BOOK III

THE RED HEAD CHIEF

I. THE SHADOW OF NAPOLEON 315

II. AMERICAN RULE IN ST. LOUIS 319

III. FAREWELL TO FINCASTLE 322

IV. THE BOAT HORN 327

V. A BRIDE IN ST. LOUIS 331

VI. THE FIRST FORT IN MONTANA 335

VII. A MYSTERY 337

VIII. A LONELY GRAVE IN TENNESSEE 343

IX. TRADE FOLLOWS THE FLAG 344

X. TECUMSEH 352

XI. CLARK GUARDS THE FRONTIER 360

XII. THE STORY OF A SWORD 369

XIII. PORTAGE DES SIOUX 376

XIV. "FOR OUR CHILDREN, OUR CHILDREN" 386

XV. TOO GOOD TO THE INDIANS 390

XVI. THE RED HEAD CHIEF 397

XVII. THE GREAT COUNCIL AT PRAIRIE DU CHIEN 404

XVIII. THE LORDS OF THE RIVERS 415

XIX. FOUR INDIAN AMBASSADORS 421

XX. BLACK HAWK 429

XXI. A GREAT LIFE ENDS 434

XXII. THE NEW WEST 438

THE CONQUEST

Book I

_WHEN RED MEN RULED_

I

_A CHILD IS BORN_

The old brick palace at Williamsburg was in a tumult. The Governor

tore off his wig and stamped it under foot in rage.

"I'll teach them, the ingrates, the rebels!" Snatching at a worn

bell-cord, but carefully replacing his wig, he stood with clinched

fists and compressed lips, waiting.

"They are going to meet in Williamsburg, eh? I'll circumvent them.

These Virginia delegates! These rebellious colonists! I'll nip their

little game! The land is ripe for insurrection. Negroes, Indians,

rebels! There are enough rumblings now. Let me but play them off

against each other, and then these colonists will know their friends.

Let but the Indians rise--like naked chicks they'll fly to mother

wings for shelter. I'll show them! I'll thwart their hostile plans!"

Again Lord Dunmore violently rang the bell. A servant of the palace

entered.

"Here, sirrah! take this compass and dispatch a messenger to Daniel

Boone. Bade him be gone at once to summon in the surveyors at the

Falls of the Ohio. An Indian war is imminent. Tell him to lose no

time."

The messenger bowed himself out, and a few minutes later a horse's

hoofs rang down the cobblestone path before the Governor's Mansion of

His Majesty's colony of Virginia in the year of our Lord 1774.

Lord Dunmore soliloquised. "Lewis is an arrant rebel, but he is

powerful as old Warwick. I'll give him a journey to travel." Again he

rang the bell and again a servant swept in with low obeisance.

"You, sirrah, dispatch a man as fast as horse or boat can speed to

Bottetourt. Tell Andrew Lewis to raise at once a thousand men and

march from Lewisburg across Mt. Laurel to the mouth of the Great

Kanawha. Here are his sealed orders." The messenger took the packet

and went out.

"An Indian war will bring them back. I, myself, will lead the right

wing, the pick and flower of the army. I'll make of the best men my

own scouts. To myself will I bind this Boone, this Kenton, Morgan, and

that young surveyor, George Rogers Clark, before these agitators taint

their loyalty. I, myself, will lead my troops to the Shawnee towns.

Let Lewis rough it down the Great Kanawha."

It was the sixth of June when the messenger drew rein at Boone's door

in Powell's Valley. The great frontiersman sat smoking in his porch,

meditating on the death of that beloved son killed on the way to

Kentucky. The frightened emigrants, the first that ever tried the

perilous route, had fallen back to Powell's Valley.

Boone heard the message and looked at his faithful wife, Rebecca, busy

within the door. She nodded assent. The messenger handed him the

compass, as large as a saucer. For a moment Boone balanced it on his

hand, then slipped it into his bosom. Out of a huge wooden bowl on a

cross-legged table near he filled his wallet with parched corn, took

his long rifle from its peg over the door, and strode forth.

Other messengers were speeding at the hest of Lord Dunmore, hither and

yon and over the Blue Ridge.

Andrew Lewis was an old Indian fighter from Dinwiddie's

day,--Dinwiddie, the blustering, scolding, letter-writing Dinwiddie,

who undertook to instruct Andrew Lewis and George Washington how to

fight Indians! Had not the Shawnees harried his border for years? Had

he not led rangers from Fairfax's lodge to the farthest edge of

Bottetourt? Side by side with Washington he fought at Long Meadows and

spilled blood with the rest on Braddock's field. More than forty years

before, his father, John Lewis, had led the first settlers up the

Shenandoah. They had sown it to clover, red clover, red, the Indians

said, from the blood of red men slain by the whites.

But what were they to do when peaceful settlers, fugitives from the

old world, staked their farms on vacant land only to be routed by the

scalp halloo? Which was preferable, the tyranny of kings or the Indian

firestake? Hunted humanity must choose.

The Shawnees, too, were a hunted people. Driven from south and from

north, scouted by the Cherokees, scalped by the Iroquois, night and

day they looked for a place of rest and found it not. Beside the

shining Shenandoah, daughter of the stars, they pitched their wigwams,

only to find a new and stronger foe, the dreaded white man. Do their

best, interests would conflict. Civilisation and savagery could not

occupy the same territory.

And now a party of emigrants were pressing into the Mingo country on

the upper Ohio. Early in April the family of Logan, the noted Mingo

chief, was slaughtered by the whites. It was a dastardly deed, but

what arm had yet compassed the lawless frontier? All Indians

immediately held accountable all whites, and burnings and massacres

began in reprisal. Here was an Indian war at the hand of Lord Dunmore.

Few white men had gone down the Kanawha in those days. Washington

surveyed there in 1770, and two years later George Rogers Clark

carried chain and compass in the same region. That meant

settlers,--now, war. But Lewis, blunt, irascible, shrank not. Of old

Cromwellian stock, sternly aggressive and fiercely right, he felt the

land was his, and like the men of Bible times went out to smite the

heathen hip and thigh. Buckling on his huge broadsword, and slipping

into his tall boots and heavy spurs, he was off.

At his call they gathered, defenders of the land beyond the Blue

Ridge, Scotch-Irish, Protestants of Protestants, long recognised by

the Cavaliers of tidewater Virginia as a mighty bulwark against the

raiding red men. Charles Lewis brought in his troop from Augusta,

kinsfolk of the Covenanters, fundamentally democratic, Presbyterian

Irish interpreting their own Bibles, believing in schools, born

leaders, dominating their communities and impressing their character

on the nation yet unborn.

It was August when, in hunting shirts and leggings, they marched into

rendezvous at Staunton, with long knives in their leathern belts and

rusty old firelocks above their shoulders. In September they camped at

Lewisburg. Flour and ammunition were packed on horses. Three weeks of

toil and travail through wilderness, swamp, and morass, and they were

at the mouth of the Great Kanawha.

But where was Dunmore? With his thousand men he was to march over the

Braddock Road to meet them there on the Ohio. Rumour now said he was

marching alone on the Shawnee towns.

"And so expose himself!" ejaculated Lewis.

But just then a runner brought word from Lord Dunmore, "Join me at the

Shawnee towns."

"What does it mean?" queried Lewis of his colonels, Charles Lewis of

Augusta, Fleming of Bottetourt, Shelby and Field of Culpepper. "It

looks like a trap. Not in vain have I grown gray in border forays.

There's some mistake. It will leave the whole western portion of

Virginia unprotected."

Brief was the discussion. Before they could cross the Ohio, guns

sounded a sharp surprise. Andrew Lewis and his men found themselves

penned at Point Pleasant without a hope of retreat. Behind them lay

the Ohio and the Kanawha, in front the woods, thick with Delawares,

Iroquois, Wyandots, Shawnees, flinging themselves upon the entrapped

army.

Daylight was just quivering in the treetops when the battle of Point

Pleasant began. At the first savage onset Fleming, Charles Lewis, and

Field lay dead. It was surprise, ambuscade, slaughter.

Grim old Andrew Lewis lit his pipe and studied the field while his

riflemen and sharp-shooters braced themselves behind the white-armed

sycamores. There was a crooked run through the brush unoccupied.

While the surging foes were beating back and forth, Andrew Lewis sent

a party through that run to fall upon the Indians from behind. A

Hercules himself, he gathered up his men with a rush, cohorns roaring.

From the rear there came an answering fire. Above the din, the voice

of Cornstalk rose, encouraging his warriors, "Be strong! be strong!"

But panic seized the Indians; they broke and fled.

Andrew Lewis looked and the sun was going down. Two hundred whites lay

stark around him, some dead, some yet to rise and fight on other

fields. The ground was slippery with gore; barked, hacked, and red

with blood, the white-armed sycamores waved their ghostly hands and

sighed, where all that weary day red men and white had struggled

together. And among the heaps of Indian slain, there lay the father of

a little Shawnee boy, Tecumseh.

Cornstalk, chief of the Shawnees, Red Hawk, pride of the Delawares,

and Logan, Logan the great Mingo, were carried along in the resistless

retreat of their people, down and over the lurid Ohio, crimson with

blood and the tint of the setting sun.

On that October day, 1774, civilisation set a milestone westward.

Lewis and his backwoodsmen had quieted the Indians in one of the most

hotly contested battles in all the annals of Indian warfare.

"Let us go on," they said, and out of the debris of battle, Lewis and

his shattered command crossed the Ohio to join Lord Dunmore at the

Shawnee towns.

"We have defeated them. Now let us dictate peace at their very doors,"

said Lewis. But Dunmore, amazed at this success of rebel arms, sent

the flying word, "Go back. Retrace your steps. Go home."

Lewis, astounded, stopped. "Go back now? What does the Governor mean?

We must go on, to save him if nothing else. He is in the very heart of

the hostile country." And he pressed on.

Again the messenger brought the word, "Retreat."

"Retreat?" roared Lewis, scarce believing his ears. "We've reached

this goal with hardship. We've purchased a victory with blood!" There

was scorn in the old man's voice. "March on!" he said.

But when within three miles of the Governor's camp, Lord Dunmore

himself left his command and hastened with an Indian chief to the camp

of Lewis. Dunmore met him almost as an Indian envoy, it seemed to

Lewis.

"Why have you disobeyed my orders?" thundered the Governor, drawing

his sword and reddening with rage. "I say go back. Retrace your steps.

Go home. I will negotiate a peace. There need be no further movement

of the southern division."

His manner, his tone, that Indian!--the exhausted and overwrought

borderers snatched their bloody knives and leaped toward the Governor.

Andrew Lewis held them back. "This is no time for a quarrel. I will

return." And amazed, enraged, silenced, Andrew Lewis began his retreat

from victory.

But suspicious murmurings rolled along the line.

"He ordered us there to betray us."

"Why is my lord safe in the enemy's country?"

"Why did the Indians fall upon us while the Governor sat in the

Shawnee towns?"

"That sword--"

Andrew Lewis seemed not to hear these ebullitions of his men, but his

front was stern and awful. As one long after said, "The very earth

seemed to tremble under his tread."

All Virginia rang with their praises, as worn and torn and battered

with battle, Lewis led his troop into the settlements. Leaving them to

disperse to their homes with pledge to reassemble at a moment's

notice, he set forth for Williamsburg where news might be heard of

great events. On his way he stopped at Ivy Creek near Charlottesville,

at the house of his kinsman, William Lewis. An infant lay in the

cradle, born in that very August, while they were marching to battle.

"And what have you named the young soldier?" asked the grim old

borderer, as he looked upon the sleeping child.

"Meriwether Lewis, Meriwether for his mother's people," answered the

proud and happy father.

"And will you march with the minute men?"

"I shall be there," said William Lewis.

II

_THE CLARK HOME_

"What do you see, William?"

A red-headed boy was standing at the door of a farmhouse on the road

between Fredericksburg and Richmond, in the valley of the

Rappahannock.

"The soldiers, mother, the soldiers!"

Excitedly the little four-year-old flew down under the mulberry trees

to greet his tall and handsome brother, George Rogers Clark, returning

from the Dunmore war.

Busy, sewing ruffles on her husband's shirt and darning his long silk

stockings, the mother sat, when suddenly she heard the voice of her

son with his elder brother.

"I tell you, Jonathan, there is a storm brewing. But I cannot take an

oath of allegiance to the King that my duty to my country may require

me to disregard. The Governor has been good to me, I admit that. I

cannot fight him--and I will not fight my own people. Heigh-ho, for

the Kentucky country."

Dropping her work, Mrs. Clark, Ann Rogers, a descendant of the martyr

of Smithfield, and heir through generations of "iron in the blood and

granite in the backbone," looked into the approaching, luminous eyes.

"I hope my son has been a credit to his country?"

"A credit?" exclaimed Jonathan. "Why, mother, Lord Dunmore has offered

him a commission in the British army!"

"But I cannot take it," rejoined George Rogers, bending to press a

kiss on the cheek of his brown-eyed little mother. "Lord Dunmore means

right, but he is misunderstood. And he swears by the King."

"And do we not all swear by the King?" almost wrathfully exclaimed

John Clark, the father, entering the opposite door at this moment.

"Who has suffered more for the King than we self-same Cavaliers, we

who have given Virginia her most honourable name--'The Old Dominion'?

Let the King but recognise us as Britons, entitled to the rights of

Englishmen, and we will swear by him to the end."

It was a long speech for John Clark, a man of few words and intensely

loyal, the feudal patriarch of this family, and grandson of a Cavalier

who came to Virginia after the execution of Charles I. But his soul

had been stirred to the centre, by the same wrongs that had kindled

Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson. These were his friends, his

neighbours, who had the same interests at stake, and the same high

love of liberty.

"If the King would have us loyal, aye, then, let him be loyal to us,

his most loyal subjects. Did not Patrick Henry's father drink the

King's health at the head of his regiment? Did not Thomas Jefferson's

grandsires sit in the first House of Burgesses in the old church at

Jamestown, more than a century before the passage of the Stamp Act?

And who swore better by the King? None of us came over here from

choice! We came because we loved our King and would not bide his

enemies."

George Rogers Clark looked approvingly at his father, and yet, he owed

fealty to Lord Dunmore. Even as a stripling he had been singled out

for favours.

"I see the storm gathering," he said. "If I choose, it must be with my

people. But I need not choose,--I will go to Kentucky."

It was the selfsame thought of Daniel Boone.

"But here are the children!"

Nine-year-old Lucy danced to her brother, William still clung to his

hand, and their bright locks intermingled.

"Three red-headed Clarks," laughed the teasing Jonathan.

More than a century since, the first John Clark settled on the James,

a bachelor and tobacco planter. But one day Mary Byrd of Westover

tangled his heart in her auburn curls. In every generation since, that

red hair had re-appeared.

"A strain of heroic benevolence runs through the red-headed Clarks,"

said an old dame who knew the family. "They win the world and give it

away."

But the dark-haired Clarks, they were the moneymakers. Already

Jonathan, the eldest, had served as Clerk in the Spottsylvania Court

at Fredericksburg, where he often met Colonel George Washington. Three

younger brothers, John, Richard, and Edmund, lads from twelve to

seventeen, listened not less eagerly than Ann, Elizabeth, Lucy, and

Fanny, the sisters of this heroic family.

But George was the adventurer. When he came home friends, neighbours,

acquaintances, gathered to listen. The border wars had kindled

military ardour with deeds to fire a thousand tales of romance and

fireside narrative. Moreover, George was a good talker. But he seemed

uncommonly depressed this night,--the choice of life lay before him.

At sixteen George Rogers Clark had set out as a land surveyor, like

Washington and Boone and Wayne, penetrating and mapping the western

wilds.

To survey meant to command. Watched by red men over the hills, dogged

by savages in the brakes, scalped by demons in the wood, the frontier

surveyor must be ready at any instant to drop chain and compass for

the rifle and the knife.

Like Wayne and Washington, Clark had drilled boy troops when he and

Madison were pupils together under the old Scotch dominie, Donald

Robertson, in Albemarle.

While still in his teens George and a few others, resolute young men,

crossed the Alleghanies, went over Braddock's route, and examined Fort

Necessity where Washington had been. They floated down the Monongahela

to Fort Pitt. In the angle of the rivers, overlooking the flood,

mouldered the remains of old Fort Du Quesne, blown up by the French

when captured by the English. The mound, the moat, the angles and

bastions yet remained, but overgrown with grass, and cattle grazed

where once an attempt had been made to plant mediæval institutions on

the sod of North America. As if born for battles, Clark studied the

ground plans.

"Two log gates swung on hinges here," explained the Colonel from Fort

Pitt, "one opening on the water and one on the land side with a

mediæval drawbridge. Every night they hauled up the ponderous bridge,

leaving only a dim dark pit down deep to the water."

With comprehensive glance George Rogers Clark took in the mechanism of

intrenchments, noted the convenient interior, with magazine,

bake-house, and well in the middle.

"So shall I build my forts." Pencil in hand the young surveyor had the

whole scheme instantly sketched. The surprised Colonel took a second

look. Seldom before had he met so intelligent a study of

fortifications.

"Are you an officer?"

"I am Major of Virginia militia under Lord Dunmore."

With a missionary to the Indians, Clark slid down the wild Ohio and

took up a claim beyond the farthest. Here for a year he lived as did

Boone, beating his corn on a hominy block and drying his venison

before his solitary evening fire. Then he journeyed over into the

Scioto.

So, when the Dunmore war broke out, here was a scout ready at hand for

the Governor. Major Clark knew every inch of the Braddock route and

every trail to the Shawnee towns. When a fort was needed, it was the

skilled hand and fertile brain of George Rogers Clark that planned the

bastioned stockade that became the nucleus of the future city of

Wheeling.

Then Dunmore came by. Like a war-horse, Clark scented the battle of

Point Pleasant afar off.

"And I not there to participate!" he groaned. But Dunmore held him at

his own side, with Morgan, Boone, and Kenton, picked scouts of the

border. When back across the Ohio the Mingoes came flying, Clark wild,

eager, restless, was pacing before Dunmore's camp.

Beaten beyond precedent by the mighty valour of Andrew Lewis,

Cornstalk and his warriors came pleading for peace.

"Why did you go to war?" asked Dunmore.

"Long, long ago there was a great battle between the red Indians and

the white ones," said Cornstalk, "and the red Indians won. This nerved

us to try again against the whites."

But Logan refused to come.

"Go," said Lord Dunmore, to George Rogers Clark and another, "go to

the camp of the sullen chief and see what he has to say."

They went. The great Mingo gave a vehement talk. They took it down in

pencil and, rolled in a string of wampum, carried it back to the camp

of Lord Dunmore.

In the council Clark unrolled and read the message. Like the wail of

an old Roman it rang in the woods of Ohio.

"I appeal to any white man if ever he entered Logan's cabin and he

gave him not meat; if he ever came cold and naked and he clothed him

not. During the course of the last long and bloody war, Logan remained

idle in his cabin, an advocate for peace. Such was my love for the

whites, that my countrymen pointed as they passed and said, 'Logan is

the friend of the white man.' I had even thought to have lived with

you but for the injuries of one man. Colonel Cresap, last Spring, in

cold blood and unprovoked, murdered all the relations of Logan, not

even sparing my women and children. There runs not a drop of my blood

in the veins of any living creature. This drove me to revenge. I have

sought it; I have killed many; I have fully glutted my vengeance; for

my country I rejoice at the beams of peace. But do not harbour a

thought that mine is the joy of fear. Logan never felt fear. He will

not turn on his heel to save his life. Who is there to mourn for

Logan? Not one."

One by one, half a dozen of Clark's army comrades had dropped in

around the hickory flame, while the substance of Logan's tale

unfolded.

"And was Cresap guilty?"

"No," answered George Rogers Clark, "I perceived he was angry to hear

it read so before the army and I rallied him. I told him he must be a

very great man since the Indians shouldered him with everything that

happened."

Little William had fallen asleep, sitting in the lap of his elder

brother, but, fixed forever, his earliest memory was of the Dunmore

war. There was a silence as they looked at the sleeping child. A

little negro boy crouched on the rug and slumbered, too. His name was

York.

III

_EXIT DUNMORE_

On the last day of that same August in which Meriwether Lewis was born

and Andrew Lewis was leading the Virginia volunteers against the

Shawnees, Patrick Henry and George Washington set out on horseback

together for Philadelphia, threading the bridle-paths of uncut

forests, and fording wide and bridgeless rivers to the Continental

Congress.

It had been nine years since Patrick Henry, "alone and unadvised," had

thrilled the popular heart with his famous first resolutions against

the Stamp Act. From the lobby of the House of Burgesses, Thomas

Jefferson, a student, looked that morning at the glowing orator and

said in his heart, "He speaks as Homer wrote." It was an alarm bell, a

call to resistance. "Cæsar had his Brutus, Charles the First his

Cromwell, and George the Third"--how the staid, bewigged, beruffled

old Burgesses rose in horror!--"and George the Third may profit by

their example."

"Most indecent language," muttered the Burgesses as they hurried out

of the Capitol, pounding their canes on the flagstone floor. But the

young men lifted him up, and for a hundred years an aureole has

blazed around the name of Patrick Henry.

The Congress at Philadelphia adjourned, and the delegates plodded

their weary way homeward through winter mire. From his Indian war Lord

Dunmore came back to Williamsburg to watch the awakening of Virginia.

Then came that breathless day when Dunmore seized and carried off the

colony's gunpowder.

The Virginians promptly demanded its restoration. The minute men flew

to arms.

"By the living God!" cried Dunmore, "if any insult is offered to me or

to those who have obeyed my orders, I will declare freedom to the

slaves and lay the town in ashes."

Patrick Henry called together the horsemen of Hanover and marched upon

Williamsburg. The terrified Governor sent his wife and daughters on

board a man-of-war and fortified the palace. And on came Patrick

Henry. Word flew beyond the remotest Blue Ridge. Five thousand men

leaped to arms and marched across country to join Patrick Henry. But

at sunrise on the second day a panting messenger from Dunmore paid him

for the gunpowder. Patrick Henry, victorious, turned about and marched

home to Hanover.

Again Lord Dunmore summoned the House of Burgesses. They came, grim

men in hunting shirts and rifles. Then his Lordship set a trap at the

door of the old Powder Magazine. Some young men opened it for arms and

were shot. Before daylight Lord Dunmore evacuated the palace and fled

from the wrath of the people. On shipboard he sailed up and down for

weeks, laying waste the shores of the Chesapeake, burning Norfolk and

cannonading the fleeing inhabitants.

Andrew Lewis hastened down with his minute men. His old Scotch ire was

up as he ran along the shore. He pointed his brass cannon at Dunmore's

flagship, touched it off, and Lord Dunmore's best china was shattered

to pieces.

"Good God, that I should ever come to this!" exclaimed the unhappy

Governor.

He slipped his cables and sailed away in a raking fire, and with that

tragic exit all the curtains of the past were torn and through the

rent the future dimly glimmered.

After Dunmore's flight, every individual of the nobler sort felt that

the responsibility of the country depended upon him, and straightway

grew to that stature. Men looked in one another's faces and said, "We

ourselves are Kings."

Around the great fire little William Clark heard his father and

brothers discuss these events, and vividly remembered in after years

the lightning flash before the storm. He had seen his own brothers go

out to guard Henry from the wrath of Dunmore on his way to the second

Continental Congress. And now Dunmore had fled, and as by the irony of

fate, on the day after the signing of the Declaration of Independence,

Patrick Henry became the first American Governor of Virginia, with

headquarters at the palace.

IV

_THE WILDERNESS ROAD_

Daniel Boone threw back his head and laughed silently.

For a hundred miles in the barrier ridge of the Alleghanies there is

but a single depression, Cumberland Gap, where the Cumberland river

breaks through, with just room enough for the stream and a bridle

path. Through this Gap as through a door Boone passed into the

beautiful Kentucky, and there, by the dark and rushing water of Dick's

River, George Rogers Clark and John Floyd were encamped.

The young men leaped to their feet and strode toward the tall, gaunt

woodsman, who, axe in hand, had been vigorously hewing right and left

a path for the pioneers.

"They are coming,--Boone's trace must be ready. Can you help?" Boone

removed his coonskin cap and wiped his perspiring face with a buckskin

handkerchief. His forehead was high, fine-skinned, and white.

"That is our business,--to settle the country," answered the young

surveyors, and through the timber, straight as the bird flies over

rivers and hills, they helped Boone with the Wilderness Road.

It was in April of 1775. Kentucky gleamed with the dazzling dogwood as

if snows had fallen on the forests. As their axes rang in the primeval

stillness, another rover stepped out of the sycamore shadows. It was

Simon Kenton, a fair-haired boy of nineteen, with laughing blue eyes

that fascinated every beholder.

"Any more of ye?" inquired Boone, peering into the distance behind

him.

"None. I am alone. I come from my corn-patch on the creek. Are you

going to build?"

"Yes, when I reach a certain spring, and a bee-tree on the Kentucky

River."

"Let us see," remarked Floyd. "We may meet Indians. I nominate Major

Clark generalissimo of the frontier."

"And Floyd surveyor-in-chief," returned Clark.

"An' thee, boy, shall be my chief guard," said Daniel Boone, laying

his kindly hand on the lad's broad shoulder. "An' I--_am the people_."

The Boones were Quakers, the father of Daniel was intimate with Penn;

his uncle James came to America as Penn's private secretary; sometimes

the old hunter dropped into their speech.

But people were coming. One Richard Henderson, at a treaty in the hill

towns of the Cherokees, had just paid ten thousand pounds for the

privilege of settling Kentucky. Boone left before the treaty was

signed and a kindly old Cherokee chieftain took him by the hand in

farewell.

"Brother," he said, "we have given you a fine land, but I believe you

will have much trouble in settling it."

They were at hand. Through the Cumberland Gap, as through a rift in a

Holland dyke, a rivulet of settlers came trickling down the newly cut

Wilderness Road.

Under the green old trees a mighty drama was unfolding, a Homeric

song, the epic of a nation, as they piled up the bullet-proof cabins

of Boonsboro. This rude fortification could not have withstood the

smallest battery, but so long as the Indians had no cannon this wooden

fort was as impregnable as the walls of a castle.

In a few weeks other forts, Harrodsburg and Logansport, dotted the

canebrakes, and the startled buffalo stampeded for the salt licks.

In September Boone brought out his wife and daughters, the first white

women that ever trod Kentucky soil.

"Ugh! ugh! ugh!"

A hundred Shawnees from their summer hunt in the southern hills came

trailing home along the Warrior's Path, the Indian highway north and

south, from Cumberland Gap to the Scioto.

"Ugh! ugh! ugh!"

They pause and point to the innumerable trackings of men and beasts

into their beloved hunting grounds. Astonishment expands every

feature. They creep along and trace the road. They see the

settlements. It cannot be mistaken, the white man has invaded their

sacred arcanum.

Amazement gives place to wrath. Every look, every gesture bespeaks the

red man's resolve.

"We will defend our country to the last; we will give it up only with

our lives."

Forthwith a runner flies over the hills to Johnson Hall on the Mohawk.

Sir William is dead, dead endeavouring to unravel the perplexities of

the Dunmore war, but his son, Sir Guy, meets the complaining Shawnees.

"The Cherokees sold Kentucky? That cannot be. Kentucky belongs to the

King. My father bought it for him at Fort Stanwix, of the Iroquois.

The Cherokees have no right to sell Kentucky. Go in and take the

land." And so, around their campfires, and at the lake forts of the

British, the Shawnee-Iroquois planned to recover Kentucky.

V

_A BARREL OF GUNPOWDER_

Scarcely was Jefferson home from signing the Declaration when back

from Kentucky came little William's tall strong brother, George Rogers

Clark, elected by those far-away settlers, in June of 1776, to

represent them in the assembly of Virginia.

Cut by a thousand briars, with ragged clothes and blistered feet,

Clark looked in at the home in Caroline and hurried on to

Williamsburg.

"The Assembly adjourned? Then I must to the Governor. Before the

Assembly meets again I may effect what I wish."

Patrick Henry was lying sick at his country-home in Hanover when the

young envoy from Kentucky was ushered to his bedside. Pushing his

reading spectacles up into his brown wig, the Governor listened keenly

as the young man strode up and down his bed-chamber.

The scintillant brown eyes flashed. "Your cause is good. I will give

you a letter to the Council."

"Five hundredweight of gunpowder!" The Council lifted their eyebrows

when Clark brought in his request.

"Virginia is straining every nerve to help Washington; how can she be

expected to waste gunpowder on Kentucky?"

"Let us move those settlers back to Virginia at the public expense,"

suggested one, "and so save the sum that it would take to defend them

in so remote a frontier."

"Move Boone and Kenton and Logan back?" Clark laughed. Too well he

knew the tenacity of that border germ. "So remote a frontier? It is

your own back door. The people of Kentucky may be exterminated for the

want of this gunpowder which I at such hazard have sought for their

relief. Then what bulwark will you have to shield you from the

savages? The British are employing every means to engage those Indians

in war."

Clark knew there was powder at Pittsburg. One hundred and thirty-six

kegs had just been brought up by Lieutenant William Linn with infinite

toil from New Orleans, the first cargo ever conveyed by white men up

the Mississippi and Ohio.

"We will lend you the powder as to friends in distress, but you must

be answerable for it and pay for its transportation."

Clark shook his head,--"I cannot be answerable, nor can I convey it

through that great distance swarming with foes."

"We can go no farther," responded the Council, concluding the

interview. "God knows we would help you if we could, but how do we

even know that Kentucky will belong to us? The assistance we have

already offered is a stretch of power."

"Very well," and Clark turned on his heel. "A country that is not

worth defending is not worth claiming. Since Virginia will not defend

her children, they must look elsewhere. Kentucky will take care of

herself."

His words, that manner, impressed the Council. "What will Kentucky

do?"

To his surprise, the next day Clark was recalled and an order was

passed by the Virginia Council for five hundred pounds of gunpowder,

"for the use of said inhabitants of Kentucki," to be delivered to him

at Pittsburg. Hardly a month old was the Declaration of Independence

when the new nation reached out to the west.

"Did you get the powder?" was the first greeting of young William

Clark as his brother re-entered the home in Caroline.

"Yes, and I fancy I shall get something more."

"What is it?" inquired the little diplomat, eager as his brother for

the success of his embassy.

"Recognition of Kentucky." And he did, for when he started back Major

Clark bore the word that the Assembly of Virginia had made Kentucky a

county. With that fell Henderson's proprietary claim and all the land

was free.

With buoyant heart Clark and Jones, his colleague, hastened down to

Pittsburg. Seven boatmen were engaged and the precious cargo was

launched on the Ohio.

But Indians were lurking in every inlet. Scarce were they afloat

before a canoe darted out behind, then another and another.

With all the tremendous energy of life and duty in their veins, Clark

and his boatmen struck away and away. For five hundred miles the chase

went down the wild Ohio. At last, eluding their pursuers, almost

exhausted, up Limestone Creek they ran, and on Kentucky soil, dumped

out the cargo and set the boat adrift.

While the Indians chased the empty canoe far down the shore, Clark hid

the powder amid rocks and trees, and struck out overland for help from

the settlements. At dead of night he reached Harrod's Station. Kenton

was there, and with twenty-eight others they set out for the Creek and

returned, each bearing a keg of gunpowder on his shoulder.

VI

_THE FEUDAL AGE_

What a summer for the little forts! Dressed in hunting shirt and

moccasins, his rifle on his shoulder, his tomahawk in his belt, now

leading his eager followers on the trail of the red marauders, now

galloping at the head of his horsemen to the relief of some

beleaguered station, Clark guarded Kentucky.

No life was safe beyond the walls. Armed sentinels were ever on the

watchtowers, armed guards were at the gates. And outside, Indians lay

concealed, watching as only Indians can watch, nights and days, to cut

off the incautious settler who might step beyond the barricades. By

instinct the settlers came to know when a foe was near; the very dogs

told it, the cattle and horses became restless, the jay in the treetop

and the wren in the thorn-hollow chattered it. Even the night-owl

hooted it from the boughs of the ghostly old sycamore.

In this, the feudal age of North America, every man became a captain

and fought his own battles. Like knights of old, each borderer, from

Ticonderoga to Wheeling and Boonsboro, sharpened his knife, primed his

flintlock, and started. No martial music or gaudy banner, no drum or

bugle, heralded the border foray. Silent as the red man the stark

hunter issued from his wooden fort and slid among the leaves. Silent

as the panther he stole upon his prey.

But all at once the hill homes of the Cherokees emptied themselves to

scourge Kentucky. Shawnees of the Scioto, Chippewas of the Lakes,

Delawares of the Muskingum hovered on her shores.

March, April, May, June, July, August,--the days grew hot and stifling

to the people cooped up in the close uncomfortable forts. There had

been no planting, scarce even a knock at the gate to admit some forest

rover, and still the savages sat before Boonsboro. Clark was walled in

at Harrodsburg, Logan at Logansport.

Ammunition was failing, provisions were short; now and then there was

a sally, a battle, a retreat, then the dressing of wounds and the

burial of the dead.

Every eye was watching Clark, the leader whose genius consisted

largely in producing confidence. In the height of action he brooded

over these troubles; they knew he had plans; the powder exploit made

them ready to rely upon him to any extent. He would meet those

Indians, somewhere. Men bound with families could not leave,--Clark

was free. Timid men could not act,--Clark was bold. Narrow men could

not see,--Clark was prescient. More than any other he had the

Napoleonic eye. Glancing away to the Lakes and Detroit, the scalp

market of the west, he reasoned in the secrecy of his own heart:

"These Indians are instigated by the British. Through easily

influenced red men they hope to annihilate our frontier. Never shall

we be safe until we can control the British posts."

Unknown to any he had already sent scouts to reconnoitre those very

posts.

"And what have you learned?" he whispered, when on the darkest night

of those tempestuous midsummer days they gave the password at the

gate.

"What have we learned? That the forts are negligently guarded; that

the French are secretly not hostile; that preparations are on foot for

an invasion of Kentucky with British, Indians, and artillery."

"I will give them something to do in their own country," was Clark's

inward comment.

Without a word of his secret intent, Clark buckled on his sword,

primed his rifle, and set out for Virginia. With regret and fear the

people saw him depart, and yet with hope. Putting aside their

detaining hands, "I will surely return," he said.

With almost superhuman daring the leather-armoured knight from the

beleaguered castle in the wood ran the gauntlet of the sleeping

savages. All the Wilderness Road was lit with bonfires, and woe to the

emigrant that passed that way. Cumberland Gap was closed; fleet-winged

he crossed the very mountain tops, where never foot of man or beast

had trod before.

Scarce noting the hickories yellow with autumn and the oaks crimson

with Indian summer, the young man passed through Charlottesville, his

birthplace, and reached his father's house in Caroline at ten o'clock

at night.

In his low trundle-bed little William heard that brother's step and

sprang to unclose the door. Like an apparition George Rogers Clark

appeared before the family, haggard and worn with the summer's siege.

All the news of his brothers gone to the war was quickly heard.

"And will you join them?"

"No, my field is Kentucky. To-morrow I must be at Williamsburg."

The old colonial capital was aflame with hope and thanksgiving as

Clark rode into Duke of Gloucester Street. Burgoyne had surrendered.

Men were weeping and shouting. In the _mêlée_ he met Jefferson and

proposed to him a secret expedition. In the exhilaration of the moment

Jefferson grasped his hand,--"Let us to the Governor."

Crowds of people were walking under the lindens of the Governor's

Palace. Out of their midst came Dorothea, the wife of Patrick Henry,

and did the honours of her station as gracefully as, thirty years

later, Dolly Madison, her niece and namesake, did the honours of the

White House.

Again Patrick Henry pushed his reading spectacles up into his brown

wig and scanned the envoy from Kentucky.

"Well, sirrah, did you get the powder?"

"We got the powder and saved Kentucky. But for it she would have been

wiped out in this summer's siege. All the Indians of the Lakes are

there. I have a plan."

"Unfold it," said Patrick Henry.

In a few words Clark set forth his scheme of conquest.

"Destroy Detroit, Vincennes, Kaskaskia, and you have quelled the

Indians. There they are fed, clothed, armed, and urged to prey upon

us. I have sent spies to reconnoitre, and have received word that

assures me that their capture is feasible."

The scintillating blue eyes burned with an inward light, emitting

fire, as Patrick Henry leaned to inquire, "What would you do in case

of a repulse?"

"Cross the Mississippi and seek protection from the Spaniards,"

answered the ready chief. With his privy council, Mason, Wythe, and

Jefferson, Patrick Henry discussed the plan, and at their instance the

House of Delegates empowered George Rogers Clark "to aid any

expedition against their western enemies."

"Everything depends upon secrecy," said the Governor as he gave Clark

his instructions and twelve hundred pounds in Continental paper

currency. "But you must recruit your men west of the Blue Ridge; we

can spare none from here."

Kindred spirits came to Clark,--Bowman, Helm, Harrod and their

friends, tall riflemen with long buckhorn-handled hunting-knives,

enlisting for the west, but no one guessing their destination.

Despite remonstrances twenty pioneer families on their flat-boats at

Redstone-Old-Fort joined their small fleet to his. "We, too, are going

to Kentucky."

Jumping in as the last boat pulled out of Pittsburg, Captain William

Linn handed Clark a letter. He broke the seal.

"Ye gods, the very stars are for us! The French have joined America!"

With strange exhilaration the little band felt themselves borne down

the swift-rushing waters to the Falls of the Ohio.

Before them blossomed a virgin world. Clark paused while the boats

clustered round. "Do you see that high, narrow, rocky island at the

head of the rapids? It is safe from the Indian. While the troops erect

a stockade and blockhouse, let the families clear a field and plant

their corn."

Axes rang. The odour of hawthorn filled the air. Startled birds swept

over the falls,--eagles, sea gulls, and mammoth cranes turning up

their snowy wings glittering in the sunlight. On the mainland, deer,

bear, and buffalo roamed under the sycamores serene as in Eden.

"Halloo-oo!" It was the well-known call of Simon Kenton, paddling down

to Corn Island with Captain John Montgomery and thirty Kentuckians.

"What news of the winter?"

"Boone and twenty-seven others have been captured by the Indians."

"Boone? We are laying a trap for those very Indians," and then and

there Major Clark announced the object of the expedition.

Some cheered the wild adventure, some trembled and deserted in the

night, but one hundred and eighty men embarked with no baggage beyond

a rifle and a wallet of corn for each.

The snows of the Alleghanies were melting. A million rivulets leaped

to the blue Ohio. It was the June rise, the river was booming. Poling

his little flotilla out into the main channel Clark and his borderers

shot the rapids at the very moment that the sun veiled itself in an

all but total eclipse at nine o'clock in the morning.

It was a dramatic dash, as on and on he sped down the river,

bank-full, running like a millrace.

VII

_KASKASKIA_

Double manned, relays of rowers toiled at the oars by night and by

day.

"Do you see those hunters?"

At the mouth of the Tennessee, almost as if prearranged, two white men

emerged from the Illinois swamps as Clark shot by. He paused and

questioned the strangers.

"We are just from Kaskaskia. Rocheblave is alone with neither troops

nor money. The French believe you Long Knives to be the most fierce,

cruel, and bloodthirsty savages that ever scalped a foe."

"All the better for our success. Now pilot us."

Governor Rocheblave, watching St. Louis and dreaming of conquest, was

to be rudely awakened. All along the Mississippi he had posted spies

and was watching the Spaniard, dreaming not of Kentucky.

Out upon the open, for miles across the treeless prairies, the hostile

Indians might have seen his little handful of one hundred and eighty

men, but Clark of twenty-six, like the Corsican of twenty-six, "with

no provisions, no munitions, no cannon, no shoes, almost without an

army," was about to change the face of three nations.

Twilight fell as they halted opposite Kaskaskia on the night of July

4, without a grain of corn left in their wallets.

"Boys, the town must be taken to-night at all hazards."

Softly they crossed the river,--the postern gate was open.

"Brigands!" shouted Governor Rocheblave, leaping from his bed at

midnight when Kenton tapped him on the shoulder. It was useless to

struggle; he was bound and secured in the old Jesuit mansion which did

duty as a fort at Kaskaskia.

"Brigands!" screamed fat Madame Rocheblave in a high falsetto,

tumbling out of bed in her frilled nightcap and gown. Seizing her

husband's papers, plump down upon them she sat. "No gentleman would

ever enter a lady's bed-chamber."

"Right about, face!" laughed Kenton, marching away the Governor.

"Never let it be said that American soldiers bothered a lady."

In revenge Madame tore up the papers, public archives, causing much

trouble in future years.

"Sacred name of God!" cried the French habitants, starting from their

slumbers. From their windows they saw the streets filled with men

taller than any Indians. "What do they say?"

"Keep in your houses on pain of instant death!"

"Keep close or you will be shot!"

In a moment arose a dreadful shriek of men, women, and children,--"The

Long Knives! The Long Knives!"

The gay little village became silent as death. Before daylight the

houses of Kaskaskia were disarmed. The wild Virginians whooped and

yelled. The timid people quaked and shuddered.

"Grant but our lives and we will be slaves to save our families." It

was the pleading of Father Gibault, interceding for his people. "Let

us meet once more in the church for a last farewell. Let not our

families be separated. Permit us to take food and clothing, the barest

necessities for present needs."

"Do you take us for savages?" inquired Clark in amaze. "Do you think

Americans would strip women and children and take the bread out of

their mouths? My countrymen never make war on the innocent. It was to

protect our own wives and children that we have penetrated this

wilderness, to subdue these British posts whence the savages are

supplied with arms and ammunition to murder us. We do not war against

Frenchmen. The King of France is our ally. His ships and soldiers

fight for us. Go, enjoy your religion and worship when you please.

Retain your property. Dismiss alarm. We are your friends come to

deliver you from the British."

The people trembled; then shouts arose, and wild weeping. The bells of

old Kaskaskia rang a joyous peal.

"Your rights shall be respected," continued Colonel Clark, "but you

must take the oath of allegiance to Congress."

From that hour Father Gibault became an American, and all his people

followed.

"Let us tell the good news to Cahokia," was their next glad cry. Sixty

miles to the north lay Cahokia, opposite the old Spanish town of St.

Louis. The Kaskaskians brought out their stoutest ponies, and on them

Clark sent off Bowman and thirty horsemen.

"The Big Knives?" Cahokia paled.

"But they come as friends," explained the Kaskaskians.

Without a gun the gates were opened, and the delighted Frenchmen

joyfully banqueted the Kentuckians.

The Indians were amazed. "The Great Chief of the Long Knives has

come," the rumour flew. For five hundred miles the chiefs came to see

the victorious Americans.

"I will not give them presents. I will not court them. Never will I

seem to fear them. Let them beg for peace." And with martial front

Clark bore himself as if about to exterminate the entire Indian

population. The ruse was successful; the Indians flocked to the

Council of the Great Chief as if drawn by a magnet.

Eagerly they leaned and listened.

"Men and warriors: I am a warrior, not a counsellor."

Holding up before them a green belt and another the colour of blood,

"Take your choice," he cried, "Peace or War."

So careless that magnificent figure stood, so indifferent to their

choice, that the hearts of the red men leaped in admiration.

"Peace, Peace, Peace," they cried.

From all directions the Indians flocked; Clark became apprehensive of

such numbers,--Chippewas, Ottawas, Pottawattamies, Sacs, Foxes,

Maumees.

"The Big Knives are right," said the chiefs. "The Great King of the

French has come to life."

Without the firing of a gun or the loss of a life, the great tactician

subjugated red men and white. Clark had no presents to give,--he awed

the Indians. He devoted great care to the drilling of his troops, and

the nations sat by to gaze at the spectacle. The Frenchmen drilled

proudly with the rest.

While Clark was holding his councils Kenton had gone to Vincennes.

Three days and three nights he lay reconnoitring. He spoke with the

people, then by special messenger sent word, "The Governor has gone to

Detroit. You can take Vincennes."

Clark was ready.

"Do not move against Vincennes," pleaded Father Gibault, "I know my

people. Let me mediate for you."

Clark accepted Gibault's offer, and the patriot priest hastened away

on a lean-backed pony to the Wabash. With his people gathered in the

little log church he told the tale of a new dominion. There under the

black rafters, kissing the crucifix to the United States, the priest

absolved them from their oath of allegiance to the British king.

"Amen," said Gibault solemnly, "we are new men. We are Americans."

To the astonishment of the Indians the American flag flew over the

ramparts of Vincennes.

"What for?" they begged to know.

"Your old father, the King of France, has come to life again. He is

mad at you for fighting for the English. Make peace with the Long

Knives, they are friends of the Great King."

The alarmed Indians listened. Word went to all the tribes. From the

Wabash to the Mississippi, Clark, absolute, ruled the country, a

military dictator.

But the terms of the three-months militia had expired.

"How many of you can stay with me?" he entreated.

One hundred re-enlisted; the rest were dispatched to the Falls of the

Ohio under Captain William Linn.

"Tell the people of Corn Island to remove to the mainland and erect a

stockade fort." Thus was the beginning of Louisville.

Captain John Montgomery and Levi Todd (the grandfather of the wife of

Abraham Lincoln) were dispatched with reports and Governor Rocheblave

as a prisoner-of-war to Virginia.

On arrival of the news the Virginia Assembly immediately created the

county of Illinois, and Patrick Henry appointed John Todd of Kentucky

its first American Governor.

VIII

_THE SPANISH DONNA_

In the year that Penn camped at Philadelphia the French reared their

first bark huts at Kaskaskia, in the American bottom below the

Missouri mouth. Here for a hundred years around the patriarchal,

mud-walled, grass-roofed cabins had gathered children and

grandchildren, to the fourth and fifth generation. Around the houses

were spacious piazzas, where the genial, social Frenchmen reproduced

the feudal age of Europe. Gardens were cultivated in the common

fields, cattle fed in the common pastures, and lovers walked in the

long and narrow street. The young men went away to hunt furs; their

frail bark canoes had been to the distant Platte, and up the Missouri,

no one knows how far.

Sixty miles north of Kaskaskia lay Cahokia, and opposite Cahokia lay

St. Louis.

Now and then a rumour of the struggle of the American Revolution came

to St. Louis, brought by traders over the Detroit trail from Canada.

But the rebellious colonies seemed very far away.

In the midst of his busy days at Kaskaskia, Colonel Clark was

surprised by an invitation from the Spanish Governor at St. Louis, to

dine with him at the Government House.

Father Gibault was well acquainted in St. Louis. He dedicated, in

1770, the first church of God west of the Mississippi, and often went

there to marry and baptise the villagers. So, with Father Gibault,

Colonel Clark went over to visit the Governor.

"L'Americain Colonel Clark, your Excellency."

The long-haired, bare-headed priest stood _chapeau_ in hand before the

heavy oaken door of the Government House, at St. Louis. Then was shown

the splendid hospitality innate to the Spanish race.

The Governor of Upper Louisiana, Don Francisco de Leyba, was friendly

even to excess. He extended his hand to Colonel Clark.

"I feel myself flattered by this visit of de Señor le Colonel, and

honoured, honoured. De fame of your achievement haf come to my ear and

awakened in me emotions of de highest admiration. De best in my house

is at your service; command me to de extent of your wishes, even to de

horses in my stable, de wines in my basement. My servant shall attend

you."

Colonel Clark, a man of plain, blunt speech, was abashed by this

profusion of compliment. His cheeks reddened. "You do me too much

honour," he stammered.

All his life, the truth, the plain truth, and nothing but the truth,

had been Clark's code of conversation. Could it be possible that the

Governor meant all these fine phrases? But every succeeding act and

word seemed to indicate his sincerity.

"My wife, Madam Marie,--zis ees de great Americain General who haf

taken de Illinoa, who haf terrified de sauvages, and sent de Briton

back to Canada. And my leetle children,--dees ees de great Commandante

who ees de friend of your father.

"And, my sister,--dees ees de young Americain who haf startled de

world with hees deeds of valour."

If ever Clark was off his guard, it was when he thus met unexpectedly

the strange and startling beauty of the Donna de Leyba. Each to the

other seemed suddenly clothed with light, as if they two of all the

world were standing there alone.

What the rest said and did, Clark never knew, although he replied

rationally enough to their questions,--in fact, he carried on a long

conversation with the garrulous Governor and his amiable dark-haired

wife. But the Donna, the Donna--

Far beyond the appointed hour Clark lingered at her side. She laughed,

she sang. She could not speak a word of English, Clark could not speak

Spanish. Nevertheless they fell desperately in love. For the first and

only time in his life, George Rogers Clark looked at a woman. How they

made an appointment to meet again no one could say; but they did meet,

and often.

"The Colonel has a great deal of business in St. Louis," the soldiers

complained.

"Le great Americain Colonel kiss te Governor's sister," whispered the

Creoles of St. Louis. How that was discovered nobody knows, unless it

was that Sancho, the servant, had peeped behind the door.

Clark even began to think he would like to settle in Louisiana. And

the Governor favoured his project.

"De finest land in de world, Señor, and we can make it worth your

while. You shall have de whole district of New Madrid. Commandants,

bah! we are lacking de material. His Majesty, de King of Spain, will

gladly make you noble."

"And I, for my part," Clark responded, "can testify to all the

subjects of Spain the high regard and sincere friendship of my

countrymen toward them. I hope it will soon be manifest that we can be

of mutual advantage to one another."

Indeed, through De Leyba, Clark even dreamed of a possible Spanish

alliance for America, like that with France, and De Leyba encouraged

it.

Boon companion with the Governor over the wine, and with the

fascinating Donna smiling upon him, Colonel Clark became not

unbalanced as Mark Antony did,--although once in a ball-room he kissed

the Donna before all the people.

But there was a terrible strain on Clark's nerves at this time. His

resources were exhausted, they had long been exhausted, in fact; like

Napoleon he had "lived on the country." And yet no word came from

Virginia.

Continental paper was the only money in Clark's military chest. It

took twenty dollars of this to buy a dollar's worth of coffee at

Kaskaskia. Even then the Frenchmen hesitated. They had never known any

money but piastres and peltries; they could not even read the English

on the ragged scrip of the Revolution.

"We do not make money," said the Creoles, "we use hard silver." But

Francis Vigo, a Spanish trader of St. Louis, said, "Take the money at

its full value. It is good. I will take it myself."

In matters of credit and finance the word of Vigo was potential. "Ah,

yes, now you can haf supplies," said the cheerful Creoles, "M'sieur

Vigo will take the money, you can haf de meat an' moccasin."

Colonel Vigo, a St. Louis merchant who had large dealings for the

supply of the Spanish troops, had waited on Colonel Clark at Cahokia

and voluntarily tendered to him such aid as he could furnish. "I offer

you my means and influence to advance the cause of liberty."

The offer was gratefully accepted. When the biting winds of winter

swept over Kaskaskia, "Here," he said, "come to my store and supply

your necessities." His advances were in goods and silver piastres, for

which Clark gave scrip or a check on the agent of Virginia at New

Orleans.

Gabriel Cerré in early youth moved to Kaskaskia, where he became a

leading merchant and fur trader. "I am bitterly opposed to _les

Américains_," he said. Then he met Clark; that magician melted him

into friendship, sympathy, and aid.

"From the hour of my first interview I have been the sworn ally of

George Rogers Clark!" exclaimed Charles Gratiot, a Swiss trader of

Cahokia. "My house, my purse, my credit are at his command."

Clark could not be insensible to this profusion of hospitality, which

extended, not only to himself, but to his whole little army and to the

cause of his country.

The Frenchmen dug their potatoes, gathered the fruits of their gnarled

apple-trees, and slew the buffalo and bear around for meat. Winter

came on apace, and yet the new Governor had not arrived.

Colonel Clark's headquarters at the house of Michel Aubrey, one of the

wealthiest fur traders of Kaskaskia, became a sort of capitol. In

front of it his soldiers constantly drilled with the newly enlisted

Frenchmen. All men came to Clark about their business; the piazzas and

gardens were seldom empty. In short, the American Colonel suddenly

found himself the father and adviser of everybody in the village.

IX

_VINCENNES_

"I will dispossess these Americans," said Governor Hamilton at

Detroit. "I will recover Vincennes. I will punish Kentucky. I will

subdue all Virginia west of the mountains." And on the seventh of

October, 1778, he left Detroit with eight hundred men,--regulars,

volunteers, and picked Indians.

The French habitants of Vincennes were smoking their pipes in their

rude verandas, when afar they saw the gleam of red coats. Vincennes

sank without a blow and its people bowed again to the British king.

"I will quarter here for the winter," said Governor Hamilton. Then he

sent an express to the Spanish Governor at St. Louis with the threat,

"If any asylum be granted the rebels in your territory, the Spanish

post will be attacked."

In their scarlet tunics, emblem of Britain, to Chickasaw and Cherokee

his runners flew. At Mackinac the Lake Indians were to "wipe out the

rebels of Illinoi'." Far over to the Sioux went presents and messages,

even to the distant Assiniboine. Thousands of red-handled scalping

knives were placed in their hands. Emissaries watched Kaskaskia.

Picked warriors lingered around the Ohio to intercept any boats that

might venture down with supplies for the little Virginian army.

New Year's dawned for 1779. Danger hovered over Clark at Kaskaskia.

"Not for a whole year have I received a scrape of a pen," he wrote to

Patrick Henry. Too small was his force to stand a siege, too far away

to hope for relief. He called his Kentuckians from Cahokia, and day

and night toiled at the defences of Kaskaskia. How could they

withstand the onslaught of Hamilton and his artillery?

But hark! There is a knocking at the gate, and Francis Vigo enters.

Closeted with Clark he unfolds his errand.

"I am just from Vincennes. Listen! Hamilton has sent his Indian hordes

in every direction. They are guarding the Ohio, watching the

settlements, stirring up the most distant tribes to sweep the country.

But he has sent out so many that he is weak. At this moment there are

not more than eighty soldiers left in garrison, nor more than three

pieces of cannon and some swivels mounted."

With inspiration born of genius and desperate courage Clark made his

resolve. "If I don't take Hamilton he'll take me; and, by Heaven! I'll

take Hamilton!"

But it was midwinter on the bleak prairies of Illinois, where to this

day the unwary traveller may be frozen stark in the icy chill. Clark's

men were almost entirely without clothing, ammunition, provisions. Can

genius surmount destitution? Clark turned to Vigo.

"I have not a blanket, an ounce of bread, nor a pound of powder. Can

you fit me out in the name of Virginia?"

Francis Vigo, a Sardinian by birth but Republican at heart, answered,

"I can fit you out. Here is an order for money. Down yonder is a

swivel and a boatload of powder. I will bid the merchants supply

whatever you need. They can look to me for payment."

In two days Clark's men were fitted out and ready. Clad in skins, they

stepped out like trappers.

On the shore lay a new bateau. Vigo's swivel was rolled aboard, and

some of the guns of Kaskaskia.

"Now, Captain John Rogers," said Colonel Clark to his cousin, "with

these forty-eight men and these cannon you go down the Mississippi, up

the Ohio, and enter the Wabash River. Station yourself a few miles

below Vincennes; suffer nothing to pass, and wait for me."

On the 4th of February the little galley slid out with Rogers and his

men.

"Now who will go with me?" inquired Clark, turning to his comrades.

"It will be a desperate service. I must call for volunteers."

Stirred by the daring of the deed, one hundred and thirty young men

swore to follow him to the death. All the remaining inhabitants were

detailed to garrison Kaskaskia and Cahokia. The fickle weather-vanes

of old Kaskaskia veered and whirled, the winds blew hot and cold, then

came fair weather for the starting.

It was February 5, 1779, when George Rogers Clark set out with his one

hundred and thirty men to cross the Illinois. Vigo pointed out the

fur-trader's trail to Vincennes and Detroit. Father Gibault blessed

them as they marched away. The Creole girls put flags in the hands of

their sweethearts, and begged them to stand by "le Colonel."

"O Mother of God, sweet Virgin, preserve my beloved," prayed the Donna

de Leyba in the Government House at St. Louis.

Over all the prairies the snows were melting, the rains were falling,

the rivers were flooding.

Hamilton sat at Vincennes planning his murders.

"Next year," he exulted, "there will be the greatest number of savages

on the frontier that has ever been known. The Six Nations have

received war belts from all their allies."

But Clark and his men were coming in the rain. Eleven days after

leaving Kaskaskia they heard the morning guns of the fort. Deep and

deeper grew the creeks and sloughs as they neared the drowned lands of

the Wabash. Still they waded on, through water three feet deep;

sometimes they were swimming. Between the two Wabashes the water

spread, a solid sheet five miles from shore to shore. The men looked

out, amazed, as on a rolling sea. But Clark, ever ahead, cheering his

men, grasped a handful of gunpowder, and with a whoop, the well-known

peal of border war, blackened his face and dashed into the water. The

men's hearts leaped to meet his daring, and with "death or victory"

humming in their brains, they plunged in after.

On and on they staggered, buffeting the icy water, stumbling in the

wake of their undaunted leader. Seated on the shoulders of a tall

Shenandoah sergeant, little Isham Floyd, the fourteen-year-old drummer

boy, beat a charge. Deep and deeper grew the tide; waist deep, breast

high, over their shoulders it played; and above, the leaden sky looked

down upon this unparalleled feat of human endeavour. Never had the

world seen such a march.

Five days they passed in the water,--days of chill and whoops and

songs heroic to cheer their flagging strength. The wallets were empty

of corn, the men were fainting with famine, when lo! an Indian canoe

of squaws hove in sight going to Vincennes. They captured the canoe,

and--most welcome of all things in the world to those famished men--it

contained a quarter of buffalo and corn and kettles! On a little

island they built a fire; with their sharp knives prepared the meat,

and soon the pots were boiling. So exhausted were they that Clark

would not let them have a full meal at once, but gave cups of broth to

the weaker ones.

On the sixteenth day Clark cheered his men. "Beyond us lies

Vincennes. Cross that plain and you shall see it."

On February 22, Washington's birthday, fatigued and weary they slept

in a sugar camp. "Heard the evening and morning guns of the fort. No

provisions yet. Lord help us!" is the record of Bowman's journal.

Still without food, the 23d saw them crossing the Horseshoe

Plain,--four miles of water breast high. Frozen, starved, they

struggled through, and on a little hill captured a Frenchman hunting

ducks.

"No one dreams of your coming at this time of year," said the

duck-hunter. "There are six hundred people in Vincennes, troops,

Indians, and all. This very day Hamilton completed the walls of his

fort."

Clark pressed his determined lips. "The situation is all that I can

ask. It is death or victory." And there in the mud, half frozen,

chilled to the marrow, starved, Clark penned on his knee a letter:

"TO THE INHABITANTS OF POST VINCENNES:

"GENTLEMEN,--Being now within two miles of your village

with my army, determined to take your fort this night, and

not being willing to surprise you, I take this method to

request such as are true citizens to remain still in your

houses. Those, if any there be, that are friends of the

King, will instantly repair to the fort, join the

hair-buyer general, and fight like men. If any such do not

go and are found afterwards, they may depend on severe

punishment. On the contrary, those who are the friends of

liberty may depend on being well treated, and I once more

request them to keep out of the streets. Every one I find

in arms on my arrival I shall treat as an enemy.

GEORGE ROGERS CLARK."

"Take this. Tell the people my quarrel is with the British. We shall

be in Vincennes by the rising of the moon. Prepare dinner."

The messenger flew ahead; upon the captured horses of other

duck-hunters Clark mounted his officers. It was just at nightfall when

they entered the lower gate.

"Silence those drunken Indians," roared Hamilton at the sound of

guns. But the Frenchmen themselves turned their rifles on the fort.

Under the friendly light of the new moon Clark and his men threw up an

intrenchment, and from behind its shelter in fifteen minutes the

skilled volleys of the border rifle had silenced two of the cannon.

"Surrender!" was Clark's stentorian summons at daylight.

Hamilton, with the blood of many a borderer on his head,--what had he

to hope? Hot and hotter rained the bullets.

"Give me three days to consider."

"Not an hour!" was Clark's reply.

"Let me fight with you?" said The Tobacco's son, the principal chief

on the Wabash.

"No," answered Clark, "you sit back and watch us. Americans do not

hire Indians to fight their battles."

Amazed, the Indians fell back and waited.

The fort fell, and with it British dominion in the northwest

territory. Then the galley hove in sight and the flag waved above

Vincennes.

"A convoy up de _rivière_ on its way with goods, from le Detroit,"

whispered a Frenchman. Directly Clark dispatched his boatmen to

capture the flotilla.

"_Sur la feuille ron--don don don_," the _voyageurs_ were singing.

Merrily rowing down the river came the British, when suddenly out from

a bend swung three boats. "Surrender!"

Amid the wild huzzas of Vincennes the Americans returned, bringing the

captive convoy with fifty thousand dollars' worth of food, clothing,

and ammunition, and forty prisoners.

With a heart full of thanksgiving Clark paid and clothed his men out

of that prize captured on the Wabash.

"Let the British flag float a few days," he said. "I may entertain

some of the hair-buying General's friends."

Very soon painted red men came striding in with bloody scalps dangling

at their belts. But as each one entered, red-handed from murder,

Clark's Long Knives shot him down before the face of the guilty

Hamilton. Fifty fell before he lowered the British flag. But from that

day the red men took a second thought before accepting rewards for the

scalps of white men.

"Now what shall you do with me?" demanded Hamilton.

"You? I shall dispatch you as a prisoner of war to Virginia."

X

_THE CITY OF THE STRAIT_

Clark was not an hour too soon. Indians were already on the march.

"Hamilton is taken!"

Wabasha, the Sioux, from the Falls of St. Anthony, heard, and stopped

at Prairie du Chien.

"Hamilton is taken!"

Matchekewis, the gray-haired chief of the Chippewas, coming down from

Sheboygan, heard the astounding word and fell back to St. Joseph's.

The great Hamilton carried away by the rebels! The Indians were indeed

cowed. The capture of Hamilton completed Clark's influence. The great

Red-Coat sent away as a prisoner of war was an object-lesson the

Indians could not speedily forget.

Out of Hamilton's captured mail, Clark discovered that the French in

the neighbourhood of Detroit were not well-affected toward the

British, and were ready to revolt whenever favourable opportunity

offered.

"Very well, then, Detroit next!"

But Clark had more prisoners than he knew what to do with.

"Here," said he, to the captured Detroiters, "I am anxious to restore

you to your families. I know you are unwilling instruments in this

war, but your great King of France has allied himself with the

Americans. Go home, bear the good news, bid your friends welcome the

coming of their allies, the Americans. And tell Captain Lernoult I am

glad to hear that he is constructing new works at Detroit. It will

save us Americans some expense in building."

The City of the Strait was lit with bonfires.

"We have taken an oath not to fight the Virginians," said the paroled

Frenchmen.

The people rejoiced when they heard of Hamilton's capture; they hated

his tyranny, and, certain of Clark's onward progress, prepared a

welcome reception for "_les Américains_."

"See," said the mistress of a lodging house to Captain Lernoult. "See

what viands I haf prepared for le Colonel Clark." And the Captain

answered not a word. Baptiste Drouillard handed him a printed

proclamation of the French alliance.

Everywhere Detroiters were drinking, "Success to the Thirteen United

States!"

"Success to Congress and the American arms! I hope the Virginians will

soon be at Detroit!"

"Now Colonel Butler and his scalping crew will meet their deserts. I

know the Colonel for a coward and I'll turn hangman for him!"

"Don't buy a farm now. When the Virginians come you can get one for

nothing."

"See how much leather I am tanning for the Virginians. When they come

I shall make a great deal of money."

"Town and country kept three days in feasting and diversions," wrote

Clark to Jefferson, "and we are informed that the merchants and others

provided many necessaries for us on our arrival." But this the Colonel

did not learn until long after.

Left alone in command, with only eighty men in the garrison, Lernoult

could do nothing. Bitterly he wrote to his commander-in-chief, "The

Canadians are rebels to a man. In building the fort they aid only on

compulsion."

Even at Montreal the Frenchmen kept saying, "A French fleet will

certainly arrive and retake the country"; and Haldimand, Governor

General, was constantly refuting these rumours.

"Now let me help you," again pleaded The Tobacco's son to Clark at

Vincennes.

"I care not whether you side with me or not," answered the American

Colonel. "If you keep the peace, very well. If not you shall suffer

for your mischief."

Such a chief! Awed, the Indians retired to their camps and became

spectators. To divert Clark, the British officers urged these Indians

to attack Vincennes.

The Tobacco's son sent back reply, "If you want to fight the Bostons

at St. Vincent's you must cut your way through them, as we are Big

Knives, too!" Their fame spread to Superior and the distant Missouri.

"In the vicinity of Chicago the rebels are purchasing horses to mount

their cavalry."

"The Virginians are building boats to take Michilimackinac."

"They are sending belts to the Chippewas and Ottawas."

"The Virginians are at Milwaukee."

So the rumours flew along the Lakes, terrifying every Briton into

strengthening his stronghold. And this, for the time, kept them well

at home.

"Had I but three hundred I could take Detroit," said Clark. Every day

now came the word from the French of the city, "Come,--come to our

relief."

"But Vincennes must be garrisoned. My men are too few."

Then a messenger arrived with letters from Thomas Jefferson, now

Governor of Virginia, with "thanks from the Assembly for the heroic

service you have rendered," and the promise of troops.

Now for the first time were the soldiery made aware of the gratitude

of their country. Tumultuous cheers rent the air. The Indians heard,

and thought it was news of another victory.

"Let us march this day on Detroit," begged the soldiers, few as they

were. Half the population of Vincennes, and all the Indians, would

have followed.

"Too many are ill," Clark said to himself. "Bowman is dying, the lands

are flooded, the rains are falling. An unsustained march might end in

disaster. For five hundred troops, I would bind myself a slave for

seven years!"

To the soldiers he explained, "Montgomery is coming with men and

powder. Let us rendezvous here in June and make a dash at Detroit."

Leaving a garrison in the fort, in answer to imperative call, Clark

set out with six boatloads of troops and prisoners for a flying trip

to Kaskaskia.

But every step of the way, day and night, "Detroit must be taken,

Detroit must be taken," was the dream of the disturbed commander. "I

cannot rest. Nothing but the fall of Detroit will bring peace to our

frontiers. In case I am not disappointed, Detroit is already my own."

XI

_A PRISONER OF WAR_

"A prisoner of war? No, indeed, he is a felon, a murderer!" exclaimed

the Virginians, as weary, wet, and hungry the late Governor of Detroit

sat on his horse in the rain at the door of the governor's palace at

Williamsburg, where Jefferson now resided. The mob gathered to

execrate the "hair-buyer general" and escort him to jail.

There were twenty-seven prisoners, altogether, brought by a band of

borderers, most of the way on foot.

Every step of the long journey Captain John Rogers and his men had

guarded the "hair-buyer general" from the imprecations of an outraged

people.

It was the first news of Vincennes, as the startled cry ran,--

"Governor Hamilton, charged with having incited Indians to scalp,

torture, and burn, is at the door,--Hamilton, who gave standing

rewards for scalps but none for prisoners; and Dejean, Chief Justice

of Detroit, the merciless keeper of its jails, a terror to captives

with threats of giving them over to savages to be burnt alive;

Lamothe, a captain of volunteer scalping parties; Major Hay, one of

Hamilton's chief officers, and others."

"Load them with heavy fetters and immure them in a dungeon," said

Governor Jefferson. "Too many of our boys are rotting in British

prison ships." This from Jefferson, so long the humane friend of

Burgoyne's surrendered troops now quartered at Charlottesville!

The British commanders blustered and protested, but Jefferson firmly

replied, "I avow my purpose to repay cruelty, hangings, and close

confinement. It is my duty to treat Hamilton and his officers with

severity. Iron will be retaliated with iron, prison ships by prison

ships, and like by like in general."

Washington advised a mitigation of the extreme severity, but

Jefferson's course had its effect. The British were more merciful

thereafter.

And with the coming of Hamilton came all the wonderful story of the

capture of Vincennes. And who can tell it? Who has told it? Historians

hesitate. Romancers shrink from the task. Not one has surpassed George

Rogers Clark's own letters, which read like fragments of the gospel of

liberty.

Before the home fire at Caroline, John Rogers told the tale. A hush

fell. The mother softly wept as she thought of her scattered boys, one

in the west, two with Washington tracking the snows of Valley Forge,

one immured in a prison ship where patriot martyrs groaned their lives

away.

Little William heard the tale, and his young heart swelled with

emotion. John Clark listened, then spoke but one sentence.

"If I had as many more sons I would give them all to my country."

All the way from Kentucky Daniel Boone was sent to the Virginia

legislature. He said to Jefferson: "I doubt these charges against

Governor Hamilton. Last Spring I was captured by the Shawnees and

dragged to Detroit. Governor Hamilton took pity on me and offered the

Indians one hundred dollars for my release. They refused to take it.

But he gave me a horse, and on that horse I eventually made my

escape."

"Did that prevent Governor Hamilton from sending an armed force of

British and Indians to besiege Boonsboro?" inquired Jefferson.

Boone had to admit that it did not. But for that timely escape and

warning Boonsboro would have fallen.

But Boone in gratitude went to the dungeon and offered what

consolation he could to the imprisoned Governor.

The fact is, that Daniel Boone carried ever on his breast, wrapped in

a piece of buckskin, that old commission of Lord Dunmore's. It saved

him from the Indians; it won Hamilton.

XII

_TWO WARS AT ONCE_

The sunbeams glistened on the naked skin of an Indian runner, as, hair

flying in the wind, from miles away he came panting to Clark at

Kaskaskia.

"There is to be an attack on San Loui'. Wabasha, the Sioux, and

Matchekewis--"

"How do you know?"

"I hear at Michilimackinac,--Winnebagoe, Sauk, Fox, Menomonie."

Clark laughed and gave the messenger a drink of taffia. But the moment

the painted savage slid away the Colonel prepared to inform his

friends at St. Louis.

"Pouf!" laughed the careless commandant, drinking his wine at the

Government House. "Why need we fear? Are not our relation wit de

Indian friendly? Never haf been attack on San Luis, never will be. Be

seat, haf wine, tak' wine, Señor le Colonel."

"Pouf!" echoed the guests at the Governor's table. "Some trader angry

because he lose de peltry stole in de Spanish country. It never go

beyond threat."

An attack? The very idea seemed to amuse the Governor in his cups. But

Father Gibault looked grave. "I, too, have heard such a rumour."

"It may be only a belated report of Hamilton's scheming," replied

Clark. "Now he is boxed up it may blow over. But in case the English

attempt to seize the west bank of this river I pledge you all the

assistance in my power."

"T'anks, t'anks, my good friend, I'll not forget. In de middle of de

night you get my summon."

But, unknown to them, that very May, Spain declared war against Great

Britain. And Great Britain coveted the Mississippi.

Madame Marie and the charming Donna had been listeners. Colonel Clark

handed the maiden a bouquet of wild roses as he came in, but spoke not

a word. All the year had she been busy, embroidering finery for "le

Colonel." Such trifles were too dainty for the soldier's life--but he

wore them next his heart.

While the dinner party overwhelmed the victor with congratulations and

drank to his health, Clark saw only the Donna, child of the convent,

an exotic, strangely out of place in this wild frontier.

"I am a soldier," he whispered, "and cannot tarry. My men are at the

boats, but I shall _watch_ St. Louis."

Her eyes followed him, going away so soon, with Father Gibault and De

Leyba down to the river. As he looked back a handkerchief fluttered

from an upper window, and he threw her a kiss.

"I am not clear but the Spaniards would suffer their settlements to

fall with ours for the sake of having the opportunity of retaking them

both," muttered Clark as he crossed the river, suspicious of De

Leyba's inaction.

At Kaskaskia forty recruits under Captain Robert George had arrived

by way of New Orleans. Then Montgomery, with another forty, came down

the Ohio.

They must be fed and clothed directly. In the midst of these

perplexities appeared John Todd, the new Governor.

"Ah, my friend," Clark grasped his hand. "Now I see myself happily rid

of a piece of trouble I take no delight in. I turn the civil

government over to you. But our greatest trouble is the lack of

money."

"Money? Why, here are continental bills in abundance."

"Worth two cents on the dollar. 'Dose British traders,' say the

habitants, 'dey will not take five huntert to one. Dey will have

nought but skins.' This has brought our Virginia paper into disrepute.

They will not even take a coin unless it is stamped with the head of a

king."

"What have you done?"

"Done? Purchased supplies on my own credit. Several merchants of this

country have advanced considerable sums and I have given them drafts

on our Virginian agent in New Orleans. They come back, protested for

want of funds. Francis Vigo has already loaned me ten thousand dollars

in silver piastres."

"But Virginia will pay it,--she is bound to pay it. The service must

not suffer." Thus reassured that his course had been right, Colonel

Clark continued:

"Four posts must be garrisoned to hold this country,--Kaskaskia,

Cahokia, Vincennes, and the Falls of the Ohio,--not one has sufficient

defence. Colonel Montgomery's force is not half what I expected. But

if I am not deceived in the Kentuckians I shall yet be able to

complete my designs on Detroit. I only want sufficient men to make me

appear respectable in passing among the savages."

The cautious French settlers were a trial to Clark. Father Gibault

tried to persuade them, parting with his own tithes and horses to set

an example to his parishioners to make equal sacrifices to the

American cause. Altogether, Father Gibault advanced seven thousand

eight hundred livres, French money, equal to fifteen hundred and sixty

dollars,--his little all.

Governor Todd said, "If the people will not spare willingly, you must

press it."

"I cannot press it," answered Clark. "We must keep the inhabitants

attached to us by every means in our power. Rather will I sign notes

right and left on my own responsibility to procure absolute

necessities to hold Illinois, trusting to Virginia to make it right."

Then after a thoughtful pause,--"I cannot think of the consequences of

losing possession of the country without resolving to risk every point

rather than suffer it."

The bad crops of 1779 and the severity of the winter of 1780 made

distress in Illinois. Nevertheless the cheerful habitants sold their

harvests to Clark and received in payment his paper on New Orleans.

"You encourage me to attempt Detroit," Clark wrote to Jefferson. "It

has been twice in my power. When I first arrived in this country, or

when I was at Vincennes, could I have secured my prisoners and had

only three hundred men, I should have attempted it, and I since learn

there could have been no doubt of my success. But they are now

completing a new fort, too strong I fear for any force that I shall

ever be able to raise in this country."

Then he hurried back to Vincennes. Thirty only were there of the three

hundred expected. An Indian army camped ready to march at his call.

"Never depend upon Injuns," remarked Simon Kenton, reappearing after

an absence of weeks.

"Kenton? Well, where have you been? You look battered."

"Battered I am, but better, the scars are almost gone. Captured by

Shawnees, made to run the gauntlet twice, then dragged to St. Dusky to

be burnt at the stake."

"How did you escape?"

"One of your Detroit Frenchmen, Pierre Drouillard, late interpreter

for your captured Hamilton, told them the officers at Detroit wanted

to question me about the Big Knife. Ha! Ha! It took a long powwow and

plenty of wampum, and the promise to bring me back."

"Did he intend to do it?"

"Lord, no! as soon as we were out of sight he told me, 'Never will I

abandon you to those inhuman wretches,' A trader's wife enabled me to

escape from Detroit."

"Do you think I can take Detroit?"

"Take it, man? As easy as you took Vincennes. Only the day of surprise

is past. A cloud of red Injuns watch the approaches. You must have

troops."

Troops! Troops! None came. None could come. What had happened?

Taking with him one of Hamilton's light brass cannon to fortify the

Falls of the Ohio, Clark discovered that at the very time of his

capture, Hamilton had appointed a great council of Indians to meet at

the mouth of the Tennessee.

"The Cherokees have risen on the Tennessee settlements, and the

regiments intended for you have turned south."

The sword and belt of Hamilton had done their work. America was

fighting two wars at once.

XIII

_THE KEY OF THE COUNTRY_

"The Falls is the Key of the Country. It shall be my depot of

supplies. Here will I build a fort. A great city will one day arise on

this spot." And in honour of the King who had helped America, Clark

named it Louisville.

Axes, hammers, and saws made music while Clark's busy brain was

planning parks and squares to make his city the handsomest in America.

But, ever disturbing this recreation, "Detroit" was in his soul.

"Public interest requires that I reside here until provision can be

made for the coming campaign."

"Since Clark's feat the world is running mad for Kentucky," said the

neighbours in Caroline. Through all that Autumn, emigrants were

hurrying down to take advantage of the new land laws of Virginia.

"A fleet of flatboats!" shouted the workmen at the Falls. Down with

others from Pittsburg, when the autumn rains raised the river, came

Clark's old comrade, John Floyd, and his brothers and his bride, Jane

Buchanan. One of those brothers was Isham Floyd, the boy drummer of

Vincennes.

"I, too, shall build a fort," said John Floyd to his friends, "here on

Bear Grass Creek, close to Louisville."

Still emigrants were on their way, when a most terrific winter set in.

Stock was frozen, wild beasts and game died. The forests lay deep with

snow, and rivers were solid with ice.

The cabins of Louisville were crowded, the fort was filled with

emigrants. Food gave out, corn went up to one hundred and fifty

dollars a bushel in depreciated continental currency. Even a cap of

native fur cost five hundred dollars.

The patient people shivered under their buffalo, bear, and elk-skin

bedquilts, penned in the little huts, living on boiled buffalo beef

and venison hams, with fried bear or a slice of turkey breast for

bread, and dancing on Christmas night with pineknot torches bracketed

on the walls.

"Did you not say the conquerors of Vincennes waded through the drowned

lands in February?" asked a fair one of her partner at the dance.

"Yes, but that was an open winter. This, thank God, is cold enough to

deter our enemies from attempting to recover what they have lost."

"But Colonel Clark said the weather was warm?"

"Warm, did you say? Who knows what Clark would have called warm

weather in February? The water up to their armpits could not have been

warm at that time of year."

The spring waters broke; a thousand emigrants went down the Ohio to

Louisville. And carcasses of bear, elk, deer, and lesser game floated

out of the frozen forests.

During the June rise more than three hundred flatboats arrived at the

Falls loaded with wagons; for months long trains were departing from

Louisville with these people bound for the interior. Floyd's fort on

the Bear Grass became a rendezvous; the little harbour an anchorage

for watercraft.

"We must establish a claim to the Mississippi," wrote Jefferson to

Clark. "Go down to the mouth of the Ohio and build a fort on Chickasaw

Bluff. It will give us a claim to the river."

While Clark was preparing, an express arrived from Kaskaskia,--

"We are threatened with invasion. Fly to our relief."

Without money save land warrants, without clothing save skins,

depending on their rifles for food, Clark's little flotilla with two

hundred men set down the Ohio, on the very flood that was bringing the

emigrants, to clinch the hold on Illinois.

"I have now two thousand warriors on the Lakes. The Wabash Indians

have promised to amuse Mr. Clark at the Falls." De Peyster, the new

commandant at Detroit, was writing to General Haldimand at Quebec.

Even as Clark left, a few daring savages came up and fired on the fort

at Louisville.

"She is strong enough now to defend herself," said Clark as he pulled

away.

Colonel Bird, working hard at Detroit, started his Pottawattamies.

They went but a little way.

"Ugh! Ugh! Ugh! Long Knives coming!" Pell-mell, back they fell, to be

fitted out all over again.

"These unsteady rogues put me out of all patience!" exclaimed the

angry Colonel Bird. "They are always cooking or counciling. Indians

are most happy when most frequently fitted out."

"Such is the dependence on Indians without troops to lead them,"

sagely remarked De Peyster. "But without them we could not hold the

country."

"It is distressing," wrote Governor Haldimand, "to reflect that

notwithstanding the vast treasure lavished upon these people, no

dependence can be had on them."

"Amazing sum!" he exclaimed when the bills came in. "I observe with

great concern the astonishing consumption of rum at Detroit. This

expense cannot be borne."

However, the Pottawattamies sharpened their hatchets and, newly

outfitted, set out for the rapids of the Ohio.

"Bring them in alive if possible," was the parting admonition of De

Peyster, warned by the obloquy of Hamilton. Vain remonstrance with

four hundred and seventy-six dozen scalping knives at Bird's command!

From every unwary emigrant along the Ohio, daily the Delawares and

Shawnees brought their offerings of scalps to Detroit, and throwing

them down at the feet of the commander said, "Father, we have done as

you directed us; we have struck your enemies."

The bounty was paid; the scalps were counted and flung into a cellar

under the Council House.

And De Peyster, really a good fellow, like André, a _bon vivant_ and

lover of books and music, went on with his cards, balls, and

assemblies, little feeling the iron that goes to the making of

nations.

"Kentuckians very bad people! Ought to be scalped as fast as taken,"

said the Indians.

XIV

_BEHIND THE CURTAIN_

"We must dislodge this American general from his new conquest," said

the British officers, "or tribe after tribe will be gained over and

subdued. Thus will be destroyed the only barrier which protects the

great trading establishments of the Northwest and Hudson's Bay.

Nothing could then prevent the Americans from gaining the source of

the Mississippi, gradually extending themselves by the Red River to

Lake Winnipeg, from whence the descent of Nelson's River to York Fort

would in time be easy."

Another strong factor in this decision was the dissatisfaction of the

British traders with the new movement that was deflecting the fur

trade down the Mississippi. The French families of Cahokia and

Kaskaskia sent their furs down to New Orleans, greatly to the

displeasure of their late English rulers, who wanted them to go to

Canada, by the St. Louis trail to Detroit.

"Why should it not continue over the old Detroit trail to Montreal?"

they questioned. "Is our fur trade to be cut off by these beggarly

rebels and Spaniards? It belongs to Canada, Canada shall have it!" So

all North America was fought over for the fur trade.

"I will use my utmost endeavours to send as many Indians as I can to

attack the Spanish settlements, early in February," said Pat Sinclair,

the British commander at Michilimackinac.

"I have taken steps to engage the Sioux under their own Chief,

Wabasha, a man of uncommon abilities. Wabasha is allowed to be a very

extraordinary Indian and well attached to His Majesty's interest."

And Wabasha, king of the buffalo plains above the Falls of St.

Anthony, _was_ an extraordinary Indian. In old days he fought for

Pontiac, but after De Peyster brought the Sioux, the proudest of the

tribes, to espouse the English cause, every year Wabasha made a visit

to his British father at Michilimackinac.

On such a visit as this he came from Prairie du Chien after hearing

that Hamilton was taken, and was received with songs and cannonading:

"Hail to great Wabashaw!

Cannonier--fire away,

Hoist the fort-standard, and beat all the drums;

Ottawa and Chippewa,

Whoop! for great Wabashaw!

He comes--beat drums--the Sioux chief comes.

"Hail to great Wabashaw!

Soldiers your triggers draw,

Guard,--wave the colours, and give him the drum!

Choctaw and Chickasaw,

Whoop for great Wabashaw!

Raise the port-cullis!--the King's friend is come."

By such demonstrations and enormous gifts, the Indians were held to

the British standard.

It was Wabasha and his brothers, Red Wing and Little Crow, who in 1767

gave a deed to Jonathan Carver of all the land around St. Anthony's

Falls, on which now stand the cities of St. Paul and Minneapolis, but

no government confirmation of the deed has ever been discovered.

"The reduction of St. Louis will be an easy matter, and of the rebels

at Kaskaskia also," continued Sinclair. "All the traders who will

secure the posts on the Spanish side of the Mississippi have my

promise for the exclusive trade of the Missouri."

The Northwest red men were gathering,--Menomonies, Sacs, Foxes,

Winnebagoes,--at the portage of the Wisconsin and Fox Rivers,

collecting all the corn and canoes in the country, to set out on the

tenth of March. Again Sinclair writes, "Seven hundred and fifty men

set out down the Mississippi the second of May."

Another party assembled at Chicago to come by the Illinois,--Indians,

British, and traders.

"Captain Hesse will remain at St. Louis," continued Governor Sinclair.

"Wabasha will attack Ste. Genevieve and the rebels at Kaskaskia. Two

vessels leave here on the second of June to attend Matchekewis, who

will return by the Illinois River with prisoners."

Very well De Peyster knew Matchekewis, the puissant chief who

"At foot-ball sport

With arms concealed, surprised the fort,"

at Michilimackinac in Pontiac's war. It was Matchekewis himself who

kicked the ball over the pickets, and rushing in with his band fell on

the unprepared ranks of the British garrison. On the reoccupation of

Mackinac, Matchekewis had been sent to Quebec and imprisoned, but,

released and dismissed with honours and a buffalo barbecue, now he was

leading his Chippewas for the King.

All this was part of a wider scheme, devised in London, for the

subjugation of the Mississippi.

XV

_THE ATTACK ON ST. LOUIS_

Scarce had Clark time to set his men to work on Fort Jefferson, on the

Chickasaw Bluffs overlooking the Mississippi, before he received two

other expresses, one from Montgomery, one from the Spanish Governor

himself,--"Haste, haste to our relief."

Not wishing to alarm his men, Clark picked out a strong escort,--"I

shall be gone a few days. Finish the fort. Keep a constant guard."

They thought he had gone to Kentucky.

All through the year 1779 the Frenchmen remembered Clark's warning. At

last, so great became the general apprehension, that the people

themselves, directed by Madame Rigauche, the school-mistress, erected

a sort of defence of logs and earth, five or six feet high, and posted

a cannon in each of the three gates.

"Pouf! Pouf!" laughed the Governor. But he did not interfere.

But so many days elapsed, so little sign of change appeared in the

accustomed order of things, that the reassured Frenchmen went on as

usual digging in their fields, racing their horses, and clicking their

billiard balls. Night after night they played their fiddles and danced

till dawn on their footworn puncheon floors.

And all the while the Lake Indians of the North were planning and

counselling. All through the Spring they were gathering at rendezvous,

paddling down Lake Michigan's shore into the Chicago River, and then

by portage into the Illinois, where they set up the cry, "On to St.

Louis!"

So long had been the fear allayed, so much the rumour discredited,

that when old man Quenelle came back across the river, white with

excitement, the people listened to his tale as of one deranged.

"What? Do you ask? What?" His teeth chattered. "Ducharme, Ducharme the

absconder, meet me across te river an' say--'Te Injun comin'!' Fifteen

huntert down te river of te Illinois!"

Terrified was the old man. Hearers gathered round plying him with

questions. The incredulous laughed at his incoherence. "What? What?"

he gasped. "You laugh?" Some believed him. Dismay began to creep over

the more timid ones.

"What is it?" inquired the burly Governor De Leyba, bustling up.

"What? That same old yarn to frighten the people? Quenelle is an old

dotard. Take him to prison." Thus reassured, again the people went on

with work, games, festivity.

But now the people of Cahokia became excited. Early in March Colonel

Gratiot sent a boatload of goods for trade to Prairie du Chien. It was

captured by Indians on the Mississippi. Breathless half-breed runners

reported the apparition upon the waters,--"All te waves black with

canoes. A great many sauvages."

"Clark," was the spoken and unspoken thought of all. "Clark, the

invincible, where is he?"

Some said, "He is camped with his Long Knives in the American Bottom."

"No, he is building a fort at the Chickasaw Bluffs."

Hurriedly the villagers prepared an express for Clark. Charles Gratiot

was sent, the brainiest man in Cahokia, one who could speak English,

and, moreover, a great friend of Clark.

On the swiftest canoe Charles Gratiot launched amid the prayers of

Cahokia. Down he swept on the Mississippi with the precious papers

calling for succour. Safely he passed a thousand snags, safely reached

the bluffs of Chickasaw, and saw the fort. Toiling up he gave his

message.

"Colonel Clark? He is gone. We think he left for Louisville." Without

delay a messenger was dispatched to follow his supposed direction.

Meanwhile, Clark and his soldiers, joining Montgomery by land, had

hurried to Cahokia. Immediately he crossed to St. Louis. It was the

feast of Corpus Christi, May 25. Service in the little log chapel was

over.

"Come," said the people in holiday attire, "Let us gather strawberries

on the flowery mead."

From their covert, peeped the Indians. "To-morrow!" they said,

"to-morrow!"

Out of the picnic throng, with lap full of flowers, the beautiful

Donna ran to greet her lover.

"So long"--she drew a sigh--"I haf watched and waited!" Love had

taught her English. Never had the Donna appeared so fair, with shining

eyes and black hair waving on her snowy shoulders.

With tumultuous heart Colonel Clark bent and kissed her. "Vengeance I

swear on any Indian that shall ever mar this lovely head!" Then

crushing her hand with the grip of a giant,--"Wait a little, my dear,

I must see your brother the Governor."

Outside the maiden waited while Clark entered the Government House.

At last Don Francisco De Leyba was come to his senses: "I fear, but I

conceal from de people. I sent for Lieutenant Cartabona from de Ste.

Genevieve. He haf arrived with twenty-five soldier. Will you not

command of both side de river? I need you. You promised."

De Leyba wore a long scarf of crape for his lately deceased wife.

Clark had never seen him look so ill; he was worn out and trembling.

The ruffle at his wrist shook like that of a man with palsy.

Clark took the nervous hand in his own firm grasp.

"Certainly, my friend, I will do everything in my power. What are your

defences?"

"We haf a stockade, you note it? De cannon at gates? I assure de

people no danger, de rumour false; I fear dey scarce will believe

now." Together they went out to review Cartabona's soldiers and the

works of defence.

"Le Colonel Clark! Le Colonel Clark!" the people cheered as he passed.

"Now we are safe!"

De Leyba had sent out a hunter to shoot ducks for the Colonel's

dinner. And while the Governor and Clark were in discussion, the

hunter met a spy.

"Who commands at Cahokia?" inquired the stranger.

"Colonel Clark; he has arrived with a great force."

"Colonel Clark! Oh, no," answered the spy in amazement, "that cannot

be! Clark is in Kentucky. We have just killed an express with

dispatches to him there."

"I don't know about that," answered the hunter, in his turn surprised.

"Colonel Clark is at this moment in St. Louis, and I have been sent to

kill some ducks for his dinner."

The stranger disappeared.

Clark was in St. Louis about two hours. "Cartabona is here. I shall be

ready to answer his slightest signal. Be sure I shall answer." He

turned to go.

"Going? No, no, Señor Colonel, I cannot permit--" The hands of

Governor De Leyba shook still more. "I expect you to dine,--haf sent a

hunter for ducks."

But when did George Rogers Clark ever stop to eat when there was

fighting on hand? Hastily recrossing the river, he put Cahokia into

immediate defence.

The next day dawned clear and bright, but the people, wearied with

all-night dancing, slumbered late. Grandfather Jean Marie Cardinal had

not danced. He was uncommonly industrious that morning. Hastening away

in the dewy dawn, he went to planting corn in his slightly plowed

fields. Gradually others strolled out on the Grand Prairie. It was

high noon when an Indian down by the spring caught the eye of

Grandfather Jean Marie Cardinal.

"He must not give the alarm," thought the savage, so on the instant he

slew and scalped him where he stood.

Then all was tumult. The people in the village heard the sound of

firearms. Lieutenant Cartabona and his garrison fired a gunshot from

the tower to warn the scattered villagers in the fields. Erelong they

came stumbling into the north gate half dead with fright and

exhaustion.

"The Chippewas! The Chippewas!"

They had crossed the river and murdered the family of François

Bellhome.

"_Sacre Dieu! le Sauvage! la Tour! la Tour!_" cried the frantic

habitants, but the tower was occupied by Cartabona and his coward

soldiers.

Every man rushed to the Place des Armes, powder-horn and bullet-pouch

in hand.

"To arms! To arms!" was the terrified cry.

"Where is the garrison? Where is the Governor?"

But they came not forth. Cartabona and his men continued to garrison

the tower. The Governor cowered in the Government House with doors

shut and barricaded. Women and children hid in the houses, telling

their beads.

It was about noon when the quick ear of Clark, over in Cahokia, heard

the cannonading and small arms in St. Louis. He sent an express.

"Here, Murray and Jaynes, go over the river and inquire the cause."

Slipping through the cottonwood trees, the express met an old negro

woman on a keen run for Cahokia. She screamed, "Run, Boston, run! A

great many salvages!"

All together ran back, just in time to meet Colonel Clark marching out

of the east gate. In the thick woods of Cahokia Creek he caught a view

of the foe. "Boom!" rang his brass six-pounder,--tree-tops and Indians

fell together.

Amazed at this rear fire the Indians turned in confusion. One

terrified look,--"It is the Long Knife! We have been deceived. We will

not fight the Long Knife!" With one wild whoop they scurried to their

boats. The handful of traders, deserted, raised the siege and retired.

It was the period of the spring rise of the powerful and turbulent

Mississippi, which, undermining its shores, dumped cottonwood trees

into the river.

"The whole British army is coming on rafts!" In terror seeing the

supposed foe advancing, Cartabona's soldiers began firing at the

white-glancing trees on the midnight waters. On, on came the ghostly

flotilla.

"Cease firing!" demanded De Leyba emerging from his retreat.

"De cowardly, skulking old Goffner! hide heself! abandon de people!"

In wrath they tore toward him, sticks and stones flying. The Governor

fled, and the daft Spaniards, watching the river, spiked the cannon,

preparing to fly the moment the British landed.

Cahokia trembled all night long. There were noises and howls of

wolves, but no Indians. Clark himself in the darkness made the rounds

of his sentinels. Even through the shadows they guessed who walked at

night.

"Pass, grand round, keep clear of my arms and all's well," was the

successive cry from post to post in the picket gardens of old Cahokia.

With the first pale streak of dawn the sleepless habitants looked out.

All was still. The Indians were gone, but over at St. Louis seven men

were found dead, scalped by the retreating foe. Many more were being

carried off prisoners, but Clark's pursuing party rescued thirty.

The prisoners, dragged away to the north by their captors, suffered

hardships until restored at the end of the war, in 1783.

When Clark heard of the incompetence of De Leyba he was furious. On

his way to the Government House, he saw the lovely Donna at her

casement. Her hair was dishevelled, her eyes wet with tears. She

extended her hand. Clark took one step toward her, and then pride

triumphed.

"Never will I become the father of a race of cowards," and turning on

his heel he left St. Louis forever.

In one month De Leyba was dead, some said by his own hand. He knew

that Auguste Chouteau had gone to complain of him at New Orleans,--the

people believed he had been bribed by Great Britain; he knew that only

disgrace awaited him, and he succumbed to his many disasters and the

universal obloquy in which he was held. He was buried in the little

log chapel, beneath the altar, by the side of his wife, where his tomb

is pointed out to this day.

And the beautiful Donna De Leyba? She waited and wept but Clark came

not. Then, taking with her the two little orphan nieces, Rita and

Perdita, she went down to New Orleans. Here for a time she lingered

among friends, and at last, giving up all hope, retired to the

Ursuline convent and became a nun.

Presently Auguste Chouteau returned from New Orleans with the new

Governor, Don Francisco de Cruzat, who pacified fears and fortified

the town with half-a-dozen circular stone turrets, twenty feet high,

connected by a stout stockade of cedar posts pierced with loopholes

for artillery. On the river bank a stone tower called the Half Moon,

and west of it a square log tower called the Bastion, still stood

within the memory of living men.

"Next year a thousand Sioux will be in the field under Wabasha," wrote

Sinclair to Haldimand, his chief in Canada.

But the Sioux had no more desire to go back to "the high walled house

of thunder," where the cannon sounded not "Hail to great Wabashaw!"

Their own losses were considerable, for Clark ordered an immediate

pursuit. Some of the Spaniards, grateful for the succour of the

Americans, crossed the river and joined Montgomery's troops in his

chase after the retreating red men.

"The Americans are coming," was the scare-word at Prairie du Chien.

"Better get up your furs."

With Wabasha's help the traders hastily bundled three hundred packs of

their best furs into canoes, and setting fire to the remaining sixty

packs, burned them, together with the fort, while they hurried away to

Michilimackinac. Matchekewis went by the Lakes. "Two hundred Illinois

cavalry arrived at Chicago five days after the vessels left," is the

record of the Haldimand papers.

The watchfulness and energy of Clark alone saved Illinois;

nevertheless, De Peyster felt satisfied, for he thought that diversion

kept Clark from Detroit.

After the terror was all over, long in the annals of the fireside, the

French of St. Louis related the feats of "_l'année du coup_."

"Auguste Chouteau, he led te defence, he and he brother."

"No, Madame Rigauche, te school-meestress, she herself touch te

cannon."

"Well, at any rate, we hid in te Chouteau garden, behind te stone

wall."

XVI

_OLD CHILLICOTHE_

With a wrench at his hot heart stifled only by wrath and

determination, Clark strode from St. Louis. At Cahokia French

deserters were talking to Montgomery.

"A tousand British and Indians on te march to Kentucky with cannon."

"When did they start?" thundered Clark. The Frenchman dodged as if

shot.

"Dey start same time dis. Colonel Bird to keep Clark busy in Kentucky

so Sinclair get San Loui' an' brak up te fur trade."

For once in his life Clark showed alarm. "I know the situation of that

country. I shall attempt to get there before Bird does."

Drawing Montgomery aside, he said, "And you, Colonel, chase these

retreating Indians. Chase them to Michilimackinac if possible. Destroy

their towns and crops, distress them, convince them that we will

retaliate and thus deter them from joining the British again."

Without pausing to breathe after the fatigue of the last few days,

with a small escort Clark launched a boat and went flying down to

Chickasaw Bluffs. Disguised as Indians, feathered and painted, he and

a few others left Fort Jefferson.