The Country Pacified.
Clark soon received some small reinforcements, and was able to establish permanent garrisons at Vincennes, Kaskaskia, and Cahokia. With the Indian tribes who lived round about he made firm peace; against some hunting bands of Delawares who came in and began to commit ravages, he waged ruthless and untiring war, sparing the women and children, but killing all the males capable of bearing arms, and he harried most of them out of the territory, while the rest humbly sued for peace. His own men worshipped him; the French loved and stood in awe of him while the Indians respected and feared him greatly. During the remainder of the Revolutionary war the British were not able to make any serious effort to shake the hold he had given the Americans on the region lying around and between Vincennes and the Illinois. Moreover he so effectually pacified the tribes between the Wabash and the Mississippi that they did not become open and formidable foes of the whites until, with the close of the war against Britain, Kentucky passed out of the stage when Indian hostilities threatened her very life.
The fame of Clark's deeds and the terror of his prowess spread to the southern Indians, and the British at Natchez trembled lest they should share the fate that had come on Kaskaskia and Vincennes. [Footnote: State Department MSS. [Intercepted Letters], No. 51, Vol. II., pp. 17 and 45. Letter of James Colbert, a half-breed in the British interest, resident at that time among the Chickasaws, May 25, 1779, etc.] Flat-boats from the Illinois went down to New Orleans, and keel-boats returned from that city with arms and munitions, or were sent up to Pittsburg [Footnote: The history of the early navigation of the Ohio and Mississippi begins many years before the birth of any of our western pioneers, when the French went up and down them. Long before the Revolutionary war occasional hunters, in dug-outs, or settlers going to Natchez in flat-boats, descended these rivers, and from Pittsburg craft were sent to New Orleans to open negotiations with the Spaniards as soon as hostilities broke out; and ammunition was procured from New Orleans as soon as Independence was declared.]; and the following spring Clark built a fort on the east bank of the Mississippi below the Ohio. [Footnote: In lat. 36° 30'; it was named Fort Jefferson. Jefferson MSS., 1st Series, Vol. 19. Clark's letter.] It was in the Chickasaw territory, and these warlike Indians soon assaulted it, making a determined effort to take it by storm, and though they were repulsed with very heavy slaughter, yet, to purchase their neutrality, the Americans were glad to abandon the fort.
Clark Moves to the Falls of Ohio.
Clark himself, towards the end of 1779, took up his abode at the Falls of the Ohio, where he served in some sort as a shield both for the Illinois and for Kentucky, and from whence he hoped some day to march against Detroit. This was his darling scheme, which he never ceased to cherish. Through no fault of his own, the day never came when he could put it in execution.
He was ultimately made a brigadier-general of the Virginian militia, and to the harassed settlers in Kentucky his mere name was a tower of strength. He was the sole originator of the plan for the conquest of the northwestern lands, and, almost unaided, he had executed his own scheme. For a year he had been wholly cut off from all communication with the home authorities, and had received no help of any kind. Alone, and with the very slenderest means, he had conquered and held a vast and beautiful region, which but for him would have formed part of a foreign and hostile empire [Footnote: It is of course impossible to prove that but for Clark's conquest the Ohio would have been made our boundary in 1783, exactly as it is impossible to prove that but for Wolfe the English would not have taken Quebec. But when we take into account the determined efforts of Spain and France to confine us to the land east of the Alleghanies, and then to the land southeast of the Ohio, the slavishness of Congress in instructing our commissioners to do whatever France wished, and the readiness shown by one of the commissioners, Franklin, to follow these instructions, it certainly looks as if there would not even have been an effort made by us to get the northwestern territory had we not already possessed it, thanks to Clark. As it was, it was only owing to Jay's broad patriotism and stern determination that our western boundaries were finally made so far-reaching. None of our early diplomats did as much for the west as Jay, whom at one time the whole west hated and reviled; Mann Butler, whose politics are generally very sound, deserves especial credit for the justice he does the New Yorker.
It is idle to talk of the conquest as being purely a Virginian affair. It was conquered by Clark, a Virginian, with some scant help from Virginia, but it was retained only owing to the power of the United States and the patriotism of such northern statesmen as Jay, Adams, and Franklin, the negotiators of the final treaty. Had Virginia alone been in interest, Great Britain would not have even paid her claims the compliment of listening to them. Virginia's share in the history of the nation has ever been gallant and leading; but the Revolutionary war was emphatically fought by Americans for America; no part could have won without the help of the whole, and every victory was thus a victory for all, in which all alike can take pride.]; he had clothed and paid his soldiers with the spoils of his enemies; he had spent his own fortune as carelessly as he had risked his life, and the only reward that he was destined for many years to receive was the sword voted him by the Legislature of Virginia. [Footnote: A probably truthful tradition reports that when the Virginian commissioners offered Clark the sword, the grim old fighter, smarting under the sense of his wrongs, threw it indignantly from him, telling the envoys that he demanded from Virginia his just rights and the promised reward of his services, not an empty compliment.]
CHAPTER IV.
CONTINUANCE OF THE STRUGGLE IN KENTUCKY AND THE NORTHWEST, 1779-1781.
Clark's Conquests Benefit Kentucky.