All at once there was a startling interruption. The Indian sprang to his feet and his shrill war-whoop rang loudly through the room. His keen eyes had rested on the stranger and seen at a glance that there was something wrong. The new-comer was evidently an American, and that meant something there.
His yell of alarm broke up the dance in an instant. The women, who had just been laughing and talking, screamed with fright. All, men and women alike, huddled together in alarm. Some of the men ran for their guns, but the stranger did not move. From his place by the door he simply said, in a quiet way, "Don't be scared. Go on with your dance. But remember that you are dancing under Virginia and not under England."
View in the Northwestern Mountains.
As he was speaking, a crowd of men dressed like himself slipped into the room. They were all armed, and in a minute they spread through the fort, laying hands on the guns of the soldiers. The fort had been taken without a blow or a shot.
Rocheblave, the French commandant, was in bed while these events were taking place, not dreaming that an American was within five hundred miles. He learned better when the new-comers took him prisoner and began to search for his papers. The reason they did not find many of these was on account of their American respect for ladies. The papers were in Madame Rocheblave's room, which the Americans were too polite to enter, not knowing that she was shoving them as fast as she could into the fire, so that there was soon only a heap of ashes. A few were found outside, enough to show what the Americans wanted to make sure of,—that the English were doing their best to stir up the Indians against the settlers. To end this part of our story, we may say that the Americans got possession of Kaskaskia and its fort, and Rocheblave was sent off, with his papers, to Virginia. Probably his wide-awake wife went with him.
Now let us go back a bit and see how all this came to pass. Colonel Clark was a native of Virginia, but he had gone to Kentucky in his early manhood, being very fond of life in the woods. Here he became a friend of Daniel Boone, and no doubt often joined him in hunting excursions; but his business was that of a surveyor, at which he found plenty to do in this new country.
Meanwhile, the war for independence came on, and as it proceeded Clark saw plainly that the English at the forts in the West were stirring up the Indians to attack the American settlements and kill the settlers. It is believed that they paid them for this dreadful work and supplied them with arms and ammunition. All this Clark was sure of and he determined to try and stop it. So he made his way back to the East and had a talk with Patrick Henry, who was then governor of Virginia. He asked the governor to let him have a force to attack the English forts in the West. He thought he could capture them, and in this way put an end to the Indian raids.
Patrick Henry was highly pleased with Clark's plan. He gave him orders to "proceed to the defence of Kentucky," which was done to keep his real purpose a secret. He was also supplied with a large sum of money and told to enlist four companies of men, of whom he was to be the colonel. These he recruited among the hunters and pioneers of the frontier, who were the kind of men he wanted, and in the spring of 1778 he set out on his daring expedition.
With a force of about one hundred and fifty men Colonel Clark floated down the Ohio River in boats, landing at length about fifty miles above the river's mouth and setting off through the woods towards Kaskaskia. It was a difficult journey, and they had many hardships. Their food ran out on the way and they had to live on roots to keep from starvation. But at length one night they came near enough to hear the fiddle and the dancing. How they stopped the dance you have read.