Chapter VIII: Book I: When Red Men Ruled (4)

Little thought they of bare walls, low rafters, or small windows. After the boys hauled in the logs on a hand-sled, and built up a great flame, the whole world seemed illuminated. The pewter basins shone like mirrors, and while their fingers flew in the light of the fire, stories were told of Kaskaskia, Vincennes, St. Louis. But the Donna? Clark never spoke of her. It was a hidden grief that made him ever lonely. When he saw the lovelight all around him and sometimes left the room, the mother wondered why sudden silence came upon the group.

At Mulberry Hill Lucy was married to Major Croghan, who, on a farm five miles out, built Locust Grove, an English mansion of the olden style, in its day the handsomest in Louisville. And Fanny? She was the belle of Kentucky. In powdered wig and ruffles many a grave Virginian tripped with her the minuet and contra dances of the Revolution.

More and more young William became enamoured of the Indian dress, and went about gaily singing the songs of Robin Hood and hacking the meat with his hunting knife.

Out over the game-trails of Kentucky, like the beaten streets of Fredericksburg, the only city he ever knew, young William went with the Boones, Kenton, and his own famous brother, George Rogers Clark, in peltry cap and buckskin hunting-shirt girded with a leathern belt.

Led by them, with what eagerness he shot his first buffalo, deep in the woods of Kentucky. Not much longer could bears, deer, and buffalo retreat to the cane. With the coming of the Clarks an emigration set in that was to last for a hundred years.

Even amusements partook of sportive adventure. Now it was the hunter's horn summoning the neighbours to a bear chase in the adjoining hills. William surpassed the Indian himself in imitating the bark of the wolf, the hoot of the owl, the whistle of the whippoorwill.

Daniel Boone came often to Mulberry Hill in leggings and moccasins, ever hunting, hunting, hunting beaver, bear and coon, wolves and wild-cats, deer and foxes, and going back to trade their skins in Maryland for frontier furniture, knives and buttons, scissors, nails, and tea.

Upon his shot-pouch strap Boone fastened his moccasin awl with a buckhorn handle made out of an old clasp-knife, and carried along with him a roll of buckskin to mend his mocassins. While the grizzled hunter stitched deftly at his moccasins, William and York sat by, engaged in the same pastime, for wherever William went, York was his shadow.

"Since poor Richard's uncertain fate I can never trust the boy alone," said his mother. "York, it is your business to guard your young master." And he did, to the ends of the earth.

When "Uncle Daniel," rolled in a blanket, threw himself down on a bed of leaves and slept with his feet to the fire to prevent rheumatism, York and William lay down too, sleeping by turns and listening for Indians.

At daylight, loosely belting their fringed hunting shirts into wallets for carrying bread, a chunk of jerked beef, or tow for the gun, with tomahawk on the right side and scalping knife on the left, each in a leathern case, again they set off under the reddening forest.

Skilled in the lore of woodcraft, watchful of clouds and stars and sun, an intimate student of insect life and own brother to the wily beaver, bear, and buffalo, William Clark was becoming a scientist.

Returning from the chase with the same sort of game that graced the Saxon board before the Norman conquest, he sat down to hear the talk of statesmen. For when Clark's commission was revoked, Kentucky, unprotected, called a convention to form a State.

Affairs that in European lands are left to kings and their ministers, were discussed in the firelight of every cabin. Public safety demanded action. Exposed on three sides to savage inroads, with their Virginia capital hundreds of miles beyond forest, mountains, and rivers, no wonder Kentucky pleaded for statehood.

In a despotic country the people sleep. Here every nerve was awake. Discussion, discussion, discussion, made every fireside a school of politics; even boys in buckskin considered the nation's welfare.

Before he was seventeen William Clark was made an ensign and proudly donned the eagle and blue ribbon of the Cincinnati, a society of the soldiers of the Revolution of which Washington himself was president. Educated in the backwoods and by the cabin firelight, young William was already developing the striking bearing and bold unwavering character of his brother.

"What can have become of Richard?" Every day the mother heart glanced down the long avenue of catalpas that were growing in front of Mulberry Hill.

Of the whole family, the gentle affectionate Richard was an especial favourite. He was coming from Kaskaskia to see his mother, but never arrived. One day his horse and saddlebags were found on the banks of the Wabash. Was he killed by the Indians, or was he drowned? No one ever knew.

Again George Rogers Clark was out making treaties with the Indians to close up the Revolution, but British emissaries had been whispering in their ears, "Make the Ohio the boundary."

At last, after long delays, a few of the tribes came in to the council at the mouth of the Great Miami, some in friendship, some like the Shawnees, rudely suggestive of treachery.

"The war is over," explained General Clark as chairman; "we desire to live in peace with our red brethren. If such be the will of the Shawnees, let some of their wise men speak."

There was silence as they whiffed at the council pipes. Then a tall chief arose and glanced at the handful of whites and at his own three hundred along the walls of the council house.

"We come here to offer you two pieces of wampum. You know what they mean. Choose." Dropping the beaded emblems upon the table the savage turned to his seat by the wall.

Pale, calm as a statue, but with flashing eye, Clark tangled his slender cane into the belts and--flung them at the chiefs.

"Ugh!"

Every Indian was up with knife unsheathed, every white stood with hand on his sword. Into their very teeth the Long Knife had flung back the challenge, "Peace, or War."

Like hounds in leash they strained, ready to leap, when the lordly Long Knife raised his arm and grinding the wampum beneath his heel thundered,--

"_Dogs, you may go!_"

One moment they wavered, then broke and fled tumultuously from the council house.

All night they debated in the woods near the fort. In the morning, "Let me sign," said Buckongahelas.

Smiling, Clark guided the hand of the boastful Delaware, and all the rest signed with him.

XXIII

_MISSISSIPPI TROUBLES_

For the first time in their stormy history, the front and rear gates of the Kentucky forts lay back on their enormous wooden hinges, and all day long men and teams passed in and out with waggon loads of grain from the harvest fields. So hushed and still was the air, it seemed the old Indian days were gone for ever. At night the animals came wandering in from the woods, making their customary way to the night pens. Fields of corn waved undisturbed around the forts.

But the truce was brief. Already the Cherokees were slaughtering on the Wilderness Road, and beyond the Ohio, Shawnee and Delaware, wild at the sight of the white man's cabin, rekindled the fires around the stake.

Thousands of emigrants were coming over the mountains from Carolina, and down the Ohio from Pittsburg social boats lashed together rode in company, bark canoes, pirogues, flatboats, keelboats, scows, barges, bateaux and brigades of bateaux, sweeping down with resistless English, Scotch, Irish, Germans, Huguenots, armed for the battle of the races.

Still the powerful fur traders of Quebec and Montreal hung on to Detroit and Mackinac, still De Peyster opposed giving up the peninsulas of Michigan.

"Pen the young republic east of the Alleghanies," said France, Spain, England, when the Peace Treaty was under consideration. But Clark's conquest compelled them to grant the Illinois.

Before the ink was dry on the documents, Kentucky was trading down the great river of De Soto.

"The West must trade over the mountains," said the merchants of Philadelphia and Baltimore.

"The West will follow its rivers," answered Kentucky.

"Spain is Mistress of the Mississippi," said the Spanish King to John Jay, the American minister at Madrid.

In vain flatboatmen with wheat and corn said, "We are from Kentucky."

"What Kaintucke?" brayed the commandant at Natchez. "I know no Kaintucke. Spain own both side de river. I am ordered to seize all foreign vessel on de way to New Orleong."

Without the Spaniard the trip was sufficiently hazardous. Indians watched the shores. Pirates infested the bayous. Head winds made the frail craft unmanageable,--snags leered up like monsters to pierce and swallow. But every new settler enlarged the fields, and out of the virgin soil the log granaries were bursting.

"Carry away our grain, bring us merchandise," was the cry of expanding Kentucky.

But to escape the Indian was to fall into the hands of the Spaniard, and the Spaniard was little more than a legalised pirate.

Even the goods of the Frenchmen were seized with the warning, "Try it again and we'll send you to Brazil."

The Frenchmen resented this infringement on their immemorial right. Since the days of the daring and courageous Bienville who founded New Orleans, no man had said them nay. A tremendous hatred of the Spaniard grew up in the hearts of the Frenchmen.

In the midst of these confiscations there was distress and anarchy in the Illinois. The infant republic had not had time to stretch out there the strong arm of law. Floods and continental money had ruined the confiding Frenchmen; the garrisons were in destitution; they were writing to Clark:--

"Our credit is become so weak among the French that one dollar's worth of provisions cannot be had without prompt payment, were it to save the whole country."

"And why has our British Father made no provision for us," bewailed the Indians, "who at his beck and call have made such deadly enemies of the Long Knives? Our lands have been ravaged by fire and sword, and now we are left at their mercy."

"Let us drive the red rascals out," cried the infuriated settlers.

"No," said Washington, who understood and pitied the red men. "Forgive the past. Dispossess them gradually by purchase as the extension of settlement demands the occupation of their lands."

But five thousand impoverished Indians in the Ohio country kept thirty thousand settlers in hot water all the time. No lock on a barn door could save the horses, no precaution save the outlying emigrant from scalping or capture. Red banditti haunted the streams and forests, dragging away their screaming victims like ogres of mediæval tragedy.

Clark grew sick and aged over it. "No commission, no money, no right to do anything for my suffering country!"

"Your brother, the General, is very ill," said old John Clark, coming out of the sick chamber at Mulberry Hill. In days to come there were generals and generals in the Clark family, but George Rogers was always "the General."

Into ten years the youthful commander had compressed the exposure of a lifetime. Mental anguish and days in the icy Wabash told now on his robust frame, and inflammatory rheumatism set in from which he never recovered.

"The Americans are your enemies," emissaries from Detroit were whispering at Vincennes. "The Government has forsaken you. They take your property, they pay nothing."

"We have nothing to do with the United States," said the French citizens, weary of a Congress that heeded them not. "We consider ourselves British subjects and shall obey no other power."

Even Clark's old friend, The Tobacco's Son, had gone back to his British father, and as always with Indians, dug up the red tomahawk.

A committee of American citizens at Vincennes sent a flying express to Clark.

"This place that once trembled at your victorious arms, and these savages overawed by your superior power, is now entirely anarchical and we shudder at the daily expectation of horrid murder. We beg you will write us by the earliest opportunity. Knowing you to be a friend of the distressed we look to you for assistance."

Such a call could not be ignored. Kentucky was aroused and summoned her favourite General to the head of her army. From a sick bed he arose to lead a thousand undisciplined men, and with him went his brother William.

The sultry sun scorched, the waters were low, provisions did not arrive until nine days after the soldiers, and then were spoiled. Fatigued, hungry, three hundred revolted and left; nevertheless, the Indians had fled and Vincennes was recovered.

Just then up the Wabash came a Spaniard with a boatload of valuable goods. Clark promptly confiscated the cargo, and out of them paid his destitute troops.

"It is not alone retaliation," said Clark, "It is a warning. If Spain will not let us trade down the river, she shall not trade up."

Kentucky applauded. They even talked of sending Clark against the Spaniards and of breaking away from a government that refused to aid them.

"General Clark seized Spanish goods?" Virginia was alarmed and promptly repudiated the seizure. "We are not ready to fight Spain."

Clark's friends were disturbed. "You will be hung."

Clark laughed. "I will flee to the Indians first."

"We have as much to fear from the turbulence of our backwoodsmen," said Washington, "as from the hostility of the Spaniards."

But at this very time, unknown to Washington, the Spaniards were arming the savages of the south, to exterminate these reckless ambitious frontiersmen.

Louisiana feared these unruly neighbours. Intriguers from New Orleans were whispering, "Break with the Atlantic States and league yourself with Spain."

Then came the rumour, "Jay proposes to shut up the Mississippi for twenty-five years!"

Never country was in such a tumult.

"We are sold! We are vassals of Spain!" cried the men of the West. "What? Close the Mississippi for twenty-five years as a price of commercial advantage on the Atlantic coast? Twenty-five years when our grain is rotting? Twenty-five years must we be cut off when the Wilderness Road is thronged with packtrains, when the Ohio is black with flatboats? Where do they think we are going to pen our people? Where do they think we are going to ship our produce? Better put twenty thousand men in the field at once and protect our own interests."

The bond was brittle; how easily might it be broken!

Even Spain laughed at the weakness of a Union that could not command Kentucky to give up its river. And Kentucky looked to Clark. "We must conquer Spain or unite with her. We must have the Mississippi. Will you march with us on New Orleans?"

Then, happily, Virginia spoke out for the West. "We must aid them. The free navigation of the Mississippi is the gift of nature to the United States."

The very next day Madison announced in the Virginia Assembly, "I shall move the election of delegates to a Constitutional Convention." The stability of the Union seemed pivoted upon an open river to the Gulf.

Veterans of the Revolution and of the Continental Congress met to frame a constitution in 1787. After weeks of deliberation with closed doors, the immortal Congress adjourned. The Constitution was second only to the Declaration of Independence. Without kings or princes a free people had erected a Continental Republic.

The Constitution was adopted, and all the way into Kentucky wilds were heard the roaring of cannon and ringing of bells that proclaimed the Father of his Country the first President of the United States.

"We must cement the East and the West," said Washington. But that West was drifting away--with its Mississippi.

About this time young Daniel Boone said, "Father, I am going west."

Just eighteen, one year older than William Clark, in the summer of 1787, he concluded to strike out for the Mississippi.

"Well, Dannie boy, thee take the compass," said his father.

It was the old guide, as large as a saucer, that Lord Dunmore gave Boone when he sent him out to call in the surveyors from the Falls of the Ohio thirteen years before.

Mounted on his pony, with a wallet of corn and a rifle on his back, Boone rode straight on westward thirty days without meeting a single human being. Pausing on the river bank opposite St. Louis he hallooed for an hour before any one heard him.

"Dat some person on de oder shore," presently said old René Kiercereaux, the chorister at the village church.

A canoe was sent over and brought back Boone. As if a man had dropped from the moon, French, Spanish, and Indian traders gathered. He spoke not a word of French, but Auguste Chouteau's slave Petrie could talk English.

"Son of Boone, de great hunter? Come to my house!"

"Come to _my_ house!"

The hospitable Creoles strove with one another for the honour of entertaining the son of Daniel Boone. For twelve years he spent his summers in St. Louis and his winters in western Missouri, hunting and trapping.

"The best beaver country on earth," he wrote to his father. "You had better come out."

"Eef your father, ze great Colonel Boone, will remove to Louisiana," said Señor Zenon Trudeau, the Lieutenant-Governor, "eef he will become a citizen of Spain, de King will appreciate de act and reward him handsomely."

XXIV

_ST. CLAIR_

"Kentucky! Kentucky! I hear nothing else," exclaimed the Fighting Parson of the Revolution, who had thrown aside his prayer-book and gown to follow the armies of Washington. "If this western exodus continues Virginia bids fair to be depopulated." Even Jack Jouett, who had ridden to warn Jefferson of Tarleton's raid, had gone to become an honoured member of Kentucky's first legislature.

"Father, let me go."

Charles Mynn Thruston, the son of the Fighting Parson, had long desired to follow Fanny Clark, but his father held him back. Smiling now at the ardour of his son, he said, "You may go, my boy. I am thinking of the western country myself."

Preparations were immediately made, business affairs settled, and a farewell dinner brought friends to historic Mount Zion, the famous Shenandoah seat of the Fighting Parson.

"A strangah desiahs to know, sah, if he can get dinnah, sah," announced black Sambo.

"Certainly, certainly." Parson Thruston was the soul of hospitality. "Bring him at once to the table, Sambo."

The stranger seated himself and ate in silence.

"I perceive," remarked the Parson after the courses had been removed, "I perceive that you are a traveller. May I inquire whence you come?"

Every ear was intent. "From Kentucky, sir," answered the stranger.

"Ah, that is fortunate. I am about to leave for that country myself," exclaimed young Thruston, "and shall be glad to hear such news as you may have to communicate."

The stranger smiled and pondered. "The only interesting incident that I recall before my departure from Louisville, was the marriage of the Kentucky belle, Miss Fanny Clark, to Dr. O'Fallon."

As if struck by a bolt from heaven, Charles Mynn Thruston fell unconscious to the floor.

Dr. O'Fallon was a young Irish gentleman of talent and learning. An intimate friend of the Governor of South Carolina, just before the Revolution he had come to visit America, but espousing the cause of the colonists, the Governor promptly clapped him into prison.

"Imprisoned O'Fallon!" The people of Charleston arose, liberated him, and drove the Governor to the British fleet in the harbour.

Dr. O'Fallon enlisted as a private soldier. But surgeons were needed,--he soon proved himself one of skill unexcelled in America. General Washington himself ordered him north, and made him Surgeon-General in his own army. Here he remained until the close of the war, and was thanked by Congress for his services.

And now he had visited Kentucky to assist in securing the navigation of the Mississippi, and met--Fanny. With the charming Fanny as his wife, Dr. O'Fallon rode many a mile in the woods, the first great doctor of Louisville.

Other emigrants were bringing other romances, and other tragedies. "Ohio! Ohio! We hear nothing but Ohio!" said the people of New England.

One rainy April morning the "Mayflower," a flatboat with a second Plymouth colony, turned into the Muskingum and founded a settlement.

"Marie, Marie Antoinette,--did she not use her influence in behalf of Franklin's mission to secure the acknowledgment of American independence? Let us name our settlement Marietta."

So were founded the cities of the French king and queen, Louisville and Marietta. A few months later, Kentuckians went over and started Cincinnati on the site of George Rogers Clark's old block-house.

Into the Ohio, people came suddenly and in swarms, "institutional Englishmen," bearing their household gods and shaping a state.

"These men come wearing hats," said the Indians. Frenchmen wore handkerchiefs and never tarried.

Surveyors came.

Squatting around their fires, with astonishment and fear the Indians watched "the white man's devil," squinting over his compass and making marks in his books. Wherever the magical instrument turned all the best lands were bound with chains fast to the white man.

The Indians foresaw their approaching destruction and hung nightly along the river shore, in the thick brush under the sycamores, stealing horses and sinking boats. With tomahawk in hand, a leader among them was young Tecumseh.

"The Ohio shall be the boundary. No white man shall plant corn in Ohio!" cried the Indian.

"Keep the Ohio for a fur preserve," whispered Detroit at his back.

While wedding bells were ringing at Mulberry Hill, Marietta was suffering. The gardens were destroyed by Indian marauders, the game was driven off, and great was the privation within the walled town.

That was the winter when Governor St. Clair came with his beautiful daughter Louisa, the fleetest rider in the chase, the swiftest skater on the ice, and, like all pioneer girls, so skilled with the rifle that she could bring down the bird on the wing, the squirrel from the tree.

Creeping out over the crusty February snow, every family in the settlement had its kettle in the sugar orchard boiling down the maple sap. Corn-meal and sap boiled down together formed for many the daily food.

But with all the bravado of their hearts, men and women passed sleepless vigils while the sentinel stood all night long in the lonely watchtower of the middle blockhouse. At any moment might arise the cry, "The Indians! The Indians are at the gates!" and with the long roll of the drum beating alarm every gun was ready at a porthole and every white face straining through the dark.

When screaming wild geese steering their northern flight gave token of returning spring, when the partridge drummed in the wood and the turkey gobbled, when the red bird made vocal the forest and the hawthorn and dogwood flung out their perfume, then too came the Indian from his winter lair.

"Ah," sighed many a mother, "I prefer the days of gloom and tempest, for then the red man hugs his winter fire."

Always among the first in pursuit of marauding Indians, William Clark as a cadet had already crossed the Ohio with General Scott, "a youth of solid and promising parts and as brave as Cæsar," said Dr. O'Fallon.

Joseph Brant, Thayendanegea, presented a memorial to Congress insisting upon the Ohio as the Indian boundary. His son came down to Marietta.

"Ah, yes," was the whispered rumour at Marietta, "young Brant, the educated son of the famous Mohawk leader, aspires to the hand of Louisa St. Clair." But the Revolutionary General spurned his daughter's dusky suitor.

The next day after New Year's, 1791, the Indians swept down on Marietta with the fiendish threat, "Before the trees put forth their leaves again no white man's cabin shall smoke beyond the Ohio."

"Capture St. Clair alive," bade the irate Mohawk chieftain. "Shoot his horse under him but do not kill him." Did he hope yet to win consent to his marriage with Louisa?

The next heard of St. Clair was when the last shattered remnant of his prostrate army fell back on Cincinnati, a defeat darker, more annihilating, more ominous than Braddock's.

"My God," exclaimed Washington, "it's all over! St. Clair's defeated--routed; the officers are nearly all killed, the men by wholesale; the rout is complete--too shocking to think of--and a surprise into the bargain."

No wonder Secretary Lear stood appalled as the great man poured forth his wrath in the house at Philadelphia.

Fifteen hundred went out from Cincinnati,--five hundred came back. A thousand scalps had Thayendanegea.

The news came to Mulberry Hill like a thunderbolt. Kentucky, even Pittsburg, looked for an immediate savage inundation,--for was not all that misty West full of warriors? The old fear leaped anew. Like an irresistible billow they might roll over the unprotected frontier.

From his bed of sickness General Clark started up. "Ah, Detroit! Detroit! Hadst thou been taken my countrymen need not have been so slaughtered."

At Marietta, up in the woods and on the side hills, glittered multitudes of fires, the camps of savages. Hunger added its pangs to fear. The beleaguered citizens sent all the money they could raise by two young men to buy salt, meat, and flour at Redstone-Old-Fort on the Monongahela. Suddenly the river closed with ice; in destitution Marietta waited.

"They have run off with the money," said some.

"They have been killed by Indians," said others. But again, as suddenly, the ice broke, and early in March the young men joyfully moored their precious Kentucky ark at the upper gate of the garrison at Marietta.

XXV

_THE SWORD OF "MAD ANTHONY" WAYNE_

"Another defeat will ruin the reputation of the government," said Washington, as he sent out "Mad Anthony" Wayne, the uproarious Quaker general, with ruffles, queue, and cocked hat, the stormer of Stony Point in the Revolution.

In vain Wayne sent commissioners to treat with the Indians. Elated with recent victories, "The Ohio shall be the boundary," was the defiant answer.

An Indian captured and brought to Wayne said of the British: "All their speeches to us are red, red as blood. All the wampum and feathers are painted red. Our war-pipes and hatchets are red. Even the tobacco is red for war."

"My mind and heart are upon that river," said Cornplanter, an Indian chief, pointing to the Ohio. "May that water ever continue to be the boundary between the Americans and the Indians."

Commissioned by Washington First Lieutenant of the Fourth Sub-Legion, on the first of September, 1792, William Clark crossed the Ohio and spent the winter at Legionville where Wayne was collecting and drilling his army.

"I will have no six months men," said Wayne. "Two years will it take to organise, drill, and harden them before we think of taking the field."

"We are certain to be scalped," whispered timorous ones, remembering St. Clair's slaughter. Hundreds deserted. The very word Indian inspired terror.

But horse, foot, and artillery, he drilled them, the tremblers took courage, and the government, at last awakened, stood firmly behind with money and supplies.

"Remember, Stony Point was stormed with unloaded muskets. See! You must know the use of the broadsword and of the bayonet, a weapon before which the savages cannot stand."

At work went "Mad Anthony" teaching his men to load and fire upon the run, to leap to the charge with loud halloos, anticipating all possible conditions.

"Charge in open order. Each man rely on himself, and expect a personal encounter with the enemy." The men caught his spirit. Wayne's Legion became a great military school.

Now he was drilling superb Kentucky cavalry, as perfectly matched as the armies of Europe, sorrel and bay, chestnut and gray, bush-whacking and charging, leaping ravines and broken timber, outdoing the Indians themselves in their desperate riding.

And with all this drill, Wayne was erecting and garrisoning forts. In the fall of 1793, Lieutenant Clark was dispatched to Vincennes.

"It appears that all active and laborious commands fall on me," he wrote to his brother Jonathan, in Virginia. "Not only labour, but I like to have starved,--was frozen up in the Wabash twenty days without provisions. In this agreeable situation had once more to depend on my rifle."

After several skirmishes with Indians, Lieutenant Clark returned to Fort Washington (Cincinnati) in May, to be immediately dispatched with twenty-one dragoons and sixty cavalry to escort seven hundred packhorses laden with provisions and clothing to Greenville, a log fort eighty miles north of Cincinnati.

The Shawnees were watching. Upon this rich prize fell an ambuscade of sixty Indians. Eight men were killed, the train began to retreat, when Clark came dashing up from the rear, put the assailants to flight, and saved the day. For this he was thanked by General Wayne.

Washington, Jefferson, the whole country impatiently watched for news of Wayne on the Ohio.

Drill, drill, drill,--keeping out a cloud of scouts that no peering Indian might discover his preparations, Wayne exercised daily now with rifle, sabre, and bayonet until no grizzly frontiersman surpassed his men at the target, no fox-hunter could leap more wildly, no swordsman more surely swing the sharp steel home. At the sight young Tennesseeans and Kentuckians, Virginians of the border and Pennsylvanians of lifetime battle, were eager for the fray.

About midsummer, 1794, Wayne moved out with his Legion, twenty-six hundred strong, and halted at Fort Greenville for sixteen hundred Kentucky cavalry. Brigades of choppers were opening roads here and there to deceive.

"This General that never sleeps is cutting in every direction," whispered the watchful Shawnees. "He is the Black Snake."

For a last time Wayne offered peace. His messengers were wantonly murdered.

The issue at Fallen Timbers lasted forty minutes,--the greatest Indian battle in forty years of battle. Two thousand Indians crouching in the brush looked to see the Americans dismount and tie their horses as they did in St. Clair's battle,--but no, bending low on their horses with gleaming sabres and fixed bayonets, on like a whirlwind came thundering the American cavalry.

"What was it that defeated us? It was the Big Wind, the Tornado," said the Indians.

Matchekewis was there from Sheboygan with his warriors, the Black Partridge from Illinois, and Buckongahelas. The Shawnees had their fill of fighting that day; Tecumseh fell back at the wild onset, retreating inch by inch.

William Clark led to the charge a column of Kentuckians and drove the enemy two miles. But why enumerate in this irresistible legion, where all were heroes on that 20th of August, 1794.

Wayne's victory ended the Revolution. Ninety days after, Lord St. Helens gave up Ohio in his treaty with Jay, and England bound herself to deliver the northwestern posts that her fur traders had hung on to so vainly.

Niagara, Michilimackinac, Detroit, keys to the Lakes, _entrepôts_ to all the fur trade of the Northwest, were lost to Britain for ever. It was hardest to give up Detroit,--it broke up their route and added many a weight to the weary packer's back when the fur trade had to take a more northern outlet along the Ottawa.

It was ten o'clock in the morning of July 11, 1796, when the Detroiters peering through their glasses espied two vessels. "The Yankees are coming!"

A thrill went through the garrison, and even through the flag that fluttered above. The last act in the war of independence was at hand.

The four gates of Detroit opened to be closed no more, as the drawbridge fell over the moat and the Americans marched into the northern stronghold. It was Lernoult's old fort built so strenuously in that icy winter of 1779-80, when "Clark is coming" was the watchword of the north. Scarce a picket in the stockade had been changed since that trying time. Blockhouse, bastion, and battery could so easily have been taken, that even at this day we cannot suppress a regret that Clark had not a chance at Detroit!

Barefooted Frenchmen, dark-eyed French girls, and Indians, Indians everywhere, came in to witness the transfer of Detroit. At noon, July 11, 1796, the English flag was lowered and the Stars and Stripes went up where Clark would fain have hung them seventeen years before.

And the old cellar of the council house! Like a tomb was its revelation, for there, mouldered with the must of years, lay two thousand scalps, long tresses of women, children's golden curls, and the wiry locks of men, thrown into that official cellar in those awful days that now were ended.

The merry Frenchmen on their pipestem farms,--for every inhabitant owned his pathway down to the river,--the merry Frenchmen went on grinding their corn by their old Dutch windmills, went on pressing their cider in their gnarled old apple orchards. They could not change the situation if they would, and they would not if they could. The lazy windmills of Detroit swung round and round as if it had been ever thus. Still the Indians slid in and out and still the British traders lingered, loath to give up the fur trade of the Lakes.

The next year after Wayne's victory the last buffalo in Ohio was killed, and in 1796 the first American cabins were built at Cleveland and Chillicothe. For the first time the Ohio, the great highway, was safe. Passenger boats no longer had bullet-proof cabins, no longer trailed cannon on their gunwales. In that year twenty thousand emigrants passed down the Ohio. Astonished and helpless the red men saw the tide. By 1800 there were more whites in the Mississippi valley than there were Indians in all North America.

XXVI

_THE SPANIARD_

Early in April of 1793 a company of French merchants sat at a dinner in New Orleans. Before them magnolias bloomed in the plaza. Out in the harbour their vessels were flying the Spanish flag.

"Spain has declared war against France. A French frigate is sailing for the Gulf."

Like a bomb the announcement burst in their midst.

The fine and handsome face of Charles De Pauw was lit with determination. He had come over with Lafayette, and had invested a fortune in the new world.

"My ships are in danger. I will haul down the Spanish colours and float the American flag. Long enough have the Frenchmen of Missouri and Illinois endured the Spanish yoke. Long enough have our cargoes been confiscated and our trade ruined by unnecessary and tyrannical restrictions."

"But America will not help us."

"The Kentuckians will," answered De Pauw. "Already they are begging George Rogers Clark to march on New Orleans."

A huzza rang round the table. "We shall be here to help him."

"Every settlement that borders the Mississippi will join with us. Spain rules to Pittsburg, dictates prices, opens and closes markets. Will Americans endure that? From New Orleans to British America, Spain stretches an invisible cordon, 'thus far and no farther.' All beyond is the private park of Don Carlos IV."

"What will Congress do?"

"Congress?" echoed another. "What does it matter to those people beyond the Alleghanies? They are very far away. Europe is not so remote. Our interests lie with Mississippi and the sea."

"But that would dismember the Union."

"Will it dismember the Union for the Louisianians to break their fetter from Spain and thereby give us a market clear of duty? The Kentuckians, equally with us, are irritated at the Spanish Government. We have a right to strike Spain."

Charles De Pauw renamed his schooner the "Maria" and sailed out of the Gulf under the Stars and Stripes. On the way to New York he met the frigate returning that brought the French minister, Charles Genet, to Charleston.

Acres of flatboats lay freighted on the dimpling Ohio. Corn, wheat, oats, rye,--the worn-out tobacco lands of Virginia knew nothing like it. But the Spaniard stood at the gate and locked up the river.

"A King?" Americans laughed at the fancy. "A King to check or hinder us in our rights? Who shall refuse us? Are we not Americans?"

"The Mississippi is ours," cried Kentucky. "By the law of nature, by the authority of numbers, by the right of necessity. If Congress will not give it to us, we must take it ourselves."

And now France--

George Rogers Clark was profoundly moved by the French crusade for liberty. "We owe it to France to help her. Was not France our friend in the time of trouble?"

Then he wrote to the French minister, tendering his services to France in her arduous struggle:

"I would begin with St. Louis, a rich, large, and populous
town, and by placing two or three frigates within the
Mississippi's mouth (to guard against Spanish succours) I
would engage to subdue New Orleans, and the rest of
Louisiana. If farther aided I would capture Pensacola; and
if Santa Fé and the rest of New Mexico were objects--I know
their strength and every avenue leading to them, for
conquest.--All the routes as well as the defenceless
situation of those places are perfectly known to me and I
possess draughts of all their defences, and estimates of
the greatest force which could oppose me. If France will be
hearty and secret in this business my success borders on
certainty.--The route from St. Louis to Santa Fé is easy,
and the places not very distant.... To save Congress from a
rupture with Spain on our account, we must first expatriate
ourselves and become French citizens. This is our
intention."

On its errand of good or ill the letter sped to the French minister to the United States, and lo! that minister was Genet, just landed at Charleston.

Genet had come from Revolutionary France, at this moment fighting all Europe, so frightfully had upblazed the tiny spark of liberty borne back by the soldiers of Rochambeau.

André Michaux was instructed to hasten to the Falls of the Ohio with this message to George Rogers Clark:

"The French minister has filled out this blank commission from his Government making you a Marshal of France, Major General and Commander-in-Chief of the French Legion on the Mississippi."

Thus had Genet answered the letter.

New Orleans was watching. "The Americans are threatening us with an army assembling on the Ohio," wrote Carondelet in alarm to Spain.

"Ill-disposed and fanatical citizens in this Capital," he added, "restless and turbulent men infatuated with Liberty and Equality, are increased with every vessel that comes from the ports of France."

He begged Spain to send him troops from Cuba. He begged the Captain General of Cuba to send him troops from Havana.

Gayoso put his fort at Vicksburg in defence and Carondelet sent up a division of galleys to New Madrid and St. Louis.

But Carondelet, the Governor of Louisiana, had his hands full. Frenchmen of his own city were signing papers to strike a blow for France. He would build defences,--they opposed and complained of his measures. Merchants and others whose business suffered by the uncertainties of commerce took no responsibility as the domineering little Baron endeavoured to fortify New Orleans with palisaded wall, towers, and a moat seven feet deep and forty feet wide.

"It may happen that the enemy will try to surprise the plaza on a dark night," said the Baron.

All the artillery was mounted. Haughty Spanish cavaliers with swords and helmets paced the parapets of the grim pentagonal bastions. Watchmen with spears and lanterns guarded the gates below. The city was in terror of assault. At every rise of the river Carondelet looked for a filibustering army out of the north. By every ship runners were sent to Spain.

News of the intended raid penetrated even the Ursuline Convent. Sister Infelice paled when she heard it, gave a little gasp, and fainted.

"Clearly she fears, the gentle sister fears these northern barbarians," remarked the Mother Superior. "Take her to her chamber."

And St. Louis,--not since 1780 had she been so alarmed. The Governor constructed a square redoubt flanked by bastions, dug a shallow moat, and raised a fort on the hill. Seventeen grenadiers with drawn sabres stood at the drawbridge.

"Immediately on the approach of the enemy, retreat to New Madrid," was the order of this puissant Governor.

George Rogers Clark, who had planned and executed the conquest of Illinois, burned now for the conquest of Louisiana. And the West looked to him; she despised and defied the Spaniard as she despised and defied the Indian. They blocked the way, they must depart.

Clark's old veteran officers Christy, Logan, Montgomery, sent word they would serve under his command. The French squadron at Philadelphia was to set sail for the Gulf.

Major Fulton and Michaux, Clark's right-hand men, travelled all over the West enlisting men, provisions, and money. De Pauw engaged to furnish four hundred barrels of flour and a thousand-weight of bacon, and to send brass cannon over the mountains. In December Clark's men were already cutting timber to build boats on the Bear Grass. Five thousand men were to start in the Spring, provided Congress did not oppose and Genet could raise a million dollars.

In despair Carondelet wrote home, saying that if the project planned was carried into effect, he would have no other alternative but to surrender.

"Having no reinforcements to hope for from Havana, I have no further hope than in the faults the enemy may commit and in accidents which may perhaps favour us."

Carondelet gave up. In March he wrote again, "The commandant at Post Vincennes has offered cannon for the use of the expedition."

Early in January Clark was writing to De Pauw, "Have your stores at the Falls by the 20th of February, as in all probability we shall descend the river at that time."

Montgomery reported, "arms and ammunition, five hundred bushels of corn and ten thousand pounds of pork, also twenty thousand weight of buffalo beef, eleven hundred weight of bear meat, seventy-four pair venison hams, and some beef tongues."

With two hundred men Montgomery lay at the mouth of the Ohio ready to cross over. Not ninety Spaniards of regular troops were there to defend St. Louis, and two hundred militia, and the Governor had only too much reason to fear that St. Louis would open her gates and join the invader. All that was lacking was money. Hundreds of Kentuckians waited the signal to take down their guns and march on New Orleans.

But the ministers of Spain and of Great Britain had not been quiet. They both warned Washington. Could he hold the lawless West? It was a problem for statesmen.

Jefferson wrote to Governor Shelby of Kentucky to restrain the expedition.

"I have grave doubts," Governor Shelby answered, "whether there is any legal authority to restrain or to punish them. For, if it is lawful for any one citizen of the state to leave it, it is equally so for any number of them to do it. It is also lawful for them to carry any quantity of provisions, arms, and ammunition.--I shall also feel but little inclination to take an active part in punishing or retaining any of my fellow citizens for a supposed intention only, to gratify the fears of the ministers of a prince who openly withholds from us an invaluable right, and who secretly instigates against us a most savage and cruel enemy."

Washington promptly issued a proclamation of neutrality and requested the recall of Genet. From the new Minister of France Clark received formal notice that the conquest of Louisiana was abandoned. But Spain had had her fright. She at once opened the river, and the mass of collected produce found its way unimpeded to the sea.

In June Congress passed a law for ever forbidding such expeditions.

"I have learned that the Spaniards have built a fort at Chickasaw Bluff, on this side of the river," said General Wayne, one night in September, 1795, summoning William Clark to his headquarters. "I desire you to go down to the commanding officer on the west side and inquire his intentions."

Why, of all that army, had Wayne chosen the young lieutenant of the Fourth Sub-Legion for this errand? Was it because he bore the name of Clark? Very well; both knew why Spain had advanced to the Chickasaw Bluff.

As Washington went forty years before to inquire of the French, "Why are you building forts on the Ohio?" so now William Clark, on board the galiot, "La Vigilante," dropped down to New Madrid and asked the Spaniard, "Why are you building forts on the Mississippi?"

Down came Charles De Hault De Lassus, the Commandant himself. "I assure you we have been very far from attempting to usurp the territory of a nation with whom we desire to remain in friendship," protested the courtly Commandant with a wave of his sword and a flutter of his plume. "But the threats of the French republicans living in the United States,"--he paused for a reply.

"Calm yourself," replied Lieutenant Clark. "Read here the pacific intentions of my country."

None better than William Clark understood the virtues of conciliation and persuasion. "I assure you that the United States is disposed to preserve peace with all the powers of Europe, and with Spain especially."

With mutual expressions of esteem and cordial parting salvos, Lieutenant Clark left his Spanish friends with a mollified feeling toward "those turbulent Americans."

Nevertheless George Rogers Clark had opened the river, to be closed again at peril.

Among the soldiers at Wayne's camp that winter was Lieutenant Meriwether Lewis, "just from the Whiskey Rebellion," he said. Between him and William Clark, now Captain Clark, there sprang up the most intimate friendship.

"The nature of the Insurrection?" remarked Lewis in his camp talks with Clark. "Why, the Pennsylvania mountaineers about Redstone-Old-Fort refused to pay the whiskey tax, stripped, tarred, and feathered the collectors! 'The people must be taught obedience,' said General Washington, and, after all peaceable means failed, he marched fifteen thousand militia into the district. The thought that Washington was coming at the head of troops made them reconsider. They sent deputations to make terms about the time of Wayne's battle. We built log huts and forted for the winter on the Monongahela about fifteen miles above Pittsburg."

"And so the Spaniards have come to terms?" queried Lewis as Clark still remained silent.

"Yes, they have opened the river."

"I came near being in the midst of that," continued Lewis. "Michaux came to Charlottesville. I was eighteen, just out of school and eager for adventure. Michaux was to explore the West. Mr. Jefferson had a plan for sending two people across the Rocky Mountains. I begged to go, and probably should, had not Michaux been recalled when the new French minister came in."

"Rest assured," replied Clark solemnly, "no exploration of the West can ever be made while Spain holds Louisiana."

XXVII

_THE BROTHERS_

"My claim is as just as the book we swear by."

The hero of the heroic age of the Middle West was discussing his debts for the conquest of Illinois. "I have given the United States half the territory they possess, and for them to suffer me to remain in poverty in consequence of it will not redound to their honour. I engaged in the Revolution with all the ardour that youth could possess. My zeal and ambition rose with my success, determined to save those countries which had been the seat of my toil, at the hazard of my life and fortune.

"At the most gloomy period of the war when a ration could not be purchased on public credit, I risked my own credit, gave my bonds, mortgaged my lands for supplies, paid strict attention to every department, flattered the friendly and confused the hostile tribes of Indians, by my emissaries baffled my internal enemies (the most dangerous of all to public interest), and carried my point.

"Thus at the end of the war I had the pleasure of seeing my country secure, but with the loss of my manual activity. Demands of very great amount were not paid, others with depreciated paper. Now suits are commenced against me, for those sums in specie. My military and other lands, earned by my services, are appropriated for the payment of these debts, and demands yet are remaining, to a considerable amount more than the remains of a shattered fortune will pay.

"This is truly my situation. I see no other recourse remaining but to make application to my country for redress."

Brooding over his troubles, George Rogers Clark had built himself a little cabin at the Point of Rock, overlooking the Falls of the Ohio, and gone into a self-chosen St. Helena. The waves dashed and roared below and the mist arose, as he looked out on Corn Island, scene of his earliest exploit.

A library of handsome books was the principal ornament the house contained. Reading, hunting, fishing, he passed his days, while the old negro servants attended to the kitchen and the garden.

"I have come," answered his brother William, "I have retired from the army, to devote myself to you. Now what can be done?"

"Done? Look at these bills. Gratiot's is paid, thank God, or he would have been a ruined man. Monroe helped him through with that. And Menard's? That is shelved at Richmond for fifty years." General Clark turned the leaves of his note-book.

"And Vigo? But for him I could never have surprised Vincennes. He was the best friend I had, and the best still, except you, William."

A singular affection bound these two brothers. It seemed almost as if William took up the life of George Rogers where it was broken off, and carried it on to a glorious conclusion.

"Virginia acknowledges Vigo's debt, certifies that it has never been paid but she has ceded those lands to the Government. Who then shall pay it but Congress? The debt was necessary and lawful in contracting for supplies for the conquest of Illinois. Could I have done with less? God knows we went with parched corn only in our wallets and depended on our rifles for the rest. Tell him to keep the draft, Virginia will pay it, or Congress, some time or other, with interest."

Again, at William's persuasion, the General came home to Mulberry Hill. An expert horseman, everybody in Louisville knew Captain Clark, who, wrapped in his cloak, came spurring home night after night on his blooded bay, with York at his side, darkness nor swollen fords nor wildly beating storms stopping his journey as he came bearing news to his brother.

"I have ridden for brother George in the course of this year upwards of three thousand miles," wrote the Captain to his brother Edmund, in December, 1797, "continually in the saddle, attempting to save him, and have been serviceable to him in several instances. I have but a few days returned from Vincennes attending a suit for twenty-four thousand dollars against him."

These long journeys included tours to St. Louis, Vincennes, Kaskaskia, among the General's old debtors, proving that the articles for which he was sued were for his troops, powder and military stores.

"The General is very ill again," said father Clark, walking up and down the entry before the chamber door. The old man's severe countenance always relaxed when he spoke of "the General." Of all his children, George Rogers was the one least expected to fall into dissipation, but now in rheumatic distress, old before his time, George Rogers sometimes drank.

"Cover him, shield him, let not the world witness my brother's weakness," William would say at such times, affectionately detaining him at Mulberry Hill.

Glancing into the dining-room, the white-haired cavalier noticed Fanny and her children and others sitting around the table. Preoccupied, the old man approached, and leaning over a chair delivered an impressive grace.

"Now, my children, you can eat your dinner. Do not wait for me," and again he took up his walk in the entry outside the chamber door. A smile wreathed the faces of all; there was no dinner; they were simply visiting near the table.

With children and grandchildren around him, the house at Mulberry Hill was always full. At Christmas or Thanksgiving, when Lucy came with her boys from Locust Grove, "Well, my children," father Clark would say, "if I thought we would live, mother and I, five years longer, I would build a new house."

But the day before Christmas, 1798, the silky white hair of Ann Rogers Clark was brushed back for the last time, in the home that her taste had beautified with the groves and flowers of Mulberry Hill.

More and more frequently the old cavalier retired to his rustic arbour in the garden.

"I must hunt up father, he will take cold," William would say; and there on a moonlight night, on his knees in prayer, the old man would be found, among the cedars and honeysuckles of Mulberry Hill.

"Why do you dislike old John Clark," some one asked of a neighbour when the venerable man lay on his death-bed.

"What? I dislike old John Clark? I revere and venerate him. His piety and virtues may have been a reproach, but I reverence and honour old John Clark."

By will the property was divided, and the home at Mulberry Hill went to William.

"In case Jonathan comes to Kentucky he may be willing to buy the place," said William. "If he does I shall take the cash to pay off these creditors of yours."