HISTORIC HIGHWAYS OF AMERICA
VOLUME 8
[Illustration: THE OLD VINCENNES TRACE NEAR XENIA, ILLINOIS]
HISTORIC HIGHWAYS OF AMERICA
VOLUME 8
Military Roads of the
Mississippi Basin
The Conquest of the Old Northwest
BY
ARCHER BUTLER HULBERT
_With Maps and Illustrations_
[Illustration]
THE ARTHUR H. CLARK COMPANY
CLEVELAND, OHIO
1904
COPYRIGHT, 1904
BY
THE ARTHUR H. CLARK COMPANY
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
CONTENTS
PAGE
PREFACE 11
I. THE CLARK ROUTES THROUGH ILLINOIS 15
II. MIAMI VALLEY CAMPAIGNS 72
III. ST. CLAIR'S CAMPAIGN 108
IV. WAYNE AND FALLEN TIMBER 160
APPENDIXES 219
ILLUSTRATIONS
I. THE OLD VINCENNES TRACE NEAR XENIA, ILLINOIS _Frontispiece_
II. SKETCH MAP OF PART OF ILLINOIS, SHOWING CLARK'S
ROUTES 21
III. HUTCHINS'S SKETCH OF THE WABASH IN 1768 (showing
trace of the path to Kaskaskia; from the original
in the British Museum) 35
IV. THE ST. LOUIS TRACE NEAR LAWRENCEVILLE, ILLINOIS 62
V. A PART OF ARROWSMITH'S MAP OF THE UNITED STATES,
1796 (showing the region in which Wilkinson, Scott,
Harmar, St. Clair, and Wayne operated) 117
VI. DR. BELKNAP'S MAP OF WAYNE'S ROUTE IN THE MAUMEE
VALLEY, 1794 (from the original in the Library of
Harvard University) 197
PREFACE
This volume treats of five of the early campaigns in the portion of
America known as the Mississippi Basin--Clark's campaigns against
Kaskaskia and Vincennes in 1778 and 1779; and Harmar's, St. Clair's, and
Wayne's campaigns against the northwestern Indians in 1790, 1791, and
1793-94.
Much as has been written concerning Clark's famous march through the
"drowned lands of the Wabash," the important question of his route has
been untouched, and the story from that standpoint untold. The history
of the campaign is here made subservient to a study of the route and to
an attempted identification of the various places, and a determination
of their present-day names. Four volumes of the Draper Manuscripts in
the library of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin give a vast
deal of information on this subject. They are referred to by the library
press-mark.
Turning to the study of Harmar's, St. Clair's, and Wayne's routes into
the Northwest, the author found a singular lack of detailed description
of these campaigns, and determined to combine with the study of the
military roadway a comparatively complete sketch of each campaign,
making use, in this case as in that of Clark's campaigns, of the Draper
Manuscripts.
A great debt of thanks is due to Mr. Reuben Gold Thwaites, Secretary of
the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, for assistance and advice; to
Josiah Morrow of Lebanon, Ohio, the author is indebted for help in
determining portions of Harmar's route; and to Francis E. Wilson,
President of the Greenville Historical Society, many thanks are due for
help in questions concerning the pathway of the intrepid leader known to
the East as "Mad Anthony" Wayne, but remembered in the West as the
"Blacksnake" and the "Whirlwind," because he doubled his track like a
blacksnake and swept over his roads like a whirlwind.
A. B. H.
MARIETTA, OHIO, September 14, 1903.
Military Roads of the Mississippi Basin
The Conquest of the Old Northwest
CHAPTER I
THE CLARK ROUTES THROUGH ILLINOIS
On the twenty-fourth of June, 1778, George Rogers Clark, with about one
hundred and seventy-five patriot adventurers, left the little pioneer
settlement on Corn Island, in the Ohio River, opposite the present site
of Louisville, Kentucky, for the conquest of the British posts of
Kaskaskia and Vincennes in the "Illinois country."[1]
The boats running day and night, the party reached Clark's first
stopping-place, an island in the Ohio near the mouth of the Tennessee
River, in four days. Just below this island was the site of old Fort
Massac--now occupied by Metropolis, Massac County, Illinois--built
probably by a vanguard from Fort Duquesne, a generation before, when
the French clearly foresaw the end of their reign on the upper Ohio.
Here, almost a century before that, was the old trading-station of
Juchereau and the mission of Mermet--the subsequent "soul of the mission
of Kaskaskia," as Bancroft describes him. The situation was strategic on
two accounts: it was a site well out of the reach of the Ohio floods,
and it was near the mouths of both the Tennessee and Cumberland
Rivers--valleys known of old to the Shawanese and Cherokees. As a coign
of vantage for traders and missionaries, it had been of commanding
importance. It was, likewise, near the Ohio terminus of several old
buffalo routes across Illinois, roads which became connecting links
between Kaskaskia, on the river bearing that name near the Mississippi,
and the mission at Fort Massac. The old paths of the buffalo, long known
as hunting traces, offered the traveler from the Ohio to the old-time
metropolis of Illinois a short-cut by land, saving thrice the distance
by water, and obviated stemming the swift tides of the Mississippi. One
of the principal backbones of Illinois was threaded by these primeval
routes, and high ground between the vast cypress swamps and mist-crowned
drowned lands of Illinois was a boon to any traveler, especially that
first traveler, the bison. This high ground ran between Kaskaskia and
Shawneetown, on the Ohio River, the course becoming later a famous state
highway. Its earliest name was the "Kaskaskia Trace."
Clark's spies, sent out to Illinois a year before, undoubtedly advised
him to land at Fort Massac and, gaining from there this famous highway,
to pursue it to Kaskaskia. His plan of surprising the British post
necessitated his pursuing unexpected courses. It was well known that the
British watched the Mississippi well; therefore he chose the land route.
Here, at the mouth of the Tennessee, his men brought in a canoe full of
white traders who had recently been in Kaskaskia; certain of these were
engaged to guide Clark thither. The party dropped down to Massac Creek,
which enters the Ohio just above the site of the old fort, and in that
inlet secreted their flat-boats ready to begin their intrepid march of
one hundred and twenty miles across country.[2]
As this little company of eight or nine score adventurers drew around
their fires on Massac Creek, they little dreamed, we may be sure, of the
fame they were to gain from this plucky excursion into the prairies of
Illinois. It was impossible for them to lift their eyes above the
commonplaces of the journey and the possibilities of the coming
encounter, and see in true perspective what the capture of Illinois
meant to poor Kentucky. It is not less difficult for us to turn our eyes
from these general results, which were so brilliant, and get a clear
insight into the commonplaces of this memorable little campaign--to hear
the talk of the tired men about the fires as they cleaned the heavy
clods of mud from shoes and moccasins, examined their guns, viewed the
night, and then talked softly of the possibilities of the morrow, and
dreamed, in the ruddy firelight, of those at home. Of all companies of
famous campaigners on the Indian trails of America, this company was the
smallest and the most picturesque. Clark had but little over half the
force which Washington commanded at Fort Necessity in 1754.
Little Massac Creek is eleven miles in length but drains seventy square
miles of territory. This fact is a significant description of the nature
of the northern and central portions of Massac County. From the Cache
River a string of lakes extends in a southeast and then northeast
direction to Big Bay River, varying in width from one to four miles;
around the lakes lies a much greater area of cypress swamps and
treacherous "sloughs" altogether impassable. The water of these lakes
drains sometimes into the Cache and at other times into the Big
Bay--depending upon the stage of water in the Ohio.[3]
There were three routes from Fort Massac toward Kaskaskia; one, which
may well be called the Moccasin Gap route, circled to the eastward to
get around the lakes and swamps of Massac County; it passed eastward
into Pope County, where it struck the Kaskaskia-Shawneetown highway.
This route ran two and one-half miles west of Golconda, Pope County, and
on to Sulphur or Round Spring. From thence through Moccasin Gap, section
3, township 12, range 4E, Johnson County; thence it ran directly for the
prairie country to the northward. As noted, this route merged into the
famous old Kaskaskia and Shawneetown route across Illinois--what was
known as the Kaskaskia Trace--in Pope County. It was this course which
in earliest times had been blazed by the French as the safest common
highway between Kaskaskia and the trading and mission station (and later
fort) at Massac. The trees along the course were marked with the proper
number of miles by means of a hot iron, the figures then being painted
red. "Such I saw them," records Governor Reynolds, "in 1800. This road
made a great curve to the north to avoid the swamps and rough country on
the sources of the Cash [Cache] river, and also to obtain the prairie
country as soon as possible. This road ... was called the old Massac
road by the Americans."
[Illustration: SKETCH MAP OF PART OF ILLINOIS
Showing Routes of George Rogers Clark]
The second route circled the Massac County lakes to the westward,
cutting in between them and the canyons of the Cache River, near what is
familiarly known as Indian Point (section 33, township 13, range 3E,
Massac County), or one mile south of the northwest corner of Massac
County; thence, running north of northwest, it crossed the Little Cache
(Dutchman's Creek) one and one-half miles north of Forman. Thence the
route is up the east side of the Cache and through Buffalo Gap, section
25, township 11, range 2E, Johnson County, to the prairie land beyond.
The third route follows the second through Massac County.
It is important to note here that the Illinois of Clark's day--as is
partly true now--was composed of three kinds of land: swampy or
"drowned" lands, prairie land, and timber land. Being practically a
level country, the forests became as prominent landmarks as mountains
and hills are in rugged districts. Routes of travel clung to the
prairies; and camping-places, if water could be had in the neighborhood,
were always chosen on the edge of a forest where wood could be obtained.
Between wood and water, of course the latter was the greater necessity.
The prairie district in Illinois does not extend below Williamson
County, and famous Phelps Prairie in that county is the most southern in
the state.[4] Both routes from Fort Massac made straight, therefore, for
Phelps Prairie, in which the town of Bainbridge, Williamson County, now
stands. Here the two routes joined again; or, rather, the Buffalo Gap
route met, in Phelps Prairie, the Kaskaskia Trace, as the "Old Massac
Road" had met it in Pope County. The former point of intersection was on
the "Brooks place," section 9, township 9, range 2E, Williamson
County.[5] The Buffalo Gap route was known as the "middle trail;" the
third route northwest from Fort Massac pursued this path to a point on
the Cache above Indian Point; thence it swung westward, keeping far
south of the prairie land, passed near Carbondale, Williamson County,
and crossed the Big Muddy River at Murphysboro.[6] It was known as the
"western trail." Not touching the prairie land, it is plain that the
route could be used only in the driest of midsummer weather.
The evidence that Clark's guides took the middle trail is overwhelming;
the western trail was too wet and did not touch any prairie--this
utterly excludes that route from the list of possibilities. According to
Clark's _Memoir_, on the third day out the party reached a prairie where
the chief guide became confused; Clark's command to him was to discover
and take them into the hunter's road that led from the east into
Kaskaskia. There can be no doubt that this "hunter's road" which came
from the east was the Kaskaskia-Shawneetown trace, which the Old Massac
Road joined in Pope County, or that the middle trail was the one which
the party had been following; the junction of the middle trail on the
Brooks Place, above mentioned, is in Phelps Prairie and about a three
days' march from Fort Massac. The junction of the trail passing from
Fort Massac eastward of the Massac County lakes with the Kaskaskia and
Shawneetown trace is not more than a day's march from Fort Massac and is
not in a prairie. There can be no doubt, therefore, that Clark's brave
band stole northward on the middle trace, the Buffalo Gap route. Clark
would not have commanded his guide, under pain of death, to find the
Kaskaskia Trace if the party had been traversing that trace and had
merely missed the way. Every implication is that the Kaskaskia Trace was
the goal sought and not yet found.
The first day's march of about eighteen miles was a hard one, passing
over the winding trail which skirted the southern side of the marshes
that flanked the sloughs and lakes of Massac County, but finally leading
to the bluffs, near the Cache River, where, probably on Indian Point,
the first night's camp was pitched.[7]
The first taste of the swamps of Illinois was not discouraging, and on
the day after, June 29, the march was resumed. The route today was on
the top of the watershed between the Cache River on the left (west) and
Dutchman's Creek on the right. Buffalo Gap was passed today, a mile
south of the present Goreville, Johnson County. Camp was pitched this
night, after a twenty-mile march, probably at the spring two miles north
of the present Pulley's Mill. The route all day was along the buffalo
trail or hunter's road from which Buffalo Gap received its name.[8] This
gap, like Moccasin Gap to the eastward, was a famous portal to the
prairie country for the bison, Indian, and white man. Two old-time state
roads were built through these two gaps.[9]
Pushing forward from the spring near Pulley's Mill on the morning of
June 30, the Virginians ere long came into the prairie lands lying in
Williamson County. Phelps Prairie was reached first, the path entering
the southern portion of the prairie. Here it was that "John Saunders,
our principal guide, appeared confused, and we soon discovered that he
was totally lost." These Illinois prairies are almost treeless, save
near the water courses; the grass in the old days grew rank and high
and one could tell his course only, perhaps, by the stars, if the
pathways were obscured. The paths in these prairies are overgrown in the
summer time,[10] and it is probable that this is why Clark's guide,
attempting to find the Kaskaskia Trace, lost his bearings. The important
landmarks in these prairies were the forests which often bounded them
and in many instances extended into them. These extremities of the
forests were and are still known as "points," and many of them are yet
landmarks in Illinois history. A spring beside a point in a prairie made
an ideal camping-spot known to half a continent in the olden time.
Clark's campground in Phelps Prairie was, without doubt, at a spring
just west of Bainbridge.
Northward from Phelps Prairie two routes ran to Kaskaskia: a wet and a
dry route. The one which we may call the highland route led north
through Herrin's Prairie and swung around to the Mississippi by heading
such streams as Pipestone, Rattlesnake, and Galium, crossing the Big
Muddy River at Humphry's Ford, section 30, township 8, range 2E.[11]
This was the dry route, the preferable one the year round. Another
shorter course ran northwest and crossed many of the streams which the
highland route headed. There can be little doubt that Clark's guides
chose this latter course. By Clark's _Memoir_ we know it to have been a
dry season, and the shortest, and probably the least traveled, course
would best suit his plan of surprising Kaskaskia. The shortness of the
time (four days) in which the distance to Kaskaskia was covered from
Phelps Prairie almost precludes the possibility of his having used the
longer watershed route.
On the first day of July, then, the little army moved from near the
present Bainbridge along a well-known trail which crossed Crab Orchard
Creek at Greathouse Crossing[12] (section 2, township 9, range 1W)[13]
and the Big Muddy at Marshall's Shoals, section 6, township 9, range
1W, southwest of De Soto, Jackson County.[14] It is possible that camp,
on the night of July 1, was pitched at Greathouse Crossing; if so the
day's march was not a long one. From the Big Muddy the trail struck to
the watershed between the Beaucoup and its tributaries on the north and
the tributaries of the Big Muddy on the south, running near the present
Lenan in Jackson County. The course now was a watershed route from the
Big Muddy to the St. Mary River, and is marked today by the significant
names of such high altitude towns as Shiloh Hill, Teacup Knob, and Wine
Hill. Through these places an ancient highway has coursed from times to
which the memory of white men runneth not to the contrary. Water was
scarce on the highest grounds, but springs, here and there, were well
known, and at one of these, probably near Lenan (section 15, township 8,
range 3), the adventurers paused, on the night of September 2, and built
their evening fires.[15]
The end was now almost in sight; two days more and the immediate basin
of the Mississippi River would be reached, and the success or failure of
the daring raid be decided. It can be easily imagined that it was a
silent and eager body of men which, on September 3, strode forward over
the rolling hills of Randolph County on the old trail. Their excitement
must have been intense. The old trail from Lenan entered Randolph County
near the center of section 12, township 7, south of range 5W and passed
over Teacup Knob in section 5 and near the present Wine Hill P. O.
Pushing on over the hills, the St. Mary River was reached at the site of
what became the "Old State Ford," near Welge Station (formerly Bremen
Station) on the Wabash, Chester and Western Railroad--section 1,
township 7S., range 6W.[16] Here the last camp of the march was
pitched on the night of July 3--the "glorious Fourth" was to see the
little invading army lying quietly on the outskirts of quaint old
Kaskaskia.
From the state ford on the St. Mary, the course was the highland route
running near Diamond Cross.[17] Here, on the watershed between the
tributaries of the St. Mary and the Kaskaskia, lay the worn Vincennes
Trace running northeast from Kaskaskia to the Wabash. It is probable
that Clark entered this highway before the Kaskaskia River was
reached.[18] And at the end of the journey awaited victory; Governor
Rochblave was completely surprised, and Kaskaskia was captured by the
perilous feat of actually marching up to it and taking possession of it
with the assumed arrogance of a powerful conqueror.
From the moment Kaskaskia was in Clark's hands he turned his attention
to Vincennes, and in July, through the coöperation of the French priest
Gibault, the inhabitants were induced to proclaim themselves American
subjects and to hoist an American flag. Captain Helm of Clark's little
army was posted at Vincennes with a guard, and Helm it was who was
captured in the fall by the British Lieutenant-governor Hamilton of
Detroit. The latter had pushed his difficult way up the Maumee and down
the Wabash to seize the revolted town.[19] Throughout the winter Clark
feared a swift advance from Vincennes; and, to save himself from being
captured by Hamilton, Clark desperately resolved to capture him. By
February 5 a new "grand army," of four companies, possibly one hundred
and sixty strong, well-armed, but without tents and horse, save a few
packhorses, departed from Kaskaskia on the desperate journey across the
swimming prairies and flooded rivers of Illinois for Vincennes.[20] Had
one man dropped from the ranks each mile, not one of the one hundred and
sixty would have reached the Wabash. Few expeditions in American history
have been recounted more than this; it is strange that the route of this
immortal little army has never been carefully considered--for the story
of the route is almost the whole story of the campaign.
[Illustration: HUTCHINS'S SKETCH OF THE WABASH IN 1768, SHOWING TRACE OF
THE PATH TO KASKASKIA [_From the original in the British Museum_]]
Crossing the Kaskaskia River February 5, 1779, Clark's army lay three
miles from Kaskaskia, for two days, "to tighten belts."[21] It is
impossible to determine how much was known of their path onward. To many
it had been well known for nearly a century--an old watershed prairie
route marked out by the buffalo and followed by missionaries--the Appian
Way of Illinois. The difficulty in studying this route, it should be
stated at once, arises from the fact that while Kaskaskia was formerly
the metropolis of western Illinois, the rise of St. Louis across the
Mississippi had the effect of altering previously traveled routes. What
has been ever known as the St. Louis Trace, coursing across Illinois
from Vincennes to the Mississippi, became in the nineteenth century what
the old Kaskaskia Trace had been in the eighteenth century, just as what
had been the "Old Massac Road" became known as the St. Louis-Shawneetown
Road. As a result, the later Kaskaskia travelers followed the St.
Louis Trace--much-traveled, broad, and hard--as far westward as Marion
County, and then turned due southwest to Kaskaskia. Therefore it is
necessary not to confound the ancient Kaskaskia trace to Vincennes with
the later Kaskaskia trace which was identical for some distance with the
more northerly St. Louis Trace.[22] At the same time it is easy to err
in separating the older and newer routes too widely in the attempt not
to confound them. The newer St. Louis Trace runs across from Indiana
(Vincennes) to Missouri (St. Louis) through the Illinois counties of
Lawrence, Richland, Clay, Marion, Clinton, and St. Clair. The course is
practically that of the old Mississippi and Ohio (now the Baltimore and
Ohio Southwestern) Railway. The route passed over the best course
between the points, as proved by the railway surveyors and engineers.
But many rivers blocked the way; the first of these from Vincennes was
the Embarras--so called, as in the case of many streams, because the
great floods left deposits of driftwood which seriously impeded
navigation. West of the Embarras came the petulant Little Wabash and the
Big Muddy, draining thousands of square miles of swamp and prairie, and,
in rainy seasons, uniting and spreading out five miles in width. West of
the tributaries of the Little Wabash come those of the Kaskaskia. A few
smaller Wabash and Mississippi tributaries, such as the Bonpas and St.
Mary are headed by this trans-Illinois route, but it was not, in one
sense, a watershed route, crossing the Embarras, Little Wabash, Fox,
Beaucoup, and Kaskaskia and their tributaries.
These streams flow southward. Kaskaskia lay some fifty miles south of
St. Louis and the later St. Louis Trace. The route of the more ancient
Kaskaskia Trace to Vincennes, therefore, ran some seventy-five miles in
a northeast direction; then, turning due east, it ran about one hundred
miles to the Wabash. For the first seventy-five miles it was a
watershed route, coursing along the highland prairies between Three
Mile, Plum, Crooked, Grand Point, and Raccoon Creeks--all tributaries of
the Kaskaskia River--on the west and north, and the heads of the St.
Mary, Beaucoup, and Big Muddy Rivers on the east and south. This
backbone line of prairie land runs straight northeast through Randolph
and Washington Counties, cutting into corners of Perry, Jefferson, and
Marion Counties. But here in Marion County the backbone, which had been
accommodatingly trending eastward, turned quickly to the north to avoid
the treacherous Little Wabash; at this point the old trace divided into
two courses both of which ran to Vincennes. One course, probably that
known later as the eastern half of the St. Louis Trace, passed through
the center of Clay, Richland, and Lawrence Counties, crossing both the
Little Wabash and Big Muddy a short distance above their junction, the
Embarras near Lawrence, and the Wabash at Vincennes. The other branch of
the Kaskaskia Trace passed through the northern portion of Wayne,
Edwards and Wabash Counties, crossing the Little Wabash and Fox some
two miles above their junction, the Bonpas River, near Bonpas, and the
Wabash, two miles above St. Francisville. From this ford the route led
up the eastern shore of the Wabash about nine miles to Vincennes. By any
route, at any time of year, the journey across Illinois was a hardship
no thinking man would undergo, save only on the most important mission;
in the winter season--with the Wabash a surging sea, the Little Wabash a
running lake, Crooked Creek treacherously straight, water frozen on the
prairies, the "points" of timber swampy morasses--all communication
landward was cut off, with the beavers and blue racers swimming for the
high ground.
In their right mind, Clark's adventurers would probably not have faced
the wilderness into which they strode on the morning of February 7 on
any private affair of life or death. Two magnetic influences drew them
on; these Americans had brought to Illinois the spirit of 1775, a breath
of a boasted freedom that was half license, in which the hot-headed
French exulted. Believing the Americophobite British, the inhabitants
of Kaskaskia had feared the barbarian Virginians more than any savages;
Clark made capital of this in securing Kaskaskia, and later, by the
kindness with which he treated the inhabitants and the freedom he gave
them, accomplished a moral victory as sweeping and as picturesque as his
military achievement. The proposed plan to carry to reconquered
Vincennes the blessings of liberty enjoyed at Kaskaskia under Virginian
rule appealed strongly to the impressionable _habitants_; to Clark's own
patriot soldiers the Vincennes campaign was the very acme of frontier
adventure. Again, the young, daring Clark--quiet, resourceful,
irrepressible--was a potent factor in pushing these men out on a journey
of such unparalleled hardship. True, it is difficult to look beyond the
later George Rogers Clark, of soiled reputation, to the cool, brave
youth of twenty-seven years who led these men through the prairies of
Illinois in 1779. To dim the brilliant lustre of such days as these was
a heavy--if not the heaviest--price to pay for indiscretions of later
years. Yet, as the records of this handful of men are studied, and
especially when the track of their memorable march is picked out and
followed, one can fancy the clear, bright picture of the Clark of 1779
and, happily, believe for the moment that there is no connection between
him and the later Clark whom the Spaniards knew. It is plain that the
French were charmed by the dashing Virginian and his Vincennes chimera.
The record Clark left of the expedition--written ere the grasshopper was
a burden or those were darkened who stood at the windows--clearly
implies that the expedition was launched with a levity that it is sure
all did not feel, though it may have been perfectly assumed; and as the
days passed we shall see that Clark hurried on in order to get his men
too far to turn back. His diplomatic endeavors, throughout those
marvelous fifteen days, to lure his men on, to lift their thoughts from
their sufferings and incite them to their almost superhuman tasks, are
perhaps without parallel in the history of marching armies in America.
Departing from the two days' camping-place, three miles from Kaskaskia,
the course, for almost the entire first day, lay through thick forests,
which have quite disappeared since that time, on the watershed between
the Kaskaskia tributaries on the northwest and those of the St. Mary on
the southeast.[23] Fortunately the journey at the outset was
comparatively easy; the weather was warm for the season, though rainy. A
good march was made on the seventh through the forests and out into
Lively Prairie, half a mile northeast of Salem, Randolph County, where
the course of the old trail is well known. Beyond this, Flat Prairie
opened the way toward the "Great Rib," as the French knew the ridge in
Grand Cote Prairie (_La Prairie de la Grande Côte_) on which the present
village of Coultersville, Randolph County, stands. The first night's
camp was pitched probably in Flat Prairie, between Salem and
Coultersville.[24] The authoritative record for this day's march, as of
all others, is the official Bowman's _Journal_:[25] "Made a good march
for about nine hours; the road very bad, with mud and water. Pitched our
camp in a square, baggage in the middle, every company to guard their
own squares." On the eighth the record continues: "Marched early through
the waters, which we now began to meet in those large and level plains,
where, from the flatness of the country, [water] rests a considerable
time before it drains off; notwithstanding which, our men were in great
spirits, though much fatigued." By the eighth it would seem the little
band had reached the lower plains in the northwest corner of Perry
County, two and a half miles northwest of Swanwick, where the headwaters
of the Big Muddy tributary of the Kaskaskia were crossed, and the
prairie south of Oakdale, Washington County, at which point Elkhorn
Creek was crossed at the famous "Meadow-in-the-Hole" of old French
days. This region was also known as _Corne de Cerf_, Elkhorn Prairie,
Elkhorn Point and Ayres Point.[26] Prairie, forest, and bottom land were
not far apart here. The "Meadow-in-the-Hole" was a singular little
meadow, fifty or sixty yards wide, located on a "dry branch" of the
Elkhorn and thirty feet lower than the surrounding forests--at what is
now Oakdale on the Elkhorn.[27] From the present Oakdale the pathway ran
from Elkhorn Prairie through Nashville Prairie, circling half a mile to
the north and northeast of Nashville, Washington County. Turning to the
east here, it coursed onward to a celebrated "point" of woods called
Grand Point, near the present Grand Point Creek, section 32, township 2,
south range 1W, two miles and a half northwest of Richview, Washington
County.[28] From thence it circled northeast through section 9 in Grand
Prairie Township, the extreme northwest township of Jefferson
County.[29] The second night's camp may have been pitched on Grand
Point Creek, near Richview; and that of the ninth on Raccoon Creek, near
Walnut Point, one mile north of Walnut Hill, Marion County. The old
trail from Grand Prairie, Jefferson County, entered Marion County at
section 32, Centralia Township, on the old Israel Jennings farm. Walnut
Hill was two miles north of due east from the Jennings farm, through
which, it may be added in passing, ran the later famous St.
Louis-Shawneetown road.[30] Bowman's record for the ninth and tenth
reads: "9th. Made another day's march. Fair part of the day. 10th.
Crossed the river of the Petit Fork upon trees that were felled for that
purpose, the water being so high there was no fording it. Still raining
and no tents. Encamped near the river. Stormy weather."
Here we have the first definite mention of a camping-place; the Petit
Fork was the Adams or Horse tributary of Skillet Creek--the first
tributary of the Little Wabash and Big Wabash the army encountered.[31]
The crossing-place was near Farrington, Jefferson County[32]--fifteen
short miles from Walnut Point and known in early days as Yellow
Bark.[33] The feat of felling trees across this rushing stream being
accomplished, the men crawled over and encamped on the eastern bank. A
picture of the army splashing along through the watery prairies would be
greatly prized today, but a picture of it creeping across Petit Fork on
felled tree-trunks would be of extraordinary interest; it is one of the
remarkable incidents of the heroic adventure.
Of these days the accounts of Clark furnish us almost no
information.[34] The incident of the Petit Fork was not sufficiently
notable to receive mention, for Clark wrote Mason: "The first
obstruction of any consequence that I met with was on the 13th [the
Little Wabash];" yet in his _Memoir_--written, it must be remembered, as
late as 1791--he describes the march to the Little Wabash as made
"through incredible difficulties, far surpassing anything that any of us
had ever experienced." The _Letter_ breathes the spirit of the youth,
for it was written in 1779; the _Memoir_ ever reads like an old man's
reminiscences. Clark's diplomacy in securing the loyalty of his men
through great discouragements indicates a high order of the best
qualities of a military commander. "My object now," he writes, "was to
keep the men in spirits." He allowed the men to kill game and hold
typical Indian feasts after the hard day's wet march. Before their
rousing fires, with venison and bear meat savoring the air, little
wonder the night brought partial forgetfulness of the day's fatigue. The
four companies took turns at being hosts; the company on duty each day
being supplied with horses on which to transport the game brought down.
And throughout every day's march Clark, and his equally courageous
officers, made light of all difficulties, and "putting on the woodsman,
shouting now and then and Running as much through the mud and water as
any of them. Thus, Insensibly, without a murmur, was those men led on
to the Banks of the Little Wabash which we reached on the 13th." The
spectacle, here presented, of officers inveigling soldiers forward, is
one of the most singular in the history of the West. We may well believe
Clark refers particularly to the two French companies which composed a
most important arm of his force--the Virginians, perhaps, not needing
equal inspiration to endeavor. The climax in Clark's diplomacy was
reached as he now approached the flood-tides of the raging Little
Wabash.
It is necessary here to emphasize that the army, turning eastward just
north of present Nashville, abandoned the watershed to which their path
had thus far held; the route now was nearly due east, across the
tributaries of the Little Wabash. Of these, Petit Fork (Adams tributary
of the Skillet) was the first to be encountered; it was passed with
great heroism on the tenth of February. On the eleventh the eastward
route was followed and the Saline River (Skillet Creek) was crossed.
Bowman's record reads: "11th. Crossed the Saline river. Nothing
extraordinary this day." The route between the Skillet and Little
Wabash may have been either one of the two courses mentioned, not over
five miles apart, and running parallel to each other. The northern
passed through the southern portion of Clay County, the southern through
the northern portion of Wayne. There were two encampments between the
Petit Fork and the Little Wabash; if the northern route was pursued,
these camps were near Xenia and Clay City in Wayne County; if the
southern route was followed, the camps were near Blue Point and Mount
Erie in Wayne County. Bowman's record for the twelfth is: "12th. Marched
across Cot plains;[35] saw and killed numbers of buffaloes. The road
very bad from the immense quantity of rain that had fallen. The men much
fatigued. Encamped on the edge of the woods. This plain or meadow being
fifteen or more miles across, it was late in the night before the
baggage and troops got together. Now twenty-[forty-] one miles from St.
Vincent. 13th. Arrived early at the two Wabashes. Although a league
asunder, they now made but one. We set to making a canoe." Clark's
records of the arrival at the Little Wabash read (from his _Memoir_):
"This place is called the two Little Wabashes; they are three miles
apart and from the Heights of the one to that of the other on the
opposite shores is five miles the whole under water gen^{ly} about three
feet Deep never under two and frequently four;" (from _Letter to Mason_)
"Arriving at the two Little Wabashes, although three miles asunder--they
now make but one--the flowed water between them being at least three
feet deep and in many places four. Being near five miles to the opposite
hills, the shallowest place, except about one hundred yards, was three
feet." So far as these records go, either the Clay or the Wayne County
route might have been that pursued. The long prairie of which Bowman
speaks would have been, on the Clay County route, "Twelve Mile Prairie"
situated between the present towns on the Baltimore and Ohio
Southwestern Railway, Xenia and Clay City; on the Wayne County route it
would have been "Long Prairie" lying between Blue Point and Mount Erie.
The "two Wabashes" on the Clay County route would have been the Little
Wabash River and the Big Muddy Creek. By the Wayne County route the two
Wabashes would have been the Little Wabash and Fox River.
The indefatigable Lyman C. Draper, after a large correspondence with
many of the best informed men in Illinois on the subject of the
crossing-place of the Little Wabash, came to the firm conclusion that
the two Wabashes were the Little Wabash and the Fox; the present writer
after studying that correspondence and visiting the ground in
question--which Mr. Draper did not find time to do--quite as firmly
believes that the crossing-place was above the junction of the Little
Wabash and Big Muddy Creek at the old McCauley's settlement--in the
southeast corner of section 21 of Clay County, range 8E, two miles east
of old Maysville, which was three-fourths of a mile south of the present
Clay City station on the Baltimore and Ohio Southwestern Railway. By
this upper route Clark would have been on higher ground before and after
crossing the Little Wabash. It is quite sure his party passed a salt
spring (see p. 66) and the only one in this region was on this upper
route. And finally, Bowman states that on the day after crossing the
Little Wabash the party crossed the Fox River. This could not have been
possible if the Little Wabash and Fox were crossed simultaneously. But
even a slight discussion of the question may well be relegated to an
appendix.[36] At either crossing-place, and the two are but a few miles
apart, a most desperate situation confronted the intrepid Clark and his
tired band of invaders.
"... I Viewed this Sheet of water for some time with Distrust," Clark
wrote in his _Memoir_, "but accusing myself of Doubting I amediately Set
to work without holding any consultation about it or suffering anybody
else to do so in my presence ordered a perogue amediately built and
acted as though crossing the water would be only a piece of
diversion.... My aneziety [anxiety] to cross this place continually
increased as I saw that it would at once fling us into a situation of
folorn hope as all Ideas of a Retreat would in some Measure be done away
that if the Men began after this was accomplished to think seriously of
what they had really suffered that they prefer^d Risking any seeming
difficulty that might probably turn out favourable than to attempt to
Retreat when they would be certain of Experiencing what they had already
felt and if the weather should but Freeze altogether impracticable,
except the Ice would bear them." The heroism of Clark's crossing of the
Little Wabash has been retold on a thousand pages but it has rarely been
suggested that he hurried into these dangers eagerly because they would
serve to thwart any hope of retreat. He not only "burned his bridges,"
but hastened impetuously across waters that could never be bridged, in
the hope that they would freeze and cut off all dreams of retreat. This
memoir, let it again be remarked, was written many years after the
event--after Clark saw his great feat somewhat in the light we see it
today. His letter to Mason, however, was written in the same year that
the march was made; if not so self-laudatory, it is as interesting as
the memoir, and perhaps more authentic. He thus described the crossing
in that document: "This [flood] would have been enough to have stopped
any set of men not in the same temper that we were. But in three days we
contrived to cross by building a large canoe, ferried across the two
channels; the rest of the way we waded, building scaffolds at each to
lodge our baggage on until the horses crossed to take them." Bowman's
record is that of the soldier: "14th. Finished the canoe and put her
into the river about 4 o'clock in the afternoon. 15th. Ferried across
the two Wabashes, it being then five miles in water to the opposite
hills, where we encamped. Still raining. Orders not to fire any guns for
the future, but in case of necessity."
When, near Olney, Clark's men crossed the Fox River on the 16th of
February, it is probable that they camped on what is now the St. Louis
Trace Road on one of the northeastern tributaries of the Fox. The day
after, an early start was made in order that the famed Embarras might be
reached before nightfall. It can well be believed that an intense,
hushed excitement prevailed. The success of the invasion must depend on
a swift surprise; it was probable that all would be lost if the approach
was discovered; for, the Wabash being out of banks, the enemy, doubtless
well supplied with boats, would have Clark's band at their mercy. The
provisions were fast giving out; surrender or starvation stared Clark in
the face if discovered. Accordingly, Commissary Kennedy with three
guides was sent forward "to cross the river Embarrass," Clark wrote in
his _Memoir_, "... and, if possible, to get some vessels in the vicinity
of the town [Vincennes], but principally if he could get some
information." "About an hour, by sun, we got near the river Embarras,"
Bowman wrote in his _Journal_; "Found the country all overflowed with
water." The Embarras was reached near Lawrenceville and the river was
descended a few miles--"Traveled till 8 o'clock in mud and water," wrote
Bowman--before a camping-spot was found.
On the morning of the eighteenth the morning gun at Fort Sackville
(Vincennes) was heard. The Wabash was reached at two o'clock in the
afternoon, but no boats could be found by the parties of searchers sent
out on rafts and in a canoe. Affairs were growing desperate, and the
"very quiet but hungry" men set to work building canoes. Messengers were
sent to hurry on "The Willing" but did not find her. "No provisions of
any sort," writes Bowman on the nineteenth, "now for two days. Hard
fortune!" On the twentieth, as work on the canoes advanced, a canoe
containing five Frenchmen from Vincennes was captured, and Clark learned
that he was not yet discovered. On the twenty-first the army began to be
ferried across the Wabash, "to a small hill called [Mammelle ?]." The
crossing-place cannot be determined with precision. It was below the
mouth of the Embarras, and not lower on the Wabash than a mile and a
half above St. Francisville. Several _mammelles_ (bluffs) lie on the
eastern bank of the Wabash here. One lies four and one-half miles below
the mouth of the Embarras. As the current was swift, the river broad,
and the point of embarkation somewhat below the mouth of the Embarras,
it is probable that the army landed further down the Wabash than has
usually been described.[37] A march of three miles northward was made by
the vanguard on the day it crossed, seemingly from the "lower" to the
"upper" _mammelle_--the "next hill of the same name," according to
Bowman. On the twenty-second another league was covered by exhausting
efforts, making in all six miles from the crossing-place. The camp this
night is definitely known to be a high, twenty-acre sugar orchard still
remembered as "Sugar Camp," three and one-half miles from Vincennes.
Clark was now at the lower end of the "Lower Prairie," and there were
two courses to Vincennes which lay on the rising ground across the three
miles of flooded prairie.[38] One, by way of the Grand Marais or swamp
in the middle of the prairie, was impassable; the other route, known as
the "two buttes route," was the difficult alternative. The first butte
was "Warrior's Island," a ten-acre hill heavily wooded, a mile and a
half from Sugar Camp and two miles from Vincennes. It could be and was
reached by the strong men wading breast high, drawing or paddling their
feebler comrades in the canoes. The second butte, "Bunker Hill," was not
on the direct line to Vincennes, but was a high point to the east on the
same plateau on which Vincennes stood. At one o'clock of the
twenty-third, the floundering army, half numb with cold and weak from
exposure, reached Warrior's Island. From here Clark sent his first
message, diplomatically directed to the inhabitants of 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 of you as are true
citizens, and willing to enjoy the liberty I bring you, to remain still
in your houses, and those, if any there be, who are friends to the king,
will instantly repair to the fort[39] and join the _Hair-buyer
General_,[40] and fight like men. And if any such as do not go to the
fort shall be discovered afterwards, they may depend on severe
punishment. On the contrary, those who are true friends to liberty may
depend on being well treated; and I once more request them to keep out
of the streets, for every one I find in arms on my arrival I shall treat
as an enemy."[41]
At eight o'clock that night the famished army waded to Bunker Hill, and
soon the outskirts of the town were invested, under fire of the fort. On
the twenty-fourth Hamilton surrendered, and the campaign, prosecuted
under difficulties which today cannot be justly described, ended in
complete triumph.
[Illustration: THE ST. LOUIS TRACE, NEAR LAWRENCEVILLE, ILLINOIS]
Nothing can impress one with the heroism of this march like a visit
to these low lands which are now proving of great value to horse and
cattle owners of northern Illinois as grazing grounds. Though my journey
over Clark's route was made at the driest and most favorable season of
the year, the mists, heavy as clouds, lay along the Bonpas, Fox, Little
Wabash, Big Muddy, and Skillet and between them, and a thunderstorm made
the modern road a veritable slough. From Vincennes to Xenia, the
Baltimore and Ohio Southwestern Railway is parallel with the old St.
Louis Trace which was Clark's route here.[42] But the student will find
the journey by the old trace, throwing its curling lengths along the
hills from Lawrenceville to Sumner, a most interesting though taxing
experience. At Sumner the trace drops into the bottom-lands where the
mists seem to lie forever and where little villages are perched upon
knolls of a few thousand feet in diameter, surrounded by swamps and
prairies that are now being drained and cultivated widely. Here the old
trace--for the ancient name clings to it--is helped along by dint of
corduroy bridges and stone and wooden culverts. Between Sumner and Olney
the corduroy bridges are frequent and exceedingly rough, particularly if
you are hurrying along at nightfall to gain the portals of a
comparatively comfortable inn at Olney. Westward the road ploughs its
way through the marshes and the mist to the little Big Muddy and across
to the Little Wabash about where the old trace ran. Here the fogs lie
heaviest, shutting off all view of the low-lying, bushy wastes. In
midsummer the fog and marshes warn the explorer away; what of this land
when the rivers are loosed by the winter floods and are streaming wildly
along the vast stretch of the stunted bush and vine? The scene presented
to Clark's Virginians and Frenchmen in February 1779 cannot by any means
be pictured by one to whom these swamps are unknown; to such as know
them, the picture, though probably imperfect, is one of horror. To row a
boat where the current is swift is fatiguing labor, and to walk in the
water, when each step may find one in a sink-hole and where the rank
grasses, growing from heavy tufts, hold one's feet as a cord, is all
that the strongest man can endure for even a short period. The little
spots of ground which here and there rise above the flood are covered
with driftwood and infested with snakes.
In midsummer the scene was more pleasant. "Beyond Ombra we enter a
Tartarian meadow," wrote Volney in 1804, "interspersed with clumps of
trees, but in general flat and naked, and windy and cold in winter. In
summer it is filled with tall and strong shrubs, which brush the legs of
the rider in his narrow path so much, that a journey out [to Kaskaskia]
and back will wear out a pair of boots. Water is scarce [for drinking],
and there is danger of being bewildered, as happened to one of my fellow
travellers, three years before, when, with two others, he roamed about
for seventeen days. Thunder, rain, gnats, and horse flies, are very
troublesome in summer."[43]
Of the journey from Vincennes to Kaskaskia in 1804 Volney gives the
following itinerary:
"_Road from Fort Vincennes to Kaskaskias_
MILES HOURS
To Ombra creek[44] 9 2
To Elm in the meadow 13-1/2 3
To Cat River[45] 13-1/2 3
To the Yoke[46] 15 3
To the Salt spring[47] 6 1-1/2
To the Slaves gibbet[48] 15 3
To Great Point[49] 15 2-1/2
To the Coffee-pot[50] 12 2
To the Yellow bark[51] 15 3
To Walnut Point[52] 15 2-1/2
Beyond this is a beaver dam,[53] destroyed.
At a cross road you take the left, which
is shortest. There is no water for
eighteen miles, and you fall into the
main road at Pointe aux Fesses.[54]
To the [Beaver] Dam 4-1/2 1
To the three-thorned Acacia[55] 12 2
To Pointe aux Fesses[56] 15 3
To the Meadow of the Hole[57] 15 3
To the Great Rib[58] 15 3
To Lepronier[59] 12 2
To Kas[kaskia] 18 4
Totals[60] 220-1/2 43-1/2"
The junction of the old Kaskaskia Trace with the modern St. Louis Trace
was on the Isaac Elliott farm, one mile east of old Xenia, half a mile
north of the newer Xenia.[61] It was pointed out to the writer by Sandy
Alexander Nelms of Salem, Illinois, one of the very few remaining
old-time stage-drivers on the St. Louis Trace of the thirties, who was
born near this junction. He remembers portions of the old path very
well, though it has not, within his lifetime, been used as a highway.
Within the borders of the present Xenia the outline of the old trace is
exceedingly plain. The frontispiece of this volume is from a recent
photograph of this part of the road. Mr. Nelms informs the writer that
the old trace could, in early years, be followed by the camping-spots,
where blue-grass sprang up when the prairie-grass was killed out.[62]
Blue-grass on the Illinois routes, like the apple-trees on the old track
from Albany to the Mohawk in New York, was the first sign of coming
civilization. Mr. Nelms remembers with distinctness that in a corn-field
near the present Baltimore and Ohio Southwestern Railway depot at Xenia
the route of the old trace could be followed by the color of the earth
and heavier growth of corn. The general color of the field was black but
a wide strip of yellowish clay was the course of the old Kaskaskia
Trace--generations of travel over the narrow aisle in the old-time
forests having changed the nature of the soil. Here, it is said, the
crop of corn was distinctly heavier and better than elsewhere on the
prairie.
Wherever this old trace may be found it speaks of Clark and Clark only.
All the story of its other days is forgotten for those hard fifteen
during which that daring youth drew his comrades "insensibly" onward,
amid jests and raillery, to the British stronghold from which thousands
of savages had been urged to war upon the feeble Kentucky stations.
Boone's Wilderness Road meant much, but if Fort Sackville and the other
Wabash Valley centers had been a trifle more potent than they were, it
would have become as overgrown as was Braddock's Road when Forbes
marched to Fort Duquesne three years after Braddock. The two posts at
the termini of the Vincennes Trace, and the dark councils of their
commanders, were a more serious menace to Kentucky's safety than all the
redskins north of the Ohio River. It was the British-fed, British-armed,
and British-led Indians that made possible the dream of a reconquest of
Kentucky.
After George Rogers Clark led his men over that narrow, winding trace,
through flooded Grand Cote Prairie and over the raging Little and Great
Wabash, that danger of British conquest of Kentucky was practically
eliminated from the western situation.
The capture of Vincennes was the first chapter in the conquest of the
Old Northwest.