men from the
western reaches of Virginia. With these he started on his venturous
undertaking.

Reuben Gold Thwaites, in his _How George Rogers Clark Won the
Northwest_, describes the volunteers as follows:

"There was of course no attempt among them at military uniform, officers
in no wise being distinguished from men. The conventional dress of
eighteenth-century borderers was an adaptation to local conditions,
being in part borrowed from the Indians. Their feet were encased in
moccasins. Perhaps the majority of the corps had loose, thin trousers of
homespun or buckskin, with a fringe of leather thongs down each outer
seam of the legs; but many wore only leggings of leather, and were as
bare of knee and thigh as a Highland clansman; indeed, many of the
pioneers were Scotch-Irish, some of whom had been accustomed to this
airy costume in the mother-land. Common to all were fringed hunting
shirts or smocks, generally of buckskin--a picturesque, flowing garment
reaching from neck to knees, and girded about the waist by a leathern
belt, from which dangled the tomahawk and scalping-knife. On one hip
hung the carefully scraped powder horn; on the other, a leather sack,
serving both as game-bag and provision-pouch, although often the folds
of the shirt, full and ample above the belt, were the depository for
food and ammunition. A broad-brimmed felt hat, or a cap of fox-skin or
squirrel-skin, with the tail dangling behind, crowned the often tall and
always sinewy frontiersman. His constant companion was his home-made
flint-lock rifle--a clumsy, heavy weapon, so long that it reached to the
chin of the tallest man, but unerring in the hands of an expert
marksman, such as was each of these backwoodsmen.

"They were rough in manners and in speech. Among them, we must confess,
were men who had fled from the coast settlements because no longer to be
tolerated in a law-abiding community. There were not lacking mean,
brutal fellows, whose innate badness had on the untrammelled frontier
developed into wickedness. Many joined Clark for mere adventure, for
plunder and deviltry. The majority, however, were men of good parts, who
sought to protect their homes at whatever peril--sincere men, as large
of heart as they were of frame, many of them in later years developing
into citizens of a high type of effectiveness in a frontier
commonwealth. As a matter of history, most of them proved upon this
expedition to be heroes worthy of the fame t