Читать книгу The Conquest: The True Story of Lewis & Clark - Eva Emery Dye - Страница 14

"I will dispossess these Americans," said Governor Hamilton at Detroit. "I will recover Vincennes. I will punish Kentucky. I will subdue all Virginia west of the mountains." And on the seventh of October, 1778, he left Detroit with eight hundred men,—regulars, volunteers, and picked Indians.

The French habitants of Vincennes were smoking their pipes in their rude verandas, when afar they saw the gleam of red coats. Vincennes sank without a blow and its people bowed again to the British king.

"I will quarter here for the winter," said Governor Hamilton. Then he sent an express to the Spanish Governor at St. Louis with the threat, "If any asylum be granted the rebels in your territory, the Spanish post will be attacked."

In their scarlet tunics, emblem of Britain, to Chickasaw and Cherokee his runners flew. At Mackinac the Lake Indians were to "wipe out the rebels of Illinoi'." Far over to the Sioux went presents and messages, even to the distant Assiniboine. Thousands of red-handled scalping knives were placed in their hands. Emissaries watched Kaskaskia. Picked warriors lingered around the Ohio to intercept any boats that might venture down with supplies for the little Virginian army.

New Year's dawned for 1779. Danger hovered over Clark at Kaskaskia.

"Not for a whole year have I received a scrape of a pen," he wrote to Patrick Henry. Too small was his force to stand a siege, too far away to hope for relief. He called his Kentuckians from Cahokia, and day and night toiled at the defences of Kaskaskia. How could they withstand the onslaught of Hamilton and his artillery?

But hark! There is a knocking at the gate, and Francis Vigo enters. Closeted with Clark he unfolds his errand.

"I am just from Vincennes. Listen! Hamilton has sent his Indian hordes in every direction. They are guarding the Ohio, watching the settlements, stirring up the most distant tribes to sweep the country. But he has sent out so many that he is weak. At this moment there are not more than eighty soldiers left in garrison, nor more than three pieces of cannon and some swivels mounted."

With inspiration born of genius and desperate courage Clark made his resolve. "If I don't take Hamilton he'll take me; and, by Heaven! I'll take Hamilton!"

But it was midwinter on the bleak prairies of Illinois, where to this day the unwary traveller may be frozen stark in the icy chill. Clark's men were almost entirely without clothing, ammunition, provisions. Can genius surmount destitution? Clark turned to Vigo.

"I have not a blanket, an ounce of bread, nor a pound of powder. Can you fit me out in the name of Virginia?"

Francis Vigo, a Sardinian by birth but Republican at heart, answered, "I can fit you out. Here is an order for money. Down yonder is a swivel and a boatload of powder. I will bid the merchants supply whatever you need. They can look to me for payment."

In two days Clark's men were fitted out and ready. Clad in skins, they stepped out like trappers.

On the shore lay a new bateau. Vigo's swivel was rolled aboard, and some of the guns of Kaskaskia.

"Now, Captain John Rogers," said Colonel Clark to his cousin, "with these forty-eight men and these cannon you go down the Mississippi, up the Ohio, and enter the Wabash River. Station yourself a few miles below Vincennes; suffer nothing to pass, and wait for me."

On the 4th of February the little galley slid out with Rogers and his men.

"Now who will go with me?" inquired Clark, turning to his comrades. "It will be a desperate service. I must call for volunteers."

Stirred by the daring of the deed, one hundred and thirty young men swore to follow him to the death. All the remaining inhabitants were detailed to garrison Kaskaskia and Cahokia. The fickle weather-vanes of old Kaskaskia veered and whirled, the winds blew hot and cold, then came fair weather for the starting.

It was February 5, 1779, when George Rogers Clark set out with his one hundred and thirty men to cross the Illinois. Vigo pointed out the fur-trader's trail to Vincennes and Detroit. Father Gibault blessed them as they marched away. The Creole girls put flags in the hands of their sweethearts, and begged them to stand by "le Colonel."

"O Mother of God, sweet Virgin, preserve my beloved," prayed the Donna de Leyba in the Government House at St. Louis.

Over all the prairies the snows were melting, the rains were falling, the rivers were flooding.

Hamilton sat at Vincennes planning his murders.

"Next year," he exulted, "there will be the greatest number of savages on the frontier that has ever been known. The Six Nations have received war belts from all their allies."

But Clark and his men were coming in the rain. Eleven days after leaving Kaskaskia they heard the morning guns of the fort. Deep and deeper grew the creeks and sloughs as they neared the drowned lands of the Wabash. Still they waded on, through water three feet deep; sometimes they were swimming. Between the two Wabashes the water spread, a solid sheet five miles from shore to shore. The men looked out, amazed, as on a rolling sea. But Clark, ever ahead, cheering his men, grasped a handful of gunpowder, and with a whoop, the well-known peal of border war, blackened his face and dashed into the water. The men's hearts leaped to meet his daring, and with "death or victory" humming in their brains, they plunged in after.

On and on they staggered, buffeting the icy water, stumbling in the wake of their undaunted leader. Seated on the shoulders of a tall Shenandoah sergeant, little Isham Floyd, the fourteen-year-old drummer boy, beat a charge. Deep and deeper grew the tide; waist deep, breast high, over their shoulders it played; and above, the leaden sky looked down upon this unparalleled feat of human endeavour. Never had the world seen such a march.

Five days they passed in the water,—days of chill and whoops and songs heroic to cheer their flagging strength. The wallets were empty of corn, the men were fainting with famine, when lo! an Indian canoe of squaws hove in sight going to Vincennes. They captured the canoe, and—most welcome of all things in the world to those famished men—it contained a quarter of buffalo and corn and kettles! On a little island they built a fire; with their sharp knives prepared the meat, and soon the pots were boiling. So exhausted were they that Clark would not let them have a full meal at once, but gave cups of broth to the weaker ones.

On the sixteenth day Clark cheered his men. "Beyond us lies Vincennes. Cross that plain and you shall see it."

On February 22, Washington's birthday, fatigued and weary they slept in a sugar camp. "Heard the evening and morning guns of the fort. No provisions yet. Lord help us!" is the record of Bowman's journal.

Still without food, the 23d saw them crossing the Horseshoe Plain,—four miles of water breast high. Frozen, starved, they struggled through, and on a little hill captured a Frenchman hunting ducks.

"No one dreams of your coming at this time of year," said the duck-hunter. "There are six hundred people in Vincennes, troops, Indians, and all. This very day Hamilton completed the walls of his fort."

Clark pressed his determined lips. "The situation is all that I can ask. It is death or victory." And there in the mud, half frozen, chilled to the marrow, starved, Clark penned on his knee a letter:

"To the Inhabitants of Post Vincennes:

"Gentlemen,—Being now within two miles of your village with my army, determined to take your fort this night, and not being willing to surprise you, I take this method to request such as are true citizens to remain still in your houses. Those, if any there be, that are friends of the King, will instantly repair to the fort, join the hair-buyer general, and fight like men. If any such do not go and are found afterwards, they may depend on severe punishment. On the contrary, those who are the friends of liberty may depend on being well treated, and I once more request them to keep out of the streets. Every one I find in arms on my arrival I shall treat as an enemy.

George Rogers Clark."

"Take this. Tell the people my quarrel is with the British. We shall be in Vincennes by the rising of the moon. Prepare dinner."

The messenger flew ahead; upon the captured horses of other duck-hunters Clark mounted his officers. It was just at nightfall when they entered the lower gate.

"Silence those drunken Indians," roared Hamilton at the sound of guns. But the Frenchmen themselves turned their rifles on the fort.

Under the friendly light of the new moon Clark and his men threw up an intrenchment, and from behind its shelter in fifteen minutes the skilled volleys of the border rifle had silenced two of the cannon.

"Surrender!" was Clark's stentorian summons at daylight.

Hamilton, with the blood of many a borderer on his head,—what had he to hope? Hot and hotter rained the bullets.

"Give me three days to consider."

"Not an hour!" was Clark's reply.

"Let me fight with you?" said The Tobacco's son, the principal chief on the Wabash.

"No," answered Clark, "you sit back and watch us. Americans do not hire Indians to fight their battles."

Amazed, the Indians fell back and waited.

The fort fell, and with it British dominion in the northwest territory. Then the galley hove in sight and the flag waved above Vincennes.

"A convoy up de rivière on its way with goods, from le Detroit," whispered a Frenchman. Directly Clark dispatched his boatmen to capture the flotilla.

"Sur la feuille ron—don don don," the voyageurs were singing.

Merrily rowing down the river came the British, when suddenly out from a bend swung three boats. "Surrender!"

Amid the wild huzzas of Vincennes the Americans returned, bringing the captive convoy with fifty thousand dollars' worth of food, clothing, and ammunition, and forty prisoners.

With a heart full of thanksgiving Clark paid and clothed his men out of that prize captured on the Wabash.

"Let the British flag float a few days," he said. "I may entertain some of the hair-buying General's friends."

Very soon painted red men came striding in with bloody scalps dangling at their belts. But as each one entered, red-handed from murder, Clark's Long Knives shot him down before the face of the guilty Hamilton. Fifty fell before he lowered the British flag. But from that day the red men took a second thought before accepting rewards for the scalps of white men.

"Now what shall you do with me?" demanded Hamilton.

"You? I shall dispatch you as a prisoner of war to Virginia."