Stories of Old Kentucky Part 8

Leaving his home one spring morning in 1775, and stopping at the bend of the road to wave farewell to his mother, sister, and brother, George Rogers Clark, a young soldier-surveyor of twenty-two who had seen active service in Dunmore's war, started out for the wilds of Kentucky.

More than six feet in height, dignified, affable, manly, brave, determined, yet gentle, he at once commanded not only the attention, but respect, friends.h.i.+p, and leaders.h.i.+p of all. Whether or not he came with an official commission, his military bearing, his superior intelligence, and his indomitable spirit caused him by common consent to be placed at the head of the irregular militia of this section.

George Rogers Clark returned to Virginia in the autumn, but in the memorable year of '76 came again to Kentucky to make it his permanent home.

He opposed the plans of the Transylvania Company, urged the settlers to try to effect a more certain connection with Virginia, and went over mountains, through mud, and amid difficulties and dangers, as a representative to the Virginia legislature, which had adjourned before he reached the capital.

Not to be deterred, he visited Governor Patrick Henry, who was at home sick, and impressed upon him the necessity of protecting the settlements in Kentucky. He then went before the executive council of the state and asked for 500 pounds of gunpowder to be used in defense of the stations.

The council agreed to lend this to the colonists as friends, but said they could not give it to them as fellow citizens. At this Clark refused to accept the gunpowder and intimated intentions of appealing for a.s.sistance elsewhere, saying that, "A country that is not worth defending is not worth having." This reply caused the recall of Clark to the presence of the council, and the gunpowder was conveyed to Pittsburgh and delivered to Clark for the colonists.

At the next session of the legislature, through the splendid services of this same useful citizen, the territory which later became our commonwealth was erected into Kentucky County, of Virginia.

From this time on Clark was, by common consent, the moving master spirit in all the daring plans of his adopted state. With a seeing eye and an unsurpa.s.sed judgment he concluded that the Indian invasions were inspired by the British and that to stop this terrible warfare the colonists should strike at the fountain head. Accordingly he laid and perfected his plans for attacking the posts of Kaskaskia, Cahokia, and Saint Vincents (now Vincennes). Virginia voted to defray the expenses and gave Clark two sets of instructions, one public, ordering him to proceed to the defense of Kentucky, the other private, ordering an attack on Kaskaskia.

Descending the Ohio on flatboats or pirogues, he landed, May, 1778, three companies of troops and several families on Corn Island, near the Falls of the Ohio. He drilled his raw recruits, reenforced with volunteers from the country, and a few weeks later, amid a total eclipse of the sun, set out with his frail fleet of four companies of one hundred and thirty-five fighting men.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "On the night of July 4, they captured Kaskaskia."]

Landing on Owen's Island near the mouth of the Tennessee River, and striking across the country from Fort Ma.s.sacre, or Ma.s.sac, he began that wonderful march which won him undying fame.

Meeting a party of hunters recently from Kaskaskia, Clark secured from them important intelligence and an offer to guide his forces where by a sudden surprise they believed the place could be easily captured. On the night of July 4, he took the town of two hundred and fifty inhabitants without the loss of one drop of blood.

Most of the people were of French descent and had been taught by the British that the Kentuckians waged savage warfare. They were therefore terror-stricken until General Clark a.s.sured them that their own king, whose rule over them had been exchanged for that of the British by the treaty of Paris, 1763, had joined hands with America to stop the cruel war of the British and Indians. The French colonists were then overjoyed, said their French king had come to life, and offered to accompany the division that was to march to Cahokia.

On July 6, that post was also surprised and taken; the inhabitants were dreadfully alarmed at the sight of the "big knife," but were soon rea.s.sured by their relatives and friends from Kaskaskia.

Not satisfied with these brilliant successes, General Clark felt that he must also capture Vincennes, but M. Gibault, the village priest of both that place and Kaskaskia, volunteered to inform the people of Vincennes that the king of France had become an ally of the American colonists.

Soon the American flag floated over that fort and from the Lakes to the Mississippi the powerful arm of the British was broken, and the many Indian invasions of Kentucky were discontinued.

A FAMOUS MARCH

News came to General Clark in January of 1779, that the British under Governor Hamilton from Detroit had recaptured Vincennes and were waiting only till spring to advance with hundreds of Indian allies on Kaskaskia, obliterate the Kentuckians, and break the power of Virginia west of the Alleghenies. Learning at the same time that Hamilton had only about eighty regular soldiers with three cannons and some swivels, Clark decided not to wait to be attacked, but to take the aggressive. He at once sent forty-five men on a boat to proceed to a point near the mouth of the White River with instructions, to allow nothing to pa.s.s, and to wait further orders.

Nine days after the important information reached him, General Clark with one hundred and seventy men started across flooded prairies, swollen streams, and inundated valleys. There is no more daring march recorded. Trudging through rain and mud, fording small streams, wading most of the time in deep water ofttimes to the armpits, they traveled without tents, depending on parched corn and the securing of game for food; at last they went for days with no nourishment whatever.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Clark and his men crossing a swollen stream.]

It took all the ingenuity of General Clark to keep up the courage of the soldiers. Sometimes he would plunge into the deep water singing a favorite song, when all would join in, fall in line, and sing as they waded. At another time, seeing the discouragement and despair in their faces, he blackened his face with gunpowder, gave an Indian-like war whoop, and plunged into the stream; again all followed. At another place a little drummer boy was placed on the shoulders of a tall man and told to beat as if for his life. The enthusiasm of the boy and his stirring music quickly renewed the courage of the soldiers. A division was placed in the rear with orders to shoot any who "dropped out," and the march was continued through the freezing waters.

Near Vincennes, they captured a Frenchman who had been duck shooting, and sent a letter by him to the French inhabitants saying that the fort would be stormed that night and they could choose between remaining quietly in their homes and receiving the friendly protection of the a.s.saulters, or of going into the British fort and of abiding results.

All was then commotion and people rushed out from their houses to learn the news. By a stratagem of Clark's his men were so marching in a circle behind an elevation that as they pa.s.sed and repa.s.sed, flying many "colors," each man was counted dozens of times, and the inhabitants of the place thought there was an attacking force of many hundreds of people at their gates.

For two days and nights, Clark's men besieged the fort. Their ammunition ran alarmingly low, yet Clark, Napoleon-like, was very demanding. At last the "Stars and Stripes" floated again over Vincennes, and thus was secured to our nation that vast tract out of which have been carved Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, while the value to the colonists in Kentucky could not be easily estimated.

THE FIRST CHRISTMAS PARTY

When General George Rogers Clark had conquered the British and Indians in their stronghold in the Illinois country, he felt it safe for the few families he had left on Corn Island, near the Falls of the Ohio, to remove to the mainland, and so ordered that a fort be built there.

Rows of log cabins joined together around a hollow square const.i.tuted this structure; at one corner there was a cabin, double the size of the others, that was to serve as a storeroom. In this building took place the first Christmas dinner and dance in Kentucky, as far as any record shows.

The men ranged the forest and brought home rabbits, turkeys, deer, bears, and buffaloes. The women baked corn pone, hoecake and johnnycake, boiled and fried hominy, and prepared milk, b.u.t.ter, and cheese.

Forks were driven into the earthen floor of the storehouse. On rough, unhewn, uncovered boards laid above poles stretched between the forks, the feast was served. Wooden platters held the meats, wooden plates the bread, and wooden bowls the hominy. The centerpiece that decorated the table and proved the great dish of the banquet was an opossum baked whole, hanging by its tail on a stick of wood, which was suspended over the center.

The fiddler of the fort, an old negro named Cato, as well as every man, woman, and child, had been downcast for some time because the fiddle had only one string left. Patient Cato had tried horsehair and deer sinews, but no music could thus be made. Fortunately on Christmas eve a small boat landed near the fort and on it was a Frenchman with a violin.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "The Frenchman retired in a rage."]

It did not take old Cato long to inquire if the musician had any extra strings he would sell; learning that he had, Cato joyfully exchanged racc.o.o.n skins for the coveted strings, and gave the stranger an extra skin to tell nothing about the trade. Cato was intending to give the settlers a great surprise. Alas for his dreams! The traders from the boat being invited to the feast, the Frenchman happened to speak of an accident to his fiddle; whereupon he was besieged with requests to get his instrument and play, so they could dance. He reluctantly yielded, the table was cleared away, the older people and children ranged themselves around the walls, and the younger men and women impatiently waited on the smooth, dirt floor, until the music began.

The Frenchman tried in vain to teach the fas.h.i.+onable dances of his homeland to the backwoods boys and girls. At last, becoming discouraged and disgusted, he retired in a rage. Then the old darkey approached him and politely asked if he might play while his honor rested. He was told to "play on."

Soon to the music of old Cato's fiddle, the boys and girls were making merry by dancing the Virginia reel. Not till the midnight hour did either the dancers or fiddler weary or pause.

FORT JEFFERSON

Thomas Jefferson, the Sage of Monticello, the originator of many plans for the defense and perpetuation of our country, deserves a place of honor in the records of Kentucky, for the interest shown in this, the then remote part of Virginia.

In a message in 1778, Governor Patrick Henry of Virginia suggested that a post be established and fortified on the Mississippi; but it was Governor Jefferson of the same state who later expressly said that the plan must be executed.

Spain and France for years were zealous in their efforts to check the extension of the infant republic, control the great Mississippi, and make of Kentucky a Spanish province. Her geographical position and great river frontage caused them to realize her wonderful resources. So, to fortify the claim of the United States to the Mississippi as its western boundary, Thomas Jefferson, Governor of Virginia, engaged Dr. Thomas Walker with an able corps of surveyors to ascertain the point on the Mississippi River intersected by the southern limit of Virginia. He then, in 1780, instructed General George Rogers Clark to establish a fort and garrison near that point and afterwards to extend a line of forts to the north, both to offer protection and to establish possession. So in the summer of 1780, General Clark with 200 soldiers erected and manned with cannons a fort at a point about five miles below where Cairo now is and near Wickliffe, Kentucky. Adverse criticisms fell from many because of this division and depletion of forces, but as in all other enterprises with which he was connected, Jefferson built not for the present alone but for the future as well.

By an oversight Clark and his soldiers failed to follow Jefferson's instructions to secure from the Chickasaw Indians, who owned the land west of the Tennessee River, the consent to the erection of the fort.

They thereby aroused a spark of resentment that erelong became such a flame that the Indians began hara.s.sing and killing the families outside the fort. By threat of death, they forced one captive to describe the true state of the fort, in which, to their surprise, they learned there were only about thirty men and two thirds of these were sick with malaria. Soon the Indians marched, one thousand two hundred strong, under the command of a Scotchman named Colbert; but for five days these weakened frontiersmen with little water and less food, except green pumpkins, held the fort.

Finally Captains Clark and Colbert met under a flag of truce, but failed to agree to terms. The fort even refused a demand to surrender, though told that the a.s.sistance they expected would not reach them. As night fell the Indians made a desperate a.s.sault, but the firing from one of the blockhouses so depleted and demoralized their ranks that they retreated. Reenforcements arrived soon after and the siege was abandoned.

Though Fort Jefferson from its isolated position was finally forsaken, yet "its evacuation was a signal for peace," and the Indians here no longer molested the white settlers.

"THE HARD WINTER"

From November to March, 1779-1780, the settlers of Kentucky suffered untold anguish from the severity of the weather and the scarcity of food. More pioneers had come into the wilderness the preceding summer and so increased the population that the products of garden, field, and forest were soon exhausted.