Hero Tales from History — George Rogers Clark, The Young Hero with a Great Idea
GEORGE ROGERS CLARK, THE YOUNG HERO WITH A GREAT IDEA
Soon after the beginning of the War for Independence, George Rogers Clark, a tall, broad-shouldered, red-haired, blue-eyed young man of twenty-four, left his home in Virginia and went over the mountains to join the settlers in Kentucky.
He had already had some adventures in the wilderness along the Ohio River, hunting wild game and fighting wilder Indians.
Not long after Clark’s arrival, the pioneers joined together and sent him and another man back to Virginia to see if they could have Kentucky adopted as a county of that state.
Virginia had just been declared one of the thirteen United States.
Clark and his companion were also to try to get the legislature to grant them money enough to buy gunpowder, which was now the greatest need of the Kentucky settlers in fighting the Indians.
When the two young delegates, in coonskin caps and leather leggings, arrived at the Virginia capital they found to their dismay that the legislators of the new state had just adjourned and gone home.
Patrick Henry, the fiery orator who had shouted in that very capitol building, “Give me liberty or give me death!
” was now governor of Virginia.
The young men from Kentucky went and told him they must not go back without that powder; so Governor Henry got them five hundred pounds, and arranged to make it all right when the State legislature should meet again.
Clark succeeded also in having Kentucky made a county of Virginia.
[Illustration: COLONEL GEORGE ROGERS CLARK.
] While the battles of the Revolution were being fought along the Atlantic coast, there was a terrible state of affairs in the great valley of the Ohio.
Henry Hamilton, the British governor at Detroit, then in charge of the forts and trading posts on the Wabash and Mississippi rivers, was doing one thing that made the settlers’ blood boil wherever they heard of it.
He had hired all the Indians he could to fight on the British side by furnishing them with scalping-knives and paying them a bounty, or money prize, on every scalp they brought in to prove that they had killed an American man, woman, or child.
The savages went everywhere on the warpath, murdering as many people as they could to earn as much bounty money as possible.
In the midst of this horrible warfare a bright idea came to George Rogers Clark, but he kept it to himself.
He sent two men across the Ohio and up the Mississippi and Wabash rivers to see what was going on at the British trading-posts there.
The word they brought back made the young man start at once for Virginia--this time alone.
He called again on Governor Patrick Henry and on his old neighbor, Thomas Jefferson.
Both of those great patriots approved his plan and charged him on no account to let it leak out before he was ready to act, for fear some wily Indian or dishonest Frenchman might give warning and spoil it all.
When George Rogers Clark started again from Virginia he wore the badge of a colonel in the Continental army; and he had the promised support of the state.
He went west by way of the Ohio River as far as what is now Louisville.
The settlement he started there owes its name to the news which Clark heard from some men who joined him there; that the king and the people of France had pledged money, men, and ships to help the United States in the War for Independence.
The new town was named in honor of the French king.
The first thing the young commander had to do was to raise a company of about two hundred men for his secret purpose.
All he told his recruits was that they were to go on a mission to put a stop to the terrible outrages of the “British” Indians upon the settlers.
It was not until they were again floating down the Ohio River toward the Mississippi that he told them that they were out to capture three towns on the Mississippi and the Wabash, which, as his two friends had found out for him, were not well guarded by the British.
Most of the people in these towns were French settlers, but were under British rule.
When they had nearly reached the place where the Ohio flows into the Mississippi, they left their boats and marched through tangled forests and across the plains toward Kaskaskia, the nearest of the three towns.
They arrived on the Fourth of July, 1778, the second anniversary of American independence.
They hid for a whole day in a clump of trees and bushes on the shore of the Mississippi.
After nightfall Clark detailed half his men to surround the village, and led the rest to the fort, where he found the French commander of the fort giving a dance by the flaring light of several torches.
Some of the women of the settlement and several Indians were present.
The young Virginian went right in and stood there smiling--it was so different from what he had expected!
--when an Indian spied him and gave an ear-splitting warwhoop.
The dancers stopped as if shot.
All stared at the tall young officer with the keen but kindly eyes.
After a moment the newcomer raised his voice and said, “Go on with the dancing, but I wish to announce that you are no longer subjects of King George.
This fort and this place now belong to the State of Virginia.
” As he spoke, his men burst in and took the French officers prisoner.
Clark added, to the village people, “You can go to your homes, but you must stay there.
All who leave their houses to-night will do so under pain of death.
The town is guarded by my men.
” The French settlers spent the night in fear, for Clark disarmed the village at once.
Some of their chief men came to him next day to beg him to spare their lives.
The young commander shook hands with them and told them that they need not be afraid of any one but the British.
“King Louis of France,” he explained, “is the friend of America.
He is going to help us in our fight for liberty.
” The French were all glad to hear the good news and lost no time in swearing to be true to the United States government.
In his record, Clark went on: “The scene was changed from almost dejection to that of joy in the extreme--the bells ringing, the church crowded, returning thanks--in short, every appearance of extravagant joy that could fill a place with almost confusion.
” To Colonel George Rogers Clark and his sturdy pioneers this easy campaign so far seemed like a pleasure excursion.
They were well received also at Fort Cahokia, on the Mississippi across from St. Louis.
Then a French volunteer took a few men to Fort Sackville at Vincennes and placed them on guard there.
Thus the three scattered strongholds of the British in the Northwest Territory came to belong to the new State of Virginia.
When Governor Hamilton got word, by Indian runner, of all that had happened, he came down from Detroit to Vincennes on the Wabash with five hundred English and Indians in canoes.
He easily retook Fort Sackville, for Clark had not been able to spare more than half a dozen men to hold it.
By that time winter had come on, and the Wabash began to rise and flood its banks.
The river overflowed this part of the country so regularly that the region was called “the drowned lands.
” The flood, of course, made it impossible for Hamilton to march his men to the Mississippi.
He announced that he would wait until spring before retaking the other forts.
So he sent away his Indian allies and ordered part of his troops back to winter quarters at Detroit.
When the young Kentucky colonel heard of this he saw a chance to spring another surprise.
He started out with one hundred and seventy men to travel two hundred and fifty miles through, rather than over, trails almost impossible to pass because of snow, ice, and overflowing streams.
The worst part of all the journey was at the last, near Vincennes, where the whole country looked like a large lake.
Clark himself led the way, feeling out the path with his feet.
He placed the tall, stalwart men among those who were smaller and weaker.
Sometimes they had to wade in the icy waters up to their necks.
Only the hardiest of the pioneers could endure long hours in such cold water.
Some of the men became numb and unconscious.
Their robust companions carried them in their arms or held them on floating logs until they came to a dry knoll like an oasis in the desert.
There the active men would rub and warm the chilled bodies of the rest.
Meantime a meal would be prepared of duck, venison, or other game, which Clark and his more able-bodied men had been able to shoot, dress, and cook in the ways best approved by hungry pioneers.
After they had eaten and dried their clothes, they would make up lost sleep.
Clark himself was a wonder of endurance, cheerfulness, and tact.
He started his men singing the favorite songs of the frontier, like, “Keep Your Powder Dry,” and encouraged and animated them by every means in his power.
It took five days to wade the last nine miles.
Washington’s crossing the Delaware in boats was a short and easy passage compared with this feat of George Rogers Clark.
But the humor of the American pioneer, who made a joke of his hardest experiences, saved the day.
Clark wrote of the “antic little drummer-boy” who floated across a river on his drum; but he did not tell how a tall soldier took that drummer on his shoulder and led the way through deep waters, while the boy beat a merry march for that shivering, laughing company.
Near Vincennes they met a man out shooting ducks.
From him they learned that Hamilton and his garrison did not dream of being attacked.
By this man Clark sent in to the people of the settlement this warning: “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 willing to surprise you, I take this method to request such of you as are true citizens and willing to enjoy the liberty I bring you, to remain in your houses; and those, if any there be, that are friends to the king, will instantly repair to the fort, and join the _hair-buyer general and fight like men_!
Those who are true friends of liberty may depend on being well treated; and I once more request them to keep out of the streets, for every one I find in arms on my arrival I shall treat as an enemy.
(Signed) G. R.
CLARK.
” As a result of this notice, the Indians took to the woods and the French villagers shut themselves in their homes.
Clark and his men soon rushed into the town and surrounded Fort Sackville.
The next day a party of “British” Indians came into town on their ponies, grinning and shaking the scalps they had taken from a number of Kentucky settlers.
These Indians on the warpath did not know of the presence of the little American army until some wrathful Kentuckians fell upon and killed every one of them in plain view of Hamilton and his soldiers.
The besieged garrison fought desperately for days, but the pioneer sharpshooters with their deadly aim forced them to surrender.
The British never attempted to take the little river fortresses again.
And when the treaty of peace was signed between the young United States and old England, that vast Northwest Territory was safe in the hands of the new nation.
But for the great thought so heroically carried out by George Rogers Clark and his men, that western empire--now occupied by the states of Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin--would at the end of the war have belonged to England.
As Clark said to Governor Patrick Henry when he outlined his plan of capturing the three river forts and holding all that territory for the United States of America: “A country which is not worth defending is not worth claiming.
”
