USA > Mississippi > The westward movement : the colonies and the republic west of the Alleghanies, 1763-1798 with full cartographical illustrations from contemporary sources > Part 11
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On December 10, 1777, Clark laid his scheme before the governor. In case of failure in the plan, he proposed to join the Spaniards beyond the Mississippi. The Virginia council having approved Clark's plan, on January 2, 1778, the governor gave Clark a colonel's commission, and committed to him two sets of instructions, one expressing a purpose to defend Ken- tucky only, and the other, which was to be kept secret, author- izing him to attack Kaskaskia. In both he was given author- ity to raise, west of the Alleghanies, seven companies of forty men each. He was to apply to General Hand, who, as we have seen, had been in command at Fort Pitt since June 1, 1777, for a portion of the stock of powder which had been brought up the Mississippi from New Orleans, and such other supplies as could be furnished. Twelve hundred dollars in paper were given to him, and he was told to draw for further sums on Oliver Pollock at New Orleans, who would be instructed to honor his drafts. The legislature of Virginia, as Jefferson, Mason, and Wythe in their letters of congratulation assured him, was expected to appropriate as bounty to each man three hun- dred acres of the conquered territory. So the whole movement was a Virginia one, intended to secure her dominion over what she believed to be her charter limits. The men were enlisted under the impression conveyed by his public instructions. Three companies were raised, one hundred and fifty men in all, and these were rendezvoused at Redstone on the Monongahela,
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GEORGE ROGERS CLARK.
where the boats were assembled. In May, 1778, having beside his troops a train of adventurous settlers, Clark moved on to Pittsburg and Wheeling. At both these places he picked up supplies. At the mouth of the Kanawha he found reinforce- ments. On his way down the Ohio, some of the accompanying emigrants left him at points where they could easily enter the wilderness. Others remained on the flotilla till May 27, when he reached the falls, near the modern Louisville. Here they were landed on Corn Island, where the rushing river broke up the reflections of eanebrakes, vines, and lofty trees. A stockade was built to protect the eighty settlers, and to furnish a store- house for his excess of supplies. Ten of his soldiers were left as a guard. He had lost something by desertion on the way, and was glad of a small company from the Holston, which now joined him. They did not prove steadfast, however, for as soon as he made known his real instructions, they left him. His total available force had now been reduced to about one hundred and seventy-five men. If it had been larger, he might at once have advanced on Vincennes; but hoping for other aceessions, he determined to go to Kaskaskia first.
While making his preparations to leave, intelligence of the French alliance reached him from Fort Pitt. It was good tidings which he hoped to break to the French at Kaskaskia with some effeet. On June 24, he poled his boats up the river from the island in order to gain the main channel, and then, it being a high stage of the water, the flotilla shot down the rapids " at the very moment of the sun being in a great eclipse." It was a nearly total obscuration, and it was nine o'clock in the morning. It took two days to reach a creek just above Fort Massac, relays of rowers working day and night. He met on the way some hunters, who the week before had been in Kaskaskia, and engaged one or two of them as guides.
The men were landed, and there was not a horse or cannon among them to give a show of efficacy to the courageous little army. It was on June 26 that they began their march over a route of one hundred and twenty miles, the first fifty of which lay through a swampy country. The open prairie, which came next, encouraged them in their weariness. On the afternoon of July 4, they were within three miles of Kaskaskia, and their food was exhausted. That post was in command of Rocheblave,
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CLARK TAKES KASKASKIA.
Clarksville
PLAN of the
Rapids or Falls of the OHIO Latitude of Louisville
Sandy
Isle
Rocky I. Goose
River
OHIO
References D'A to D is the carriage Way to the North, From. C.to D. is the shortest . and surest way: The punctuated Line shows the ? way Boats must keep to"
Fort
Louisville!
[From Collot's Atlas.]
suddenly sprung into their company. There could be no resist- a dance when Clark, after dark, and accompanied by his mon. left to him were in the guard hall of the fort making merry in watch the country and report upon events. The men that were greatly diminished, and Rocheblave had been kept there to hension of the exposure of the post, its garrison had been cupied the region. To save expense, and without much appre- a French officer who had joined the British after they had oc-
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GEORGE ROGERS CLARK.
ance, and " the self-styled Colonel, Mr. Clerke," as Rocheblave reported him to Carleton, was thus easily put in possession of the post and of all within the town. The next morning the oath of fidelity was administered. After this the townspeople, whose spirits were distinctly gladdened by the news of the French alliance, were suffered to go about their business.
The successful commander now turned for sympathy to the Spanish over the Mississippi, with whom he opened communi- eation. He found the commandant at St. Louis more than ready to countenance him. Wherever he turned, the French about him were ready to serve him. They had much disturbed Rocheblave of late by keeping up a trade with the Spaniards, which that officer was powerless to stop. With Kaskaskia in American hands, there was nothing to prevent such traffic aeross the Mississippi being carried on openly.
Clark went to Cahokia - to which he had sent Bowman and thirty horsemen on the first day of his ocenpation of Kaskaskia - and met the northern Indians, and though he ran some hazards and encountered some treachery, the French stood by him, and in outward seeming, at least, the tribes were gained over. He sent a commission to the chief of the distant Foxes, but the British intercepted it.
Gibault, a priest at Kaskaskia, in company with Dr. Lafont and a few others whom Clark could trust, was sent, on July 14, to Vincennes. Lieutenant Leonard Helm was also of the party, and was detailed to take the military command of the place. He administered the oath to those he found, and sent belts to the neighboring Wabash Indians.
Gibault returned to Kaskaskia on August 1, and reported his success. Clark now enlisted enough resident Creoles to supply the gaps in his companies, made by the expiration of the term of his three months' men. The men thus released were sent to Virginia under an officer, who also took charge of Rocheblave as a prisoner of war.
There soon arrived from St. Louis a man in whom Clark found a fast friend. This was François Vigo, a native of Sardinia, now a man somewhat over thirty years of age, accord- ing to the best accounts, though his gravestone makes him born in 1739. He had come to New Orleans in a Spanish regiment, early in the days of the Spanish control. After leaving the
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POLLOCK AND VIGO.
army he turned trader, and had of late been living at St. Louis, where he had become a person of influence and property. Hearing of Clark's success, he had hastened to Kaskaskia to see him. Without the financial aid of Vigo at St. Louis and of Pollock at New Orleans, it is doubtful if Clark could have sustained himself in the coming months. Governor Henry had already directed Pollock to draw on France for money to be sent to Clark, and at a later day Clark gave an affidavit that he received Pollock's remittances in specie. In September, 1778, Pollock wrote to Congress that he had just sent a new remittance of seven thousand three hundred dollars to Clark. During that year he borrowed a large amount from the Spanish governor for like uses. Vigo let Clark have twelve thousand dollars, and took Clark's drafts on Pollock for that sum. When these drafts reached New Orleans, Pollock, who had been sending powder and swivels up the river to Clark, found himself obliged to raise money at 123 per cent. discount to meet the obligation. Later, Pollock drew on Delap of Bordeaux on account of a cargo shipped to that port, in order to amass funds for Clark's continued drafts. Fearing that the vessel might not arrive and Delap would dishonor his draft, he solicited Congress in April, 1779, to direct Franklin, then in Paris, to assume if necessary the burden. Transactions like these before the close of the war reduced Pollock to penury. When Vigo died at Terre Haute in 1836, neglected and childless, something like twenty thou- sand dollars which he had paid to Clark remained unsettled. Ten years later (1846), Vigo's heirs memorialized Congress for restitution, but with little effect. In 1848, a committee of the House of Representatives recognized the obligation. Here the matter rested till 1872, when Congress referred the question to the Court of Claims, which gave a decision in favor of Vigo's heirs. The government carried the case to the Supreme Court in 1876, when long-delayed justice was rendered, but the appli- cants who received, including interest, fifty thousand dollars, were mainly claim agents and lobbyists. The particular draft which was the basis of the suit was one drawn on Pollock, December 4, 1778, for $8716.40, which Vigo had cashed.
While Clark was thus engaged securing funds, measures were in progress to organize the conquered territory under a
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GEORGE ROGERS CLARK.
eivil government. The provisions were quite at variance with the purpose which the English ministry had had in view in pushing through the Quebec Bill, and threw back the bounds of Canada, where both the colonists and the parent government had long, through many wars, insisted that they belonged. The Virginia Assembly, in the autumn of 1778, had here created the county of Illinois, and had given to Governor Henry the authority to raise five hundred men for its defense, and to keep open communication with and through it.
Henry selected, as governor of the new county, an active Virginian, who had gone, in 1775, to Kentucky, where he had played a part in the Transylvania movement, and had later been in Clark's command, - Captain John Todd. Henry sent him instructions which required him "to cultivate and emulate the affections of the French and Indians," to command the county militia, and to use them to assist Clark. Todd, on receiving these papers, returned to Virginia to perfect plans, and when he again reached Kaskaskia in May, 1779, he bore a letter of friendship to the Spanish governor at Ste. Genevieve, which he was expected to deliver in person. He was also en- joined to take under his special care the family of Rocheblave, now a prisoner in Virginia. In appointing the county officers, Todd was quite ready to give the French a large part of them, and he endeavored to fill the country with actual settlers, to the , exclusion of speculators in land.
It was a relief to Clark to find the civil administration of the region in so good hands, for events were demanding his anxious attention.
All along the valley north of the Ohio, the American cause had not prospered, and in Kentucky there had been turmoil enough, though it was not always favorable to the British and their savage allies. During the summer there were bands of Tories, horse thieves, and other renegades, traversing the Ten- nessee country. The Watauga community, bestirring itself, had mustered and sent out two companies of militia. These effectually scoured the country, and those of the marauders who were not captured fled to the Cherokees, or escaped north- ward to the British.
There was now only a hunter's hut on the site of the later
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BOONESBOROUGH.
Nashville, and perhaps a dozen families were clustered about Bledsoe's Lick, stockaded together and surrounded by Chick- asaws. These were relieved. Farther north, however, at Boonesborough, Hamilton, through his rangers and savages, tried hard to deliver a serious blow.
Boone, who had been earlier captured at the Salt Licks, had been taken to Detroit, where Hamilton treated him con- siderately. Later he was carried into the Shawnee country a prisoner, and succeeded in ingratiating himself with his mas- ters. Here he learned that Hamilton had gathered a band of over four hundred warriors, and was intending to let them loose upon the Kentucky settlements. In June, managing to escape, Boone reached his home in time to improve its defenses. The enemy not appearing, and anxious for definite knowledge, Boone started out with a squad of men to reconnoitre. He crossed the Ohio, and had a sharp conflict with the Indians on the Scioto. Learning that Hamilton's expedition was now on the march, led by both French and British officers and fly- ing the flags of both, it soon became a race for the goal. Boone surpassed them in speed, and reached Boonesborough in time to drive in the cattle and dispose his forty effective men for the onset. He had a score other men not equal to a steady fight.
The enemy approached the fort on September 8, 1778, -if this is the date, for there is a conflict of testimony. The leader, whom Boone calls Du Quesne, but whom the English call De Quindre, demanded a parley. This was accorded by Boone, only to find it had been treacherously asked for, and he and his men, who went to the meeting, had a struggle to escape the snare. Gaining the stockade, the siege began, and lasted sev- eral days, till the enemy finally disappeared in the woods. This repulse and the raid of the Watauga men relieved the region south of the Ohio to the end of the year.
Farther east, however, results had not been so cheering. In May, 1778, Congress had voted to raise three thousand men for service on the western frontiers. It was hoped that it might prove practicable to push this force across the country south of Lake Erie and capture Detroit. General Hand was relieved. and General Lachlan McIntosh, a Scotchman, now somewhat over fifty years old, who had been with Oglethorpe in (teorgia,
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GEORGE ROGERS CLARK.
and had attracted Washington's attention, was assigned to the command at Fort Pitt. Washington, at Valley Forge, had ordered the Eighth Pennsylvania regiment, under Colonel Brod- head, to the frontiers, and the Thirteenth Virginia regiment, under Colonel Gibson, was directed to be in readiness. Vir- ginia was at the same time expected to concentrate a large force of militia. This army, when ready, was to advanee in two divisions of about fifteen hundred men each, - one by the Kanawha and the other by the Ohio, and to unite at Fort Randolph (Point Pleasant). News had already been received of an attack by two hundred savages, in May, at the mouth of the Kanawha, and later on the Greenbrier; but the assailants had been foiled at both places.
It was well into June, 1778, when McIntosh began his march, but the ravages which were taking place in the Wyoming valley rendered it necessary to detach for a while Brodhead's command. It was August when the general, with this dimin- ished force, reached his headquarters at the forks of the Ohio. Before he was ready to move on, Brodhead rejoined him.
There were at this time three main posts west of the Alle- ghanies, - Forts Pitt, Randolph, and Hand; but there were beside nearly two-score movable camps of rangers, who were patrolling the border. McIntosh called them in, and hoped with his force thus strengthened to advance on Detroit. It was necessary to his plan to leave friendly tribes behind him, and at Pittsburg, on September 17, with a supply of ten thon- sand dollars' worth of presents, he began conciliatory methods with the Delawares, who were stretched along his expected path. The Moravians had pretty well established themselves among these Indians, though not so effectually but that a part of this heterogeneous people stood aloof in the British interests. The enemy had a firm foothold among the Shawnees who occupied the lower valleys of the Great and Little Miami and of the Scioto. The upper waters of these same streams were given over to the inimieal Mingoes. Beyond these were the Wyan- dots on the Sandusky - not always steadfast in the English interests - and the Ottawas on the Maumee, whom Hamilton could better depend upon. MeIntosh tried to gather these hos- tile tribes to a conference, but fewer came than he had wished. Nevertheless, he thought he had gained over enough for his
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MCINTOSH'S MARCH.
purpose, and the Shawnees had consented to his traversing their country. But in doing this he had lost time, and the season was become inauspicious for an active campaign. Accordingly he began the erection of a fort on the right bank of the Ohio, thirty miles below Fort Pitt, and near the mouth of Beaver Creek. Here, at Fort McIntosh, as he called it, he established his headquarters on October 8, 1778. It was a good position to afford succor, when necessary, to the settlements which had already begun to extend to the Muskingum, and thirty miles up that river. The new fort was the first built north of the Ohio, and McIntosh had, in and around it, a body of twelve hundred or more soldiers, mainly Virginians, - a larger number of armed men than had before operated in this country. His delay here in building what Brodhead, his successor, called a "romantic " fort was thought to have prevented the main ob- ject of his campaign, - the capture of Detroit.
McIntosh, checked in his advance as he was, had got far ahead of his trains. A herd of cattle, which was driven after him, did not come up till November 3, when there was still a lack in his supplies of salt and other things. Two days later, the general started again, but with cattle to drive and other obstacles, he made only fifty miles in a fortnight, and was then sufficiently ahead of his main supplies to cause alarm, for there were rumors of an opposing force. He was following pretty much the route which Bouquet had taken fourteen years before. He had not met the enemy ; but fearing concealed dangers, and needing a nearer refuge than Fort MeIntosh, in case of disaster, and believing in the policy of holding the country by a chain of posts, he built a stockade on the west branch of the Tuscara- was, an affluent of the Muskingum, and named it Fort Laurens, after the president of Congress. Its site was near the modern Bolivia and close to a spot where Bouquet had built a stockade, some distance above the Moravian settlements.
This was McIntosh's farthest point, and Detroit was safe, for, without supplies and the season far gone, there was no longer hope to reach his goal. He put a bold fighter, Colonel John Gibson, in command of the post, with a force of one hundred and fifty men, to be used, if possible, in another advance in the spring. In December, the general returned to Fort Pitt, put his regulars into winter quarters, and sent his militia to their
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GEORGE ROGERS CLARK.
homes. The year had ended with the American hopes nearly dashed in the upper regions of the Ohio valley.
Farther west the enemy had made a bold stroke against Clark. It looked all the more serious, if the British attack on Savannah should succeed and they should hold Augusta, - as they later did, - since it gave them two bases, not so very re- mote from each other. From these, with their available forces strengthened " by redeeming the army of the Convention," as Burgoyne's captured troops were called, they hoped to make a counter movement south of the Ohio.
The expedition which onee more gave them Vincennes, while McIntosh was inauspieionsly withdrawing to Fort Pitt, was conducted by Hamilton without the approval of Haldimand, now commanding at Quebec. That general held that such a movement carried the invading force beyond the reach of aid, while the government's policy had been to depend upon maraud- ing parties. Hamilton himself had suggested this alternative course of flying bands carly in the conflict, and Germain had ordered him, March 26, 1777, to pursue it. In June such orders were received at Detroit, accompanied by injunctions to restrain the barbarities of the savages. Such precautions were necessarily inoperative, and it might have been known they would be.
, The responsibility for the use of Indians during the war is pretty evenly divided between the combatants. The practice of it, however, by the ministerial party meant attacks on women and children and the spoliation of homes. The practice of it by the Americans gave no such possible misery to an invading army, which was without domestic accompaniments. The use of the Stockbridge Indians during the investment of Boston doubt- less antedated the employment of such allies by the royal com- manders. On Gage's reporting to Dartmouth this fact, the minister (August 2, 1775) told that general "there was no room to hesitate upon the propriety of pursuing the same meas- ure." The British government at the same time began the shipment (August, 1775) of presents to reward the constancy of the Indians.
It was on September 2, 1776, that Hamilton, writing from Detroit to Dartmouth, urged that "every means should be
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HAMILTON AND THE INDIANS.
employed that Providence has put into his Majesty's hands," - a sentiment which, later expressed by Lord Suffolk, brought upon him (November, 1777) the scathing rebuke of Chatham. Congress did not formally sanction the use of Indians till March, 1778, and then it was conditioned on Washington's judging it to be " prudent and proper."
Few if any British officers brought themselves so much under severe criticism for inciting savage barbarities as Governor Hamilton. He sang war songs with the braves, he made gifts to parties that returned with scalps ; but that he explicitly offered rewards as an incentive to taking scalps would be hard to prove, though the Council of Virginia, after Hamilton became their prisoner, charged him with doing so. His glee at the successful outcome of savage raids was not nnshared by many in the royal service. We have abundant testimony of this in the observa- tions of John Leech and others while prisoners in the British posts. This gruesome hilarity was far, however, from being universal. Such a cynical Tory as Judge Jones shuddered at it. Lieutenant-Governor Abbott, at Detroit, in June, 1778, pro- tested against the nse of Indians, and urged only the securing of their neutrality. De Peyster at Mackinac once addressed a band of braves as follows : "I am pleased when I see what you call live meat, because I can speak to it and get information. Scalps serve to show you have seen the enemy, but they are of no use to me; I cannot speak with them." Even Hamilton himself at times grew tender, and on hearing that Haldimand had assumed command at Quebec, he hastened to inform him that the Indians "never fail [at his hands] of a gratnity on every proof of obedience in sparing the lives of such as are incapable of defending themselves."
In June, 1777, Hamilton notified Carleton of a coming Indian council, and told him that he could assemble a thousand warriors in three weeks, " should your Excellencey have occasion for their services." Shortly after this, Carleton was relieved of all responsibility in the matter, as the condnet of the war about the upper lakes had, under orders from England, been put entirely in the hands of Hamilton. When this new gov- ernor reached Detroit to take command, he at onee began the enrollment of five hundred militia.
At Detroit, Hamilton was advantageously situated for an
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GEORGE ROGERS CLARK.
offensive war. A British fleet consisting of the "Gage," car- rying twenty-two guns and swivels, beside various smaller craft, -it was less than ten years since the British had launched their first keel at Detroit, -had command of the lakes, and could keep the post at Detroit in communication with De Peyster at Maekinae and with the British commander at Ni- agara, the other strategie points on these inland waters. Unfor- tunately for Hamilton, there was more or less disaffection at and around his post, and the health of Clark was a common toast even in the press-gang, which he kept at work on the for- tifications. The governor was never quite sure that somebody was not betraying his plans, nor was he certain that for a quart of rum an Indian would not carry tidings to General Hand, who was striving to open the road from Pittsburg to Detroit. Hamilton's force was perhaps five hundred in all, consisting of four companies of the King's Regiment under Lernoult, a single company of the 47th, and two companies of Butler's Rangers.
While Clark had been preparing to descend the Ohio, Hand with five hundred men had made (February, 1778) an incursion into the Ohio country, but his movement had only that kind of success which gave his expedition the bitter designation of the " squaw campaign." His purpose was to destroy some stores which Hamilton had sent to Cayahoga (Cleveland) as a base for a campaign against Fort Pitt, and in this he utterly failed.
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