GEORGE ROGERS CLARK AND THE CONQUEST OF THE NORTHWEST

Have the elder races halted?
Do they droop and end their lesson, wearied over there beyond the seas ?
We take up the task eternal, and the burden and the lesson,
Pioneers! O Pioneers!
All the past we leave behind,
We debouch upon a newer, mightier world, varied world;

Fresh and strong the world we seize, world of labor and the march,
Pioneers! O Pioneers!
We detachments steady throwing,
Down the edges, through the passes, up the mountains steep,
Conquering, holding, daring, venturing, as we go the unknown ways,
Pioneers! O Pioneers!

* * * * * * *

The sachem blowing the smoke first towards the sun and then
towards the earth,
The drama of the scalp dance enacted with painted faces and
guttural exclamations,
The setting out of the war-party, the long and stealthy march,
The single file, the swinging hatchets, the surprise and
slaughter of enemies.
--Whitman.



GEORGE ROGERS CLARK AND THE CONQUEST OF THE NORTHWEST

In 1776, when independence was declared, the United States
included only the thirteen original States on the seaboard. With
the exception of a few hunters there were no white men west of
the Alleghany Mountains, and there was not even an American
hunter in the great country out of which we have since made the
States of Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin. All
this region north of the Ohio River then formed apart of the
Province of Quebec. It was a wilderness of forests and prairies,
teeming with game, and inhabited by many warlike tribes of Indians.

Here and there through it were dotted quaint little towns of
French Creoles, the most important being Detroit, Vincennes on
the Wabash, and Kaskaskia and Kahokia on the Illinois. These
French villages were ruled by British officers comanding small
bodies of regular soldiers or Tory rangers and Creole partizans.
The towns were completely in the power of the British government;
none of the American States had actual possession of a foot of
property in the Northwestern Territory.

The Northwest was acquired in the midst of the Revolution only by
armed conquest, and if it had not been so acquired, it would have
remained a part of the British Dominion of Canada.

The man to whom this conquest was clue was a famous backwoods
leader, a mighty hunter, a noted Indian-fighter, George Rogers
Clark. He was a very strong man, with light hair and blue eyes.
He was of good Virginian family. Early in his youth, he embarked
on the adventurous career of a backwoods surveyor, exactly as
Washington and so many other young Virginians of spirit did at
that period. He traveled out to Kentucky soon after it was
founded by Boone, and lived there for a year, either at the
stations or camping by him self in the woods, surveying, hunting,
and making war against the Indians like any other settler; but
all the time his mind was bent on vaster schemes than were
dreamed of by the men around him. He had his spies out in the
Northwestern Territory, and became convinced that with a small
force of resolute backwoodsmen he could conquer it for the United
States. When he went back to Virginia, Governor Patrick Henry
entered heartily into Clark's schemes and gave him authority to
fit out a force for his purpose.

In 1778, after encountering endless difficulties and delays, he
finally raised a hundred and fifty backwoods riflemen. In May
they started down the Ohio in flatboats to undertake the allotted
task. They drifted and rowed downstream to the Falls of the Ohio,
where Clark founded a log hamlet, which has since become the
great city of Louisville.

Here he halted for some days and was joined by fifty or sixty
volunteers; but a number of the men deserted, and when, after an
eclipse of the sun, Clark again pushed off to go down with the
current, his force was but about one hundred and sixty riflemen.
All, however, were men on whom he could depend--men well used to
frontier warfare. They were tall, stalwart backwoodsmen, clad in
the hunting-shirt and leggings that formed the national dress of
their kind, and armed with the distinctive weapon of the backwoods,
the long-barreled, small-bore rifle.

Before reaching the Mississippi the little flotilla landed, and
Clark led his men northward against the Illinois towns. In one of
them, Kaskaskia, dwelt the British commander of the entire
district up to Detroit. The small garrison and the Creole militia
taken together outnumbered Clark's force, and they were in close
alliance with the Indians roundabout. Clark was anxious to take
the town by surprise and avoid bloodshed, as he believed he could
win over the Creoles to the American side. Marching cautiously by
night and generally hiding by day, he came to the outskirts of
the little village on the evening of July 4, and lay in the woods
near by until after nightfall.

Fortune favored him. That evening the officers of the garrison
had given a great ball to the mirth-loving Creoles, and almost
the entire population of the village had gathered in the fort,
where the dance was held. While the revelry was at its height,
Clark and his tall backwoodsmen, treading silently through the
darkness, came into the town, surprised the sentries, and
surrounded the fort without causing any alarm.

All the British and French capable of bearing arms were gathered
in the fort to take part in or look on at the merrymaking. When
his men were posted Clark walked boldly forward through the open
door, and, leaning against the wall, looked at the dancers as
they whirled around in the light of the flaring torches. For some
moments no one noticed him. Then an Indian who had been lying
with his chin on his hand, looking carefully over the gaunt
figure of the stranger, sprang to his feet, and uttered the wild
war-whoop. Immediately the dancing ceased and the men ran to and
fro in confusion; but Clark, stepping forward, bade them be at
their ease, but to remember that henceforth they danced under the
flag of the United States, and not under that of Great Britain.

The surprise was complete, and no resistance was attempted. For
twenty-four hours the Creoles were in abject terror. Then Clark
summoned their chief men together and explained that he came as
their ally, and not as their foe, and that if they would join
with him they should be citizens of the American republic, and
treated in all respects on an equality with their comrades. The
Creoles, caring little for the British, and rather fickle of
nature, accepted the proposition with joy, and with the most
enthusiastic loyalty toward Clark. Not only that, but sending
messengers to their kinsmen on the Wabash, they persuaded the
people of Vincennes likewise to cast off their allegiance to the
British king, and to hoist the American flag.

So far, Clark had conquered with greater ease than he had dared
to hope. But when the news reached the British governor,
Hamilton, at Detroit, he at once prepared to reconquer the land.
He had much greater forces at his command than Clark had; and in
the fall of that year he came down to Vincennes by stream and
portage, in a great fleet of canoes bearing five hundred fighting
men-British regulars, French partizans, and Indians. The
Vincennes Creoles refused to fight against the British, and the
American officer who had been sent thither by Clark had no
alternative but to surrender.

If Hamilton had then pushed on and struck Clark in Illinois,
having more than treble Clark's force, he could hardly have
failed to win the victory; but the season was late and the
journey so difficult that he did not believe it could be taken.
Accordingly he disbanded the Indians and sent some of his troops
back to Detroit, announcing that when spring came he would march
against Clark in Illinois.

If Clark in turn had awaited the blow he would have surely met
defeat; but he was a greater man than his antagonist, and he did
what the other deemed impossible.

Finding that Hamilton had sent home some of his troops and
dispersed all his Indians, Clark realized that his chance was to
strike before Hamilton's soldiers assembled again in the spring.
Accordingly he gathered together the pick of his men, together
with a few Creoles, one hundred and seventy all told, and set out
for Vincennes. At first the journey was easy enough, for they
passed across the snowy Illinois prairies, broken by great
reaches of lofty woods. They killed elk, buffalo, and deer for
food, there being no difficulty in getting all they wanted to
eat; and at night they built huge fires by which to sleep, and
feasted "like Indian war-dancers," as Clark said in his report.

But when, in the middle of February, they reached the drowned
lands of the Wabash, where the ice had just broken up and
everything was flooded, the difficulties seemed almost
insuperable, and the march became painful and laborious to a
degree. All day long the troops waded in the icy water, and at
night they could with difficulty find some little hillock on
which to sleep. Only Clark's indomitable courage and cheerfulness
kept the party in heart and enabled them to persevere. However,
persevere they did, and at last, on February 23, they came in
sight of the town of Vincennes. They captured a Creole who was
out shooting ducks, and from him learned that their approach was
utterly unsuspected, and that there were many Indians in town.

Clark was now in some doubt as to how to make his fight. The
British regulars dwelt in a small fort at one end of the town,
where they had two light guns; but Clark feared lest, if he made
a sudden night attack, the townspeople and Indians would from
sheer fright turn against him. He accordingly arranged, just
before he himself marched in, to send in the captured
duck-hunter, conveying a warning to the Indians and the Creoles
that he was about to attack the town, but that his only quarrel
was with the British, and that if the other inhabitants would
stay in their own homes they would not be molested. Sending the
duck-hunter ahead, Clark took up his march and entered the town
just after nightfall. The news conveyed by the released hunter
astounded the townspeople, and they talked it over eagerly, and
were in doubt what to do. The Indians, not knowing how great
might be the force that would assail the town, at once took
refuge in the neighboring woods, while the Creoles retired to
their own houses. The British knew nothing of what had happened
until the Americans had actually entered the streets of the
little village. Rushing forward, Clark's men soon penned the
regulars within their fort, where they kept them surrounded all
night. The next day a party of Indian warriors, who in the
British interest had been ravaging the settlements of Kentucky,
arrived and entered the town, ignorant that the Americans had
captured it. Marching boldly forward to the fort, they suddenly
found it beleaguered, and before they could flee they were seized
by the backwoodsmen. In their belts they carried the scalps of
the slain settlers. The savages were taken redhanded, and the
American frontiersmen were in no mood to show mercy. All the
Indians were tomahawked in sight of the fort.

For some time the British defended themselves well; but at length
their guns were disabled, all of the gunners being picked off by
the backwoods marksmen, and finally the garrison dared not so
much as appear at a port-hole, so deadly was the fire from the
long rifles. Under such circumstances Hamilton was forced to
surrender.

No attempt was afterward made to molest the Americans in the land
they had won, and upon the conclusion of peace the Northwest,
which had been conquered by Clark, became part of the United
States.

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