Leaving a few men at the entrance, Clark walked boldly into the great hall, and, leaning silently against the doorpost, watched the gay dancers as they whirled round in the light of the flaring torches. Suddenly an Indian lying on the floor spied the tall stranger, sprang to his feet, and gave a whoop. The dancing stopped. The young ladies screamed, and their partners rushed toward the doors.
"Go on with your dance," said Clark, "but remember that henceforth you dance under the American flag, and not under that of Great Britain."
The surprise was complete. Nobody had a chance to resist. The town and the fort were in the hands of the riflemen.
Clark now began to make friends with the Creoles. He formed them into companies, and drilled them every day. A priest known as Father Gibault, a man of ability and influence, became a devoted friend to the Americans. He persuaded the people at Cahokia and at other Creole villages, and even at Vincennes, about one hundred and forty miles away on the Wabash, to turn from the British and to raise the American flag. Thus, without the loss of a drop of blood, all the posts in the Wabash valley passed into the hands of the Americans, and the boundary of the rising republic was extended to the Mississippi.
Clark soon had another chance to show what kind of man he was. With less than two hundred riflemen and a few Creoles, he was hemmed in by tribes of faithless savages, with no hope of getting help or advice for months; but he acted as few other men in the country would have dared to act. He had just conquered a territory as large as almost any European kingdom. If he could hold it, it would become a part of the new nation. Could he do it?
From the Great Lakes to the Mississippi came the chiefs and the warriors to Cahokia to hear what the great chief of the "Long Knives" had to say for himself. The sullen and hideously painted warriors strutted to and fro in the village. At times there were enough of them to scalp every white man at one blow, if they had only dared. Clark knew exactly how to treat them.
One day when it seemed as if there would be trouble at any moment, the fearless commander did not even shift his lodging to the fort. To show his contempt of the peril, he held a grand dance, and "the ladies and gentlemen danced nearly the whole night," while the sullen warriors spent the time in secret council. Clark appeared not to care, but at the same time he had a large room near by filled with trusty riflemen. It was hard work, but the young Virginian did not give up. He won the friendship and the respect of the different tribes, and secured from them pledges of peace. It was little trouble to gain the good will of the Creoles.
Let me tell you of an incident which showed Clark's boldness in dealing with Indians. Years after the Illinois campaign, three hundred Shawnee warriors came in full war paint to Fort Washington, the present site of Cincinnati, to meet the great "Long Knife" chief in council. Clark had only seventy men in the stockade. The savages strode into the council room with a war belt and a peace belt. Full of fight and ugliness, they threw the belts on the table, and told the great pioneer leader to take his choice.
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| Fort Washington, a Stockaded Fort on the Ohio, the Present Site of Cincinnati |
Quick as a flash, Clark rose to his feet, swept both the belts to the floor with his cane, stamped upon them, and thrust the savages out of the hall, telling them to make peace at once, or he would drive them off the face of the earth. The Shawnees held a council which lasted all night, but in the morning they humbly agreed to bury the hatchet.
Great was the wrath of Hamilton, the "hair buyer general," when he heard what the young Virginian had done. He at once sent out runners to stir up the savages; and, in the first week of October, he set out in person from Detroit with five hundred British regulars, French, and Indians. He recaptured Vincennes without any trouble. Clark had been able to leave only a few of the men he had sent there, and some of them deserted the moment they caught sight of the redcoats.
If Hamilton had pushed on through the Illinois country, he could easily have crushed the little American force; but it was no easy thing to march one hundred and forty miles over snow-covered prairies, and so the British commander decided to wait until spring.
When Clark heard of the capture of Vincennes, he knew that he had not enough men to meet Hamilton in open fight. What was he to do? Fortune again came to his aid.
The last of January, he heard that Hamilton had sent most of his men back to Detroit; that the Indians had scattered among the villages; and that the British commander himself was now wintering at Vincennes with about a hundred men. Clark at once decided to do what Hamilton had failed to do. Having selected the best of his riflemen, together with a few Creoles, one hundred and seventy men in all, he set out on February 7 for Vincennes.
All went well for the first week. They marched rapidly. Their rifles supplied them with food. At night, as an old journal says, they "broiled their meat over the huge camp fires, and feasted like Indian war dancers." After a week the ice had broken up, and the thaw flooded everything. The branches of the Little Wabash now made one great river five miles wide, the water even in the shallow places being three feet deep.
It took three days of the hardest work to ferry the little force across the flooded plain. All day long the men waded in the icy waters, and at night they slept as well as they could on some muddy hillock that rose above the flood. By this time they had come so near Vincennes that they dared not fire a gun for fear of being discovered.
Marching at the head of his chilled and foot-sore army, Clark was the first to test every danger.
"Come on, boys!" he would shout, as he plunged into the flood.
Were the men short of food? "I am not hungry," he would say, "help yourself." Was some poor fellow chilled to the bone? "Take my blanket," said Clark, "I am glad to get rid of it."
In fact, as peril and suffering increased, the courage and the cheerfulness of the young leader seemed to grow stronger.
On February 17, the tired army heard Hamilton's sunrise gun on the fort at Vincennes, nine miles away, boom across the muddy flood.
Their food had now given out. The bravest began to lose heart, and wished to go back. In hastily made dugouts the men were ferried, in a driving rain, to the eastern bank of the Wabash; but they found no dry land for miles round. With Clark leading the way, the men waded for three miles with the water often up to their chins, and camped on a hillock for the night. The records tell us that a little drummer boy, whom some of the tallest men carried on their shoulders, made a deal of fun for the weary men by his pranks and jokes.
Death now stared them in the face. The canoes could find no place to ford. Even the riflemen huddled together in despair. Clark blacked his face with damp gunpowder, as the Indians did when ready to die, gave the war whoop, and leaped into the ice-cold river. With a wild shout the men followed. The whole column took up their line of march, singing a merry song. They halted six miles from Vincennes. The night was bitterly cold, and the half-frozen and half-starved men tried to sleep on a hillock.
The next morning the sun rose bright and beautiful. Clark made a thrilling speech and told his famished men that they would surely reach the fort before dark. One of the captains, however, was sent with twenty-five trusty riflemen to bring up the rear, with orders to shoot any man that tried to turn back.
The worst of all came when they crossed the Horseshoe Plain, which the floods had made a shallow lake four miles wide, with dense woods on the farther side. In the deep water the tall and the strong helped the short and the weak. The little dugouts picked up the poor fellows who were clinging to bushes and old logs, and ferried them to a spot of dry land. When they reached the farther shore, so many of the men were chilled that the strong ones had to seize those half-frozen, and run them up and down the bank until they were able