s was a far more
serious calamity. By his personal influence he had kept the Indians in
check, the Creoles contented, and the troops well fed and fairly
disciplined. As soon as he went, trouble broke out. The officers did not
know how to support their authority; they were very improvident, and one
or two became implicated in serious scandals. The soldiers soon grew
turbulent, and there was constant clashing between the civil and
military rulers. Gradually the mass of the Creoles became so angered
with the Americans that they wished to lay their grievances before the
French Minister at Philadelphia; and many of them crossed the
Mississippi and settled under the Spanish flag. The courts rapidly lost
their power, and the worst people, both Americans and Creoles, practised
every kind of rascality with impunity. All decent men joined in
clamoring for Clark's return; but it was impossible for him to come
back. The freshets and the maladministration combined to produce a
dearth, almost a famine, in the land. The evils were felt most severely
in Vincennes, where Helm, the captain of the post, though a brave and
capable man, was utterly unable to procure supplies of any kind. He did
not hear of Clark's success against Piqua and Chillicothe until October.

Then he wrote to one of the officers at the Falls, saying that he was
"sitting by the fire with a piece of lightwood and two ribs of an old
buffloe, which is all the meat we have seen this many days. I
congratulate your success against the Shawanohs, but there's never
doubts where that brave Col. Clark commands; we well know the loss of
him in Illinois.... Excuse Haste as the Lightwood's Just out and mouth
watering for part of the two ribs." [Footnote: Calendar of Va. State
Papers, I., pp. 380, 382, 383, Oct. 24-29, 1780.]

La Balme's Expedition.

In the fall of 1780 a Frenchman, named la Balme, led an expedition
composed purely of Creoles against Detroit. He believed that he could
win over the French at that place to his side, and thus capture the fort
as Clark had captured Vincennes. He raised some fifty volunteers round
Cahokia and Kaskaskia, perhaps as many more on the Wabash, and marched
to the Maumee River. Here he stopped to plunder some British traders;
and in November the neighboring Indians fell on his camp, killed him and
thirty or forty of his men, and scattered the rest. [Footnote: Haldimand
MSS. De Peyster to Haldimand, Nov. 16, 1780.] His march had been so