Eva Emery Dye - The Conquest - The True Story of Lewis & Clark

"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.

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.