THROUGH THE DROWNED LANDS
The next morning Father Gibault rang the church bell, signaling all
people to assemble at the church. Immediately the villagers came
streaming out of their houses or stores. Colonel Clark and Jim waited
outside for them to appear. Jim had brought his drum, and played it
loudly to attract their attention.
Willie Watson came running to the church; when he saw Jim, he pushed
through the crowd to him.
“What’s all the excitement, Jim? What’s happened?” Willie asked
breathlessly.
Jim didn’t lose a drumbeat as he replied, “Wait and find out, Willie.
Colonel Clark is going to talk to the people.”
As soon as everyone was quiet, Father Gibault told them that Colonel
Clark had an important message for them. Then Colonel Clark told them
that even now Hamilton was in command of Vincennes and was planning to
attack Kaskaskia as soon as the weather permitted.
Before the citizens could recover from this shock, Clark had outlined
his plan of an immediate march on Vincennes and a surprise attack on
Fort Sackville. He said he would need volunteers to help build a supply
boat he would send ahead for his army.
“I’ll help. I’ll help,” came the cry of the men from every quarter.
“And we’ll help, too,” the women cried. “We’ll make flags for your army.
You’ll need banners to carry.”
Colonel Clark smiled and nodded. “Those of you who will help with the
boat and supplies, step over on this side. And you who will volunteer to
go to Vincennes, sign up with Captain Charleville.”
The men quickly made their choices, and Jim began to play his drum again
to interest the men in joining Captain Charleville’s company.
“Jim,” asked Willie, who had stood quietly up to now, “are you going to
Vincennes?”
“Of course, Willie. I haven’t asked Colonel Clark, but he’ll be needing
a drummer, I know.”
“If you’re going, I am, too,” Willie said, excitement making his voice
shrill. “I think my mother has a rifle which belonged to my father. I
can take it with me.”
Jim looked doubtfully at Willie. “Can you fire a rifle?”
Willie shook his head. “No, but I can learn.”
Jim grinned. “It takes a lot of practice, Willie, but I’ve an idea. If
you’ll let me have your father’s rifle, I’ll let you take my drum. You
can play it well, and I’ve had experience with rifles. My father taught
me to use one.”
Willie smiled. “Will you, Jim? Sure—you can have the rifle.”
“I don’t think we’d better say anything to Colonel Clark until it’s time
to go,” Jim cautioned. “He might think of an excuse to keep us from
going with him.”
“All right, Jim. Mum’s the word, but I’ll manage to get the rifle.”
By nightfall Captain Charleville had raised his company of Kaskaskia
volunteers. The women were so enthusiastic about the undertaking that
they worked furiously for the next two days, making flags of various
colors and designs. When they were presented to Colonel Clark, he didn’t
know what he would do with so many flags. But he thanked the ladies
gravely and packed their gift with the army supplies.
On the third of February Captain McCarty arrived from Cahokia with his
volunteers. That same day the men finished work on the riverboat, which
Clark had named the _Willing_. They had made it into a warship equipped
with armament of two four-pounders and four swivels. It required a crew
of forty men to man, and Clark put Captain John Rogers in charge of it.
He ordered Rogers to go down the Kaskaskia and Mississippi Rivers to the
Ohio and ascend the Ohio and Wabash Rivers; then he was to take his
station thirty miles below Vincennes and wait there for further orders.
The next day Captain Rogers and his crew set out on the warship with
supplies, stores and ammunition.
At three o’clock in the afternoon of February fifth, Clark’s army was
ready to march. Jim had had to talk long and hard to get Clark’s
permission to go with the troops; he had made no mention of Willie. But
Willie stood beside Jim, carrying his father’s rifle, which protruded
above his head.
As the army, one hundred-thirty men strong, stood waiting, Father
Gibault made a little talk to the men and gave them his blessing and
absolution. All the women and men not able to go with Clark were on hand
to bid the troops good-bye and wish them Godspeed.
George Rogers Clark rode in front on a magnificent stallion, followed by
his officers, also mounted. Jim Long-Knife Hudson, wearing an
ill-fitting buckskin suit and beating his drum, stepped out proudly.
Willie Watson dropped back to the rear of the second company, fearing
Colonel Clark would see him and send him home because of his age and
size.
The rest of the men, clad in worn buckskin trousers and hunting shirts,
swung out jauntily, their heads held high. Some carried rifles and some
tomahawks, since there weren’t enough rifles for everyone. A motley
array—Clark’s pioneer army, and at the same time a magnificent column of
spirited soldiers.
The whole of the flat Illinois country between Kaskaskia and Vincennes
was freezing water and half-frozen mud. Two hundred and forty miles lay
between the army and Vincennes, but the men bravely started out. By
nightfall, however, they had covered only three miles. It was rainy and
drizzly, so they spent an uncomfortable night without tents or shelter
of any kind. The next day they remained in camp.
That night Colonel Clark spied Willie Watson for the first time.
“Willie!” he cried, “what are you doing here?”
Willie trembled but stood his ground. “I’m marching with you to take
Fort Sackville, sir,” he replied.
Clark shook his head. “You’re too young, Willie, for this trip. If I had
seen you earlier, you would have remained at home.”
Willie grinned mischievously. “Yes, sir. I’ve taken pains to stay out of
your sight, sir. I was afraid you wouldn’t let me come along. And I’m
fourteen years old, as old as Jim Hudson. I brought my father’s rifle
too.”
Clark smiled and then shook his head. “I admire your spirit, Willie. Can
you fire your rifle?”
Willie shook his head slowly. “No, sir, I can’t. But Jim is going to
take my rifle and I’ll play his drum.”
Colonel Clark looked grave. “Since it’s too late to send you home,
Willie, I guess you’ll just have to stay.”
Willie smiled. “Oh, sir, thank you. I’ll make it. You won’t regret my
coming, sir.”
The next day the soldiers marched for nine hours, then pitched camp in a
square on the driest ground they could find, putting their baggage in
the center.
As they continued through succeeding days they marched sometimes through
water up to their armpits. They had to hold rifles and powder high above
their heads to keep them dry.
In desperation Clark and his officers dismounted and piled the baggage
on their horses. The animals struggled along through the water with the
men.
If any men happened to see any wild game, Colonel Clark gave them time
to shoot it. Now and then they bagged a deer and on the twelfth of
February they sighted a herd of buffalo.
“Here, Willie,” Jim called, “take my drum and give me your rifle. Maybe
I can get a buffalo.”
Willie handed over the rifle, as Jim noticed with satisfaction it was
exactly like his father’s. He dashed out with two soldiers to shoot one
of the buffalos. He went as close as he dared to the herd, took careful
aim and fired. His buffalo dropped immediately as did several others
which the men shot. In a few minutes they had dragged the buffaloes over
toward the fires.
[Illustration: uncaptioned]
“Good boy, Jim,” Willie said, clapping him on the back excitedly. “We’ll
eat plenty tonight.”
Clark’s army did eat a good meal and had entertainment afterward. Willie
and Jim sang many of the songs they had learned together, and took turns
playing the drum. Willie also danced a strange mixture of French and
Indian dances until he was exhausted.
That evening the two boys helped boost the morale of Clark’s army more
than anyone else save the colonel himself. Colonel Clark was quick to
give them credit. “We could never have made it this far, boys,” he said,
“without your music and dancing.”
The boys were exhausted from their performance; Jim was too tired to say
a word. But Willie grinned at Colonel Clark and said, “I told you, sir,
you wouldn’t regret letting me come with you.”
During their first six days this remarkable army marched over one
hundred and seventy-four miles, averaging twenty-eight miles a day. The
hardest part of the trip, however, lay before them——the sixty-three
miles to Vincennes. They would have four rivers to cross—two branches of
the Little Wabash, the Embarrass and the Great Wabash, all of them now
swollen by floods.
When the army reached the two Little Wabash branches, normally three
miles apart, the men were stunned to see a sheet of water almost five
miles across, with no dry banks or channels for either branch in sight.
The shallowest place was about three feet deep; what the greatest depth
was, no man knew.
Colonel Clark ordered his soldiers to halt while he considered what to
do. For a few minutes he gazed at the great expanse of water, then
ordered some of the men to build a pirogue. This took only a day to
build. Then he ordered a few others to explore these drowned lands and
if possible, find a dry camping spot on the far bank of the second
branch. Once they found a trail, they marked it with blazes on all trees
above the waterline.
But how to get the loaded pack horses across both branches of the river?
The horses could wade to the first channel easily enough, but when in
deep water they would have to swim, and they could not swim with their
heavy packs. Once again Colonel Clark solved his new problem. He had his
men build a scaffold in a shallow spot beyond the second river bank.
When this was finished, the men unloaded the horses and moved the
baggage over to the scaffold in their pirogue. Then they swam the horses
through both channels, reloading the animals at the scaffold. They also
ferried any ill, weak soldiers across both river branches.
As Colonel Clark himself plunged into the water, he expected the rest of
his army to follow him along the tree-blazed route. But the men hung
back, complaining they were already cold and wet enough without wading
another five miles.
Suddenly Willie Watson, seeing Colonel Clark floundering through the
water alone, seized Jim’s drum and started into the water, beating the
drum as hard as he could. “Come on, you,” he called, beating a terrific
roll. Jim plunged in right behind Willie, holding his rifle high above
his head.
Soon the water was up to Willie’s armpits. He pushed the drum down and
sat on it, floating along and paddling the water with his drumsticks.
“Come on, you fellows,” he called. “Somebody give me a push.”
A French sergeant, almost six and a half feet tall, charged into the
water, scooped up Willie and his drum, put him on his shoulders and
shouted, “Advance!”
Willie’s courageous antics turned the trick for Colonel Clark. While
Willie played and sang at the top of his lungs, the rest of the soldiers
waded into the water and did not turn back, though in some places the
water came up to their chins. But no dry spot could be found, so they
had to spend the night in shallow water without food.
Somehow they continued to march through the ice-cold drowned lands until
they had crossed the Embarrass and Wabash Rivers. Here the men in their
soaking wet clothes were more discouraged than ever. This was the place
where the _Willing_ was supposed to be waiting for them. The warship,
however, had not arrived.
The next day the camp awakened to a dull boom.
“What’s that?” Willie cried, poking Jim who lay beside him.
“I don’t know,” Jim mumbled. “Sounded like guns, didn’t it?”
One soldier overheard the boys and said, “Colonel Clark said those were
the British morning guns at Fort Sackville.”
“Why, we’re almost there,” Jim cried, jumping up and stretching.
“Almost there!” sneered another soldier. “Take a look at that water.”
“Where are we?” Willie asked, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes.
“About nine miles below Vincennes on the banks of the Great Wabash!” a
nearby soldier exclaimed. “But how we’ll ever get across that flood
water I don’t know.” Several more men began to complain, and some even
muttered about going home.
Jim and Willie looked around and saw Captain McCarty’s men cutting down
poplar trees.
“Come on, Willie,” Jim said. “Let’s see what they’re going to do with
those trees.”
The boys went over to help drag the poplars to a dry area where the men
could build canoes. They worked all day and by evening had finished two.
Meanwhile the boys saw two more drifting aimlessly on the flood waters,
so they waded out and captured them. Now Colonel Clark had four canoes
to ferry his army over some of this vast expanse of river.
The next morning it was raining again and the water was still quite
cold. Though the soldiers still had had nothing to eat, the stronger
ones began ferrying the troops over to a small hill called Bubbie. From
here they waded to a larger hill, clutching trees and bushes in the
water to steady themselves. The canoes went alongside to watch for any
sick men.
Those who were able built fires on the opposite side of the river and
marched the exhausted men up and down in front of the fire to revive
them.
At last they reached Warrior’s Island, a dry spot of about ten acres.
From here Clark planned to attack Fort Sackville. The men had to rest,
however, before he could order the attack.
A day or two later, some of Clark’s scouts brought two Indian squaws and
two half-grown boys into camp and presented them to him.
“What do I want with these people?” Clark demanded. “I haven’t anything
to feed to my own men, to say nothing of four prisoners.”
“That’s it, sir,” one scout replied. “They had food in their canoe. It
was filled with kettles, tallow, corn and half a quarter of buffalo
meat. We have it here, but what shall we do with these Indians?”
“Food!” cried several of the men near the colonel. “Where?”
“Make some buffalo stew for the men immediately,” Clark ordered. He
looked at the trembling Indians. “I guess we’ll have to take these
prisoners to Vincennes with us.”
Just at this moment Jim and Willie came up to the colonel. When Jim saw
the Indians, he stopped and stared as if he didn’t believe his own eyes.
Then he dashed over to the taller Indian boy. “Wahbunou!” he cried.
“What are you doing here?”
Wahbunou tried to smile, but was too frightened to talk. He just grabbed
Jim and clung to him.
George Rogers Clark looked at Jim in amazement. “Jim, do you know this
boy?”
“Oh, sir,” Jim cried, “this is Wahbunou, my Potawatomi friend that I
told you about.”
Colonel Clark looked keenly at the boy and then at Jim. “Is this the boy
who did not tell his people about seeing the Long-Knives marching that
summer afternoon?”
“Yes, sir.”
Clark smiled at the Indian boy. “Well then, Wahbunou, I am sorry we had
to take your food. But my men have had nothing to eat for several days.
You are no longer a prisoner of Chief Long-Knife. All four of you are
free to take your canoe and return home.”
Wahbunou did not understand all that Colonel Clark said to him, but when
Jim interpreted, the Indian boy nodded his head and smiled.
George Rogers Clark shook hands with Wahbunou and said, “If you will
come to Fort Sackville in a few days I’ll pay you for your food.
Unfortunately, I have nothing to give you for it tonight.”
Wahbunou nodded again, spoke to his Indian companions and motioned for
them to follow him. They found their canoe and paddled rapidly away.
Meanwhile the men were busy making buffalo stew. When it was ready the
weakest men were fed first. Though there wasn’t enough stew to go
around, it revived many exhausted soldiers and improved the spirit of
all the soldiers.
[Illustration: _Vincennes_]