settlements, broke up their nearest villages, destroyed their corn,
and by compelling them to retire to a greater distance, gave some
relief to the inhabitants.

While the frontiers of New York and Pennsylvania were thus suffering
the calamities incident to savage warfare, a fate equally severe was
preparing for Virginia. The western militia of that state had made
some successful incursions into the country north-west of the Ohio,
and had taken some British posts on the Mississippi. These were
erected in the county of Illinois; and a regiment of infantry, with a
troop of cavalry, were raised for its protection. The command of these
troops was given to Colonel George Rogers Clarke, a gentleman whose
courage, hardihood, and capacity for Indian warfare, had given
repeated success to his enterprises against the savages.

This corps was divided into several detachments, the strongest of
which remained with Colonel Clarke at Kaskaskia. Colonel Hamilton, the
Governor of Detroit, was at Vincennes with about six hundred men,
principally Indians, preparing an expedition, first against Kaskaskia,
and then up the Ohio to Pittsburg; after which he purposed to
desolate the frontiers of Virginia. Clarke anticipated and defeated
his design by one of those bold and decisive measures, which, whether
formed on a great or a small scale, mark the military and enterprising
genius of the man who plans and executes them.

[Sidenote: 1779 February.]

[Sidenote: Colonel Clarke surprises St. Vincents, and takes
possession of it.]

He was too far removed from the inhabited country to hope for support,
and was too weak to maintain Kaskaskia and the Illinois against the
combined force of regulars and Indians by which he was to be attacked
so soon as the season for action should arrive. While employed in
preparing for his defence, he received unquestionable information that
Hamilton had detached his Indians on an expedition against the
frontiers, reserving at the post he occupied only about eighty
regulars, with three pieces of cannon and some swivels. Clarke
instantly resolved to seize this favourable moment. After detaching a
small galley up the Wabash with orders to take her station a few miles
below Vincennes, and to permit nothing to pass her, he marched in the
depth of winter with one hundred and thirty men, the whole force he
could collect, across the country from Kaskaskia to Vincennes. This
march, through the woods, and over high wat