-77 the northwestern Indians were preparing to take up the tomahawk. Runners were sent through the leafless, frozen woods from one to another of their winter camps. In each bleak, frail village, each snow-hidden cluster of bark wigwams, the painted, half-naked warriors danced the war dance, and sang the war song, beating the ground with their war clubs and keeping time with their feet to the rhythmic chant as they moved in rings round the peeled post, into which they struck their hatchets. The hereditary sachems, the peace chiefs, could no longer control the young men. The braves made ready their weapons and battle gear; their bodies were painted red and black, the plumes of the war eagle were braided into their long scalp locks, and some put on necklaces of bears' claws, and head-dresses made of panther skin, or of the shaggy and horned frontlet of the buffalo. [Footnote: For instances of an Indian wearing this buffalo cap, with the horns on, see Kercheval and De Haas.]

Before the snow was off the ground the war parties crossed the Ohio and fell on the frontiers from the Monongahela and Kanawha to the Kentucky. [Footnote: State Department MSS. for 1777, passim. So successful were the Indian chiefs in hoodwinking the officers at Fort Pitt that some of the latter continued to believe that only three or four hundred Indians had gone on the war path.]

On the Pennsylvanian and Virginian frontiers the panic was tremendous. The people fled into the already existing forts, or hastily built others; where there were but two or three families in a place, they merely gathered into block-houses—stout log-cabins two stories high, with loop-holed walls, and the upper story projecting a little over the lower. The savages, well armed with weapons supplied them from the British arsenals on the Great Lakes, spread over the country; and there ensued all the horrors incident to a war waged as relentlessly against the most helpless non-combatants as against the armed soldiers in the field. Block-houses were surprised and burnt; bodies of militia were ambushed and destroyed. The settlers were shot down as they sat by their hearth-stones in the evening, or ploughed the ground during the day; the lurking Indians crept up and killed them while they still-hunted the deer, or while they lay in wait for the elk beside the well-beaten game trails.

The captured women and little ones were driven off to the far interior. The weak among them, the young children, and the women heavy with child, were tomahawked and scalped as soon as their steps faltered. The able-bodied, who could stand the terrible fatigue, and reached their journey's end, suffered various fates. Some were burned at the stake, others were sold to the French or British traders, and long afterwards made their escape, or were ransomed by their relatives. Still others were kept in the Indian camps, the women becoming the slaves or wives of the warriors, [Footnote: Occasionally we come across records of the women afterwards making their escape; very rarely they took their half-breed babies with them. De Haas mentions one such case where the husband, though he received his wife well, always hated the copper-colored addition to his family; the latter, by the way, grew up a thorough Indian, could not be educated, and finally ran away, joined the Revolutionary army, and was never heard of afterwards.] while the children were adopted into the tribe, and grew up precisely like their little red-skinned playmates. Sometimes, when they had come to full growth, they rejoined the whites; but generally they were enthralled by the wild freedom and fascination of their forest life, and never forsook their adopted tribesmen, remaining inveterate foes of their own color. Among the ever-recurring: tragedies of the frontier, not the least sorrowful was the recovery of these long-missing children by their parents, only to find that they had lost all remembrance of and love for their father and mother, and had become irreclaimable savages, who eagerly grasped the first chance to flee from the intolerable irksomeness and restraint of civilized life. [Footnote: For an instance where a boy finally returned, see "Trans-Alleghany Pioneers," p. 119; see also pp. 126, 132, 133, for instances of the capture and treatment of whites by Indians.]

The Attack on Wheeling.

Among others, the stockade at Wheeling [Footnote: Fort Henry. For an account of the siege, see De Haas, pp. 223-340. It took place in the early days of September.] was attacked by two or three hundred Indians; with them came a party of Detroit Rangers, marshalled by drum and fife, and carrying the British colors. [Footnote The accounts of the different sieges of Wheeling were first written down from the statements of the pioneers when they had grown very aged. In consequence, there is much uncertainty as to the various incidents. Thus there seems to be a doubt whether Girty did or did not command the Indians in this first siege. The frontiersmen hated Girty as they did no other man, and he was credited with numerous actions done by other white leaders of the Indians; the British accounts say comparatively little about him. He seems to have often fought with the Indians as one of their own number, while his associates led organized bands of rangers; he was thus more often brought into contact with the frontiersmen, but was really hardly as dangerous a foe to them as were one or two of his tory companions.] Most of the men inside the fort were drawn out by a stratagem, fell into an ambuscade, and were slain; but the remainder made good the defence, helped by the women, who ran the lead into bullets, cooled and loaded the guns, and even, when the rush was made, assisted to repel it by firing through the loopholes. After making a determined effort to storm the stockade, in which some of the boldest warriors were slain while trying in vain to batter down the gates with heavy timbers, the baffled Indians were obliged to retire discomfited. The siege was chiefly memorable because of an incident which is to this day a staple theme for story-telling in the cabins of the mountaineers. One of the leading men of the neighborhood was Major Samuel McColloch, renowned along the border as the chief in a family famous for its Indian fighters, the dread and terror of the savages, many of whose most noted warriors he slew, and at whose hands he himself, in the end, met his death. When Wheeling was invested, he tried to break into it, riding a favorite old white horse. But the Indians intercepted him, and hemmed him in on the brink of an almost perpendicular slope, [Footnote: The hill overlooks Wheeling; the slope has now much crumbled away, and in consequence has lost its steepness.] some three hundred feet high. So sheer was the descent that they did not dream any horse could go down it, and instead of shooting they advanced to capture the man whom they hated. McColloch had no thought of surrendering, to die by fire at the stake, and he had as little hope of resistance against so many foes. Wheeling short round, he sat back in the saddle, shifted his rifle into his right hand, reined in his steed, and spurred him over the brink. The old horse never faltered, but plunged headlong down the steep, boulder-covered, cliff-broken slope. Good luck, aided by the wonderful skill of the rider and the marvellous strength and sure-footedness of his steed, rewarded, as it deserved, one of the most daring feats of horsemanship of which we have any authentic record. There was a crash, the shock of a heavy body, half springing, half falling, a scramble among loose rocks, and the snapping of saplings and bushes; and in another moment the awe-struck Indians above saw their unharmed foe, galloping his gallant white horse in safety across the plain. To this day the place is known by the name of McColloch's leap. [Footnote: In the west this feat is as well known as is Putnam's similar deed in the north.]

In Virginia and Pennsylvania the Indian outrages meant only the harassing of the borderers; in Kentucky they threatened the complete destruction of the vanguard of the white advance and, therefore the stoppage of all settlement west of the Alleghanies until after the Revolutionary war, when very possibly the soil might not have been ours to settle. Fortunately Hamilton did not yet realize the importance of the Kentucky settlements, nor the necessity of crushing them, and during 1777 the war bands organized at Detroit were sent against the country round Pittsburg; while the feeble forts in the far western wilderness were only troubled by smaller war parties raised among the tribes on their own account. A strong expedition, led by Hamilton in person, would doubtless at this time have crushed them.

The Struggle in Kentucky.

As it was, there were still so few whites in Kentucky that they were greatly outnumbered by the invading Indians. They were, in consequence, unable to meet the enemy in the open field, and gathered in their stations or forted villages. Therefore the early conflicts, for the most part, took the form of sieges of these wooden forts. Such sieges, had little in common with the corresponding operations of civilized armies. The Indians usually tried to surprise a fort; if they failed, they occasionally tried to carry it by open assault, or by setting fire to it, but very rarely, indeed, beleaguered it in form. For this they lacked both the discipline and the commissariat. Accordingly, if their first rush miscarried, they usually dispersed in the woods to hunt, or look for small parties of whites; always, however, leaving some of their number to hover round the fort and watch any thing that took place. Masters in the art of hiding, and able to conceal themselves behind a bush, a stone, or a tuft of weeds, they skulked round the gate before dawn, to shoot the white sentinels; or they ambushed the springs, and killed those who came for water; they slaughtered all of the cattle that had not been driven in, and any one venturing incautiously beyond the walls was certain to be waylaid and murdered. Those who were thus hemmed in the fort were obliged to get game on which to live; the hunters accordingly were accustomed to leave before daybreak, travel eight or ten miles, hunt all day at the risk of their lives, and return after dark. Being of course the picked men of the garrison, they often eluded the Indians, or slew them if an encounter took place, but very frequently indeed they were themselves slain. The Indians always trusted greatly to wiles and feints to draw their foes into their power. As ever in this woodland fighting, their superiority in hiding, or taking advantage of cover, counterbalanced the superiority of the whites as marksmen; and their war parties were thus at least a match, man against man, for the Kentuckians, though the latter, together with the Watauga men, were the best woodsmen and fighters of the frontier. Only a very few of the whites became, like Boon and Kenton, able to beat the best of the savages at their own game.

The innumerable sieges that took place during the long years of Indian warfare differed in detail, but generally closely resembled one another as regards the main points. Those that occurred in 1777 may be considered as samples of the rest; and accounts of these have been preserved by the two chief actors, Boon and Clark. [Footnote: In Boon's narrative, written down by Filson, and in Clark's diary, as given by Morehead. The McAfee MSS. and Butler's history give some valuable information. Boon asserts that at this time the "Long Knives" proved themselves superior to their foe in almost every battle; but the facts do not seem to sustain him, though the statement was doubtless true as regards a few picked men. His estimates of the Indian numbers and losses must be received with great caution.]

Boonsborough Attacked.

Boonsborough, which was held by twenty-two riflemen, was attacked twice, once in April and again in July, on each occasion by a party of fifty or a hundred warriors. [Footnote: Boon says April 15th and July 4th. Clark's diary makes the first date April 24th. Boon says one hundred Indians, Clark "40 or 50." Clark's account of the loss on both sides agrees tolerably well with Boon's. Clark's diary makes the second attack take place on May 23d. His dates are probably correct, as Boon must have written only from memory.] The first time the garrison was taken by surprise; one man lost his scalp, and four were wounded, including Boon himself, who had been commissioned as captain in the county militia. [Footnote: Two of the other wounded men were Captain John Todd and Boon's old hunting companion, Stoner.] The Indians promptly withdrew when they found they could not carry the fort by a sudden assault. On the second occasion the whites were on their guard, and though they had one man killed and two wounded (leaving but thirteen unhurt men in the fort), they easily beat off the assailants, and slew half a dozen of them. This time the Indians stayed round two days, keeping up a heavy fire, under cover of which they several times tried to burn the fort. [Footnote: Clark's diary.]

Logan's Adventures.

Logan's [Footnote: Boon says July 19th, Clark's diary makes it May 30th: Clark is undoubtedly right; he gives the names of the man who was killed and of the two who were wounded.] station at St. Asaphs was likewise attacked; it was held by only fifteen gunmen. When the attack was made the women, guarded by part of the men, were milking the cows outside the fort. The Indians fired at them from the thick cane that still stood near-by, killing one man and wounding two others, one mortally. [Footnote: The name of the latter was Burr Harrison; he died a fortnight afterward.—Clark.] The party, of course, fled to the fort, and on looking back they saw their mortally wounded friend weltering on the ground. His wife and family were within the walls; through the loopholes they could see him yet alive, and exposed every moment to death. So great was the danger that the men refused to go out to his rescue, whereupon Logan alone opened the gate, bounded out, and seizing the wounded man in his arms, carried him back unharmed through a shower of bullets. The Indians continued to lurk around the neighborhood, and the ammunition grew very scarce. Thereupon Logan took two companions and left the fort at night to go to the distant settlements on the Holston, where he might get powder and lead. He knew that the Indians were watching the wilderness road, and trusting to his own hardiness and consummate woodcraft, he struck straight out across the cliff-broken, wood-covered mountains, sleeping wherever night overtook him, and travelling all day long with the tireless speed of a wolf. [Footnote: Not a fanciful comparison; the wolf is the only animal that an Indian or a trained frontiersman cannot tire out in several days' travel. Following a deer two days in light snow, I have myself gotten near enough to shoot it without difficulty.] He returned with the needed stores in ten days from the time he set out. These tided the people over the warm months.

In the fall, when the hickories had turned yellow and the oaks deep red, during the weeks of still, hazy weather that mark the Indian summer, their favorite hunting season, [Footnote: Usually early in November.—McAfee MSS.] the savages again filled the land, and Logan was obliged to repeat his perilous journey. [Footnote: Marshall, 50.] He also continually led small bands of his followers against the Indian war—and hunting-parties, sometimes surprising and dispersing them, and harassing them greatly. Moreover he hunted steadily throughout the year to keep the station in meat, for the most skilful hunters were, in those days of scarcity, obliged to spend much of their time in the chase. Once, while at a noted game lick, [Footnote: These game licks were common, and were of enormous extent. Multitudes of game, through countless generations, had tramped the ground bare of vegetation, and had made deep pits and channels with their hoofs and tongues. See McAfee MSS. Sometimes the licks covered acres of ground, while the game trails leading towards them through the wood were as broad as streets, even 100 feet wide. I have myself seen small game licks, the largest not a hundred feet across, in the Selkirks, Coeur d'Alenes, and Bighorns, the ground all tramped up by the hoofs of elk, deer, wild sheep, and white goats, with deep furrows and hollows where the saline deposits existed. In the Little Missouri Bad Lands there is so much mineral matter that no regular licks are needed. As the game is killed off the licks become overgrown and lost.] waiting for deer, he was surprised by the Indians, and by their fire was wounded in the breast and had his right arm broken. Nevertheless he sprang on his horse and escaped, though the savages were so close that one, leaping at him, for a moment grasped the tail of the horse. Every one of these pioneer leaders, from Clark and Boon to Sevier and Robertson, was required constantly to expose his life; each lost sons or brothers at the hands of the Indians, and each thinned the ranks of the enemy with his own rifle. In such a primitive state of society the man who led others was expected to show strength of body no less than strength of mind and heart; he depended upon his physical prowess almost as much as upon craft, courage, and headwork. The founder and head of each little community needed not only a shrewd brain and commanding temper, but also the thews and training to make him excel as woodsman and hunter, and the heart and eye to enable him to stand foremost in every Indian battle.

Clark Shares in the Defense of Kentucky.

Clark spent most of the year at Harrodstown, taking part in the defence of Kentucky. All the while he was revolving in his bold, ambitious heart a scheme for the conquest of the Illinois country, and he sent scouts thither to spy out the land and report to him what they saw. The Indians lurked round Harrodstown throughout the summer; and Clark and his companions were engaged in constant skirmishes with them. Once, warned by the uneasy restlessness of the cattle (who were sure to betray the presence of Indians if they got sight or smell of them), they were able to surround a party of ten or twelve, who were hidden in a tall clump of weeds. The savages were intent on cutting off some whites who were working in a turnip patch two hundred yards from the fort; Clark's party killed three—he himself killing one,—wounded another, and sold the plunder they took, at auction, for seventy pounds. At other times the skirmishes resulted differently, as on the occasion chronicled by Clark in his diary, when they "went out to hunt Indians; one wounded Squire Boon and escaped." [Footnote: Clark's Diary, entry for July 9th.]

The corn was brought in from the cribs under guard; one day while shelling a quantity, a body of thirty-seven whites were attacked, and seven were killed or wounded, though the Indians were beaten off and two scalps taken. In spite of this constant warfare the fields near the forts were gradually cleared, and planted with corn, pumpkins, and melons; and marrying and mirth-making went on within the walls. One of Clark's scouts, shortly after returning from the Illinois, got married, doubtless feeling he deserved some reward for the hardships he had suffered; on the wedding night Clark remarks that there was "great merriment." The rare and infrequent expresses from Pittsburg or Williamsburg brought letters telling of Washington's campaigns, which Clark read with absorbed interest. On the first of October, having matured his plans for the Illinois campaign, he left for Virginia, to see if he could get the government to help him put them into execution.

The Holston men Help Kentucky.

During the summer parties of backwoods militia from the Holston settlements—both Virginians and Carolinians—came out to help the Kentuckians in their struggle against the Indians; but they only stayed a few weeks, and then returned home. In the fall, however, several companies of immigrants came out across the mountains; and at the same time the small parties of hunters succeeded in pretty well clearing the woods of Indians. Many of the lesser camps and stations had been broken up, and at the end of the year there remained only four—Boonsborough, Harrodstown, Logan's station at St. Asaphs, and McGarry's, at the Shawnee Springs. They contained in all some five or six hundred permanent settlers, nearly half of them being able-bodied riflemen. [Footnote: The McAfee MSS. give these four stations; Boon says there were but three. He was writing from memory, however, and was probably mistaken; thus he says there were at that time settlers at the Falls, an evident mistake, as there were none there till the following year. Collins, following Marshall, says there were at the end of the year only one hundred and two men in Kentucky,—sixty-five at Harrodstown, twenty-two at Boonsborough, fifteen at Logan's. This is a mistake based on a hasty reading of Boon's narrative, which gives this number for July, and particularly adds that after that data they began to strengthen. In the McAfee MSS. is a census of Harrodstown for the fall of 1777, which sums up: Men in service, 81; men not in service, 4; women, 24; children above ten, 12; children under ten, 58; slaves above ten, 12; slaves under ten, 7; total, 198. In October Clark in his diary records meeting fifty men with their families, (therefore permanent settlers), on their way to Boon, and thirty-eight men on their way to Logan's. At the end of the year, therefore, Boonsborough and Harrodstown must have held about two hundred souls apiece; Logan's and McGarry's were considerably smaller. The large proportion of young children testifies to the prolific nature of the Kentucky women, and also shows the permanent nature of the settlements. Two years previously, in 1775, there had been, perhaps, three hundred people in Kentucky, but very many of them were not permanent residents.]

Boon Captured.

Early in 1778 a severe calamity befell the settlements. In January Boon went, with twenty-nine other men, to the Blue Licks to make salt for the different garrisons—for hitherto this necessary of life had been brought in, at great trouble and expense, from the settlements. [Footnote: See Clark's Diary, entry for October 25, 1777.] The following month, having sent three men back with loads of salt, he and all the others were surprised and captured by a party of eighty or ninety Miamis, led by two Frenchmen, named Baubin and Lorimer. [Footnote: Haldimand MSS. B., 122, p. 35. Hamilton to Carleton, April 25, 1778. He says four-score Miamis.] When surrounded, so that there was no hope of escape, Boon agreed that all should surrender on condition of being well treated. The Indians on this occasion loyally kept faith. The two Frenchmen were anxious to improve their capture by attacking Boonsborough; but the fickle savages were satisfied with their success, and insisted on returning to their villages. Boon was taken, first to Old Chillicothe, the chief Shawnee town on the Little Miami, and then to Detroit, where Hamilton and the other Englishmen treated him well, and tried to ransom him for a hundred pounds sterling. However, the Indians had become very much attached to him, and refused the ransom, taking their prisoner back to Chillicothe. Here he was adopted into the tribe, and remained for two months, winning the good-will of the Shawnees by his cheerfulness and his skill as a hunter, and being careful not to rouse their jealousy by any too great display of skill at the shooting-matches.

Hamilton was urging the Indians to repeat their ravages of the preceding year; Mingos, Shawnees, Delawares, and Miamis came to Detroit, bringing scalps and prisoners. A great council was held at that post early in June. [Footnote: Do., June 14, 1778.] All the northwestern tribes took part, and they received war-belts from the Iroquois and messages calling on them to rise as one man. They determined forthwith to fall on the frontier in force. By their war parties, and the accompanying bands of tories, Hamilton sent placards to be distributed among the frontiersmen, endeavoring both by threat and by promise of reward, to make them desert the patriot cause. [Footnote: Do., April 25, 1778.]

Boon Escapes and Makes a Foray.

In June a large war party gathered at Chillicothe to march against Boonsborough, and Boon determined to escape at all hazards, so that he might warn his mends. One morning before sunrise he eluded the vigilance of his Indian companions and started straight through the woods for his home where he arrived in four days, having had but one meal during the whole journey of a hundred and sixty miles. [Footnote: Boon's Narrative.]

On reaching Boonsborough he at once set about putting the fort in good condition; and being tried by court-martial for the capture at the Blue Licks, he was not only acquitted but was raised to the rank of major. His escape had probably disconcerted the Indian war party, for no immediate attack was made on the fort. After waiting until August he got tired of the inaction, and made a foray into the Indian country himself with nineteen men, defeating a small party of his foes on the Sciota. At the same time he learned that the main body of the Miamis had at last marched against Boonsborough. Instantly he retraced his steps with all possible speed, passed by the Indians, and reached the threatened fort a day before they did.

Boonsborough again Beseiged.

On the eighth day of the month the savages appeared before the stockade. They were between three and four hundred in number, Shawnees and Miamis, and were led by Captain Daigniau de Quindre, a noted Detroit partisan [Footnote: Haldimand MSS. Aug. 17, 1778, Girty reports that four hundred Indians have gone to attack "Fort Kentuck." Hamilton's letter of Sept. 16th speaks of there being three hundred Shawnees with de Quindre (whom Boon calls Duquesne).]; with him were eleven other Frenchmen, besides the Indian chiefs. They marched into view with British and French colors flying, and formally summoned the little wooden fort to surrender in the name of his Britannic Majesty. The negotiations that followed showed, on the part of both whites and reds, a curious mixture of barbarian cunning and barbarian childishness; the account reads as if it were a page of Graeco-Trojan diplomacy. [Footnote: See Boon's Narrative.] Boon first got a respite of two days to consider de Quindre's request, and occupied the time in getting the horses and cattle into the fort. At the end of the two days the Frenchman came in person to the walls to hear the answer to his proposition; whereupon Boon jeered at him for his simplicity, thanking him in the name of the defenders for having given them time to prepare for defence, and telling him that now they laughed at his attack. De Quindre, mortified at being so easily outwitted, set a trap in his turn for Boon. He assured the latter that his orders from Detroit were to capture, not to destroy, the garrison, and proposed that nine of their number should come out and hold a treaty. The terms of the treaty are not mentioned; apparently it was to be one of neutrality, Boonsborough acting as if it were a little independent and sovereign commonwealth, making peace on its own account with a particular set of foes. At any rate, de Quindre agreed to march his forces peaceably off when it was concluded.

Boon accepted the proposition, but, being suspicious of the good-faith of his opponents, insisted upon the conference being held within sixty yards of the fort. After the treaty was concluded the Indians proposed to shake hands with the nine white treaty-makers, and promptly grappled them. [Footnote: Apparently there were eighteen Indians on the treaty ground, but these were probably, like the whites, unarmed.] However, the borderers wrested themselves free, and fled to the fort under a heavy fire, which wounded one of their number.

The Indians then attacked the fort, surrounding it on every side and keeping up a constant fire at the loop-holes. The whites replied in kind, but the combatants were so well covered that little damage was done. At night the Indians pitched torches of cane and hickory bark against the stockade, in the vain effort to set it on fire, [Footnote: McAfee MSS.] and de Quindre tried to undermine the walls, starting from the water mark. But Boon discovered the attempt, and sunk a trench as a countermine. Then de Quindre gave up and retreated on August 20th, after nine days' fighting, in which the whites had but two killed and four wounded; nor was the loss of the Indians much heavier. [Footnote: De Quindre reported to Hamilton that, though foiled, he had but two men killed and three wounded. In Haldimand MSS., Hamilton to Haldimand, October 15, 1778. Often, however, these partisan leaders merely reported the loss in their own particular party of savages, taking no account of the losses in the other bands that had joined them—as the Miamis joined the Shawnees in this instance. But it is certain that Boon (or Filson, who really wrote the Narrative) greatly exaggerated the facts in stating that thirty-seven Indians were killed, and that the settlers picked up 125 pounds' weight of bullets which had been fired into the fort.]

This was the last siege of Boonsborough. Had de Quindre succeeded he might very probably have swept the whites from Kentucky; but he failed, and Boon's successful resistance, taken together with the outcome of Clark's operations at the same time, ensured the permanency of the American occupation. The old-settled region lying around the original stations, or forts, was never afterwards seriously endangered by Indian invasion.

Ferocious Individual Warfare.

The savages continued to annoy the border throughout the year 1778. The extent of their ravages can be seen from the fact that, during the summer months those around Detroit alone brought in to Hamilton eighty-one scalps and thirty-four prisoners, [Footnote: Haldimand MSS. Letter of Hamilton, September 16, 1778. Hamilton was continually sending out small war parties; thus he mentions that on August 25th a party of fifteen Miamis went out; on September 5th, thirty-one Miamis; on September 9th, one Frenchman, five Chippewas, and fifteen Miamis, etc.] seventeen of whom they surrendered to the British, keeping the others either to make them slaves or else to put them to death with torture. During the fall they confined themselves mainly to watching the Ohio and the Wilderness road, and harassing the immigrants who passed along them. [Footnote: McAfee MSS.]

Boon, as usual, roamed restlessly over the country, spying out and harrying the Indian war parties, and often making it his business to meet the incoming bands of settlers, and to protect and guide them on the way to their intended homes. [Footnote: Marshall, 55.] When not on other duty he hunted steadily, for game was still plentiful in Kentucky, though fast diminishing owing to the wanton slaughter made by some of the more reckless hunters. [Footnote: McAfee MSS.] He met with many adventures, still handed down by tradition, in the chase of panther, wolf, and bear, of buffalo, elk, and deer. The latter he killed only when their hides and meat were needed, while he followed unceasingly the dangerous beasts of prey, as being enemies of the settlers.

Throughout these years the obscure strife, made up of the individual contests of frontiersman and Indian, went on almost without a break. The sieges, surprises, and skirmishes in which large bands took part were chronicled; but there is little reference in the books to the countless conflicts wherein only one or two men on a side were engaged. The west could never have been conquered, in the teeth of so formidable and ruthless a foe, had it not been for the personal prowess of the pioneers themselves. Their natural courage and hardihood, and their long training in forest warfare, [Footnote: The last point is important. No Europeans could have held their own for a fortnight in Kentucky; nor is it likely that the western men twenty years before, at the time of Braddock's war, could have successfully colonized such a far-off country.] made them able to hold their own and to advance step by step, where a peaceable population would have been instantly butchered or driven off. No regular army could have done what they did. Only trained woodsmen could have led the white advance into the vast forest-clad regions, out of which so many fair States have been hewn. The ordinary regular soldier was almost as helpless before the Indians in the woods as he would have been if blindfolded and opposed to an antagonist whose eyes were left uncovered.

Much the greatest loss, both to Indians and whites, was caused by this unending personal warfare. Every hunter, almost every settler, was always in imminent danger of Indian attack, and in return was ever ready, either alone or with one or two companions, to make excursions against the tribes for scalps and horses. One or two of Simon Kenton's experiences during this year may be mentioned less for their own sake than as examples of innumerable similar deeds that were done, and woes that were suffered, in the course of the ceaseless struggle.

Simon Kenton's Adventures.

Kenton was a tall, fair-haired man of wonderful strength and agility; famous as a runner and wrestler, an unerring shot, and a perfect woodsman. Like so many of these early Indian fighters, he was not at all bloodthirsty. He was a pleasant, friendly, and obliging companion; and it was hard to rouse him to wrath. When once aroused, however, few were so hardy as not to quail before the terrible fury of his anger. He was so honest and unsuspecting that he was very easily cheated by sharpers; and he died a poor man. He was a staunch friend and follower of Boon's. [Footnote: See McClung's "Sketches of Western Adventure," pp. 86-117; the author had received from Kenton, and other pioneers, when very old, the tales of their adventures as young men. McClung's volume contains very valuable incidental information about the customs of life among the borderers,] and about Indian warfare; but he is a very inaccurate and untrustworthy writer; he could not even copy a printed narrative correctly (see his account of Slover's and McKnight's adventures), and his tales about Kenton must be accepted rather as showing the adventures incident to the life of a peculiarly daring Indian fighter than as being specifically and chronologically correct in Kenton's individual case. Once, in a fight outside the stockade at Boonsborough, he saved the life of his leader by shooting an Indian who was on the point of tomahawking him. Boon was a man of few words, cold and grave, accustomed to every kind of risk and hairbreadth escape, and as little apt to praise the deeds of others as he was to mention his own; but on this occasion he broke through his usual taciturnity to express his thanks for Kenton's help and his admiration for Kenton himself.

Kenton went with his captain on the expedition to the Scioto. Pushing ahead of the rest, he was attracted by the sound of laughter in a canebrake. Hiding himself, he soon saw two Indians approach, both riding on one small pony, and chatting and laughing together in great good-humor. Aiming carefully, he brought down both at once, one dead and the other severely wounded. As he rushed up to finish his work, his quick ears caught a rustle in the cane, and looking around he saw two more Indians aiming at him. A rapid spring to one side on his part made both balls miss. Other Indians came up; but, at the same time, Boon and his companions appeared, running as fast as they could while still keeping sheltered. A brisk skirmish followed, the Indians retreated, and Kenton got the coveted scalp. When Boon returned to the fort, Kenton stayed behind with another man and succeeded in stealing four good horses, which he brought back in triumph.

Much pleased with his success he shortly made another raid into the Indian country, this time with two companions. They succeeded in driving off a whole band of one hundred and sixty horses, which they brought in safety to the banks of the Ohio. But a strong wind was blowing, and the river was so rough that in spite of all their efforts they could not get the horses to cross; as soon as they were beyond their depth the beasts would turn round and swim back. The reckless adventurers could not make up their minds to leave the booty; and stayed so long, waiting for a lull in the gale, and wasting their time in trying to get the horses to take to the water in spite of the waves, that the pursuing Indians came up and surprised them. Their guns had become wet and useless; and no resistance could be made. One of them was killed, another escaped, and Kenton himself was captured.

The Indians asked him if "Captain Boon" had sent him to steal horses; and when he answered frankly that the stealing was his own idea, they forthwith proceeded to beat him lustily with their ramrods, at the same time showering on him epithets that showed they had at least learned the profanity of the traders. They staked him out at night, tied so that he could move neither hand nor foot; and during the day he was bound on an unbroken horse, with his hands tied behind him so that he could not protect his face from the trees and bushes. This was repeated every day. After three days he reached the town of Chillicothe, stiff, sore, and bleeding.

Next morning he was led out to run the gauntlet. A row of men, women, and boys, a quarter of a mile long, was formed, each with a tomahawk, switch, or club; at the end of the line was an Indian with a big drum, and beyond this was the council-house, which, if he reached, would for the time being protect him. The moment for starting arrived; the big drum was beaten; and Kenton sprang forward in the race. [Footnote: For this part of Kenton's adventures compare the "Last of the Mohicans.">[ Keeping his wits about him he suddenly turned to one side and darted off with the whole tribe after him. His wonderful speed and activity enabled him to keep ahead, and to dodge those who got in his way, and by a sudden double he rushed through an opening in the crowd, and reached the council-house, having been struck but three or four blows.

He was not further molested that evening. Next morning a council was held to decide whether he should be immediately burnt at the stake, or should first be led round to the different villages. The warriors sat in a ring to pass judgment, passing the war club from one to another; those who passed it in silence thereby voted in favor of sparing the prisoner for the moment, while those who struck it violently on the ground thus indicated their belief that he should be immediately put to death. The former prevailed, and Kenton was led from town to town. At each place he was tied to the stake, to be switched and beaten by the women and boys; or else was forced to run the gauntlet, while sand was thrown in his eyes and guns loaded with powder fired against his body to burn his flesh.

Once, while on the march, he made a bold rush for liberty, all unarmed though he was; breaking out of the line and running into the forest. His speed was so great and his wind so good that he fairly outran his pursuers; but by ill-luck, when almost exhausted, he came against another party of Indians. After this he abandoned himself to despair. He was often terribly abused by his captors; once one of them cut his shoulder open with an axe, breaking the bone.

His face was painted black, the death color, and he was twice sentenced to be burned alive, at the Pickaway Plains and at Sandusky. But each time he was saved at the last moment, once through a sudden spasm of mercy on the part of the renegade Girty, his old companion in arms at the time of Lord Dunmore's war, and again by the powerful intercession of the great Mingo chief, Logan. At last, after having run the gauntlet eight times and been thrice tied to the stake, he was ransomed by some traders. They hoped to get valuable information from him about the border forts, and took him to Detroit. Here he stayed until his battered, wounded body was healed. Then he determined to escape, and formed his plan in concert with two other Kentuckians, who had been in Boon's party that was captured at the Blue Licks. They managed to secure some guns, got safely off, and came straight down through the great forests to the Ohio, reaching their homes in safety. [Footnote: McClung gives the exact conversations that took place between Kenton, Logan, Girty, and the Indian chiefs. They are very dramatic, and may possibly be true; the old pioneer would probably always remember even the words used on such occasions; but I hesitate to give them because McClung is so loose in his statements. In the account of this very incident he places it in '77, and says Kenton then accompanied Clark to the Illinois. But in reality—as we know from Boon—it took place in '78, and Kenton must have gone with Clark first.]

Boon and Kenton have always been favorite heroes of frontier story,—as much so as ever were Robin Hood and Little John in England. Both lived to a great age, and did and saw many strange things, and in the backwoods cabins the tale of their deeds has been handed down in traditional form from father to son and to son's son. They were known to be honest, fearless, adventurous, mighty men of their hands; fond of long, lonely wanderings; renowned as woodsmen and riflemen, as hunters and Indian fighters. In course of time it naturally came about that all notable incidents of the chase and woodland warfare were incorporated into their lives by the story-tellers. The facts were altered and added to by tradition year after year; so that the two old frontier warriors already stand in that misty group of heroes whose rightful title to fame has been partly overclouded by the haze of their mythical glories and achievements.

CHAPTER II.

CLARK'S CONQUEST OF THE ILLINOIS, 1778.

Kentucky had been settled, chiefly through Boon's instrumentality, in the year that saw the first fighting of the Revolution, and it had been held ever since, Boon still playing the greatest part in the defence. Clark's more far-seeing and ambitious soul now prompted him to try and use it as a base from which to conquer the vast region northwest of the Ohio.

The Country beyond the Ohio.

The country beyond the Ohio was not, like Kentucky, a tenantless and debatable hunting-ground. It was the seat of powerful and warlike Indian confederacies, and of clusters of ancient French hamlets which had been founded generations before the Kentucky pioneers were born; and it also contained posts that were garrisoned and held by the soldiers of the British king. Virginia, and other colonies as well, made, it is true, vague claims to some of this territory. [Footnote: Some of the numerous land speculation companies, which were so prominent about this time, both before and after the Revolution, made claims to vast tracts of territory in this region, having bought them for various trinkets from the Indian chiefs. Such were the "Illinois Land Company" and "Wabash Land Company," that, in 1773 and 1775, made purchases from the Kaskaskias and Piankeshaws. The companies were composed of British, American, and Canadian merchants and traders, of London, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Quebec, etc. Lord Dunmore was in the Wabash Company. The agents of the companies, in after years, made repeated but unsuccessful efforts to get Congress to confirm their grants. Although these various companies made much noise at the time, they introduced no new settlers into the land, and, in fact, did nothing of lasting effect; so that it is mere waste of time to allude to most of them. See, however, the "History of Indiana," by John B. Dillon (Indianapolis, 1859), pp. 102-109, etc.] But their titles were as unreal and shadowy as those acquired by the Spanish and Portuguese kings when the Pope, with empty munificence, divided between them the Eastern and the Western hemispheres. For a century the French had held adverse possession; for a decade and a half the British, not the colonial authorities, had acted as their unchallenged heirs; to the Americans the country was as much a foreign land as was Canada. It could only be acquired by force, and Clark's teeming brain and bold heart had long been busy in planning its conquest. He knew that the French villages, the only settlements in the land, were the seats of the British power, the head-quarters whence their commanders stirred up, armed, and guided the hostile Indians. If these settled French districts were conquered, and the British posts that guarded them captured, the whole territory would thereby be won for the Federal Republic, and added to the heritage of its citizens; while the problem of checking and subduing the northwestern Indians would be greatly simplified, because the source of much of both their power and hostility would be cut off at the springs. The friendship of the French was invaluable, for they had more influence than any other people with the Indians.

Clark Sends Spies to the Illinois.

In 1777 Clark sent two young hunters as spies to the Illinois country and to the neighborhood of Vincennes, though neither to them nor to any one else did he breathe a hint of the plan that was in his mind. They brought back word that, though some of the adventurous young men often joined either the British or the Indian war parties, yet that the bulk of the French population took but little interest in the struggle, were lukewarm in their allegiance to the British flag, and were somewhat awed by what they had heard of the backwoodsmen. [Footnote: The correctness of this account is amply confirmed by the Haldimand MSS., letters of Hamilton, passim; also Rocheblave to Carleton, July 4, 1778; and to Hamilton, April 12, 1778.] Clark judged from this report that it would not be difficult to keep the French neutral if a bold policy, strong as well as conciliatory, was pursued towards them; and that but a small force would be needed to enable a resolute and capable leader to conquer at least the southern part of the country. It was impossible to raise such a body among the scantily garrisoned forted villages of Kentucky. The pioneers, though warlike and fond of fighting, were primarily settlers; their soldiering came in as a purely secondary occupation. They were not a band of mere adventurers, living by the sword and bent on nothing but conquest. They were a group of hard-working, hard-fighting freemen, who had come in with their wives and children to possess the land. They were obliged to use all their wit and courage to defend what they had already won without wasting their strength by grasping at that which lay beyond. The very conditions that enabled so small a number to make a permanent settlement forbade their trying unduly to extend its bounds.

He Goes to Virginia to Raise Troops.

Clark knew he could get from among his fellow-settlers some men peculiarly suited for his purpose, but he also realized that he would have to bring the body of his force from Virginia. Accordingly he decided to lay the case before Patrick Henry, then Governor of the State of which Kentucky was only a frontier county.

On October 1, 1777, he started from Harrodsburg, [Footnote: In the earlier MSS, it is called sometimes Harrodstown and sometimes Harrodsburg; but from this time on the latter name is in general use.] to go over the Wilderness road. The brief entries of his diary for this trip are very interesting and sometimes very amusing. Before starting he made a rather shrewd and thoroughly characteristic speculation in horseflesh, buying a horse for £12, and then "swapping" it with Isaac Shelby and getting £10 to boot. He evidently knew how to make a good bargain, and had the true backwoods passion for barter. He was detained a couple of days by that commonest of frontier mischances, his horses straying; a natural incident when the animals were simply turned loose on the range and looked up when required. [Footnote: This, like so many other incidents in the every-day history of the old pioneers, is among the ordinary experiences of the present sojourner in the far west.] He travelled in company with a large party of men, women, and children who, disheartened by the Indian ravages, were going back to the settlements. They marched from fifteen to twenty miles a day, driving beeves along for food. In addition the scouts at different times killed three buffalo [Footnote: One at Rockcastle River, two at Cumberland Ford.] and a few deer, so that they were not stinted for fresh meat.

When they got out of the wilderness he parted from his companions and rode off alone. He now stayed at the settler's house that was nearest when night overtook him. At a large house, such as that of the Campbell's, near Abingdon, he was of course welcomed to the best, and treated with a generous hospitality, for which it would have been an insult to offer money in return. At the small cabins he paid his way; usually a shilling and threepence or a shilling and sixpence for breakfast, bed, and feed for the horse; but sometimes four or five shillings. He fell in with a Captain Campbell, with whom he journeyed a week, finding him "an agreeable companion." They had to wait over one stormy day, at a little tavern, and probably whiled away the time by as much of a carouse as circumstances allowed; at any rate, Clark's share of the bill when he left was £1 4_s_. [Footnote: The items of expense jotted down in the diary are curious. For a night's lodging and board they range from 1s. 3d. to 13s. In Williamsburg, the capital, they were for a fortnight £9 18s.] Finally, a month after leaving Harrodsburg, having travelled six hundred and twenty miles, he reached his father's house. [Footnote Seventy miles beyond Charlottesville; he gives an itinerary of his journey, making it six hundred and twenty miles in all, by the route he travelled. On the way he had his horse shod and bought a pair of shoes for himself; apparently he kept the rest of his backwoods apparel. He sold his gun for £15 and swapped horses again—this time giving £7 l0_s_. to boot.]

After staying only a day at his old home, he set out for Williamsburg, where he was detained a fortnight before the State auditors would settle the accounts of the Kentucky militia, which he had brought with him. The two things which he deemed especially worthy of mention during this time were his purchase of a ticket in the State lottery, for three pounds, and his going to church on Sunday—the first chance he had had to do so during the year. [Footnote: When his accounts were settled he immediately bought "a piece of cloth for a jacket; price, £4 15_s_; buttons, etc., 3_s_.">[ He was overjoyed at the news of Burgoyne's surrender; and with a light heart he returned to his father's house, to get a glimpse of his people before again plunging into the wilds.

Clark and Patrick Henry.

After a week's rest he went back to the capital, laid his plans before Patrick Henry, and urged their adoption with fiery enthusiasm. [Footnote: Clark has left a full MS. memoir of the events of 1777, 1778, and 1779. It was used extensively by Mann Butler, the first historian who gave the campaign its proper prominence, and is printed almost complete by Dillon, on pp. 115-167 of his "Indiana." It was written at the desire of Presidents Jefferson and Madison; and therefore some thirty or forty years after the events of which it speaks. Valuable though it is, as the narrative of the chief actor, it would be still more valuable had it been written earlier; it undoubtedly contains some rather serious errors.] Henry's ardent soul quickly caught flame; but the peril of sending an expedition to such a wild and distant country was so great, and Virginia's resources were so exhausted, that he could do little beyond lending Clark the weight of his name and influence. The matter could not be laid before the Assembly, nor made public in any way; for the hazard would be increased tenfold if the strictest secrecy were not preserved. Finally Henry authorized Clark to raise seven companies, each of fifty men, who were to act as militia and to be paid as such. [Footnote: Henry's private letter of instructions, January 2, 1778.] He also advanced him the sum of twelve hundred pounds (presumably in depreciated paper), and gave him an order on the authorities at Pittsburg for boats, supplies, and ammunition; while three of the most prominent Virginia gentlemen [Footnote: Thomas Jefferson, George Mason, and George Wythe.] agreed in writing to do their best to induce the Virginia Legislature to grant to each of the adventurers three hundred acres of the conquered land, if they were successful. He was likewise given the commission of colonel, with instructions to raise his men solely from the frontier counties west of the Blue Ridge, [Footnote: 3 Butler, p. 48; but Henry's public instructions authorized Clark to raise his men in any county.] so as not to weaken the people of the seacoast region in their struggle against the British.

Clark alone Organizes the Expedition.

Thus the whole burden of making ready the expedition was laid on Clark's shoulders. The hampered Virginian authorities were able to give him little beyond their good-will. He is rightfully entitled to the whole glory; the plan and the execution were both his. It was an individual rather than a state or national enterprise.

Governor Henry's open letter of instructions merely ordered Clark to go to the relief of Kentucky. He carried with him also the secret letter which bade him attack the Illinois regions; for he had decided to assail this first, because, if defeated, he would then be able to take refuge in the Spanish dominions beyond the Mississippi. He met with the utmost difficulty in raising men. Some were to be sent to him from the Holston overland, to meet him in Kentucky; but a combination of accidents resulted in his getting only a dozen or so from this source. [Footnote: Four companies were to be raised on the Holston; but only one actually went to Kentucky; and most of its members deserted when they found out about the true nature of the expedition.] Around Pittsburg the jealousy between the Virginians and Pennsylvanians hampered him greatly. Moreover, many people were strongly opposed to sending any men to Kentucky at all, deeming the drain on their strength more serious than the value of the new land warranted; for they were too short-sighted rightly to estimate what the frontiersmen had really done. When he had finally raised his troops he was bothered by requests from the different forts to aid detachments of the local militia in expeditions against bands of marauding Indians.

He Starts Down the Ohio.

But Clark never for a moment wavered nor lost sight of his main object. He worked steadily on, heedless of difficulty and disappointment, and late in the spring at last got together four small companies of frontiersmen from the clearings and the scattered hunters' camps. In May, 1778, he left the Redstone settlements, taking not only his troops—one hundred and fifty in all [Footnote: Clark's letter to George Mason, Nov. 19, 1779. Given in "Clark's Campaign in the Illinois" (Cincinnati, 1869), for the first time; one of Robert Clarke's excellent Ohio Valley Historical Series.]—but also a considerable number of private adventurers and settlers with their families. He touched at Pittsburg and Wheeling to get his stores. Then the flotilla of clumsy flatboats, manned by tall riflemen, rowed and drifted cautiously down the Ohio between the melancholy and unbroken reaches of Indian-haunted forest. The presence of the families shows that even this expedition had the usual peculiar western character of being undertaken half for conquest, half for settlement.

He landed at the mouth of the Kentucky, but rightly concluded that as a starting-point against the British posts it would be better to choose a place farther west, so he drifted on down the stream, and on the 27th of May [Footnote: This is the date given in the deposition, in the case of Floyd's heirs, in 1815; see MSS. in Col. Durrett's library at Louisville. Clark's dates, given from memory, are often a day or two out. His "Memoir" is of course less accurate than the letter to Mason.] reached the Falls of the Ohio, where the river broke into great rapids or riffles of swift water. This spot he chose, both because from it he could threaten and hold in check the different Indian tribes, and because he deemed it wise to have some fort to protect in the future the craft that might engage in the river trade, when they stopped to prepare for the passage of the rapids. Most of the families that had come with him had gone off to the interior of Kentucky, but several were left, and these settled on an island near the falls, where they raised a crop of corn; and in the autumn they moved to the mainland. On the site thus chosen by the clear-eyed frontier leader there afterwards grew up a great city, named in honor of the French king, who was then our ally. Clark may fairly be called its founder. [Footnote: It was named Louisville in 1780, but was long known only as the Falls. Many other men had previously recognized the advantages of the place; hunters and surveyors had gone there, but Clark led thither the first permanent settlers. Conolly had laid out at the Falls a grant of two thousand acres, of which he afterwards surrendered half. His grant, covering much of the present site of the city, was on July 1, 1780, declared to be forfeited by a jury consisting of Daniel Boon and eleven other good men and true, empanelled by the sheriff of the county. See Durrett MSS. in "Papers Relating to Louisville, Ky.">[

Clark at the Falls.

Here Clark received news of the alliance with France, which he hoped would render easier his task of winning over the habitants of the Illinois. He was also joined by a few daring Kentuckians, including Kenton, and by the only Holston company that had yet arrived. He now disclosed to his men the real object of his expedition. The Kentuckians, and those who had come down the river with him, hailed the adventure with eager enthusiasm, pledged him their hearty support, and followed him with staunch and unflinching loyalty. But the Holston recruits, who had not come under the spell of his personal influence, murmured against him. They had not reckoned on an expedition so long and so dangerous, and in the night most of them left the camp and fled into the woods. The Kentuckians, who had horses, pursued the deserters, with orders to kill any who resisted; but all save six or eight escaped. Yet they suffered greatly for their crime, and endured every degree of hardship and fatigue, for the Kentuckians spurned them from the gates of the wooden forts, and would not for a long time suffer them to enter, hounding them back to the homes they had dishonored. They came from among a bold and adventurous people, and their action was due rather to wayward and sullen disregard of authority than to cowardice.

When the pursuing horsemen came back a day of mirth and rejoicing was spent between the troops who were to stay behind to guard Kentucky and those who were to go onward to conquer Illinois. On the 24th of June Clark's boats put out from shore, and shot the falls at the very moment that there was a great eclipse of the sun, at which the frontiersmen wondered greatly, but for the most part held it to be a good omen.

Clark had weeded out all those whom he deemed unable to stand fatigue and hardship; his four little companies were of picked men, each with a good captain. [Footnote: The names of the four captains were John Montgomery, Joseph Bowman, Leonard Helm, and William Harrod. Each company nominally consisted of fifty men, but none of them was of full strength.] His equipment was as light as that of an Indian war party, for he knew better than to take a pound of baggage that could possibly be spared.

He Meets a Party of Hunters.

He intended to land some three leagues below the entrance of the Tennessee River, [Footnote: At the old Fort Massac, then deserted. The name is taken from that of an old French commander; it is not a corruption of Fort Massacre, as has been asserted.] thence to march on foot against the Illinois towns; for he feared discovery if he should attempt to ascend the Mississippi, the usual highway by which the fur traders went up to the quaint French hamlets that lay between the Kaskaskia and the Illinois rivers. Accordingly he double-manned his oars and rowed night and day until he reached a small island off the mouth of the Tennessee, where he halted to make his final preparations, and was there joined by a little party of American hunters, [Footnote In his "Memoir" he says "from the States"; in his letter to Mason he calls them "Englishmen," probably to show that they were not French, as they had just come from Kaskaskia. He almost always spoke of the English proper as British.] who had recently been in the French settlements. The meeting was most fortunate. The hunters entered eagerly into Clark's plans, joining him for the campaign, and they gave him some very valuable information. They told him that the royal commandant was a Frenchman, Rocheblave, whose head-quarters were at the town of Kaskaskia; that the fort was in good repair, the militia were well drilled and in constant readiness to repel attack, while spies were continually watching the Mississippi, and the Indians and the coureurs des bois were warned to be on the look-out for any American force, if the party were discovered in time the hunters believed that the French would undoubtedly gather together instantly to repel them, having been taught to hate and dread the backwoodsmen as more brutal and terrible than any Indians; and in such an event the strength of the works and the superiority of the French in numbers would render the attack very hazardous. But they thought that a surprise would enable Clark to do as he wished, and they undertook to guide him by the quickest and shortest route to the towns.

The March to Kaskaskia.

Clark was rather pleased than otherwise to learn of the horror with which the French regarded the backwoodsmen. He thought it would render them more apt to be panic-struck when surprised, and also more likely to feel a strong revulsion of gratitude when they found that the Americans meant them well and not ill. Taking their new allies for guides, the little body of less than two hundred men started north across the wilderness, scouts being scattered out well ahead of them, both to kill game for their subsistence and to see that their march was not discovered by any straggling Frenchman or Indian. The first fifty miles led through tangled and pathless forest, the toil of travelling being very great. After that the work was less difficult as they got out among the prairies, but on these great level meadows they had to take extra precautions to avoid being seen. Once the chief guide got bewildered and lost himself; he could no longer tell the route, nor whither it was best to march. [Footnote: Even experienced woodsmen or plainsmen sometimes thus become lost or "turned round," if in a country of few landmarks, where they have rarely been before.] The whole party was at once cast into the utmost confusion; but Clark soon made the guide understand that he was himself in greater jeopardy than any one else, and would forfeit his life if he did not guide them straight. Not knowing the man, Clark thought he might be treacherous; and, as he wrote an old friend, he was never in his life in such a rage as when he found his troops wandering at random in a country where, at any moment, they might blunder on several times their number of hostile Indians; while, if they were discovered by any one at all, the whole expedition was sure to miscarry. However, the guide proved to be faithful; after a couple of hours he found his bearings once more, and guided the party straight to their destination.

The Surprise of Kaskaskia.

On the evening of the fourth of July [Footnote: So says Clark; and the Haldimand MSS. contains a letter of Rocheblave of July 4th. For these campaigns of 1778 I follow where possible Clark's letter to Mason as being nearly contemporary; his "Memoir," as given by Dillon, comes next in authority; while Butler, who was very accurate and painstaking, also got hold of original information from men who had taken part in the expedition, or from their descendants, besides making full use of the "Memoir.">[ they reached the river Kaskaskia, within three miles of the town, which lay on the farther bank. They kept in the woods until after it grew dusk, and then marched silently to a little farm on the hither side of the river, a mile from the town. The family were taken prisoners, and from them Clark learned that some days before the townspeople had been alarmed at the rumor of a possible attack; but that their suspicions had been lulled, and they were then off their guard. There were a great many men in the town, but almost all French, the Indians having for the most part left. The account proved correct. Rocheblave, the creole commandant, was sincerely attached to the British interest. He had been much alarmed early in the year by the reports brought to him by Indians that the Americans were in Kentucky and elsewhere beyond the Alleghanies. He had written repeatedly to Detroit, asking that regulars could be sent him, and that he might himself be replaced by a commandant of English birth; for though the French were well-disposed towards the crown, they had been frightened by the reports of the ferocity of the backwoodsmen, and the Indians were fickle. In his letters he mentioned that the French were much more loyal than the men of English parentage. Hamilton found it impossible to send him reinforcements however, and he was forced to do the best he could without them; but he succeeded well in his endeavors to organize troops, as he found the creole militia very willing to serve, and the Indians extremely anxious to attack the Americans. [Footnote: Haldimand MSS. Carleton to Hamilton, May 16, 1777; Rocheblave to Carleton, February 8, 1778; Rocheblave to Hamilton, April 12, 1778; Rocheblave to Carleton, July 4, 1778.] He had under his orders two or three times as many men as Clark, and he would certainly have made a good fight if he had not been surprised. It was only Clark's audacity and the noiseless speed of his movements that gave him a chance of success with the odds so heavily against him.

Getting boats the American leader ferried his men across the stream under cover of the darkness and in profound silence; the work occupying about two hours. He then approached Kaskaskia under cover of the night, dividing his force into two divisions, one being spread out to surround the town so that none might escape, while he himself led the other up to the walls of the fort.

Inside the fort the lights were lit, and through the windows came the sounds of violins. The officers of the post had given a ball, and the mirth-loving creoles, young men and girls, were dancing and revelling within, while the sentinels had left their posts. One of his captives showed Clark a postern-gate by the river-side, and through this he entered the fort, having placed his men round about at the entrance. Advancing to the great hall where the revel was held, he leaned silently with folded arms against the door-post, looking at the dancers. An Indian, lying on the floor of the entry, gazed intently on the stranger's face as the light from the torches within flickered across it, and suddenly sprang to his feet uttering the unearthly war-whoop. Instantly the dancing ceased; the women screamed, while the men ran towards the door. But Clark, standing unmoved and with unchanged face, grimly bade them continue their dancing, but to remember that they now danced under Virginia and not Great Britain. [Footnote: Memoir of Major E. Denny, by Wm. H. Denny, p. 217. In "Record of the Court of Upland and Military Journal of Major E. Denny," Philadelphia, 1860 (Historical Society of Penn.). The story was told to Major Denny by Clark himself, some time in '87 or '88; in process of repetition it evidently became twisted, and, as related by Denny, there are some very manifest inaccuracies, but there seems no reason to reject it entirely.] At the same time his men burst into the fort, and seized the French officers, including the commandant, Rocheblave. [Footnote: It is worth noting that these Illinois French, and most of the Indians with whom the French fur traders came in contact, called the Americans "Bostonnais." (In fact the fur traders have taught this name to the northern tribes right across to the Pacific. While hunting in the Selkirk Mountains last fall, the Kootenai Indian who was with me always described me as a "Boston man.") Similarly the Indians round the upper Ohio and thence southward often called the backwoodsmen "Virginians." In each case the French and Indians adopted the name of their leading and most inveterate enemies as the title by which to call all of them.]

Immediately Clark had every street secured, and sent runners through the town ordering the people to keep close to their houses on pain of death; and by daylight he had them all disarmed. The backwoodsmen patrolled the town in little squads; while the French in silent terror cowered within their low-roofed houses. Clark was quite willing that they should fear the worst; and their panic was very great. The unlooked-for and mysterious approach and sudden onslaught of the backwoodsmen, their wild and uncouth appearance, and the ominous silence of their commander, all combined to fill the French with fearful forebodings for their future fate. [Footnote: In his "Memoir" Clark dwells at length on the artifices by which he heightened the terror of the French; and Butler enlarges still further upon them. I follow the letter to Mason, which is much safer authority, the writer having then no thought of trying to increase the dramatic effect of the situation—which in Butler, and indeed in the "Memoir" also, is strained till it comes dangerously near bathos.]

Clark's Diplomacy.

Next morning a deputation of the chief men waited upon Clark; and thinking themselves in the hands of mere brutal barbarians, all they dared to do was to beg for their lives, which they did, says Clark, "with the greatest servancy [saying] they were willing to be slaves to save their families," though the bolder spirits could not refrain from cursing their fortune that they had not been warned in time to defend themselves. Now came Clark's chance for his winning stroke. He knew it was hopeless to expect his little band permanently to hold down a much more numerous hostile population, that was closely allied to many surrounding tribes of warlike Indians; he wished above all things to convert the inhabitants into ardent adherents of the American Government.

So he explained at length that, though the Americans came as conquerors, who by the laws of war could treat the defeated as they wished, yet it was ever their principle to free, not to enslave, the people with whom they came in contact. If the French chose to become loyal citizens, and to take the oath of fidelity to the Republic, they should be welcomed to all the privileges of Americans; those who did not so choose should be allowed to depart from the land in peace with their families.

The Creoles Espouse the American Cause.

The mercurial creoles who listened to his speech passed rapidly from the depth of despair to the height of joy. Instead of bewailing their fate they now could not congratulate themselves enough on their good-fortune. The crowning touch to their happiness was given by Clark when he told the priest, Pierre Gibault, in answer to a question as to whether the Catholic Church could be opened, that an American commander had nothing to do with any church save to defend it from insult, and that by the laws of the Republic his religion had as great privileges as any other. With that they all returned in noisy joy to their families, while the priest, a man of ability and influence, became thenceforth a devoted and effective champion of the American cause. The only person whom Clark treated harshly was M. Rocheblave, the commandant, who, when asked to dinner, responded in very insulting terms. Thereupon Clark promptly sent him as a prisoner to Virginia (where he broke his parole and escaped), and sold his slaves for five hundred pounds, which was distributed among the troops as prize-money.

A small detachment of the Americans, accompanied by a volunteer company of French militia, at once marched rapidly on Cahokia. The account of what had happened in Kaskaskia, the news of the alliance between France and America, and the enthusiastic advocacy of Clark's new friends, soon converted Cahokia; and all of its inhabitants, like those of Kaskaskia, took the oath of allegiance to America. Almost at the same time the priest Gibault volunteered to go, with a few of his compatriots, to Vincennes, and there endeavor to get the people to join the Americans, as being their natural friends and allies. He started on his mission at once, and on the first of August returned to Clark with the news that he had been completely successful, that the entire population, after having gathered in the church to hear him, had taken the oath of allegiance, and that the American flag floated over their fort. [Footnote: Judge John Law's "Address on the Colonial History of Vincennes," P 25.] No garrison could be spared to go to Vincennes; so one of the captains [Footnote: Leonard Helm. Vol. II.] was sent thither alone to take command.

The priest Gibault had given convincing proof of his loyalty. He remarked to Clark rather dryly that he had, properly speaking, nothing to do with the temporal affairs of his flock, but that now and then he was able to give them such hints in a spiritual way as would tend to increase their devotion to their new friends.

Clark's Difficulties.

Clark now found himself in a position of the utmost difficulty. With a handful of unruly backwoodsmen, imperfectly disciplined and kept under control only by his own personal influence, he had to protect and govern a region as large as any European kingdom. Moreover, he had to keep content and loyal a population of alien race, creed, and language, while he held his own against the British and against numerous tribes of Indians, deeply imbittered against all Americans and as blood-thirsty and treacherous as they were warlike. It may be doubted if there was another man in the west who possessed the daring and resolution, the tact, energy, and executive ability necessary for the solution of so knotty a series of problems.

He was hundreds of miles from the nearest post containing any American troops; he was still farther from the seat of government. He had no hope whatever of getting reinforcements or even advice and instruction for many months, probably not for a year; and he was thrown entirely on his own resources and obliged to act in every respect purely on his own responsibility.

Governor Patrick Henry, although leaving every thing in the last resort to Clark's discretion, had evidently been very doubtful whether a permanent occupation of the territory was feasible, [Footnote: In his secret letter of instructions he orders Clark to be especially careful to secure the artillery and military stores at Kaskia, laying such stress upon this as to show that he regarded the place itself as of comparatively little value. In fact, all Henry's order contemplated was an attack on "the British post at Kaskasky." However, he adds, that if the French are willing to become American citizens, they shall be fully protected against their foes. The letter earnestly commands Clark to treat not only the inhabitants, but also all British prisoners, with the utmost humanity.] though both he, and especially Jefferson, recognized the important bearing that its acquisition would have upon the settlement of the northwestern boundary, when the time came to treat for peace. Probably Clark himself had not at first appreciated all the possibilities that lay within his conquest, but he was fully alive to them now and saw that, provided he could hold on to it, he had added a vast and fertile territory to the domain of the Union. To the task of keeping it he now bent all his energies.

Clark Prepares for Defence.

The time of service of his troops had expired, and they were anxious to go home. By presents and promises he managed to enlist one hundred of them for eight months longer. Then, to color his staying with so few men, he made a feint of returning to the Falls, alleging as a reason his entire confidence in the loyalty of his French friends and his trust in their capacity to defend themselves. He hoped that this would bring out a remonstrance from the inhabitants, who, by becoming American citizens, had definitely committed themselves against the British. The result was such as he expected. On the rumor of his departure, the inhabitants in great alarm urged him to stay, saying that otherwise the British would surely retake the post. He made a show of reluctantly yielding to their request, and consented to stay with two companies; and then finding that many of the more adventurous young creoles were anxious to take service, he enlisted enough of them to fill up all four companies to their original strength. His whole leisure was spent in drilling the men, Americans and French alike, and in a short time he turned them into as orderly and well disciplined a body as could be found in any garrison of regulars.

He also established very friendly relations with the Spanish captains of the scattered creole villages across the Mississippi, for the Spaniards were very hostile to the British, and had not yet begun to realize that they had even more to dread from the Americans. Clark has recorded his frank surprise at finding the Spanish commandant, who lived at St. Louis, a very pleasant and easy companion, instead of haughty and reserved, as he had supposed all Spaniards were.

Dealings with the Indians.

The most difficult, and among the most important, of his tasks, was dealing with the swarm of fickle and treacherous savage tribes that surrounded him. They had hitherto been hostile to the Americans; but being great friends of the Spaniards and French they were much confused by the change in the sentiments of the latter, and by the sudden turn affairs had taken.

Some volunteers—Americans, French, and friendly Indians—were sent to the aid of the American captain at Vincennes, and the latter, by threats and promises, and a mixture of diplomatic speech-making with a show of force, contrived, for the time being, to pacify the immediately neighboring tribes.

Clark took upon himself the greater task of dealing with a huge horde of savages, representing every tribe between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi, who had come to the Illinois, some from a distance of five hundred miles, to learn accurately all that had happened, and to hear for themselves what the Long Knives had to say. They gathered to meet him at Cahokia, chiefs and warriors of every grade; among them were Ottawas and Chippewas, Pottawatomies, Sacs, and Foxes, and others belonging to tribes whose very names have perished. The straggling streets of the dismayed little town were thronged with many hundreds of dark-browed, sullen-looking savages, grotesque in look and terrible in possibility. They strutted to and fro in their dirty finery, or lounged round the houses, inquisitive, importunate, and insolent, hardly concealing a lust for bloodshed and plunder that the slightest mishap was certain to render ungovernable.

Fortunately Clark knew exactly how to treat them. He thoroughly understood their natures, and was always on his guard, while seemingly perfectly confident; and he combined conciliation with firmness and decision, and above all with prompt rapidity of action.

For the first two or three days no conclusion was reached, though there was plenty of speech-making. But on the night of the third a party of turbulent warriors [Footnote: "A party of Puans and others."—Clark's letter to Mason.] endeavored to force their way into the house where he was lodging, and to carry him off. Clark, who, as he records, had been "under some apprehensions among such a number of Devils," was anticipating treachery. His guards were at hand, and promptly seized the savages; while the townspeople took the alarm and were under arms in a couple of minutes, thus convincing the Indians that their friendship for the Americans was not feigned.

Clark and the Savages.

Clark instantly ordered the French militia to put the captives, both chiefs and warriors, in irons. He had treated the Indians well, and had not angered them by the harshness and brutality that so often made them side against the English or Americans and in favor of the French; but he knew that any signs of timidity would be fatal. His boldness and decision were crowned with complete success. The crestfallen prisoners humbly protested that they were only trying to find out if the French were really friendly to Clark, and begged that they might be released. He answered with haughty indifference, and refused to release them, even when the chiefs of the other tribes came up to intercede. Indians and whites alike were in the utmost confusion, every man distrusting what the moment might bring forth. Clark continued seemingly wholly unmoved, and did not even shift his lodgings to the fort, remaining in a house in the town, but he took good care to secretly fill a large room adjoining his own with armed men, while the guards were kept ready for instant action. To make his show of indifference complete, he "assembled a Number of Gentlemen and Ladies and danced nearly the whole Night." The perplexed savages, on the other hand, spent the hours of darkness in a series of councils among themselves.

Next morning he summoned all the tribes to a grand council, releasing the captive chiefs, that he might speak to them in the presence of their friends and allies. The preliminary ceremonies were carefully executed in accordance with the rigid Indian etiquette. Then Clark stood up in the midst of the rings of squatted warriors, while his riflemen clustered behind him in their tasselled hunting-shirts, travel-torn and weather-beaten. He produced the bloody war-belt of wampum, and handed it to the chiefs whom he had taken captive, telling the assembled tribes that he scorned alike their treachery and their hostility; that he would be thoroughly justified in putting them to death, but that instead he would have them escorted safely from the town, and after three days would begin war upon them. He warned them that if they did not wish their own women and children massacred, they must stop killing those of the Americans. Pointing to the war-belt, he challenged them, on behalf of his people, to see which would make it the most bloody; and he finished by telling them that while they stayed in his camp they should be given food and strong drink, [Footnote: "Provisions and Rum." Letter to Mason. This is much the best authority for these proceedings. The "Memoir," written by an old man who had squandered his energies and sunk into deserved obscurity, is tedious and magniloquent, and sometimes inaccurate. Moreover, Dillon has not always chosen the extracts judiciously. Clark's decidedly prolix speeches to the Indians are given with intolerable repetition. They were well suited to the savages, drawing the causes of the quarrel between the British and Americans in phrases that could be understood by the Indian mind; but their inflated hyperbole is not now interesting. They describe the Americans as lighting a great council-fire, sharpening tomahawks, striking the war-post, declining to give "two bucks for a blanket," as the British wanted them to, etc.; with incessant allusions to the Great Spirit being angry, the roads being made smooth, refusing to listen to the bad birds who flew through the woods, and the like. Occasional passages are fine; but it all belongs to the study of Indians and Indian oratory, rather than to the history of the Americans.] and that now he had ended his talk to them, and he wished them to speedily depart.

Not only the prisoners, but all the other chiefs in turn forthwith rose, and in language of dignified submission protested their regret at having been led astray by the British, and their determination thenceforth to be friendly with the Americans.

In response Clark again told them that he came not as a counsellor but as a warrior, not begging for a truce but carrying in his right hand peace and in his left hand war; save only that to a few of their worst men he intended to grant no terms whatever. To those who were friendly he, too, would be a friend, but if they chose war, he would call from the Thirteen Council Fires [Footnote: In his speeches, as in those of his successors in treaty-making, the United States were sometimes spoken of as the Thirteen Fires, and sometimes as the Great Fire.] warriors so numerous that they would darken the land, and from that time on the red people would hear no sound but that of the birds that lived on blood. He went on to tell them, that there had been a mist before their eyes, but that he would clear away the cloud and would show them the right of the quarrel between the Long Knives and the King who dwelt across the great sea; and then he told them about the revolt in terms which would almost have applied to a rising of Hurons or Wyandots against the Iroquois. At the end of his speech he offered them the two belts of peace and war.

The Indians Make Peace.

They eagerly took the peace belt, but he declined to smoke the calumet, and told them he would not enter into the solemn ceremonies of the peace treaty with them until the following day. He likewise declined to release all his prisoners, and insisted that two of them should be put to death. They even yielded to this, and surrendered to him two young men, who advanced and sat down before him on the floor, covering their heads with their blankets, to receive the tomahawk. [Footnote: I have followed the contemporary letter to Mason rather than the more elaborate and slightly different account of the "Memoir." The account written by Clark in his old age, like Shelby's similar autobiography, is, in many respects, not very trustworthy. It cannot be accepted for a moment where it conflicts with any contemporary accounts.] Then he granted them full peace and forgave the young men their doom, and the next day, after the peace council, there was a feast, and the friendship of the Indians was won. Clark ever after had great influence over them; they admired his personal prowess, his oratory, his address as a treaty-maker, and the skill with which he led his troops. Long afterwards, when the United States authorities were endeavoring to make treaties with the red men, it was noticed that the latter would never speak to any other white general or commissioner while Clark was present.

After this treaty there was peace in the Illinois country; the Indians remained for some time friendly, and the French were kept well satisfied.

CHAPTER III.

CLARK'S CAMPAIGN AGAINST VINCENNES, 1779.

Hamilton, at Detroit, had been so encouraged by the successes of his war parties that, in 1778, he began to plan an attack on Fort Pitt [Footnote: Haldimand MSS. Hamilton to Carleton, January, 1778.]; but his plans were forestalled by Clark's movements, and he, of course, abandoned them when the astounding news reached him that the rebels had themselves invaded the Illinois country, captured the British commandant, Rocheblave, and administered to the inhabitants the oath of allegiance to Congress. [Footnote: Do. Hamilton's letter of August 8th.] Shortly afterwards he learned that Vincennes likewise was in the hands of the Americans.

Hamilton Prepares to Reconquer the Country.

He was a man of great energy, and he immediately began to prepare an expedition for the reconquest of the country. French emissaries who were loyal to the British crown were sent to the Wabash to stir up the Indians against the Americans; and though the Piankeshaws remained friendly to the latter, the Kickapoos and Weas, who were more powerful, announced their readiness to espouse the British cause if they received support, while the neighboring Miamis were already on the war-path. The commandants at the small posts of Mackinaw and St. Josephs were also notified to incite the Lake Indians to harass the Illinois country. [Footnote: Hamilton to Haldimand, September 17, 1778.]

He led the main body in person, and throughout September every soul in Detroit was busy from morning till night in mending boats, baking biscuit, packing provisions in kegs and bags, preparing artillery stores, and in every way making ready for the expedition. Fifteen large bateaux and pirogues were procured, each capable of carrying from 1,800 to 3,000 pounds; these were to carry the ammunition, food, clothing, tents, and especially the presents for the Indians. Cattle and wheels were sent ahead to the most important portages on the route that would be traversed; a six-pounder gun was also forwarded. Hamilton had been deeply exasperated by what he regarded as the treachery of most of the Illinois and Wabash creoles in joining the Americans; but he was in high spirits and very confident of success. He wrote to his superior officer that the British were sure to succeed if they acted promptly, for the Indians were favorable to them, knowing they alone could give them supplies; and he added "the Spaniards are feeble and hated by the French, the French are fickle and have no man of capacity to advise or lead them, and the Rebels are enterprising and brave, but want resources." The bulk of the Detroit French, including all their leaders, remained staunch supporters of the crown, and the militia eagerly volunteered to go on the expedition. Feasts were held with the Ottawas, Chippewas, and Pottawatomies, at which oxen were roasted whole, while Hamilton and the chiefs of the French rangers sang the war-song in solemn council, and received pledges of armed assistance and support from the savages. [Footnote: Do. Hamilton to Haldimand, September 23, October 3, 1778.]

He Starts against Vincennes.

On October 7th the expedition left Detroit; before starting the venerable Jesuit missionary gave the Catholic French who went along his solemn blessing and approval, conditionally upon their strictly keeping the oath they had taken to be loyal and obedient servants of the crown. [Footnote: Haldimand MSS., Series B., Vol. 123, p. 53. Hamilton's letter of July 6, 1781, containing a "brief account" of the whole expedition, taken from what he calls a "diary of transactions" that he had preserved.] It is worthy of note that, while the priest at Kaskaskia proved so potent an ally of the Americans, the priest at Detroit was one of the staunchest supporters of the British. Hamilton started with thirty-six British regulars, under two lieutenants, forty-five Detroit volunteers (chiefly French), who had been carefully drilled for over a year, under Captain Lamothe; seventy-nine Detroit militia, under a major and two captains; and seventeen members of the Indian Department (including three captains and four lieutenants) who acted with the Indians. There were thus in all one hundred and seventy-seven whites. [Footnote: Do., Series B., Vol. 122, p. 253, return of forces on Dec. 24th.] Sixty Indians started with the troops from Detroit, but so many bands joined him on the route that when he reached Vincennes his entire force amounted to five hundred men. [Footnote: Do. Hamilton's letter of July 6, 1781, the "brief account." Clark's estimate was very close to the truth; he gave Hamilton six hundred men, four hundred of them Indians. See State Department MSS., No. 71, Vol. I., p. 247. Papers Continental Congress. Letter of G. R. Clark to Gov. Henry, April 29, 1779. This letter was written seven months before that to Mason, and many years before the "Memoir," so I have, where possible, followed it as being better authority than either.]

Difficulties of the Route.

Having embarked, the troops and Indians paddled down stream to Lake Erie, reaching it in a snowstorm, and when a lull came they struck boldly across the lake, making what bateau men still call a "traverse" of thirty-six miles to the mouth of the Maumee. Darkness overtook them while still on the lake, and the head boats hung out lights for the guidance of those astern; but about midnight a gale came up, and the whole flotilla was nearly swamped, being beached with great difficulty on an oozy flat close to the mouth of the Maumee. The waters of the Maumee were low, and the boats were poled slowly up against the current, reaching the portage point, where there was a large Indian village, on the 24th of the month. Here a nine miles' carry was made to one of the sources of the Wabash, called by the voyageurs "la petite rivière." This stream was so low that the boats could not have gone down it had it not been for a beaver dam four miles below the landing-place, which backed up the current. An opening was made in the dam to let the boats pass. The traders and Indians thoroughly appreciated the help given them at this difficult part of the course by the engineering skill of the beavers—for Hamilton was following the regular route of the hunting, trading, and war parties,—and none of the beavers of this particular dam were ever molested, being left to keep their dam in order, and repair it, which they always speedily did whenever it was damaged. [Footnote: Haldimand's MSS. Hamilton's "brief account.">[

It proved as difficult to go down the Wabash as to get up the Maumee. The water was shallow, and once or twice in great swamps dykes had to be built that the boats might be floated across. Frost set in heavily, and the ice cut the men as they worked in the water to haul the boats over shoals or rocks. The bateaux often needed to be beached and caulked, while both whites and Indians had to help carry the loads round the shoal places. At every Indian village it was necessary to stop, hold a conference, and give presents. At last the Wea village—or Ouiatanon, as Hamilton called it—was reached. Here the Wabash chiefs, who had made peace with the Americans, promptly came in and tendered their allegiance to the British, and a reconnoitering party seized a lieutenant and three men of the Vincennes militia, who were themselves on a scouting expedition, but who nevertheless were surprised and captured without difficulty. [Footnote: Do. The French officer had in his pocket one British and one American commission; Hamilton debated in his mind for some time the advisability of hanging him.] They had been sent out by Captain Leonard Helm, then acting as commandant at Vincennes. He had but a couple of Americans with him, and was forced to trust to the creole militia, who had all embodied themselves with great eagerness, having taken the oath of allegiance to Congress. Having heard rumors of the British advance, he had dispatched a little party to keep watch, and in consequence of their capture he was taken by surprise.

Hamilton Captures Vincennes.

From Ouiatanon Hamilton dispatched Indian parties to surround Vincennes and intercept any messages sent either to the Falls or to the Illinois; they were completely successful, capturing a messenger who carried a hurried note written by Helm to Clark to announce what had happened. An advance guard, under Major Hay, was sent forward to take possession, but Helm showed so good a front that nothing was attempted until the next day, the 17th of December, just seventy-one days after the expedition had left Detroit, when Hamilton came up at the head of his whole force and entered Vincennes. Poor Helm was promptly deserted by all the creole militia. The latter had been loud in their boasts until the enemy came in view, but as soon as they caught sight of the red-coats they began to slip away and run up to the British to surrender their arms. [Footnote: Do. Intercepted letter of Captain Helm, Series B., Vol. 122, p. 280.] He was finally left with only one or two men, Americans. Nevertheless he refused the first summons to surrender; but Hamilton, who knew that Helm's troops had deserted him, marched up to the fort at the head of his soldiers, and the American was obliged to surrender, with no terms granted save that he and his associates should be treated with humanity. [Footnote: Letter of Hamilton, Dec. 18-30, 1778. The story of Helm's marching out with the honors of war is apparently a mere invention. Even Mann Butler, usually so careful, permits himself to be led off into all sorts of errors when describing the incidents of the Illinois and Vincennes expeditions, and the writers who have followed him have generally been less accurate. The story of Helm drinking toddy by the fire-place when Clark retook the fort, and of the latter ordering riflemen to fire at the chimney, so as to knock the mortar into the toddy, may safely be set down as pure—and very weak—fiction. When Clark wrote his memoirs, in his old age, he took delight in writing down among his exploits all sorts of childish stratagems; the marvel is that any sane historian should not have seen that these were on their face as untrue as they were ridiculous.] The instant the fort was surrendered the Indians broke in and plundered it; but they committed no act of cruelty, and only plundered a single private house.

Measures to Secure his Conquest.

The French inhabitants had shown pretty clearly that they did not take a keen interest in the struggle, on either side. They were now summoned to the church and offered the chance—which they for the most part eagerly embraced—of purging themselves of their past misconduct by taking a most humiliating oath of repentance, acknowledging that they had sinned against God and man by siding with the rebels, and promising to be loyal in the future. Two hundred and fifty of the militia, being given back their arms, appeared with their officers, and took service again under the British king, swearing a solemn oath of allegiance. They certainly showed throughout the most light-hearted indifference to chronic perjury and treachery; nor did they in other respects appear to very good advantage. Clark was not in the least surprised at the news of their conduct; for he had all along realized that the attachment of the French would prove but a slender reed on which to lean in the moment of trial.

Hamilton had no fear of the inhabitants themselves, for the fort completely commanded the town. To keep them in good order he confiscated all their spirituous liquors, and in a rather amusing burst of Puritan feeling destroyed two billiard tables, which he announced were "sources of immorality and dissipation in such a settlement." [Footnote: Do.] He had no idea that he was in danger of attack from without, for his spies brought him word that Clark had only a hundred and ten men in the Illinois county [Footnote: Do. "Fourscore at Kaskaskia and thirty at Cahokia.">[; and the route between was in winter one of extraordinary difficulty.

He Goes into Winter Quarters.

He had five hundred men and Clark but little over one hundred. He was not only far nearer his base of supplies and reinforcements at Detroit, than Clark was to his at Fort Pitt, but he was also actually across Clark's line of communications. Had he pushed forward at once to attack the Americans, and had he been able to overcome the difficulties of the march, he would almost certainly have conquered. But he was daunted by the immense risk and danger of the movement. The way was long and the country flooded, and he feared the journey might occupy so much time that his stock of provisions would be exhausted before he got half-way. In such a case the party might starve to death or perish from exposure. Besides he did not know what he should do for carriages; and he dreaded the rigor of the winter weather. [Footnote: Haldimand MSS.; in his various letters Hamilton sets forth the difficulties at length.] There were undoubtedly appalling difficulties in the way of a mid-winter march and attack; and the fact that Clark attempted and performed the feat which Hamilton dared not try, marks just the difference between a man of genius and a good, brave, ordinary commander.

He Plans a Great Campaign in the Spring.

Having decided to suspend active operations during the cold weather, he allowed the Indians to scatter back to their villages for the winter, and sent most of the Detroit militia home, retaining in garrison only thirty-four British regulars, forty French volunteers, and a dozen white leaders of the Indians [Footnote: Do. B. Vol. 122, p. 287. Return of Vincennes garrison for Jan. 30, 1779.]; in all eighty or ninety whites, and a probably larger number of red auxiliaries. The latter were continually kept out on scouting expeditions; Miamis and Shawnees were sent down to watch the Ohio, and take scalps in the settlements, while bands of Kickapoos, the most warlike of the Wabash Indians, and of Ottawas, often accompanied by French partisans, went towards the Illinois country. [Footnote: Hamilton's "brief account," and his letter of December 18th.] Hamilton intended to undertake a formidable campaign in the spring. He had sent messages to Stuart, the British Indian agent in the south, directing him to give war-belts to the Chickasaws, Cherokees, and Creeks, that a combined attack on the frontier might take place as soon as the weather opened. He himself was to be joined by reinforcements from Detroit, while the Indians were to gather round him as soon as the winter broke. He would then have had probably over a thousand men, and light cannon with which to batter down the stockades. He rightly judged that with this force he could not only reconquer the Illinois, but also sweep Kentucky, where the outnumbered riflemen could not have met him in the field, nor the wooden forts have withstood his artillery. Undoubtedly he would have carried out his plan, and have destroyed all the settlements west of the Alleghanies, had he been allowed to wait until the mild weather brought him his hosts of Indian allies and his reinforcements of regulars and militia from Detroit.

Panic among the Illinois French.

But in Clark he had an antagonist whose far-sighted daring and indomitable energy raised him head and shoulders above every other frontier leader. This backwoods colonel was perhaps the one man able in such a crisis to keep the land his people had gained. When the news of the loss of Vincennes reached the Illinois towns, and especially when there followed a rumor that Hamilton himself was on his march thither to attack them, [Footnote: The rumor came when Clark was attending a dance given by the people of the little village of La Prairie du Rocher. The Creoles were passionately fond of dancing and the Kentuckians entered into the amusement with the utmost zest.] the panic became tremendous among the French. They frankly announced that though they much preferred the Americans, yet it would be folly to oppose armed resistance to the British; and one or two of their number were found to be in communication with Hamilton and the Detroit authorities. Clark promptly made ready for resistance, tearing down the buildings near the fort at Kaskaskia—his head-quarters—and sending out scouts and runners; but he knew that it was hopeless to try to withstand such a force as Hamilton could gather. He narrowly escaped being taken prisoner by a party of Ottawas and Canadians, who had come from Vincennes early in January, when the weather was severe and the travelling fairly good. [Footnote: Haldimand MSS. Hamilton's letter January 24, 1779.] He was at the time on his way to Cahokia, to arrange for the defence; several of the wealthier Frenchmen were with him in "chairs"—presumably creaking wooden carts,—and one of them "swampt," or mired down, only a hundred yards from the ambush. Clark and his guards were so on the alert that no attack was made.

Clark Receives News concerning Vincennes.

In the midst of his doubt and uncertainty he received some news that enabled him immediately to decide on the proper course to follow. He had secured great influence over the bolder, and therefore the leading, spirits among the French. One of these was a certain Francis Vigo, a trader in St. Louis. He was by birth an Italian, who had come to New Orleans in a Spanish regiment, and having procured his discharge, had drifted to the creole villages of the frontier, being fascinated by the profitable adventures of the Indian trade. Journeying to Vincennes, he was thrown into prison by Hamilton; on being released, he returned to St. Louis. Thence he instantly crossed over to Kaskaskia, on January 27, 1779, [Footnote: State Department MSS. Letters to Washington, 33, p. 90.] and told Clark that Hamilton had at the time only eighty men in garrison, with three pieces of cannon and some swivels mounted, but that as soon as the winter broke, he intended to gather a very large force and take the offensive. [Footnote: State Department MSS. Papers of Continental Congress, No. 71, Vol. I., p. 267.]

Clark Determines to Strike the First Blow.

Clark instantly decided to forestall his foe, and to make the attack himself, heedless of the almost impassable nature of the ground and of the icy severity of the weather. Not only had he received no reinforcements from Virginia but he had not had so much as "a scrip of a pen" from Governor Henry since he had left him, nearly twelve months before. [Footnote: Do.] So he was forced to trust entirely to his own energy and power. He first equipped a row-galley with two four-pounders and four swivels, and sent her off with a crew of forty men, having named her the Willing. [Footnote: Under the command of Clark's cousin, Lt. John Rogers.] She was to patrol the Ohio, and then to station herself in the Wabash so as to stop all boats from descending it. She was the first gun-boat ever afloat on the western waters.

His March against Vincennes.

Then he hastily drew together his little garrisons of backwoodsmen from the French towns, and prepared for the march overland against Vincennes. His bold front and confident bearing, and the prompt decision of his measures, had once more restored confidence among the French, whose spirits rose as readily as they were cast down; and he was especially helped by the creole girls, whose enthusiasm for the expedition roused many of the more daring young men to volunteer under Clark's banner. By these means he gathered together a band of one hundred and seventy men, at whose head he marched out of Kaskaskia on the 7th of February. [Footnote: Letter to Henry. The letter to Mason says it was the 5th.] All the inhabitants escorted them out of the village, and the Jesuit priest, Gibault, gave them absolution at parting.

The route by which they had to go was two hundred and forty miles in length. It lay through a beautiful and well watered country, of groves and prairies; but at that season the march was necessarily attended with the utmost degree of hardship and fatigue. The weather had grown mild, so that there was no suffering from cold; but in the thaw the ice on the rivers melted, great freshets followed, and all the lowlands and meadows were flooded. Clark's great object was to keep his troops in good spirits. Of course he and the other officers shared every hardship and led in every labor. He encouraged the men to hunt game; and to "feast on it like Indian war-dancers," [Footnote: Clark's "Memoir.">[ each company in turn inviting the others to the smoking and plentiful banquets. One day they saw great herds of buffaloes and killed many of them. They had no tents [Footnote: State Department MSS. Letters to Washington, Vol. 33, p. 90. "A Journal of Col. G. R. Clark. Proceedings from the 29th Jan'y 1779 to the 26th March Inst." [by Captain Bowman]. This journal has been known for a long time. The original is supposed to have been lost; but either this is it or else it is a contemporary MS. copy. In the "Campaign in the Illinois" (Cincinnati, Robert Clarke and Co., 1869), p. 99, there is a printed copy of the original. The Washington MS. differs from it in one or two particulars. Thus, the printed diary in the "Campaign," on p. 99, line 3, says "fifty volunteers"; the MS. copy says "50 French volunteers." Line 5 in the printed copy says "and such other Americans"; in the MS. it says "and several other Americans." Lines 6 and 7 of the printed copy read as follows in the MS. (but only make doubtful sense): "These with a number of horses designed for the settlement of Kantuck &c. Jan. 30th, on which Col. Clark," etc. Lines 10 and 11 of the printed copy read in the MS.: "was let alone till spring that he with his Indians would undoubtedly cut us all off." Lines 13 and 14, of the printed copy read in the MS. "Jan. 31st, sent an express to Cahokia for volunteers. Nothing extraordinary this day.">[; but at nightfall they kindled huge camp-fires, and spent the evenings merrily round the piles of blazing logs, in hunter fashion, feasting on bear's ham and buffalo hump, elk saddle, venison haunch, and the breast of the wild turkey, some singing of love and the chase and war, and others dancing after the manner of the French trappers and wood-runners.

Thus they kept on, marching hard but gleefully and in good spirits until after a week they came to the drowned lauds of the Wabash. They first struck the two branches of the Little Wabash. Their channels were a league apart, but the flood was so high that they now made one great river five miles in width, the overflow of water being three feet deep in the shallowest part of the plains between and alongside them.

Clark instantly started to build a pirogue; then crossing over the first channel he put up a scaffold on the edge of the flooded plain. He ferried his men over, and brought the baggage across and placed it on the scaffold; then he swam the pack-horses over, loaded them as they stood belly-deep in the water beside the scaffold, and marched his men on through the water until they came to the second channel, which was crossed as the first had been. The building of the pirogue and the ferrying took three days in all.

They had by this time come so near Vincennes that they dared not fire a gun for fear of being discovered; besides, the floods had driven the game all away; so that they soon began to feel hunger, while their progress was very slow, and they suffered much from the fatigue of travelling all day long through deep mud or breast-high water. On the 17th they reached the Embarras River, but could not cross, nor could they find a dry spot on which to camp; at last they found the water falling off a small, almost submerged hillock, and on this they huddled through the night. At daybreak they heard Hamilton's morning gun from the fort, that was but three leagues distant; and as they could not find a ford across the Embarras, they followed it down and camped by the Wabash. There Clark set his drenched, hungry, and dispirited followers to building some pirogues; while two or three unsuccessful attempts were made to get men across the river that they might steal boats. He determined to leave his horses at this camp; for it was almost impossible to get them further. [Footnote: This is not exactly stated in the "Memoir"; but it speaks of the horses as being with the troops on the 20th; and after they left camp, on the evening of the 21st, states that he "would have given a good deal … for one of the horses.">[

Hardship and Suffering.

On the morning of the 20th the men had been without food for nearly two days. Many of the Creole volunteers began to despair, and talked of returning. Clark knew that his Americans, veterans who had been with him for over a year, had no idea of abandoning the enterprise, nor yet of suffering the last extremities of hunger while they had horses along. He paid no heed to the request of the Creoles, nor did he even forbid their going back; he only laughed at them, and told them to go out and try to kill a deer. He knew that without any violence he could yet easily detain the volunteers for a few days longer; and he kept up the spirits of the whole command by his undaunted and confident mien. The canoes were nearly finished; and about noon a small boat with five Frenchmen from Vincennes was captured. From these Clark gleaned the welcome intelligence that the condition of affairs was unchanged at the fort, and that there was no suspicion of any impending danger. In the evening the men were put in still better heart by one of the hunters killing a deer.

It rained all the next day. By dawn Clark began to ferry the troops over the Wabash in the canoes he had built, and they were soon on the eastern bank of the river, the side on which Vincennes stood. They now hoped to get to town by nightfall; but there was no dry land for leagues round about, save where a few hillocks rose island-like above the flood. The Frenchmen whom they had captured said they could not possibly get along; but Clark led the men in person, and they waded with infinite toil for about three miles, the water often up to their chins; and they then camped on a hillock for the night. Clark kept the troops cheered up by every possible means, and records that he was much assisted by "a little antic drummer," a young boy who did good service by making the men laugh with his pranks and jokes. [Footnote: Law, in his "Vincennes" (p. 32), makes the deeds of the drummer the basis for a traditional story that is somewhat too highly colored. Thus he makes Clark's men at one time mutiny, and refuse to go forwards. This they never did; the Creoles once got dejected and wished to return, but the Americans, by Clark's own statement, never faltered at all. Law's "Vincennes" is an excellent little book, but he puts altogether too much confidence in mere tradition. For another instance besides this, see page 68, where he describes Clark as entrapping and killing "upwards of fifty Indians," instead of only eight or nine, as was actually the case.]

Next morning they resumed their march, the strongest wading painfully through the water, while the weak and famished were carried in the canoes, which were so hampered by the bushes that they could hardly go even as fast as the toiling footmen. The evening and morning guns of the fort were heard plainly by the men as they plodded onward, numbed and weary. Clark, as usual, led them in person. Once they came to a place so deep that there seemed no crossing, for the canoes could find no ford. It was hopeless to go back or stay still, and the men huddled together, apparently about to despair. But Clark suddenly blackened his face with gunpowder, gave the war-whoop, and sprang forwards boldly into the ice-cold water, wading out straight towards the point at which they were aiming; and the men followed him, one after another, without a word. Then he ordered those nearest him to begin one of their favorite songs; and soon the whole line took it up, and marched cheerfully onward. He intended to have the canoes ferry them over the deepest part, but before they came to it one of the men felt that his feet were in a path, and by carefully following it they got to a sugar camp, a hillock covered with maples, which once had been tapped for sugar. Here they camped for the night, still six miles from the town, without food, and drenched through. The prisoners from Vincennes, sullen and weary, insisted that they could not possibly get to the town through the deep water; the prospect seemed almost hopeless even to the iron-willed, steel-sinewed backwoodsmen [Footnote: Bowman ends his entry for the day with: "No provisions yet. Lord help us!">[; but their leader never lost courage for a moment.

That night was bitterly cold, for there was a heavy frost, and the ice formed half an inch thick round the edges and in the smooth water. But the sun rose bright and glorious, and Clark, in burning words, told his stiffened, famished, half-frozen followers that the evening would surely see them at the goal of their hopes. Without waiting for an answer, he plunged into the water, and they followed him with a cheer, in Indian file. Before the third man had entered the water he halted and told one of his officers [Footnote: Bowman] to close the rear with twenty-five men, and to put to death any man who refused to march; and the whole line cheered him again.

Then came the most trying time of the whole march. Before them lay a broad sheet of water, covering what was known as the Horse Shoe Plain; the floods had made it a shallow lake four miles across, unbroken by so much as a handsbreadth of dry land. On its farther side was a dense wood. Clark led breast high in the water with fifteen or twenty of the strongest men next him. About the middle of the plain the cold and exhaustion told so on the weaker men that the canoes had to take them aboard and carry them on to the land; and from that time on the little dug-outs plied frantically to and fro to save the more helpless from drowning. Those, who, though weak, could still move onwards, clung to the stronger, and struggled ahead, Clark animating them in every possible way. When they at last reached the woods the water became so deep that it was to the shoulders of the tallest, but the weak and those of low stature could now cling to the bushes and old logs, until the canoes were able to ferry them to a spot of dry land, some ten acres in extent, that lay near-by. The strong and tall got ashore and built fires. Many on reaching the shore fell flat on their faces, half in the water, and could not move farther. It was found that the fires did not help the very weak, so every such a one was put between two strong men who ran him up and down by the arms, and thus soon made him recover. [Footnote: Clark's "Memoir.">[

Fortunately at this time an Indian canoe, paddled by some squaws, was discovered and overtaken by one of the dug-outs. In it was half a quarter of a buffalo, with some corn, tallow and kettles. This was an invaluable prize. Broth was immediately made, and was served out to the most weakly with great care; almost all of the men got some, but very many gave their shares to the weakly, rallying and joking them to put them in good heart. The little refreshment, together with the fires and the bright weather, gave new life to all. They set out again in the afternoon, crossed a deep, narrow lake in their canoes, and after marching a short distance came to a copse of timber from which they saw the fort and town not two miles away. Here they halted, and looked to their rifles and ammunition, making ready for the fight. Every man now feasted his eyes with the sight of what he had so long labored to reach, and forthwith forgot that he had suffered any thing; making light of what had been gone through, and passing from dogged despair to the most exultant self-confidence.

Between the party and the town lay a plain, the hollows being filled with little pools, on which were many water-fowl, and some of the townspeople were in sight, on horseback, shooting ducks. Clark sent out a few active young creoles, who succeeded in taking prisoner one of these fowling horsemen. From him it was learned that neither Hamilton nor any one else had the least suspicion that any attack could possibly be made at that season, but that a couple of hundred Indian warriors had just come to town.

Clark was rather annoyed at the last bit of information. The number of armed men in town, including British, French, and Indians about quadrupled his own force. This made heavy odds to face, even with the advantage of a surprise, and in spite of the fact that his own men were sure to fight to the last, since failure meant death by torture. Moreover, if he made the attack without warning, some of the Indians and Vincennes people would certainly be slain, and the rest would be thereby made his bitter enemies, even if he succeeded. On the other hand, he found out from the prisoner that the French were very lukewarm to the British, and would certainly not fight if they could avoid it; and that half of the Indians were ready to side with the Americans. Finally, there was a good chance that before dark some one would discover the approach of the troops and would warn the British, thereby doing away with all chance of a surprise.

After thinking it over Clark decided, as the less of two evils, to follow the hazardous course of himself announcing his approach. He trusted that the boldness of such a course, together with the shock of his utterly unexpected appearance, would paralyze his opponents and incline the wavering to favor him. So he released the prisoner and sent him in ahead, with a letter to the people of Vincennes. By this letter he proclaimed to the French that he was that moment about to attack the town; that those townspeople who were friends to the Americans were to remain in their houses, where they would not be molested; that the friends of the king should repair to the fort, join the "hair-buyer general," and fight like men; and that those who did neither of these two things, but remained armed and in the streets, must expect to be treated as enemies. [Footnote: Clark's "Memoir.">[

Surprise of the Town.

Having sent the messenger in advance, he waited until his men were rested and their rifles and powder dry, and then at sundown marched straight against the town. He divided his force into two divisions, leading in person the first, which consisted of two companies of Americans and of the Kaskaskia creoles; while the second, led by Bowman, contained Bowman's own company and the Cahokians. His final orders to the men were to march with the greatest regularity, to obey the orders of their officers, and, above all, to keep perfect silence. [Footnote: In the Haldimand MSS., Series B., Vol. 122, p. 289, there is a long extract from what is called "Col. Clark's Journal." This is the official report which he speaks of as being carried by William Moires, his express, who was taken by the Indians (see his letter to Henry of April 29th; there seems, by the way, to be some doubt whether this letter was not written to Jefferson; there is a copy in the Jefferson MSS. Series I., Vol. I.). This is not only the official report, but also the earliest letter Clark wrote on the subject and therefore the most authoritative. The paragraph relating to the final march against Vincennes is as follows:

"I order'd the march in the first division Capt. Williams, Capt. Worthingtons Company & the Kaskaskia Volunteers, in the 2d commanded by Capt. Bowman his own Company & the Cohos Volunteers. At sun down I put the divisions in motion to march in the greatest order & regularity & observe the orders of their officers. Above all to be silent—the 5 men we took in the canoes were our guides. We entered the town on the upper part leaving detached Lt. Bayley & 15 rifle men to attack the Fort & keep up a fire to harrass them untill we took possession of the town & they were to remain on that duty till relieved by another party, the two divisions marched into the town & took possession of the main street, put guards &c without the least molestation."

This effectually disposes of the account, which was accepted by Clark himself in his old age, that he ostentatiously paraded his men and marched them to and fro with many flags flying, so as to impress the British with his numbers. Instead of indulging in any such childishness (which would merely have warned the British, and put them on their guard), he in reality made as silent an approach as possible, under cover of the darkness.

Hamilton, in his narrative, speaks of the attack as being made on the 22d of February, not the 23d as Clark says.] The rapidly gathering dusk prevented any discovery of his real numbers.

In sending in the messenger he had builded even better than he knew; luck which had long been against him now at last favored him. Hamilton's runners had seen Clark's camp-fires the night before; and a small scouting party of British regulars, Detroit volunteers, and Indians had in consequence been sent to find out what had caused them. [Footnote: Hamilton's "brief account" in the Haldimand MSS. The party was led by Lt. Schieffelin of the regulars and the French captains Lamothe and Maisonville.] These men were not made of such stern stuff as Clark's followers, nor had they such a commander; and after going some miles they were stopped by the floods, and started to return. Before they got back, Vincennes was assailed. Hamilton trusted so completely to the scouting party, and to the seemingly impassable state of the country, that his watch was very lax. The creoles in the town, when Clark's proclamation was read to them, gathered eagerly to discuss it; but so great was the terror of his name, and so impressed and appalled were they by the mysterious approach of an unknown army, and the confident and menacing language with which its coming was heralded, that none of them dared show themselves partisans of the British by giving warning to the garrison. The Indians likewise heard vague rumors of what had occurred and left the town; a number of the inhabitants who were favorable to the British, followed the same course. [Footnote: Haldimand MSS. Series B., Vol. 122, p. 337. Account brought to the people of Detroit of the loss of Vincennes, by a Captain Chêne, who was then living in the village. As the Virginians entered it he fled to the woods with some Huron and Ottawa warriors; next day he was joined by some French families and some Miamis and Pottawatomies.] Hamilton, attracted by the commotion, sent down his soldiers to find out what had occurred; but before they succeeded, the Americans were upon them.

About seven o'clock [Footnote: Clark's letter to Henry.] Clark entered the town, and at once pushed his men on to attack the fort. Had he charged he could probably have taken it at once; for so unprepared were the garrison that the first rifle shots were deemed by them to come from drunken Indians. But of course he had not counted on such a state of things. He had so few men that he dared not run the risk of suffering a heavy loss. Moreover, the backwoodsmen had neither swords nor bayonets.

Most of the creole townspeople received Clark joyfully, and rendered him much assistance, especially by supplying him with powder and ball, his own stock of ammunition being scanty. One of the Indian chiefs [Footnote: A son of the Piankeshaw head-chief Tabae.]offered to bring his tribe to the support of the Americans, but Clark answered that all he asked of the red men was that they should for the moment remain neutral. A few of the young Creoles were allowed to join in the attack, however, it being deemed good policy to commit them definitely to the American side.

The Attack on the Fort.

Fifty of the American troops were detached to guard against any relief from without, while the rest attacked the fort: yet Hamilton's scouting party crept up, lay hid all night in an old barn, and at daybreak rushed into the fort. [Footnote: Hamilton's Narrative. Clark in his "Memoir" asserts that he designedly let them through, and could have shot them down as they tried to clamber over the stockade if he had wished. Bowman corroborates Hamilton, saying: "We sent a party to intercept them, but missed them. However, we took one of their men, … the rest making their escape under the cover of the night into the fort." Bowman's journal is for this siege much more trustworthy than Clark's "Memoir." In the latter, Clark makes not a few direct misstatements, and many details are colored so as to give them an altered aspect. As an instance of the different ways in which he told an event at the time, and thirty years later, take the following accounts of the same incident. The first is from the letter to Henry (State Department MSS.), the second from the "Memoir." I. "A few days ago I received certain intelligence of Wm. Moires my express to you being killed near the Falls of Ohio, news truly disagreeable to me, as I fear many of my letters will fall into the hands of the enemy at Detroit." 2. "Poor Myres the express, who set out on the 15th, got killed on his passage, and his packet fell into the hands of the enemy; but I had been so much on my guard that there was not a sentence in it that could be of any disadvantage to us for the enemy to know; and there were private letters from soldiers to their friends designedly wrote to deceive in cases of such accidents." Firing was kept up with very little intermission throughout the night.

His whole account of the night attack and of his treating with Hamilton is bombastic. If his account of the incessant "blaze of fire" of the Americans is true, they must have wasted any amount of ammunition perfectly uselessly. Unfortunately, most of the small western historians who have written about Clark have really damaged his reputation by the absurd inflation of their language. They were adepts in the forcible-feeble style of writing, a sample of which is their rendering him ludicrous by calling him "the Hannibal of the West," and the "Washington of the West." Moreover, they base his claims to greatness not on his really great deeds, but on the half-imaginary feats of childish cunning he related in his old age.] At one o'clock the moon set, and Clark took advantage of the darkness to throw up an intrenchment within rifle-shot of the strongest battery, which consisted of two guns. All of the cannon and swivels in the fort were placed about eleven feet above the ground, on the upper floors of the strong block-houses that formed the angles of the palisaded walls. At sunrise on the 24th the riflemen from the intrenchment opened a hot fire into the port-holes of the battery, and speedily silenced both guns. [Footnote: Clark's letter to Henry.] The artillery and musketry of the defenders did very little damage to the assailants, who lost but one man wounded, though some of the houses in the town were destroyed by the cannon-balls. In return, the backwoodsmen, by firing into the ports, soon rendered it impossible for the guns to be run out and served, and killed or severely wounded six or eight of the garrison; for the Americans showed themselves much superior, both in marksmanship and in the art of sheltering themselves, to the British regulars and French Canadians against whom they were pitted.

Early in the forenoon Clark summoned the fort to surrender, and while waiting for the return of the flag his men took the opportunity of getting breakfast, the first regular meal they had had for six days. Hamilton declined to surrender, but proposed a three days' truce instead. This proposition Clark instantly rejected, and the firing again began, the backwoodsmen beseeching Clark to let them storm the fort; he refused. While the negotiations were going on a singular incident occurred. A party of Hamilton's Indians returned from a successful scalping expedition against the frontier, and being ignorant of what had taken place, marched straight into the town. Some of Clark's backwoodsmen instantly fell on them and killed or captured nine, besides two French partisans who had been out with them. [Footnote: Do. In the letter to Mason he says two scalped, six captured and after-wards tomahawked. Bowman says two killed, three wounded, six captured; and calls the two partisans "prisoners." Hamilton and Clark say they were French allies of the British, the former saying there were two, the latter mentioning only one. Hamilton says there were fifteen Indians.] One of the latter was the son of a creole lieutenant in Clark's troops, and after much pleading his father and friends procured the release of himself and his comrade. [Footnote: The incident is noteworthy as showing how the French were divided; throughout the Revolutionary war in the west they furnished troops to help in turn whites and Indians, British and Americans. The Illinois French, however, generally remained faithful to the Republic, and the Detroit French to the crown.] Clark determined to make a signal example of the six captured Indians, both to strike terror into the rest and to show them how powerless the British were to protect them; so he had them led within sight of the fort and there tomahawked and thrown into the river. [Footnote: Hamilton, who bore the most vindictive hatred to Clark, implies that the latter tomahawked the prisoners himself; but Bowman explicitly says that it was done while Clark and Hamilton were meeting at the church. Be it noticed in passing, that both Clark and Hamilton agree that though the Vincennes people favored the Americans, only a very few of them took active part on Clark's side.] The sight did not encourage the garrison. The English troops remained firm and eager for the fight, though they had suffered the chief loss; but the Detroit volunteers showed evident signs of panic.

Surrender of the Fort.

In the afternoon Hamilton sent out another flag, and he and Clark met in the old French church to arrange for the capitulation. Helm, who was still a prisoner on parole, and was told by Clark that he was to remain such until recaptured, was present; so were the British Major Hay and the American Captain Bowman. There was some bickering and recrimination between the leaders, Clark reproaching Hamilton with having his hands dyed in the blood of the women and children slain by his savage allies; while the former answered that he was not to blame for obeying the orders of his superiors, and that he himself had done all he could to make the savages act mercifully. It was finally agreed that the garrison, seventy-nine men in all, [Footnote: Letter to Henry. Hamilton's letter says sixty rank and file of the 8th regiment and Detroit volunteers; the other nineteen were officers and under-officers, artillerymen, and French partisan leaders. The return of the garrison already quoted shows he had between eighty and ninety white troops.] should surrender as prisoners of war. The British commander has left on record his bitter mortification at having to yield the fort "to a set of uncivilized Virginia woodsmen armed with rifles." In truth, it was a most notable achievement. Clark had taken, without artillery, a heavy stockade, protected by cannon and swivels, and garrisoned by trained soldiers. His superiority in numbers was very far from being in itself sufficient to bring about the result, as witness the almost invariable success with which the similar but smaller Kentucky forts, unprovided with artillery and held by fewer men, were defended against much larger forces than Clark's. Much credit belongs to Clark's men, but most belongs to their leader. The boldness of his plan and the resolute skill with which he followed it out, his perseverance through the intense hardships of the midwinter march, the address with which he kept the French and Indians neutral, and the masterful way in which he controlled his own troops, together with the ability and courage he displayed in the actual attack, combined to make his feat the most memorable of all the deeds done west of the Alleghanies in the Revolutionary war. [Footnote: Hamilton himself, at the conclusion of his "brief account," speaks as follows in addressing his superiors: "The difficulties and dangers of Colonel Clark's march from the Illinois were such as required great courage to encounter and great perseverance to overcome. In trusting to traitors he was more fortunate than myself; whether, on the whole, he was entitled to success is not for me to determine." Both Clark and Hamilton give minute accounts of various interviews that took place between them; the accounts do not agree, and it is needless to say that in the narration of each the other appears to disadvantage, being quoted as practically admitting various acts of barbarity, etc.] It was likewise the most important in its results, for had he been defeated we would not only have lost the Illinois, but in all probability Kentucky also.

Capture of a Convoy from Detroit.

Immediately after taking the fort Clark sent Helm and fifty men, in boats armed with swivels, up the Wabash to intercept a party of forty French volunteers from Detroit, who were bringing to Vincennes bateaux heavily laden with goods of all kinds, to the value of ten thousand pounds sterling. [Footnote: Letter to Henry.] In a few days Helm returned successful, and the spoils, together with the goods taken at Vincennes, were distributed among the soldiers, who "got almost rich." [Footnote: "Memoir.">[ The officers kept nothing save a few needed articles of clothing. The gun-boat Willing appeared shortly after the taking of the fort, the crew bitterly disappointed that they were not in time for the fighting. The long-looked-for messenger from the governor of Virginia also arrived, bearing to the soldiers the warm thanks of the Legislature of that State for their capture of Kaskaskia and the promise of more substantial reward. [Footnote: One hundred and fifty thousand acres of land opposite Louisville were finally allotted them. Some of the Piankeshaw Indians ceded Clark a tract of land for his own use, but the Virginia Legislature very properly disallowed the grant.]

Disposal of the Prisoners.

Clark was forced to parole most of his prisoners, but twenty-seven, including Hamilton himself, were sent to Virginia. The backwoodsmen regarded Hamilton with revengeful hatred, and he was not well treated while among them, [Footnote: In Hamilton's "brief account" he says that their lives were often threatened by the borderers, but that "our guard behaved very well, protected us, and hunted for us." At the Falls he found "a number of settlers who lived in log-houses, in eternal apprehension from the Indians," and he adds: "The people at the forts are in a wretched state, obliged to enclose the cattle every night within the fort, and carry their rifles to the field when they go to plough or cut wood." He speaks of Boon's kindness in his short printed narrative in the Royal Gazette.] save only by Boon—for the kind-hearted, fearless old pioneer never felt any thing but pity for a fallen enemy. All the borderers, including Clark, [Footnote: Clark, in his letter to Mason, alludes to Hamilton's "known barbarity"; but in his memoir he speaks very well of Hamilton, and attributes the murderous forays to his subordinates, one of whom, Major Hay, he particularly specifies.] believed that the British commander himself gave rewards to the Indians for the American scalps they brought in; and because of his alleged behavior in this regard he was kept in close confinement by the Virginia government until, through the intercession of Washington, he was at last released and exchanged. Exactly how much he was to blame it is difficult to say. Certainly the blame rests even more with the crown, and the ruling class in Britain, than with Hamilton, who merely carried out the orders of his superiors; and though he undoubtedly heartily approved of these orders, and executed them with eager zest, yet it seems that he did what he could—which was very little—to prevent unnecessary atrocities.

The crime consisted in employing the savages at all in a war waged against men, women, and children alike. Undoubtedly the British at Detroit followed the example of the French [Footnote: See Parkman's "Montcalm and Wolfe," II., 421, for examples of French payments, some of a peculiarly flagrant sort. A certain kind of American pseudo-historian is especially fond of painting the British as behaving to us with unexampled barbarity; yet nothing is more sure than that the French were far mote cruel and less humane in their contests with us than were the British.] in paying money to the Indians for the scalps of their foes. It is equally beyond question that the British acted with much more humanity than their French predecessors had shown. Apparently the best officers utterly disapproved of the whole business of scalp buying; but it was eagerly followed by many of the reckless agents and partisan leaders, British, tories, and Canadians, who themselves often accompanied the Indians against the frontier and witnessed or shared in their unmentionable atrocities. It is impossible to acquit either the British home government or its foremost representatives at Detroit of a large share in the responsibility for the appalling brutality of these men and their red allies; but the heaviest blame rests on the home government.

The Country Pacified.

Clark soon received some small reinforcements, and was able to establish permanent garrisons at Vincennes, Kaskaskia, and Cahokia. With the Indian tribes who lived round about he made firm peace; against some hunting bands of Delawares who came in and began to commit ravages, he waged ruthless and untiring war, sparing the women and children, but killing all the males capable of bearing arms, and he harried most of them out of the territory, while the rest humbly sued for peace. His own men worshipped him; the French loved and stood in awe of him while the Indians respected and feared him greatly. During the remainder of the Revolutionary war the British were not able to make any serious effort to shake the hold he had given the Americans on the region lying around and between Vincennes and the Illinois. Moreover he so effectually pacified the tribes between the Wabash and the Mississippi that they did not become open and formidable foes of the whites until, with the close of the war against Britain, Kentucky passed out of the stage when Indian hostilities threatened her very life.

The fame of Clark's deeds and the terror of his prowess spread to the southern Indians, and the British at Natchez trembled lest they should share the fate that had come on Kaskaskia and Vincennes. [Footnote: State Department MSS. [Intercepted Letters], No. 51, Vol. II., pp. 17 and 45. Letter of James Colbert, a half-breed in the British interest, resident at that time among the Chickasaws, May 25, 1779, etc.] Flat-boats from the Illinois went down to New Orleans, and keel-boats returned from that city with arms and munitions, or were sent up to Pittsburg [Footnote: The history of the early navigation of the Ohio and Mississippi begins many years before the birth of any of our western pioneers, when the French went up and down them. Long before the Revolutionary war occasional hunters, in dug-outs, or settlers going to Natchez in flat-boats, descended these rivers, and from Pittsburg craft were sent to New Orleans to open negotiations with the Spaniards as soon as hostilities broke out; and ammunition was procured from New Orleans as soon as Independence was declared.]; and the following spring Clark built a fort on the east bank of the Mississippi below the Ohio. [Footnote: In lat. 36° 30'; it was named Fort Jefferson. Jefferson MSS., 1st Series, Vol. 19. Clark's letter.] It was in the Chickasaw territory, and these warlike Indians soon assaulted it, making a determined effort to take it by storm, and though they were repulsed with very heavy slaughter, yet, to purchase their neutrality, the Americans were glad to abandon the fort.

Clark Moves to the Falls of Ohio.

Clark himself, towards the end of 1779, took up his abode at the Falls of the Ohio, where he served in some sort as a shield both for the Illinois and for Kentucky, and from whence he hoped some day to march against Detroit. This was his darling scheme, which he never ceased to cherish. Through no fault of his own, the day never came when he could put it in execution.

He was ultimately made a brigadier-general of the Virginian militia, and to the harassed settlers in Kentucky his mere name was a tower of strength. He was the sole originator of the plan for the conquest of the northwestern lands, and, almost unaided, he had executed his own scheme. For a year he had been wholly cut off from all communication with the home authorities, and had received no help of any kind. Alone, and with the very slenderest means, he had conquered and held a vast and beautiful region, which but for him would have formed part of a foreign and hostile empire [Footnote: It is of course impossible to prove that but for Clark's conquest the Ohio would have been made our boundary in 1783, exactly as it is impossible to prove that but for Wolfe the English would not have taken Quebec. But when we take into account the determined efforts of Spain and France to confine us to the land east of the Alleghanies, and then to the land southeast of the Ohio, the slavishness of Congress in instructing our commissioners to do whatever France wished, and the readiness shown by one of the commissioners, Franklin, to follow these instructions, it certainly looks as if there would not even have been an effort made by us to get the northwestern territory had we not already possessed it, thanks to Clark. As it was, it was only owing to Jay's broad patriotism and stern determination that our western boundaries were finally made so far-reaching. None of our early diplomats did as much for the west as Jay, whom at one time the whole west hated and reviled; Mann Butler, whose politics are generally very sound, deserves especial credit for the justice he does the New Yorker.

It is idle to talk of the conquest as being purely a Virginian affair. It was conquered by Clark, a Virginian, with some scant help from Virginia, but it was retained only owing to the power of the United States and the patriotism of such northern statesmen as Jay, Adams, and Franklin, the negotiators of the final treaty. Had Virginia alone been in interest, Great Britain would not have even paid her claims the compliment of listening to them. Virginia's share in the history of the nation has ever been gallant and leading; but the Revolutionary war was emphatically fought by Americans for America; no part could have won without the help of the whole, and every victory was thus a victory for all, in which all alike can take pride.]; he had clothed and paid his soldiers with the spoils of his enemies; he had spent his own fortune as carelessly as he had risked his life, and the only reward that he was destined for many years to receive was the sword voted him by the Legislature of Virginia. [Footnote: A probably truthful tradition reports that when the Virginian commissioners offered Clark the sword, the grim old fighter, smarting under the sense of his wrongs, threw it indignantly from him, telling the envoys that he demanded from Virginia his just rights and the promised reward of his services, not an empty compliment.]

CHAPTER IV.

CONTINUANCE OF THE STRUGGLE IN KENTUCKY AND THE NORTHWEST, 1779-1781.

Clark's Conquests Benefit Kentucky.

Clark's successful campaigns against the Illinois towns and Vincennes, besides giving the Americans a foothold north of the Ohio, were of the utmost importance to Kentucky. Until this time, the Kentucky settlers had been literally fighting for life and home, and again and again their strait had been so bad, that it seemed—and was—almost an even chance whether they would be driven from the land. The successful outcome of Clark's expedition temporarily overawed the Indians, and, moreover, made the French towns outposts for the protection of the settlers; so that for several years thereafter the tribes west of the Wabash did but little against the Americans. The confidence of the backwoodsmen in their own ultimate triumph was likewise very much increased; while the fame of the western region was greatly spread abroad. From all these causes it resulted that there was an immediate and great increase of immigration thither, the bulk of the immigrants of course stopping in Kentucky, though a very few, even thus early, went to Illinois. Every settlement in Kentucky was still in jeopardy, and there came moments of dejection, when some of her bravest leaders spoke gloomily of the possibility of the Americans being driven from the land. But these were merely words such as even strong men utter when sore from fresh disaster. After the spring of 1779, there was never any real danger that the whites would be forced to abandon Kentucky.

The Land Laws.

The land laws which the Virginia Legislature enacted about this time [Footnote: May, 1779; they did not take effect nor was a land court established until the following fall, when the land office was opened at St. Asaphs, Oct. 13th. Isaac Shelby's claim was the first one considered and granted. He had raised a crop of corn in the country in 1776.] were partly a cause, partly a consequence, of the increased emigration to Kentucky, and of the consequent rise in the value of its wild lands. Long before the Revolution, shrewd and far-seeing speculators had organized land companies to acquire grants of vast stretches of western territory; but the land only acquired an actual value for private individuals after the incoming of settlers. In addition to the companies, many private individuals had acquired rights to tracts of land; some, under the royal proclamation, giving bounties to the officers and soldiers in the French war; others by actual payment into the public treasury. [Footnote: The Ohio Company was the greatest of the companies. There were "also, among private rights, the ancient importation rights, the Henderson Company rights, etc." See Marshall, I., 82.] The Virginia Legislature now ratified all titles to regularly surveyed ground claimed under charter, military bounty, and old treasury rights, to the extent of four hundred acres each. Tracts of land were reserved as bounties for the Virginia troops, both Continentals and militia. Each family of actual settlers was allowed a settlement right to four hundred acres for the small sum of nine dollars, and, if very poor, the land was given them on credit. Every such settler also acquired a preemptive right to purchase a thousand acres adjoining, at the regulation State price, which was forty pounds, paper money, or forty dollars in specie, for every hundred acres. One peculiar provision was made necessary by the system of settling in forted villages. Every such village was allowed six hundred and forty acres, which no outsider could have surveyed or claim, for it was considered, the property of the townsmen, to be held in common until an equitable division could be made; while each family likewise had a settlement right to four hundred acres adjoining the village. The vacant lands were sold, warrants for a hundred acres costing forty dollars in specie; but later on, towards the close of the war, Virginia tried to buoy up her mass of depreciated paper currency by accepting it nearly at par for land warrants, thereby reducing the cost of these to less than fifty cents for a hundred acres. No warrant applied to a particular spot; it was surveyed on any vacant or presumably vacant ground. Each individual had the surveying done wherever he pleased, the county surveyor usually appointing some skilled woodsman to act as his deputy.

In the end the natural result of all this was to involve half the people of Kentucky in lawsuits over their land, as there were often two or three titles to each patch, [Footnote: McAfee MSS.] and the surveys crossed each other in hopeless tangles. Immediately, the system gave a great stimulus to immigration, for it made it easy for any incoming settler to get title to his farm, and it also strongly attracted all land speculators. Many well-to-do merchants or planters of the seaboard sent agents out to buy lands in Kentucky; and these agents either hired the old pioneers, such as Boon and Kenton, to locate and survey the lands, or else purchased their claims from them outright. The advantages of following the latter plan were of course obvious; for the pioneers were sure to have chosen fertile, well-watered spots; and though they asked more than the State, yet, ready money was so scarce, and the depreciation of the currency so great, that even thus the land only cost a few cents an acre. [Footnote: From the Clay MSS. "Virginia, Frederick Co. to wit: This day came William Smith of [illegible] before me John A. Woodcock, a Justice of the peace of same county, who being of full age deposeth and saith that about the first of June 1780, being in Kentuckey and empowered to purchase Land, for Mr. James Ware, he the deponent agreed with a certain Simon Kenton of Kentucky for 1000 Acres of Land about 2 or 3 miles from the big salt spring on Licking, that the sd. Kenton on condition that the sd. Smith would pay him £100 in hand and £100 more when sd. Land was surveyed,… sd. Kenton on his part wou'd have the land surveyed, and a fee Simple made there to…. sd. Land was first rate Land and had a good Spring thereon…. he agreed to warrant and defend the same … against all persons whatsoever…. sworn too before me this 17th day of Nov. 1789." Later on, the purchaser, who did not take possession of the land for eight or nine years, feared it would not prove as fertile as Kenton had said, and threatened to sue Kenton; but Kenton evidently had the whip-hand in the controversy, for the land being out in the wilderness, the purchaser did not know its exact location, and when he threatened suit, and asked to be shown it, Kenton "swore that he would not shoe it at all." Letter of James Ware, Nov. 29, 1789.]

Inrush of Settlers.

Thus it came about that with the fall of 1779 a strong stream of emigration set towards Kentucky, from the backwoods districts of Pennsylvania, Virginia, and North Carolina. In company with the real settlers came many land speculators, and also many families of weak, irresolute, or shiftless people, who soon tired of the ceaseless and grinding frontier strife for life, and drifted back to the place whence they had come. [Footnote: Thus the increase of population is to be measured by the net gain of immigration over emigration, not by immigration alone. It is probably partly neglect of this fact, and partly simple exaggeration, that make the early statements of the additions to the Kentucky population so very untrustworthy. In 1783, at the end of the Revolution, the population of Kentucky was probably nearer 12,000 than 20,000, and it had grown steadily each year. Yet Butler quotes Floyd as saying that in the spring of 1780 three hundred large family boats arrived at the Falls, which would mean an increase of perhaps four or five thousand people; and in the McAfee MSS. occurs the statement that in 1779 and 1780 nearly 20,000 people came to Kentucky. Both of these statements are probably mere estimates, greatly exaggerated; any westerner of to-day can instance similar reports of movements to western localities, which under a strict census dwindled wofully.] Thus there were ever two tides—the larger setting towards Kentucky, the lesser towards the old States; so that the two streams passed each other on the Wilderness road—for the people who came down the Ohio could not return against the current. Very many who did not return nevertheless found they were not fitted to grapple with the stern trials of existence on the border. Some of these succumbed outright; others unfortunately survived, and clung with feeble and vicious helplessness to the skirts of their manlier fellows; and from them have descended the shiftless squatters, the "mean whites," the listless, uncouth men who half-till their patches of poor soil, and still cumber the earth in out-of-the-way nooks from the crannies of the Alleghanies to the canyons of the southern Rocky Mountains.

In April, before this great rush of immigration began, but when it was clearly foreseen that it would immediately take place, the county court of Kentucky issued a proclamation to the new settlers, recommending them to keep as united and compact as possible, settling in "stations" or forted towns; and likewise advising each settlement to choose three or more trustees to take charge of their public affairs. [Footnote: Durrett MSS., in the bound volume of "Papers relating to Louisville and Kentucky." On May 1, 1780, the people living at the Falls, having established a town, forty-six of them signed a petition to have their title made good against Conolly. On Feb. 7, 1781, John Todd and five other trustees of Louisville met; they passed resolutions to erect a grist mill and make surveys.] Their recommendations and advice were generally followed.

Bowman Attacks Chillicothe.

During 1779 the Indian war dragged on much as usual. The only expedition of importance was that undertaken in May by one hundred and sixty Kentuckians, commanded by the county lieutenant, John Bowman, against the Indian town of Chillicothe. [Footnote: MS. "Notes on Kentucky," by George Bradford, who went there in 1779; in the Durrett collection. Haldimand MSS., Letter of Henry Bird, June 9, 1779. As this letter is very important, and gives for the first time the Indian side, I print it in the Appendix almost in full. The accounts of course conflict somewhat; chiefly as to the number of cabins burnt—from five to forty, and of horses captured—from thirty to three hundred. They agree in all essential points. But as among the whites themselves there is one serious question. Logan's admirers, and most Kentucky historians, hold Bowman responsible for the defeat; but in reality (see Butler, p. 110) there seems strong reason to believe that it was simply due to the unexpectedly strong resistance of the Indians. Bird's letter shows, what the Kentuckians never suspected, that the attack was a great benefit to them in frightening the Indians and stopping a serious inroad. It undoubtedly accomplished more than Clark's attack on Piqua next year, for instance.] Logan, Harrod, and other famous frontier fighters went along. The town was surprised, several cabins burned, and a number of horses captured. But the Indians rallied, and took refuge in a central block-house and a number of strongly built cabins surrounding it, from which they fairly beat off the whites. They then followed to harass the rear of their retreating foes, but were beaten off in turn. Of the whites, nine were killed and two or three wounded; the Indians' loss was two killed and five or six wounded.

The defeat caused intense mortification to the whites; but in reality the expedition was of great service to Kentucky, though the Kentuckians never knew it. The Detroit people had been busily organizing expeditions against Kentucky. Captain Henry Bird had been given charge of one, and he had just collected two hundred Indians at the Mingo town when news of the attack on Chillicothe arrived. Instantly the Indians dissolved in a panic, some returning to defend their towns; others were inclined to beg peace of the Americans. So great was their terror that it was found impossible to persuade them to make any inroad as long as they deemed themselves menaced by a counter attack of the Kentuckians. [Footnote: Haldimand MSS. De Peyster to Haldimand, Nov. 20, 1779.]

Occasional Indian Forays.

It is true that bands of Mingos, Hurons, Delawares, and Shawnees made occasional successful raids against the frontier, and brought their scalps and prisoners in triumph to Detroit, [Footnote: Haldimand MSS. De Peyster to Haldimand, Oct. 20, 1779.] where they drank such astonishing quantities of rum as to incite the indignation of the British commander-in-chief. [Footnote: Haldimand MSS. Haldimand's letter, July 23, 1779.] But instead of being able to undertake any formidable expedition against the settlers, the Detroit authorities were during this year much concerned for their own safety, taking every possible means to provide for the defence, and keeping a sharp look-out for any hostile movement of the Americans. [Footnote: Haldimand MSS., April 8, 1779.]

The incoming settlers were therefore left in comparative peace. They built many small palisaded towns, some of which proved permanent, while others vanished utterly when the fear of the Indians was removed and the families were able to scatter out on their farms. At the Falls of the Ohio a regular fort was built, armed with cannon and garrisoned by Virginia troops, [Footnote: One hundred and fifty strong, under Col. George Slaughter.] who were sent down the river expressly to reinforce Clark. The Indians never dared assail this fort; but they ravaged up to its walls, destroying the small stations on Bear Grass Creek and scalping settlers and soldiers when they wandered far from the protection of the stockade.

The Hard Winter.

The new-comers of 1779 were destined to begin with a grim experience, for the ensuing winter [Footnote: Boon, in his Narrative, makes a mistake in putting this hard winter a year later; all the other authorities are unanimous against him.] was the most severe ever known in the west, and was long recalled by the pioneers as the "hard winter." Cold weather set in towards the end of November, the storms following one another in unbroken succession, while the snow lay deep until the spring. Most of the cattle, and very many of the horses, perished; and deer and elk were likewise found dead in the woods, or so weak and starved that they would hardly move out of the way, while the buffalo often came up at nightfall to the yards, seeking to associate with the starving herds of the settlers. [Footnote: McAfee MSS. Of the McAfees' horses ten died, and only two survived, a brown mare and "a yellow horse called Chickasaw." Exactly a hundred years later, in the hard winter of 1879-80, and the still worse winter of 1880-81, the settlers on the Yellowstone and the few hunters who wintered on the Little Missouri had a similar experience. The buffalo crowded with the few tame cattle round the hayricks and log-stables; the starving deer and antelope gathered in immense bands in sheltered places. Riding from my ranch to a neighbor's I have, in deep snows, passed through herds of antelope that would barely move fifty or a hundred feet out of my way.] The scanty supply of corn gave out, until there was not enough left to bake into johnny-cakes on the long boards in front of the fire. [Footnote: Do.] Even at the Falls, where there were stores for the troops, the price of corn went up nearly fourfold, [Footnote: From fifty dollars (Continental money) a bushel in the fall to one hundred and seventy-five in the spring.] while elsewhere among the stations of the interior it could not be had at any price, and there was an absolute dearth both of salt and of vegetable food, the settlers living for weeks on the flesh of the lean wild game, [Footnote: McAfee MSS.] especially of the buffalo. [Footnote: Boon's Narrative.] The hunters searched with especial eagerness for the bears in the hollow trees, for they alone among the animals kept fat; and the breast of the wild turkey served for bread. [Footnote: McAfee MSS.] Nevertheless, even in the midst of this season of cold and famine, the settlers began to take the first steps for the education of their children. In this year Joseph Doniphan, whose son long afterwards won fame in the Mexican war, opened the first regular school at Boonsborough, [Footnote: Historical Magazine, Second Series, Vol. VIII.] and one of the McAfees likewise served as a teacher through the winter. [Footnote: McAfee MSS.] But from the beginning some of the settlers' wives had now and then given the children in the forts a few weeks' schooling.

Through the long, irksome winter, the frontiersmen remained crowded within the stockades. The men hunted, while the women made the clothes, of tanned deer-hides, buffalo-wool cloth, and nettle-bark linen. In stormy weather, when none could stir abroad, they turned or coopered the wooden vessels; for tin cups were as rare as iron forks, and the "noggin" was either hollowed out of the knot of a tree, or else made with small staves and hoops. [Footnote: McAfee MSS.] Every thing was of home manufacture—for there was not a store in Kentucky,—and the most expensive domestic products seem to have been the hats, made of native fur, mink, coon, fox, wolf, and beaver. If exceptionally fine, and of valuable fur, they cost five hundred dollars in paper money, which had not at that time depreciated a quarter as much in outlying Kentucky as at the seat of government. [Footnote: Marshall, p. 124.]

As soon as the great snow-drifts began to melt, and thereby to produce freshets of unexampled height, the gaunt settlers struggled out to their clearings, glad to leave the forts. They planted corn, and eagerly watched the growth of the crop; and those who hungered after oatmeal or wheaten bread planted other grains as well, and apple-seeds and peach-stones. [Footnote: McAfee MSS.]

Many New Settlers Arrive in the Spring.

As soon as the spring of 1780 opened, the immigrants began to arrive more numerously than ever. Some came over the Wilderness road; among these there were not a few haggard, half-famished beings, who, having stalled too late the previous fall, had been overtaken by the deep snows, and forced to pass the winter in the iron-bound and desolate valleys of the Alleghanies, subsisting on the carcasses of their stricken cattle, and seeing their weaker friends starve or freeze before their eyes. Very many came down the Ohio, in flat-boats. A good-sized specimen of these huge unwieldly scows was fifty-five feet long, twelve broad, and six deep, drawing three feet of water; [Footnote: Lettres d'un Cultivateur Americain, St. John de Creve Coeur, Paris, 1787. p. 407. He visited Kentucky in 1784.] but the demand was greater than the supply, and a couple of dozen people, with half as many horses, and all their effects, might be forced to embark on a flat-boat not twenty-four feet in length. [Footnote: MS. Journals of Rev. James Smith. Tours in western country in 1785-1795 (in Col. Durrett's library).] Usually several families came together, being bound by some tie of neighborhood or purpose. Not infrequently this tie was religious, for in the back settlements the few churches were almost as much social as religious centres. Thus this spring, a third of the congregation of a Low Dutch Reformed Church came to Kentucky bodily, to the number of fifty heads of families, with their wives and children, their beasts of burden and pasture, and their household goods; like most bands of new immigrants, they suffered greatly from the Indians, much more than did the old settlers. [Footnote: State Department MSS. No. 41, Vol. V., Memorials K, L, 1777-1787, pp. 95-97, Petition of Low Dutch Reformed Church, etc.] The following year a Baptist congregation came out from Virginia, keeping up its organization even while on the road, the preacher holding services at every long halt.

De Peyster at Detroit.

Soon after the rush of spring immigration was at its height, the old settlers and the new-comers alike were thrown into the utmost alarm by a formidable inroad of Indians, accompanied by French partisans, and led by a British officer. De Peyster, a New York tory of old Knickerbocker family, had taken command at Detroit. He gathered the Indians around him from far and near, until the expense of subsidizing these savages became so enormous as to call forth serious complaints from head-quarters. [Footnote: Haldimand MSS. Haldimand to Guy Johnson, June 30, 1780.] He constantly endeavored to equip and send out different bands, not only to retake the Illinois and Vincennes, but to dislodge Clark from the Falls [Footnote: Do. Haldimand to De Peyster, Feb. 12 and July 6, 1780.]; he was continually receiving scalps and prisoners, and by May he had fitted out two thousand warriors to act along the Ohio and the Wabash. [Footnote: Do. De Peyster to Haldimand, June 1, 1780.] The rapid growth of Kentucky especially excited his apprehension, [Footnote: Do. March 8, 1780.] and his main stroke was directed against the clusters of wooden forts that were springing up south of the Ohio. [Footnote: Do. May 17 to July 19, 1780.]

Bird's Inroad.

Late in May, some six hundred Indians and a few Canadians, with a couple of pieces of light field artillery, were gathered and put under the command of Captain Henry Bird. Following the rivers where practicable, that he might the easier carry his guns, he went down the Miami, and on the 22d of June, surprised and captured without resistance Ruddle's and Martin's stations, two small stockades on the South Fork of the Licking. [Footnote: He marched overland from the forks of the Licking. Marshall says the season was dry and the waters low; but the Bradford MSS. particularly declare that Bird only went up the Licking at all because the watercourses were so full, and that he had originally intended to attack the settlements at the Falls.] But Bird was not one of the few men fitted to command such a force as that which followed him; and contenting himself with the slight success he had won, he rapidly retreated to Detroit, over the same path by which he had advanced. The Indians carried off many horses, and loaded their prisoners with the plunder, tomahawking those, chiefly women and children, who could not keep up with the rest; and Bird could not control them nor force them to show mercy to their captives. [Footnote: Collins, Butler, etc. Marshall thinks that if the force could have been held together it would have depopulated Kentucky; but this is nonsense, for within a week Clark had gathered a very much larger and more efficient body of troops.] He did not even get his cannon back to Detroit, leaving them at the British store in one of the upper Miami towns, in charge of a bombardier. The bombardier did not prove a very valorous personage, and on the alarm of Clark's advance, soon afterwards, he permitted the Indians to steal his horses, and was forced to bury his ordnance in the woods. [Footnote: Haldimand MSS. Letter of Bombardier Wm. Homan, Aug. 18, 1780. He speaks of "the gun" and "the smaller ordnance," presumably swivels. It is impossible to give Bird's numbers correctly, for various bands of Indians kept joining and leaving him.]

Clark Hears the News

Before this inroad took place Clark had been planning a foray into the Indian country, and the news only made him hasten his preparations. In May this adventurous leader had performed one of the feats which made him the darling of the backwoodsmen. Painted and dressed like an Indian so as to deceive the lurking bands of savages, he and two companions left the fort he had built on the bank of the Mississippi, and came through the wilderness to Harrodsburg. They lived on the buffaloes they shot, and when they came to the Tennessee River, which was then in flood, they crossed the swift torrent on a raft of logs bound together with grapevines. At Harrodsburg they found the land court open, and thronged with an eager, jostling crowd of settlers and speculators, who were waiting to enter lands in the surveyor's office. Even the dread of the Indians could not overcome in these men's hearts the keen and selfish greed for gain. Clark instantly grasped the situation. Seeing that while the court remained open he could get no volunteers, he on his own responsibility closed it off-hand, and proclaimed that it would not be opened until after he came back from his expedition. The speculators grumbled and clamored, but this troubled Clark not at all, for he was able to get as many volunteers as he wished. The discontent, and still more the panic over Bird's inroad, made many of the settlers determine to flee from the country, but Clark sent a small force to Crab Orchard, at the mouth of the Wilderness road, the only outlet from Kentucky, with instructions to stop all men from leaving the country, and to take away their arms if they persisted; while four fifths of all the grown men were drafted, and were bidden to gather instantly for a campaign. [Footnote: Bradford MSS.]

His Campaign against Piqua.

He appointed the mouth of the Licking as the place of meeting. Thither he brought the troops from the Falls in light skiffs he had built for the purpose, leaving behind scarce a handful of men to garrison the stockade. Logan went with him as second in command. He carried with him a light three-pounder gun; and those of the men who had horses marched along the bank beside the flotilla. The only mishap that befell the troops happened to McGarry, who had a subordinate command. He showed his usual foolhardy obstinacy by persisting in landing with a small squad of men on the north bank of the river, where he was in consequence surprised and roughly handled by a few Indians. Nothing was done to him because of his disobedience, for the chief of such a backwoods levy was the leader, rather than the commander, of his men.

At the mouth of the Licking Clark met the riflemen from the interior stations, among them being Kenton, Harrod, and Floyd, and others of equal note. They had turned out almost to a man, leaving the women and boys to guard the wooden forts until they came back, and had come to the appointed place, some on foot or on horseback, others floating and paddling down the Licking in canoes. They left scanty provisions with their families, who had to subsist during their absence on what game the boys shot, on nettle tops, and a few early vegetables; and they took with them still less. Dividing up their stock, each man had a couple of pounds of meal and some jerked venison or buffalo meat. [Footnote: McAfee MSS.; the Bradford MS. says six quarts of parched corn.]

All his troops having gathered, to the number of nine hundred and seventy, Clark started up the Ohio on the second of August. [Footnote: This date and number are those given in the Bradford MS. The McAfee MSS. say July 1st; but it is impossible that the expedition should have started so soon after Bird's inroad. On July 1st, Bird himself was probably at the mouth of the Licking.] The skiffs, laden with men, were poled against the current, while bodies of footmen and horsemen marched along the bank. After going a short distance up stream the horses and men were ferried to the farther bank, the boats were drawn up on the shore and left, with a guard of forty men, and the rest of the troops started overland against the town of Old Chillicothe, fifty or sixty miles distant. The three-pounder was carried along on a pack-horse. The march was hard, for it rained so incessantly that it was difficult to keep the rifles dry. Every night they encamped in a hollow square, with the baggage and horses in the middle.

Chillicothe, when reached, was found to be deserted. It was burned, and the army pushed on to Piqua, a town a few miles distant, on the banks of the Little Miami, [Footnote: The Indians so frequently shifted their abode that it is hardly possible to identify the exact location of the successive towns called Piqua or Pickaway.] reaching it about ten in the morning of the 8th of August. [Footnote: "Papers relating to G. R. Clark." In the Durrett MSS. at Louisville. The account of the death of Joseph Rogers. This settles, by the way, that the march was made in August, and not in July.] Piqua was substantially built, and was laid out in the manner of the French villages. The stoutly built log-houses stood far apart, surrounded by strips of corn-land, and fronting the stream; while a strong block-house with loop-holed walls stood in the middle. Thick woods, broken by small prairies, covered the rolling country that lay around the town.

The Fight at Piqua.

Clark divided his army into four divisions, taking the command of two in person. Giving the others to Logan, he ordered him to cross the river above the town [Footnote: There is some conflict as to whether Logan went up or down stream.] and take it in the rear, while he himself crossed directly below it and assailed it in front. Logan did his best to obey the orders, but he could not find a ford, and he marched by degrees nearly three miles up stream, making repeated and vain attempts to cross; when he finally succeeded the day was almost done, and the fighting was over.

Meanwhile Clark plunged into the river, and crossed at the head of one of his own two divisions; the other was delayed for a short time. Both Simon Girty and his brother were in the town, together with several hundred Indian warriors; exactly how many cannot be said, but they were certainly fewer in number than the troops composing either wing of Clark's army. [Footnote: Haldimand MSS. McKee to De Peyster, Aug. 22, 1780. He was told of the battle by the Indians a couple of days after it took place. He gives the force of the whites correctly as nine hundred and seventy, forty of whom had been left to guard the boats. He says the Indians were surprised, and that most of the warriors fled, so that all the fighting was done by about seventy, with the two Girtys. This was doubtless not the case; the beaten party in all these encounters was fond of relating the valorous deeds of some of its members, who invariably state that they would have conquered, had they not been deserted by their associates. McKee reported that the Indians could find no trace of the gun-wheels—the gun was carried on a pack-horse,—and so he thought that the Kentuckians were forced to leave it behind on their retreat. He put the killed of the Kentuckians at the modest number of forty-eight; and reported the belief of Girty and the Indians that "three hundred [of them] would have given [Clark's men] a total rout." A very common feat of the small frontier historian was to put high praise of his own side in the mouth of a foe. Withers, in his "Chronicles of Border Warfare," in speaking of this very action, makes Girty withdraw his three hundred warriors on account of the valor of Clark's men, remarking that it was "useless to fight with fools or madmen." This offers a comical contrast to Girty's real opinion, as shown in McKee's letter.] They were surprised by Clark's swift advance just as a scouting party of warriors, who had been sent out to watch the whites, were returning to the village. The warning was so short that the squaws and children had barely time to retreat out of the way. As Clark crossed the stream, the warriors left their cabins and formed in some thick timber behind them. At the same moment a cousin of Clark's, who had been captured by the Indians, and was held prisoner in the town, made his escape and ran towards the Americans, throwing up his hands, and calling out that he was a white man. He was shot, whether by the Americans or the Indians none could say. Clark came up and spoke a few words with him before he died. [Footnote: Durrett MSS. Volume: "Papers referring to G. R. Clark." The cousin's name was Joseph Rogers, a brother of the commander of the galley.] A long-range skirmish ensued with the warriors in the timber; but on the approach of Clark's second division the Indians fell back. The two divisions followed in pursuit, becoming mingled in disorder. After a slight running fight of two hours the whites lost sight of their foes, and, wondering what had become of Logan's wing, they gathered together and marched back towards the river. One of the McAfees, captain over a company of riflemen from Salt River, was leading, when he discovered an Indian in a tree-top. He and one of his men sought shelter behind the same tree; whereupon he tried to glide behind another, but was shot and mortally wounded by the Indian, who was himself instantly killed. The scattered detachments now sat down to listen for the missing wing. After half an hour's silent waiting, they suddenly became aware of the presence of a body of Indians, who had slipped in between them and the town. The backwoodsmen rushed up to the attack, while the Indians whooped and yelled defiance. There was a moment's heavy firing; but as on both sides the combatants carefully sheltered themselves behind trees, there was very little loss; and the Indians steadily gave way until they reached the town, about two miles distant from the spot where the whites had halted. They then made a stand, and, for the first time, there occurred some real fighting. The Indians stood stoutly behind the loop-holed walls of the cabins, and in the block-house; the Americans, advancing cautiously and gaining ground inch by inch, suffered much more loss than they inflicted. Late in the afternoon Clark managed to bring the three-pounder into action, from a point below the town; while the riflemen fired at the red warriors as they were occasionally seen running from the cabins to take refuge behind the steep bank of the river. A few shots from the three-pounder dislodged the defenders of the block-house; and about sunset the Americans closed in, but only to find that their foes had escaped under cover of a noisy fire from a few of the hindmost warriors. They had run up stream, behind the banks, until they came to a small "branch" or brook, by means of which they gained the shelter of the forest, where they at once scattered and disappeared. A few of their stragglers exchanged shots with the advance guard of Logan's wing as it at last came down the bank; this was the only part Logan was able to take in the battle. Of the Indians six or eight were slain, whereas the whites lost seventeen killed, and a large number wounded. [Footnote: Bradford MS.; the McAfee MSS. make the loss "15 or 20 Indians" in the last assault, and "nearly as many" whites. Boon's narrative says seventeen on each side. But McKee says only six Indians were killed and three wounded; and Bombardier Homan, in the letter already quoted, says six were killed and two captured, who were afterwards slain. The latter adds from hearsay that the Americans cruelly slew an Indian woman; but there is not a syllable in any of the other accounts to confirm this, and it may be set down as a fiction of the by-no-means-valorous bombardier. The bombardier mentions that the Indians in their alarm and anger immediately burnt all the male prisoners in their villages.

The Kentucky historians give very scanty accounts of this expedition; but as it was of a typical character it is worth while giving in full. The McAfee MSS. contain most information about it.] Clark destroyed all the houses and a very large quantity of corn; and he sent out detachments which destroyed another village, and the stores of some British and French Canadian traders. Then the army marched back to the mouth of the Licking and disbanded, most of the volunteers having been out just twenty-five days. [Footnote: Bradford MS.]

Effect of the Victory.

The Indians were temporarily cowed by their loss and the damage they had suffered, [Footnote: See Haldimand MSS. De Peyster to Haldimand, Aug. 30, 1780.] and especially by the moral effect of so formidable a retaliatory foray following immediately on the heels of Bird's inroad. Therefore, thanks to Clark, the settlements south of the Ohio were but little molested for the remainder of the year. [Footnote: McAfee MSS.] The bulk of the savages remained north of the river, hovering about their burned towns, planning to take vengeance in the spring. [Footnote: Virginia State Papers, I., 451.]

Nevertheless small straggling bands of young braves occasionally came down through the woods; and though they did not attack any fort or any large body of men, they were ever on the watch to steal horses, burn lonely cabins, and waylay travellers between the stations. They shot the solitary settlers who had gone out to till their clearings by stealth, or ambushed the boys who were driving in the milk cows or visiting their lines of traps. It was well for the victim if he was killed at once; otherwise he was bound with hickory withes and driven to the distant Indian towns, there to be tortured with hideous cruelty and burned to death at the stake. [Footnote: McAfee MSS. The last was an incident that happened to a young man named McCoun on March 8, 1781.] Boon himself suffered at the hands of one of these parties. He had gone with his brother to the Blue Licks, to him a spot always fruitful of evil; and being ambushed by the Indians, his brother was killed, and he himself was only saved by his woodcraft and speed of foot. The Indians had with them a tracking dog, by the aid of which they followed his trail for three miles; until he halted, shot the dog, and thus escaped. [Footnote: Boon's Narrative.]

Life of the Settlers.

During this comparatively peaceful fall the settlers fared well; though the men were ever on the watch for Indian war parties, while the mothers, if their children were naughty, frightened them into quiet with the threat that the Shawnees would catch them. The widows and the fatherless were cared for by the other families of the different stations. The season of want and scarcity had passed for ever; from thenceforth on there was abundance in Kentucky. The crops did not fail; not only was there plenty of corn, the one essential, but there was also wheat, as well as potatoes, melons, pumpkins, turnips, and the like. Sugar was made by tapping the maple trees; but salt was bought at a very exorbitant price at the Falls, being carried down in boats from the old Redstone Fort. Flax had been generally sown (though in the poorer settlements nettle bark still served as a substitute), and the young men and girls formed parties to pick it, often ending their labor by an hour or two's search for wild plums. The men killed all the game they wished, and so there was no lack of meat. They also surveyed the land and tended the stock—cattle, horses, and hogs, which throve and multiplied out on the range, fattening on the cane, and large white buffalo-clover. At odd times the men and boys visited their lines of traps. Furs formed almost the only currency, except a little paper money; but as there were no stores west of the mountains, this was all that was needed, and each settlement raised most things for itself, and procured the rest by barter.

The law courts were as yet very little troubled, each small community usually enforcing a rough-and-ready justice of its own. On a few of the streams log-dams were built, and tub-mills started. In Harrodsburg a toll mill was built in 1779. The owner used to start it grinding, and then go about his other business; once on returning he found a large wild turkey-gobbler so busily breakfasting out of the hopper that he was able to creep quietly up and catch him with his hands. The people all worked together in cultivating their respective lands; coming back to the fort before dusk for supper. They would then call on any man who owned a fiddle and spend the evening, with interludes of singing and story-telling, in dancing—an amusement they considered as only below hunting. On Sundays the stricter parents taught their children the catechism; but in spite of the presence of not a few devout Baptists and Presbyterians there was little chance for general observance of religious forms. Ordinary conversation was limited to such subjects as bore on the day's doings; the game that had been killed, the condition of the crops, the plans of the settlers for the immediate future, the accounts of the last massacre by the savages, or the rumor that Indian sign had been seen in the neighborhood; all interspersed with much banter, practical joking, and rough, good-humored fun. The scope of conversation was of necessity narrowly limited even for the backwoods; for there was little chance to discuss religion and politics, the two subjects that the average backwoodsman regards as the staples of deep conversation. The deeds of the Indians of course formed the one absorbing topic. [Footnote: For all this see McAfee MSS.]

An Abortive Separatist Movement.

An abortive separatist movement was the chief political sensation of this summer. Many hundreds and even thousand of settlers from the backwoods districts of various States, had come to Kentucky, and some even to Illinois, and a number of them were greatly discontented with the Virginian rule. They deemed it too difficult to get justice when they were so far from the seat of government; they objected to the land being granted to any but actual settlers; and they protested against being taxed, asserting that they did not know whether the country really belonged to Virginia or the United States. Accordingly, they petitioned the Continental Congress that Kentucky and Illinois combined might be made into a separate State; [Footnote: State Department MSS. No. 48. See Appendix G. As containing an account of the first, and hitherto entirely unnoticed, separatist movement in Kentucky, I give the petition entire.] but no heed was paid to their request, nor did their leading men join in making it.

Kentucky Divided into Counties.

In November the Virginia Legislature divided Kentucky into the three counties of Jefferson, Lincoln, and Fayette, appointing for each a colonel, a lieutenant-colonel, and a surveyor. The three colonels, who were also justices of the counties, [Footnote: Calendar of Virginia State Papers, Vol. II., p. 47.] were, in their order, John Floyd—whom Clark described as "a soldier, a gentleman and a scholar," [Footnote: Do., Vol. I., p. 452.]—Benjamin Logan, and John Todd. Clark, whose station was at the Falls of the Ohio, was brigadier-general and commander over all. Boon was lieutenant-colonel under Todd; and their county of Fayette had for its surveyor Thomas Marshall, [Footnote: Collins, I., 20.] the father of the great chief-justice, whose services to the United States stand on a plane with those of Alexander Hamilton. [Footnote: Roughly, Fayette embraced the territory north and northeast of the Kentucky River, Jefferson that between Green River and the lower Kentucky, and Lincoln the rest of the present State.]

Clark's Plans to Attack Detroit.

The winter passed quietly away, but as soon as the snow was off the ground in 1781, the Indians renewed their ravages. Early in the winter Clark went to Virginia to try to get an army for an expedition against Detroit. He likewise applied to Washington for assistance. Washington fully entered into his plans, and saw their importance. He would gladly have rendered him every aid. But he could do nothing, because of the impotence to which the central authority, the Continental Congress, had been reduced by the selfishness and supine indifference of the various States—Virginia among the number. He wrote Clark: "It is out of my power to send any reinforcements to the westward. If the States would fill their continental battalions we should be able to oppose a regular and permanent force to the enemy in every quarter. If they will not, they must certainly take measures to defend themselves by their militia, however expensive and ruinous the system." [Footnote: State Department MSS., No. 147, Vol. V. Reports of Board of War. Letter of Washington, June 8, 1781. It is impossible to study any part of the Revolutionary struggle without coming to the conclusion that Washington would have ended it in half the time it actually lasted, had the jangling States and their governments, as well as the Continental Congress, backed him up half as effectively as the Confederate people and government backed up Lee, or as the Northerners and the Washington administration backed up McClellan—still more as they backed up Grant. The whole of our Revolutionary history is a running commentary on the anarchic weakness of disunion, and the utter lack of liberty that follows in its train.] It was impossible to state with more straightforward clearness the fact that Kentucky owed the unprotected condition in which she was left, to the divided or States-rights system of government that then existed; and that she would have had ample protection—and incidentally greater liberty—had the central authority been stronger.

Why his Efforts were Baffled.

At last, Clark was empowered to raise the men he wished, and he passed and repassed from Fort Pitt to the Falls of the Ohio and thence to the Illinois in the vain effort to get troops. The inertness and shortsightedness of the frontiersmen, above all the exhaustion of the States, and their timid selfishness and inability to enforce their commands, baffled all of Clark's efforts. In his letters to Washington he bitterly laments his enforced dependence upon "persuasive arguments to draw the inhabitants of the country into the field." [Footnote: State Department MSS. Letters to Washington, Vol. 49, p. 235, May 21, 1781. The entire history of the western operations shows the harm done by the weak and divided system of government that obtained at the time of the Revolution, and emphasizes our good fortune in replacing it by a strong and permanent Union.] The Kentuckians were anxious to do all in their power, but of course only a comparatively small number could be spared for so long a campaign from their scattered stockades. Around Pittsburg, where he hoped to raise the bulk of his forces, the frontiersmen were split into little factions by their petty local rivalries, the envy their leaders felt of Clark himself, and the never-ending jealousies and bickerings between the Virginians and Pennsylvanians. [Footnote: Calendar of Virginia State Papers, I., pp. 502, 597, etc.; II., pp. 108, 116, 264, 345. The Kentuckians were far more eager for action than the Pennsylvanians.]

The fort at the Falls, where Clark already had some troops, was appointed as a gathering-place for the different detachments that were to join him; but from one cause or another, all save one or two failed to appear. Most of them did not even start, and one body of Pennsylvanians that did go met with an untoward fate. This was a party of a hundred Westmoreland men under their county-lieutenant, Col. Archibald Loughry. They started down the Ohio in flat-boats, but having landed on a sand bar to butcher and cook a buffalo that they had killed, they were surprised by an equal number of Indians under Joseph Brant, and being huddled together, were all slain or captured with small loss to their assailants. [Footnote: At Loughry's Creek, some ten miles below the mouth of the Miami, on August 24, 1781. Diary of Captain Isaac Anderson, quoted in "Indiana Hist. Soc. Pamphlets, No. 4," by Charles Martindale, Indianapolis, 1888. Collins, whose accuracy by no means equals his thirst for pure detail, puts this occurrence just a year too late. Brant's force was part of a body of several hundred Indians gathered to resist Clark.] Many of the prisoners, including Loughry himself, were afterwards murdered in cold blood by the Indians.

Fighting on the Frontier.

During this year the Indians continually harassed the whole frontier, from Pennsylvania to Kentucky, ravaging the settlements and assailing the forts in great bands of five or six hundred warriors. [Footnote: It is most difficult to get at the number of the Indian parties; they were sometimes grossly exaggerated and sometimes hopelessly underestimated.] The Continental troops stationed at Fort Pitt were reduced to try every expedient to procure supplies. Though it was evident that the numbers of the hostile Indians had largely increased and that even such tribes as the Delawares, who had been divided, were now united against the Americans, nevertheless, because of the scarcity of food, a party of soldiers had to be sent into the Indian country to kill buffalo, that the garrison might have meat. [Footnote: State Department MSS., No. 147, Vol. VI. Reports of Board of War. March 15, 1781.] The Indians threatened to attack the fort itself, as well as the villages it protected; passing around and on each side, their war parties ravaged the country in its rear, distressing greatly the people; and from this time until peace was declared with Great Britain, and indeed until long after that event, the westernmost Pennsylvanians knew neither rest nor safety. [Footnote: Do., No. 148, Vol. I.. January 4, 1781; No. 149, Vol. I., August 6, 1782; No. 149, Vol. II., p. 461; No. 149, Vol. III., p. 183. Federal garrisons were occasionally established at, or withdrawn from, other posts on the upper Ohio besides Fort Pitt; but their movements had no permanent value, and only require chronicling by the local, State, or county historians. In 1778 Fort McIntosh was built at Beaver Creek, on the north bank of the Ohio, and Fort Laurens seventy miles towards the interior. The latter was soon abandoned; the former was in Pennsylvania, and a garrison was kept there.] Among many others the forted village at Wheeling was again attacked. But its most noteworthy siege occurred during the succeeding summer, when [Footnote: The commanders at the unmolested forts and the statesmen who stayed at home only saw those members of the tribes who claimed to be peaceful, and invariably put the number of warriors on the warpath at far too low a figure. Madison's estimates, for instance, were very much out of the way, yet many modern critics follow him.] Simon Girty, with fife and drum, led a large band of Indians and Detroit rangers against it, only to be beaten off. The siege was rendered memorable by the heroism of a girl, who carried powder from the stockade to an outlying log-house, defended by four men; she escaped unscathed because of her very boldness, in spite of the fire from so many rifles, and to this day the mountaineers speak of her deed. [Footnote: See De Haas, 263-281, for the fullest, and probably most accurate, account of the siege; as already explained he is the most trustworthy of the border historians. But it is absolutely impossible to find out the real facts concerning the sieges of Wheeling; it is not quite certain even whether there were two or three. The testimony as to whether the heroine of the powder feat was Betty Zane or Molly Scott is hopelessly conflicting; we do not know which of the two brothers Girty was in command, nor whether either was present at the first attack. Much even of De Haas' account is, to put it mildly, greatly embellished; as for instance his statement about the cannon (a small French gun, thrown into the Monongahela when Fort Du Quesne was abandoned, and fished up by a man named Naly, who was in swimming), which he asserts cut "a wide passage" through the "deep columns" of the savages. There is no reason to suppose that the Indians suffered a serious loss. Wheeling was a place of little strategic importance, and its fall would not have produced any far-reaching effects.]

It would be tiresome and profitless to so much as name the many different stations that were attacked. In their main incidents all the various assaults were alike, and that made this summer on McAfee's station may be taken as an illustration.

The Attack on McAfee's Station.

The McAfees brought their wives and children to Kentucky in the fall of '79, and built a little stockaded hamlet on the banks of Salt River, six or seven miles from Harrodsburg. Some relatives and friends joined them, but their station was small and weak. The stockade, on the south side, was very feeble, and there were but thirteen men, besides the women and children, in garrison; but they were strong and active, good woodsmen, and excellent marksmen. The attack was made on May 4, 1781. [Footnote: McAfee MSS. This is the date given in the MS. "Autobiography of Robert McAfee"; the MS. "History of First Settlement on Salt River" says May 6th. I draw my account from these two sources; the discrepancies are trivial.]

The Indians lay all night at a corn-crib three-quarters of a mile distant from the stockade. The settlers, though one of their number had been carried off two months before, still continued their usual occupations. But they were very watchful and always kept a sharp look-out, driving the stock inside the yard at night. On the day in question, at dawn, it was noticed that the dogs and cattle betrayed symptoms of uneasiness; for all tame animals dreaded the sight or smell of an Indian as they did that of a wild beast, and by their alarm often warned the settlers and thus saved their lives.

In this case the warning was unheeded. At daybreak the stock were turned loose and four of the men went outside the fort. Two began to clear a patch of turnip-land about a hundred and fifty yards off, leaving their guns against a tree close at hand. The other two started towards the corn-crib, with a horse and bag. After going a quarter of a mile, the path dipped into a hollow, and here they suddenly came on the Indians, advancing stealthily toward the fort. At the first fire one of the men was killed, and the horse, breaking loose, galloped back to the fort. The other man likewise turned and ran towards home, but was confronted by an Indian who leaped into the path directly ahead of him. The two were so close together that the muzzles of their guns crossed, and both pulled trigger at once; the Indian's gun missed fire and he fell dead in his tracks. Continuing his flight, the survivor reached the fort in safety.

When the two men in the turnip-patch heard the firing they seized their guns and ran towards the point of attack, but seeing the number of the assailants they turned back to the fort, trying to drive the frightened stock before them. The Indians coming up close, they had to abandon the attempt, although most of the horses and some of the cattle got safely home. One of the men reached the gate ahead of the Indians; the other was cut off, and took a roundabout route through the woods. He speedily distanced all of his pursuers but one; several times he turned to shoot the latter, but the Indian always took prompt refuge behind a tree, and the white man then renewed his flight. At last he reach a fenced orchard, on the border of the cleared ground round the fort. Throwing himself over the fence he lay still among the weeds on the other side. In a minute or two the pursuer, running up, cautiously peered over the fence, and was instantly killed; he proved to be a Shawnee chief, painted, and decked with many silver armlets, rings, and brooches. The fugitive then succeeded in making his way into the fort.

The settlers inside the stockade had sprung to arms the moment the first guns were heard. The men fired on the advancing Indians, while the women and children ran bullets and made ready the rifle-patches. Every one displayed the coolest determination and courage except one man who hid under a bed, until found by his wife; whereupon he was ignominiously dragged out and made to run bullets with the women.

As the Indians advanced they shot down most of the cattle and hogs and some of the horses that were running frantically round the stockade; and they likewise shot several dogs that had sallied out to help their masters. They then made a rush on the fort, but were driven off at once, one of their number being killed and several badly hurt, while but one of the defenders was wounded, and he but slightly. After this they withdrew to cover and began a desultory firing, which lasted for some time.

Suddenly a noise like distant thunder came to the ears of the men in the fort. It was the beat of horsehoofs. In a minute or two forty-five horsemen, headed by McGarry, appeared on the road leading from Harrodsburg, shouting and brandishing their rifles as they galloped up. The morning was so still that the firing had been heard a very long way; and a band of mounted riflemen had gathered in hot haste to go to the relief of the beleaguered stockade.

The Indians, whooping defiance, retired; while McGarry halted a moment to allow the rescued settlers to bridle their horses—saddles were not thought of. The pursuit was then begun at full speed. At the ford of a small creek near by, the rearmost Indians turned and fired at the horsemen, killing one and wounding another, while a third had his horse mired down, and was left behind. The main body was overtaken at the corn-crib, and a running fight followed; the whites leaving their horses and both sides taking shelter behind the tree-trunks. Soon two Indians were killed, and the others scattered in every direction, while the victors returned in triumph to the station.

Slight Losses of the Indians.

It is worthy of notice that though the Indians were defeated, and though they were pitted against first-class rifle shots, they yet had but five men killed and a very few wounded. They rarely suffered a heavy loss in battle with the whites, even when beaten in the open or repulsed from a fort. They would not stand heavy punishment, and in attacking a fort generally relied upon a single headlong rush, made under cover of darkness or as a surprise; they tried to unnerve their antagonists by the sudden fury of their onslaught and the deafening accompaniment of whoops and yells. If they began to suffer much loss they gave up at once, and if pursued scattered in every direction, each man for himself, and owing to their endurance, woodcraft, and skill in hiding, usually got off with marvellously little damage. At the outside a dozen of their men might be killed in the pursuit by such of the vengeful backwoodsmen as were exceptionally fleet of foot. The northwestern tribes at this time appreciated thoroughly that their marvellous fighting qualities were shown to best advantage in the woods, and neither in the defence nor in the assault of fortified places. They never cooped themselves in stockades to receive an attack from the whites, as was done by the Massachusetts Algonquins in the seventeenth century, and by the Creeks at the beginning of the nineteenth; and it was only when behind defensive works from which they could not retreat that the forest Indians ever suffered heavily when defeated by the whites. On the other hand, the defeat of the average white force was usually followed by a merciless slaughter. Skilled backwoodsmen scattered out, Indian fashion, but their less skilful or more panic-struck brethren, and all regulars or ordinary militia, kept together from a kind of blind feeling of safety in companionship, and in consequence their nimble and ruthless antagonists destroyed them at their ease.

Indian War Parties Repulsed.

Still, the Indian war parties were often checked, or scattered; and occasionally one of them received some signal discomfiture. Such was the case with a band that went up the Kanawha valley just as Clark was descending the Ohio on his way to the Illinois. Finding the fort at the mouth of the Kanawha too strong to be carried, they moved on up the river towards the Greenbriar settlements, their chiefs shouting threateningly to the people in the fort, and taunting them with the impending destruction of their friends and kindred. But two young men in the stockade forthwith dressed and painted themselves like Indians, that they might escape notice even if seen, and speeding through the woods reached the settlements first and gave warning. The settlers took refuge on a farm where there was a block-house with a stockaded yard. The Indians attacked in a body at daybreak when the door was opened, thinking to rush into the house; but they were beaten off, and paid dear for their boldness, for seventeen of them were left dead in the yard, besides the killed and wounded whom they carried away. [Footnote: McKee was the commander at the fort; the block-house was owned by Col. Andrew Donelly; Hanlon and Prior were the names of the two young men. This happened in May, 1778. For the anecdotes of personal prowess in this chapter see De Haas, or else Kercheval, McClung, Doddridge, and the fifty other annalists of those western wars, who repeat many of the same stories. All relate facts of undoubted authenticity and wildly improbable tales, resting solely on tradition, with exactly the same faith. The chronological order of these anecdotes being unimportant, I have grouped them here. It must always be remembered that both the men and the incidents described are interesting chiefly as examples; the old annalists give many hundreds of such anecdotes, and there must have been thousands more that they did not relate.] In the same year a block-house was attacked while the children were playing outside. The Indians in their sudden rush killed one settler, wounded four, and actually got inside the house; yet three were killed or disabled, and they were driven out by the despairing fury of the remaining whites, the women fighting together with the men. Then the savages instantly fled, but they had killed and scalped, or carried off, ten of the children. Be it remembered that these instances are taken at random from among hundreds of others, extending over a series of years longer than the average life of a generation.

The Indians warred with the odds immeasurably in their favor. The Ohio was the boundary between their remaining hunting-grounds and the lands where the whites had settled. In Kentucky alone this frontier was already seventy miles in length. [Footnote: Virginia State Papers, I., 437. Letter of Col. John Floyd. The Kentuckians, he notices, trust militia more than they do regulars.] Beyond the river stretched the frowning forest, to the Indians a sure shield in battle, a secure haven in disaster, an impenetrable mask from behind which to plan attack.

Nature of the Indian Forays.

Clark, from his post at the Falls, sent out spies and scouts along the banks of the river, and patrolled its waters with his gun-boat; but it was absolutely impossible to stop all the forays or to tell the point likely to be next struck. A war party starting from the wigwam-towns would move silently down through the woods, cross the Ohio at any point, and stealthily and rapidly traverse the settlements, its presence undiscovered until the deeds of murder and rapine were done, and its track marked by charred cabins and the ghastly, mutilated bodies of men, women, and children.

If themselves assailed, the warriors fought desperately and effectively. They sometimes attacked bodies of troops, but always by ambush or surprise; and they much preferred to pounce on unprepared and unsuspecting surveyors, farmers, or wayfarers, or to creep up to solitary, outlying cabins. They valued the scalps of women and children as highly as those of men. Striking a sudden blow, where there was hardly any possibility of loss to themselves, they instantly moved on to the next settlement, repeating the process again and again. Tireless, watchful, cautious, and rapid, they covered great distances, and their stealth and the mystery of their coming and going added to the terror produced by the horrible nature of their ravages. When pursued they dextrously covered their trail, and started homewards across a hundred leagues of trackless wilderness. The pursuers almost of necessity went slower, for they had to puzzle out the tracks; and after a certain number of days either their food gave out or they found themselves too far from home, and were obliged to return. In most instances the pursuit was vain. Thus a party of twenty savages might make a war-trail some hundreds of miles in length, taking forty or fifty scalps, carrying off a dozen women and children, and throwing a number of settlements, with perhaps a total population of a thousand souls, into a rage of terror and fury, with a loss to themselves of but one or two men killed and wounded.

A Great War Band Threatens Kentucky

Throughout the summer of 1781 the settlers were scourged by an unbroken series of raids of this kind. In August McKee, Brant, and other tory and Indian leaders assembled on the Miami an army of perhaps a thousand warriors. They were collected to oppose Clark's intended march to Detroit; for the British leaders were well aware of Clark's intention, and trusted to the savages to frustrate it if he attempted to put it into execution. Brant went off for a scout with a hundred warriors, and destroyed Loughry's party of Westmoreland men, as already related, returning to the main body after having done so. The fickle savages were much elated by this stroke, but instead of being inspired to greater efforts, took the view that the danger of invasion was now over. After much persuasion Brant, McKee, and the captain of the Detroit rangers, Thompson, persuaded them to march towards the Falls. On September 9th they were within thirty miles of their destination, and halted to send out scouts. Two prisoners were captured, from whom it was learned that Clark had abandoned his proposed expedition. [Footnote: Haldimand MSS. Captain A. Thompson to De Peyster, September 26, 1781.] Instantly the Indians began to disband, some returning to their homes, and others scattering out to steal horses and burn isolated cabins. Nor could the utmost efforts of their leaders keep them together. They had no wish to fight Clark unless it was absolutely necessary, in order to save their villages and crops from destruction; and they much preferred plundering on their own account. However, a couple of hundred Hurons and Miamis, under Brant and McKee, were kept together, and moved southwards between the Kentucky and Salt rivers, intending "to attack some of the small forts and infest the roads." [Footnote: Do. Captain A. McKee to De Peyster, September 26, 1781.] About the middle of the month they fell in with a party of settlers led by Squire Boon.

Squire Boon and Floyd Defeated.

Squire Boon had built a fort, some distance from any other, and when rumors of a great Indian invasion reached him, he determined to leave it and join the stations on Bear Grass Creek. When he reached Long Run, with his men, women, and children, cattle, and household goods, he stumbled against the two hundred warriors of McKee and Brant. His people were scattered to the four winds, with the loss of many scalps and all their goods and cattle. The victors camped on the ground with the intention of ambushing any party that arrived to bury the dead; for they were confident some of the settlers would come for this purpose. Nor were they disappointed; for next morning Floyd, the county lieutenant, with twenty-five men, made his appearance. Floyd marched so quickly that he came on the Indians before they were prepared to receive him. A smart skirmish ensued; but the whites were hopelessly outnumbered, and were soon beaten and scattered, with a loss of twelve or thirteen men. Floyd himself, exhausted and with his horse shot, would have been captured had not another man, one Samuel Wells, who was excellently mounted, seen his plight. Wells reined in, leaped off his horse, and making Floyd ride, he ran beside him, and both escaped. The deed was doubly noble, because the men had previously been enemies. [Footnote: Marshall, I., 116. Floyd had previously written Jefferson (Virginia State Papers, I., 47) that in his county there were but three hundred and fifty-four militia between sixteen and fifty-four years old; that all people were living in forts, and that forty-seven of the settlers of all ages had been killed, and many wounded, since January; so his defeat was a serious blow.] The frontiersmen had made a good defence in spite of the tremendous odds against them, and had slain four of their opponents, three Hurons and a Miami. [Footnote: Haldimand MSS. Thompson's letter; McKee only mentions the three Hurons. As already explained, the partisan leaders were apt, in enumerating the Indian losses, only to give such as had occurred in their own particular bands. Marshall makes the fight take place in April; the Haldimand MSS. show that it was in September. Marshall is as valuable for early Kentucky history as Haywood for the corresponding periods in Tennessee; but both one and the other write largely from tradition, and can never be followed when they contradict contemporary reports.] Among the former was the head chief, a famous warrior; his death so discouraged the Indians that they straightway returned home with their scalps and plunder, resisting McKee's entreaty that they would first attack Boonsborough.

One war party carried off Logan's family; but Logan, following swiftly after, came on the savages so suddenly that he killed several of their number, and rescued all his own people unhurt. [Footnote: Bradford MSS.]

Complicity of the British.

Often French Canadians, and more rarely tories, accompanied these little bands of murderous plunderers [Footnote: At this very time a small band that had captured a family in the Kanawha valley were pursued fifty miles, overtaken, several killed and wounded, and the prisoners recaptured, by Col. Andrew Donelly, mentioned in a previous note; it consisted of two French and eight Indians. Virginia State Papers, I., 601.]—besides the companies of Detroit rangers who went with the large war parties—and they were all armed and urged on by the British at Detroit. One of the official British reports to Lord George Germaine, made on October 23d of this year, deals with the Indian war parties employed against the northwestern frontier. "Many smaller Indian parties have been very successful…. It would be endless and difficult to enumerate to your Lordship the parties that are continually employed upon the back settlements. From the Illinois country to the frontiers of New York there is a continual succession… the perpetual terror and losses of the inhabitants will I hope operate powerfully in our favor" [Footnote: See full copy of the letter in Mr. Martindale's excellent pamphlet, above quoted.];—so runs the letter. At the same time the British commander in Canada was pointing out to his subordinate at Detroit that the real danger to British rule arose from the extension of the settlements westwards, and that this the Indians could prevent [Footnote: Haldimand MSS. Haldimand to De Peyster, June 24, 1781. Throughout the letters of the British officers at and near Detroit there are constant allusions to scalps being brought in; but not one word, as far as I have seen, to show that the Indians were ever reproved because many of the scalps were those of women and children. It is only fair to say, however, that there are several instances of the commanders exhorting the Indians to be merciful—which was a waste of breath,—and several other instances where successful efforts were made to stop the use of torture. The British officers were generally personally humane to their prisoners.]; in other words, the savages were expressly directed to make war on non-combatants, for it was impossible to attack a settlement without attacking the women and children therein. In return the frontiersmen speedily grew to regard both British and Indians with the same venomous and indiscriminate anger.

Nature of the Ceaseless Strife

In the writings of the early annalists of these Indian wars are to be found the records of countless deeds of individual valor and cowardice, prowess and suffering, of terrible woe in time of disaster and defeat, and of the glutting of ferocious vengeance in the days of triumphant reprisal. They contain tales of the most heroic courage and of the vilest poltroonery; for the iron times brought out all that was best and all that was basest in the human breast. We read of husbands leaving their wives, and women their children, to the most dreadful of fates, on the chance that they themselves might thereby escape; and on the other hand, we read again and again of the noblest acts of self-sacrifice, where the man freely gave his life for that of his wife or child, his brother or his friend. Many deeds of unflinching loyalty are recorded, but very, very few where magnanimity was shown to a fallen foe. The women shared the stern qualities of the men; often it happened that, when the house-owner had been shot down, his wife made good the defence of the cabin with rifle or with axe, hewing valiantly at the savages who tried to break through the door, or dig under the puncheon floor, or, perhaps, burst down through the roof or wide chimney. Many hundreds of these tales could be gathered together; one or two are worth giving, not as being unique, but rather as samples of innumerable others of the same kind.

Feat of the Two Poes.

In those days [Footnote: 1781, De Haas; Doddridge, whom the other compilers follow, gives a wrong date (1782), and reverses the parts the two brothers played.] there lived beside the Ohio, in extreme northwestern Virginia, two tall brothers, famed for their strength, agility, and courage. They were named Adam and Andrew Poe. In the summer of '81 a party of seven Wyandots or Hurons came into their settlement, burned some cabins, and killed one of the settlers. Immediately eight backwoodsmen started in chase of the marauders; among them were the two Poes.