dition stopped for stores at Fort Pitt and Fort Henry 1 7 7 8 (Wheeling), whence the flotilla of clumsy flatboats drifted down the Ohio. About the twenty-seventh, they reached the Falls of the Ohio. Here Clark established a post on Corn Island opposite the present Louisville and was joined by a contingent of Kentuckians, including John Bowman and the celebrated Simon Kenton.

On the twenty-fourth of June, the little expedition, At Kaskaskia consisting of about one hundred and seventy-five men, put out from shore and shot the falls in the midst of an almost total eclipse of the sun. At the mouth of the

Tennessee, they were joined by a party of hunters who had come from Kaskaskia and agreed to guide the expedition thither. Landing near the deserted site of Fort Massac, they struck northwestward across the tangled forests and rich prairies of southern Illinois. On the evening of the fourth of July, they reached the Kaskaskia River, three miles from the town. Rocheblave, the commandant, and the inhabitants were totally unaware of their approach and, without any bloodshed, Clark surprised and mastered both town and fort.

Clark now played his part with consummate skill. He Sagacity and reduced the creoles to a state of terror by ordering them Diplomacy to keep to their houses on pain of death and then disarming them; when a deputation visited him to ask their lives, he explained that, though the Americans came as conquerors, they had no desire to enslave the conquered. If they chose, they might become citizens of the republic and be welcomed to all its privileges. He announced that France was the ally of the United States. When Father Pierre Gibault, the village priest, asked if he might once more perform services in his church,

Clark told him that by the laws of the state his religion had as

Dobre
miste

8. Gibault

Autograph of the Missionary Pierre Gibault

great privileges as any other. From the depths of

1 7 7 8 despondency the people ascended to the heights of joy. A body of Kaskaskia volunteers accompanied a detachment under Captain Bowman to Cahokia where in like manner the people were won over. About the same time, Father Gibault went to Vincennes and persuaded the people there to take the same oath. Captain Leonard Helm was sent thither to take command of the fort. About the first of August, Father Gibault returned to Kaskaskia. Every British post in the Illinois country had passed without a battle or the loss of a life into the possession of the Americans. The possibility of such an outcome of a month's campaign involves the facts that the royal proclamation of 1763 had left the French residents of that region outside the pale of any civil authority and that even the Quebec act had not relieved them of their subjection to the military administration of a traditionally hated race.

A Resourceful
Commander

Hamilton's

As the enlistments of Clark's men expired, it was with great difficulty that he persuaded about a hundred to stay with him eight months longer. He sent the others home and induced many young Frenchmen to enlist. His dealings with the Indians were more difficult. Most of these had been hostile; now they were confused. From far and near they gathered by hundreds at Cahokia to confer with Clark and to decide upon their course. By a pretense of indifference and of power that he did not possess, he led them to sue for peace. He says that he gave them "harsh language to supply the want of men, well knowing that it was a mistaken notion in many that soft speeches was best for Indians."

When at Detroit, Governor Hamilton heard of the Counterstroke invasion of Illinois and the capture of Vincennes, he at once gathered a force to expel the invaders and, on the seventh of October, left Detroit with about one hundred and seventy-seven white men and sixty Indians. With this force he went down the Detroit River, crossed the western end of Lake Erie, ascended the Maumee, made a nine miles' portage to one of the sources of the Wabash, December 17 and, after great labor and hardship, arrived at Vincennes.

On the way he had been joined by more than two hun- 1 7 7 8 dred Indians, so that he now had about five hundred men. 1 779 Captain Helm's scouts had been captured by the British, his French militia promptly deserted, and, being left with. only one or two Americans, he was compelled to surrender without resistance.

Action

The season was so late that Hamilton went into winter Clark's quarters. He had no fear of the Americans for he knew Prompt that Clark's army numbered only one hundred and ten. But he did not know the man with whom he had to deal. Having learned from François Vigo, a merchant of Saint January 29, Louis, that Hamilton had sent away much of his force 1779 and had but eighty men in the garrison, Clark decided to recapture Vincennes. "Our case is desperate," he wrote to Governor Henry, "but, sir, we must either quit the country or attack Mr. Hamilton. Perhaps we may be fortunate." Vigo cashed Clark's drafts on the Virginia agent at New Orleans and Clark sent "The Willing," an extemporized gunboat, down the Mississippi and up the Ohio and the Wabash. the Ohio and the Wabash. On the fifth of February, after the troops had been blessed by Father Gibault, the young lieutenant-colonel marched out of Kaskaskia with a force of about one hundred and seventy men, some of whom were French creoles. It was the beginning of an expedition that was one of the most daring in conception and one of the most brilliant in execution recorded in American history; in perils and hardships it ranks with Arnold's winter march to Quebec-and it was crowned with success.

The route before him, about one hundred and seventy Out of Egypt miles in length, lay in a region that was so low that during the wet season a large part of it was overflowed. After a week's march, Clark's army came to one of the February 13 two branches of the Little Wabash. The flood was so great that "although a league asunder, they now made but one." Some time was spent in building a pirogue. "The fifteenth," says Clark, "happened to be a warm moist day for the season, and the channel of the river where we lay about thirty yards wide. A scaffold was

1779 built on the opposite shore that was about three feet under water; our baggage [was] ferried across, and put on it. Our horses swam across and received their loads at the scaffold, by which time the troops were brought across and we began our march. Our vessel was loaded

with those who were sickly, and we moved on cheerfully." The second branch, being smaller, was crossed more easily. On the seventeenth, they reached the Embarras River and spent the night on a muddy, almost submerged hillock. Unable to cross the river, they followed it down to the Wabash. Major Bowman's journal says that, on the eighteenth, they "came in sight of the swollen banks of the Wabash; made rafts for four men to cross and go up to the town and steal boats; but they spend day and night in the water to no purpose, for there was not one foot of dry land to be found." On