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.”

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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.