[20] A galley-batteau, armed with two four-pounders and four swivels, and carrying forty-six men, under the command of Captain John Rogers, left Kaskaskia February 4, for Vincennes by the river route. It was named “The Willing.”
[21] Probably at “a small branch about three miles from Kaskaskia” mentioned by Clark in his letter to Mason (English’s Conquest of the Northwest, vol. i, p. 430).
[22] The map of Clark’s route from Kaskaskia to Vincennes in the standard work on his campaigns of 1778-79, English’s Conquest of the Northwest (vol. i, pp. 290-291), gives only the later Kaskaskia trace of the eighteenth century—the modern route which it is sure Clark did not pursue.
[23] Draper MSS., xxv J, fol. 76. See map on page 21.
[24] It seems to the writer useless to spend time and space in attempting to place exactly Clark’s camping-spots. He has made several exhaustive schedules of these camps and all the contradictions discussed pro and con. At best, any outline of camps must be purest conjecture, and therefore not authoritative or really valuable. In certain instances the camping-spots are definitely fixed by contemporaneous records. Only these will be definitely described in this record—the others being placed more or less indefinitely.
[25] In possession of the Kentucky Historical Society; first published in the Louisville Literary News, November 24, 1840; see English’s Conquest of the Northwest, vol. i, pp. 568-578, from which our quotations are made.
[26] Draper MSS., xxv J, fols. 37, 57, 58, 77.
[27] Id., fol. 78.
[28] Id., fol. 77.
[29] Id.