In 1776, when independence was declared, the United States included
only the thirteen original States on the seaboard. With the exception
of a few hunters there were no white men west of the Alleghany
Mountains, and there was not even an American hunter in the great
country out of which we have since made the States of Illinois,
Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin. All this region north of the
Ohio River then formed a part of the Province of Quebec. It was a
wilderness of forests and prairies, teeming with game, and inhabited by
many warlike tribes of Indians.
Here and there through it were dotted quaint little towns of French
Creoles, the most important being Detroit, Vincennes on the Wabash,
and Kaskaskia and Kahokia on the Illinois. These French villages were
ruled by British officers commanding small bodies of regular soldiers
or Tory rangers and Creole partizans. The towns were completely in the
power of the British government; none of the American States had actual
possession of a foot of property in the Northwestern Territory.
The Northwest was acquired in the midst of the Revolution only by armed
conquest, and if it had not been so acquired, it would have remained a
part of the British Dominion of Canada.
[Illustration: George Rogers Clark.]
The man to whom this conquest was due was a famous backwoods leader,
a mighty hunter, a noted Indian-fighter, George Rogers Clark. He was
a very strong man, with light hair and blue eyes. He was of good
Virginian family. Early in his youth, he embarked on the adventurous
career of a backwoods surveyor, exactly as Washington and so many
other young Virginians of spirit did at that period. He traveled out
to Kentucky soon after it was founded by Boone, and lived there for
a year, either at the stations or camping by himself in the woods,
surveying, hunting, and making war against the Indians like any other
settler; but all the time his mind was bent on vaster schemes than
were dreamed of by the men around him. He had his spies out in the
Northwestern Territory, and became convinced that with a small force
of resolute backwoodsmen he could conquer it for the United States.
When he went back to Virginia, Governor Patrick Henry entered heartily
into Clark's schemes and gave him authority to fit out a force for his
purpose.
In 1778, after encountering endless difficulties and delays, he finally
raised a hundred and fifty backwoods riflemen. In May they started down
the Ohio in flatboats to undertake the allotted task. They drifted and
rowed down-stream to the Falls of the Ohio, where Clark founded a
log-hamlet, which has since become the great city of Louisville.
Here he halted for some days and was joined by fifty or sixty
volunteers; but a number of the men deserted, and when, after an
eclipse of the sun, Clark again pushed off to go down with the current,
his force was but about one hundred and sixty riflemen. All, however,
were men on whom he could depend--men well used to frontier warfare.
They were tall, stalwart backwoodsmen, clad in the hunting-shirt and
leggings that formed the national dress of their kind, and armed with
the distinctive weapon of the backwoods, the long-barreled, small-bore
rifle.
Before reaching the Mississippi the little flotilla landed, and Clark
led his men northward against the Illinois towns. In one of them,
Kaskaskia, dwelt the British commander of the entire district up to
Detroit. The small garrison and the Creole militia taken together
outnumbered Clark's force, and they were in close alliance with the
Indians roundabout. Clark was anxious to take the town by surprise and
avoid bloodshed, as he believed he could win over the Creoles to the
American side. Marching cautiously by night and generally hiding by
day, he came to the outskirts of the little village on the evening of
July 4th, and lay in the woods near by until after nightfall.
Fortune favored him. That evening the officers of the garrison had
given a great ball to the mirth-loving Creoles, and almost the entire
population of the village had gathered in the fort, where the dance
was held. While the revelry was at its height, Clark and his tall
backwoodsmen, treading silently through the darkness, came into the
town, surprised the sentries, and surrounded the fort without causing
any alarm.
All the British and French capable of bearing arms were gathered in the
fort to take part in or look on at the merry-making. When his men were
posted Clark walked boldly forward through the open door, and, leaning
against the wall, looked at the dancers as they whirled around in the
light of the flaring torches. For some moments no one noticed him.
Then an Indian who had been lying with his chin on his hand, looking
carefully over the gaunt figure of the stranger, sprang to his feet,
and uttered the wild war-whoop. Immediately the dancing ceased and the
men ran to and fro in confusion; but Clark, stepping forward, bade them
be at their ease, but to remember that henceforth they danced under the
flag of the United States, and not under that of Great Britain.
The surprise was complete, and no resistance was attempted. For
twenty-four hours the Creoles were in abject terror. Then Clark
summoned their chief men together and explained that he came as their
ally, and not as their foe, and that if they would join with him
they should be citizens of the American republic, and treated in all
respects on an equality with their comrades. The Creoles, caring little
for the British, and rather fickle of nature, accepted the proposition
with joy, and with the most enthusiastic loyalty toward Clark. Not
only that, but sending messengers to their kinsmen on the Wabash, they
persuaded the people of Vincennes likewise to cast off their allegiance
to the British king, and to hoist the American flag.
So far, Clark had conquered with greater ease than he had dared to
hope. But when the news reached the British governor, Hamilton, at
Detroit, he at once prepared to reconquer the land. He had much greater
forces at his command than Clark had; and in the fall of that year
he came down to Vincennes by stream and portage, in a great fleet of
canoes bearing five hundred fighting men--British regulars, French
partizans, and Indians. The Vincennes Creoles refused to fight against
the British, and the American officer who had been sent thither by
Clark had no alternative but to surrender.
[Illustration: "All the day long the troops waded in icy water."]
If Hamilton had then pushed on and struck Clark in Illinois, having
more than treble Clark's force, he could hardly have failed to win the
victory; but the season was late and the journey so difficult that he
did not believe it could be taken. Accordingly he disbanded the Indians
and sent some of his troops back to Detroit, announcing that when
spring came he would march against Clark in Illinois.
If Clark in turn had awaited the blow he would have surely met defeat;
but he was a greater man than his antagonist, and he did what the other
deemed impossible.
Finding that Hamilton had sent home some of his troops and dispersed
all his Indians, Clark realized that his chance was to strike before
Hamilton's soldiers assembled again in the spring. Accordingly he
gathered together the pick of his men, together with a few Creoles,
one hundred and seventy all told, and set out for Vincennes. At first
the journey was easy enough, for they passed across the snowy Illinois
prairies, broken by great reaches of lofty woods. They killed elk,
buffalo and deer for food, there being no difficulty in getting all
they wanted to eat; and at night they built huge fires by which to
sleep, and feasted "like Indian war-dancers," as Clark said in his
report.
But when, in the middle of February, they reached the drowned lands
of the Wabash, where the ice had just broken up and everything was
flooded, the difficulties seemed almost insuperable, and the march
became painful and laborious to a degree. All day long the troops waded
in the icy water, and at night they could with difficulty find some
little hillock on which to sleep. Only Clark's indomitable courage and
cheerfulness kept the party in heart and enabled them to persevere.
However, persevere they did, and at last, on February 23, they came
in sight of the town of Vincennes. They captured a Creole who was out
shooting ducks, and from him learned that their approach was utterly
unsuspected, and that there were many Indians in town.
Clark was now in some doubt as to how to make his fight. The British
regulars dwelt in a small fort at one end of the town, where they
had two light guns; but Clark feared lest, if he made a sudden night
attack, the townspeople and Indians would from sheer fright turn
against him. He accordingly arranged, just before he himself marched
in, to send in the captured duck-hunter, conveying a warning to the
Indians and the Creoles that he was about to attack the town, but
that his only quarrel was with the British, and that if the other
inhabitants would stay in their own homes they would not be molested.
Sending the duck-hunter ahead, Clark took up his march and entered the
town just after nightfall. The news conveyed by the released hunter
astounded the townspeople, and they talked it over eagerly, and were in
doubt what to do. The Indians, not knowing how great might be the force
that would assail the town, at once took refuge in the neighboring
woods, while the Creoles retired to their own houses. The British knew
nothing of what had happened until the Americans had actually entered
the streets of the little village. Rushing forward, Clark's men soon
penned the regulars within their fort, where they kept them surrounded
all night. The next day a party of Indian warriors, who in the British
interest had been ravaging the settlements of Kentucky, arrived and
entered the town, ignorant that the Americans had captured it. Marching
boldly forward to the fort, they suddenly found it beleaguered, and
before they could flee they were seized by the backwoodsmen. In their
belts they carried the scalps of the slain settlers. The savages were
taken red-handed, and the American frontiersmen were in no mood to show
mercy. All the Indians were tomahawked in sight of the fort.
For some time the British defended themselves well; but at length
their guns were disabled, all of the gunners being picked off by the
backwoods marksmen, and finally the garrison dared not so much as
appear at a port-hole, so deadly was the fire from the long rifles.
Under such circumstances Hamilton was forced to surrender.
No attempt was afterward made to molest the Americans in the land they
had won, and upon the conclusion of peace the Northwest, which had been
conquered by Clark, became part of the United States.