The Beginner's American History Part 17

Out of this settlement on the Watauga River grew the state of Tennessee. A monument in honor of John Sevier stands in Nashville, a city founded by his friend Robertson. Sevier became the first governor of the new state.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE SEVIER MONUMENT.]

160. Summary.--James Robertson, of North Carolina, and John Sevier, of Virginia, emigrated across the mountains to the western wilderness. They settled on the Watauga River, and that settlement, with others made later, grew into the state of Tennessee, of which John Sevier became the first governor.

What friend did Boone have in North Carolina? Tell about Governor Tryon. What happened on the Alamance River? Where did Robertson and others go? Where did they settle? Why did they like to be there? Tell about John Sevier. What did he and Robertson do? What did Was.h.i.+ngton do for Robertson? What state grew out of the Watauga settlement? What did Sevier become? Where is his monument?

GENERAL GEORGE ROGERS CLARK (1752-1818).

161. The British in the west; their forts; hiring Indians to fight the settlers.--While Was.h.i.+ngton was fighting the battles of the Revolution in the east, the British in the west were not sitting still.

They had a number of forts in the Wilderness,[1] as that part of the country was then called. One of these forts was at Detroit,[2] in what is now Michigan; another was at Vincennes,[3] in what is now Indiana; a third fort was at Kaskaskia,[4] in what is now Illinois.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Map showing the Forts at Detroit, Kaskaskia, and Vincennes, with the line of Clark's march.]

Colonel Hamilton, the British commander at Detroit, was determined to drive the American settlers out of the west. In the beginning of the Revolution the Americans resolved to hire the Indians to fight for them, but the British found that they could hire them better than we could, and so they got their help. The savages did their work in a terribly cruel way. Generally they did not come out and do battle openly, but they crept up secretly, by night, and attacked the farmers' homes. They killed and scalped the settlers in the west, burned their log cabins, and carried off the women and children prisoners. The greater part of the people in England hated this sort of war. They begged the king not to hire the Indians to do these horrible deeds of murder and destruction. George the Third was not a bad-hearted man; but he was very set in his way, and he had fully made up his mind to conquer the "American rebels," as he called them, even if he had to get the savages to help him do it.

[Footnote 1: See map in paragraph 187.]

[Footnote 2: Detroit (De-troit'): for these forts see map in this paragraph.]

[Footnote 3: Vincennes (Vin-senz').]

[Footnote 4: Kaskaskia (Kas-kas'ki-a).]

162. George Rogers Clark gets help from Virginia and starts to attack Fort Kaskaskia.--Daniel Boone had a friend in Virginia named George Rogers Clark,[5] who believed that he could take the British forts in the west and drive out the British from all that part of the country.

Virginia then owned most of the Wilderness. For this reason Clark went to Patrick Henry, governor of Virginia, and asked for help. The governor liked the plan, and let Clark have money to hire men to go with him and try to take Fort Kaskaskia to begin with.

Clark started in the spring of 1778 with about a hundred and fifty men. They built boats just above Pittsburg[6] and floated down the Ohio River, a distance of over nine hundred miles. Then they landed in what is now Illinois, and set out for Fort Kaskaskia.[7]

[Footnote 5: George Rogers Clark was born near Monticello, Virginia.

See map in paragraph 140.]

[Footnote 6: Pittsburg: see map in paragraph 140.]

[Footnote 7: Fort Kaskaskia: see map in paragraph 161.]

163. The march to Fort Kaskaskia; how a dance ended.--It was a hundred miles to the fort, and half of the way the men had to find their way through thick woods, full of underbrush, briers, and vines. The British, thinking the fort perfectly safe from attack, had left it in the care of a French officer. Clark and his band reached Kaskaskia at night. They found no one to stop them. The soldiers in the fort were having a dance, and the Americans could hear the merry music of a violin and the laughing voices of girls.

Clark left his men just outside the fort, and, finding a door open, he walked in. He reached the room where the fun was going on, and stopping there, he stood leaning against the door-post, looking on.

The room was lighted with torches; the light of one of the torches happened to fall full on Clark's face; an Indian sitting on the floor caught sight of him; he sprang to his feet and gave a terrific war-whoop. The dancers stopped as though they had been shot; the women screamed; the men ran to the door to get their guns. Clark did not move, but said quietly, "Go on; only remember you are dancing now under Virginia, and not under Great Britain." The next moment the Americans rushed in, and Clark and his "Long Knives," as the Indians called his men, had full possession of the fort.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CLARK LOOKING ON AT THE DANCE.]

164. How Fort Vincennes was taken; how the British got it back again; what Francis Vigo[8] did.--Clark wanted next to march against Fort Vincennes, but he had not men enough. There was a French Catholic priest[9] at Kaskaskia, and Clark's kindness to him had made him our friend. He said, I will go to Vincennes for you, and I will tell the French, who hold the fort for the British, that the Americans are their real friends, and that in this war they are in the right. He went; the French listened to him, then hauled down the British flag and ran up the American flag in its place.

The next year the British, led by Colonel Hamilton of Detroit, got the fort back again. When Clark heard of it he said, "Either I must take Hamilton, or Hamilton will take me." Just then Francis Vigo, a trader at St. Louis, came to see Clark at Kaskaskia. Hamilton had held Vigo as a prisoner, so he knew all about Fort Vincennes. Vigo said to Clark, "Hamilton has only about eighty soldiers; you can take the fort, and I will lend you all the money you need to pay your men what you owe them."

[Footnote 8: Vigo (Vee-go).]

[Footnote 9: The priest was Father Gibault (Zhe-bo').]

165. Clark's march to Fort Vincennes; the "Drowned Lands."--Clark, with about two hundred men, started for Vincennes. The distance was nearly a hundred and fifty miles. The first week everything went on pretty well. It was in the month of February, the weather was cold, and it rained a good deal, but the men did not mind that. They would get wet through during the day; but at night they built roaring log fires, gathered round them, roasted their buffalo meat or venison, smoked their pipes, told jolly stories, and sang jolly songs.

But the next week they got to a branch of the Wabash River.[10] Then they found that the constant rains had raised the streams so that they had overflowed their banks; the whole country was under water three or four feet deep. This flooded country was called the "Drowned Lands": before Clark and his men had crossed them they were nearly drowned themselves.

[Footnote 10: See map in paragraph 161.]

166. Wading on to victory.--For about a week the Americans had to wade in ice-cold water, sometimes waist deep, sometimes nearly up to their chins. While wading, the men were obliged to hold their guns and powder-horns above their heads to keep them dry. Now and then a man would stub his toe against a root or a stone and would go sprawling headfirst into the water. When he came up, puffing and blowing from such a dive, he was lucky if he still had his gun. For two days no one could get anything to eat; but hungry, wet, and cold, they kept moving slowly on.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MEN WADING WITH GUNS OVER THEIR HEADS.]

The last part of the march was the worst of all. They were now near the fort, but they still had to wade through a sheet of water four miles across. Clark took the lead and plunged in. The rest, s.h.i.+vering, followed. A few looked as though their strength and courage had given out. Clark saw this, and calling to Captain Bowman,--one of the bravest of his officers,--he ordered him to kill the first man who refused to go forward.

At last, with numbed hands and chattering teeth, all got across, but some of them were so weak and blue with cold that they could not take another step, but fell flat on their faces in the mud. These men were so nearly dead that no fire seemed to warm them. Clark ordered two strong men to lift each of these poor fellows up, hold him between them by the arms, and run him up and down until he began to get warm.

By doing this he saved every one.

167. Clark takes the fort; what we got by his victory; his grave.--After a long and desperate fight Clark took Fort Vincennes and hoisted the Stars and Stripes over it in triumph. The British never got it back again. Most of the Indians were now glad to make peace, and to promise to behave themselves.

By Clark's victory the Americans got possession of the whole western wilderness up to Detroit. When the Revolutionary War came to an end, the British did not want to give us any part of America beyond the thirteen states on the Atlantic coast. But we said, The whole west, clear to the Mississippi, is ours; we fought for it; we took it; we hoisted our flag over its forts, and _we mean to keep it_. We did keep it.

There is a gra.s.s-grown grave in a burial-ground in Louisville, Kentucky, which has a small headstone marked with the letters G. R.

C., and nothing more; that is the grave of General George Rogers Clark, the man who did more than any one else to get the west for us--or what was called the west a hundred years ago.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CLARK'S GRAVE.]

168. Summary.--During the Revolutionary War George Rogers Clark of Virginia, with a small number of men, captured Fort Kaskaskia in Illinois, and Fort Vincennes in Indiana. Clark drove out the British from that part of the country, and when peace was made, we kept the west--that is, the country as far as the Mississippi River--as part of the United States. Had it not been for him and his brave men, we might not have got it.

What did the British have in the west? Where were three of those forts? Who hired the Indians to fight? How did they fight? What did most of the people in England think about this? What is said of George the Third? What friend did Daniel Boone have in Virginia? What did Clark undertake to do? Tell how he went down the Ohio. Tell how he marched on Fort Kaskaskia. What happened when he got there? What did Clark say to the people in the fort? How was Fort Vincennes taken?

What did the British do the next year? Tell about Francis Vigo. What did Clark and his men start to do? How far off was Fort Vincennes?

Tell about the first part of the march. What lands did they come to?

Tell how the men waded. How did Clark save the lives of some of the men? Did Clark take the fort? What did the Americans get possession of by this victory? What happened at the end of the Revolutionary War? What did we say? What is said of the grave at Louisville, Kentucky? What did Clark get for us?