Nine days after the important information reached him, General Clark with one hundred and seventy men started across flooded prairies, swollen streams, and inundated valleys. There is no more daring march recorded. Trudging through rain and mud, fording small streams, wading most of the time in deep water ofttimes to the armpits, they traveled without tents, depending on parched corn and the securing of game for food; at last they went for days with no nourishment whatever.
Clark and his men crossing a swollen stream.
It took all the ingenuity of General Clark to keep up the courage of the soldiers. Sometimes he would plunge into the deep water singing a favorite song, when all would join in, fall in line, and sing as they waded. At another time, seeing the discouragement and despair in their faces, he blackened his face with gunpowder, gave an Indian-like war whoop, and plunged into the stream; again all followed. At another place a little drummer boy was placed on the shoulders of a tall man and told to beat as if for his life. The enthusiasm of the boy and his stirring music quickly renewed the courage of the soldiers. A division was placed in the rear with orders to shoot any who "dropped out," and the march was continued through the freezing waters.
Near Vincennes, they captured a Frenchman who had been duck shooting, and sent a letter by him to the French inhabitants saying that the fort would be stormed that night and they could choose between remaining quietly in their homes and receiving the friendly protection of the assaulters, or of going into the British fort and of abiding results.
All was then commotion and people rushed out from their houses to learn the news. By a stratagem of Clark's his men were so marching in a circle behind an elevation that as they passed and repassed, flying many "colors," each man was counted dozens of times, and the inhabitants of the place thought there was an attacking force of many hundreds of people at their gates.
For two days and nights, Clark's men besieged the fort. Their ammunition ran alarmingly low, yet Clark, Napoleon-like, was very demanding. At last the "Stars and Stripes" floated again over Vincennes, and thus was secured to our nation that vast tract out of which have been carved Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, while the value to the colonists in Kentucky could not be easily estimated.
THE FIRST CHRISTMAS PARTY
When General George Rogers Clark had conquered the British and Indians in their stronghold in the Illinois country, he felt it safe for the few families he had left on Corn Island, near the Falls of the Ohio, to remove to the mainland, and so ordered that a fort be built there.
Rows of log cabins joined together around a hollow square constituted this structure; at one corner there was a cabin, double the size of the others, that was to serve as a storeroom. In this building took place the first Christmas dinner and dance in Kentucky, as far as any record shows.