n the upper Mississippi; he
believed that they were anxious to have the British retake Illinois, so
that they, in their turn, might conquer and keep it. [Footnote: Clark to
Todd, March, 1780. Va. State Papers, I., 338.] They never had the chance
to execute this plan; but, on January 2, 1781, a Spanish captain, Don
Eugenio Pierro, led a hundred and twenty men, chiefly Indians and
Creoles, against the little French village, or fur post, of St. Joseph,
where they burned the houses of one or two British traders, claimed the
country round the Illinois River as conquered for the Spanish king, and
forthwith returned to St. Louis, not daring to leave a garrison of any
sort behind them, and being harassed on their retreat by the Indians. On
the strength of this exploit Spain afterwards claimed a large stretch of
country to the east of the Mississippi. In reality it was a mere
plundering foray. The British at once retook possession of the place,
and, indeed, were for some time ignorant whether the raiders had been
Americans or Spaniards. [Footnote: Haldimand MSS. Haldimand to De
Peyster, April 10, 1781. Report of Council at St. Joseph, March 11,
1781.] Soon after the recapture, the Detroit authorities sent a scouting
party to dislodge some Illinois people who had attempted to make a
settlement at Chicago. [Footnote: _Do._ Haldimand to De Peyster, May 19,
1782. This is the first record of an effort to make a permanent
settlement at Chicago.]

At the end of the year 1781 the unpaid troops in Vincennes were on the
verge of mutiny, and it was impossible longer even to feed them, for the
inhabitants themselves were almost starving. The garrison was therefore
withdrawn; and immediately the Wabash Indians joined those of the Miami,
the Sandusky, and the Lakes in their raids on the settlements.
[Footnote: Va. State Papers, III., 502.] By this time, however,
Cornwallis had surrendered at Yorktown, and the British were even more
exhausted than the Americans. Some of the French partisans of the
British at Detroit, such as Rocheblave and Lamothe, who had been
captured by Clark, were eager for revenge, and desired to be allowed to
try and retake Vincennes and the Illinois; they saw that the Americans
must either be exterminated or else the land abandoned to them.
[Footnote: Haldimand MSS. Letter of Rocheblave, Oct. 7, 1781; of
Lamothe, April 24, 1782.] But the British commandant was in no condition
to comply with their request, or to begin of