Suddenly an Indian, after looking at him for a moment, raised the war-whoop; the dancing ceased, but Clark, shouting at the top of his voice to still the confusion, bade the dancers continue, asking them only to remember that thereafter they were dancing under the flag of the United States, instead of that of Great Britain. A few moments later, the commandant was captured in his bed, and the investment was complete. The other settlements in the neighborhood surrendered at once, so that the Illinois country was captured without the firing of a gun.
But when the news reached the British governor, Hamilton, at Detroit, he at once prepared to recapture the country. He had a much larger force at his command than Clark could possibly muster, and in the fall of the year he advanced against Vincennes at the head of over five hundred men. The little American garrison was unable to oppose such a force and was compelled to surrender. Instead of pushing on against Clark at Kaskaskia, Hamilton disbanded his Indians and sent some of his troops back to Detroit, and prepared to spend the winter at Vincennes. He repaired the fort, strengthened the defenses, and then sat down for the winter, confident that when spring came, he would again be master of the whole Illinois country.
Clark, at Kaskaskia, realized that it was a question of his taking the British or the British taking him, and that, if he waited for spring, he would have no chance at all; so he gathered together the pick of his men, one hundred and seventy all told, and early in February, 1779, set out for Vincennes. The task before him was to capture a force nearly equal to his own, protected by a strong fort well supplied for a siege.
At first the journey was easy enough, for they passed across the snowy Illinois prairies, broken occasionally by great stretches of woodland, but when they reached the drowned lands of the Wabash, the march became almost incredibly difficult. The ice had just broken up and everything was flooded; heavy rains set in, and when the men were not wading through icy water, they were struggling through mud nearly knee-deep. After twelve days of this, they came to the bank of the Embarass river, only to find the country all under water, save one little hillock, where they spent the night without food or fire. For four days they waited there for the flood to retire, with practically nothing to eat; but the rain continued and the flood increased, and Clark, finally, in desperation, plunged into the water and called to his men to follow. All day they waded, and toward evening reached a small patch of dry ground, where they spent a miserable night. At sunrise Clark started on again, through icy water waist-deep, this time with the stern command to shoot the first laggard. Some of the men failed and sank beneath the waves, to be rescued by the stronger ones, and by the middle of the afternoon they had all got safe to land. By good fortune, they captured some Indian squaws with a canoe-load of food, and had their first meal in two days. Soon afterwards the sun came out, and they saw before them the walls of the fort they had come to capture.
The British had no suspicion of their danger, and they thought the first patter of bullets against the palisades the usual friendly salute from an Indian hunting party. But they were soon undeceived, and answered the rifles with ineffective fire from their two small cannon. All night the fight continued, and at dawn an Indian war-party, which had been ravaging the Kentucky settlements, entered the town, ignorant that the Americans had captured it. Marching up to the fort, they suddenly found themselves surrounded and seized. In their belts they carried the scalps of the settlers—men, women and children—they had slain, and, infuriated at the sight, the Americans tomahawked the savages, one after another, before the eyes of the British.
Then Clark sent to the fort a peremptory summons to surrender, adding, that "his men were eager to avenge the murder of their relatives and friends and would welcome an excuse to storm the fort." To the British, it seemed a choice between surrender and massacre. They had seen the bloody vengeance wreaked upon their Indian allies, and they had every reason to believe that they would be dealt with in the same manner, since it was they who had set the Indians on. Clark was himself, of course, in desperate straits, without means for carrying on a successful siege, but the British were far from suspecting this, and at ten o'clock on the morning of February 25, 1779, marched out and stacked arms, while Clark fired a salute of thirteen guns in honor of the colonies, from whose possession the Northwest was never again to pass.
For eight years longer, Clark devoted his life to protecting the border from British and Indian invasion. The war over, he returned to Kentucky, and took up his abode in a little log cabin on the Ohio near Louisville. He was without means, and a horrible accident marred his last years, for, while alone in his cabin, he was stricken with paralysis, and fell with one of his legs in the old-fashioned fire-place. There was no one to draw him out of danger, and before the pain brought him partially to his senses, his leg was so badly burned that it had to be amputated. There were no anaesthetics in those days, but while the leg was being removed, a fife and drum corps played its hardest at the bedside, and the doughty old warrior kept time to the music with his fingers.
He lived for ten years thereafter, though his paralysis never left him. He felt keenly the ingratitude of the Republic which he had served so well, and which yet, in his old age, abandoned him to want, and the story is told that, when the state of Virginia sent him a sword of honor, he thrust it into the ground and broke it with his crutch.
"I gave Virginia a sword when she needed one," he said; "but now, when I need bread, she sends me a toy!"