st Dunmore contemptuously styled his
successor--the situation in the back country and to obtain five hundred
pounds of powder. He also induced the authorities to take steps which
led to the definite organization of Kentucky as a county of Virginia.

In the bloody days that followed, most of the pioneers saw nothing to be
done except to keep close guard and beat off the Indians when they came.
A year or two of that sort of desperate uncertainty gave Clark an idea.
Why not meet the trouble at its source by capturing the British posts
and suppressing the commandants whose orders were mainly responsible
for the atrocities? There was just one obstacle: Kentucky could spare
neither men nor money for the undertaking.

In the spring of 1777 two young hunters, disguised as traders, were
dispatched to the Illinois country and to the neighborhood of Vincennes,
to spy out the land. They brought back word that the posts were not
heavily manned, and that the French-speaking population took little
interest in the war and was far from reconciled to British rule. The
prospect seemed favorable. Without making his purpose known to anyone,
Clark forthwith joined a band of disheartened settlers and made his way
with them over the Wilderness Trail to Virginia. By this time a plan on
the part of the rebels for the defense of the Kentucky settlements had
grown into a scheme for the conquest of the whole Northwest.

Clark's proposal came opportunely. Burgoyne's surrender had given the
colonial cause a rosy hue, and already the question of the occupation
of the Northwest had come up for discussion in Congress. Governor Henry
thought well of the plan. He called Thomas Jefferson, George Mason, and
George Wythe into conference, and on January 2, 1778, Clark was given
two sets of orders--one, for publication, commissioning him to raise
seven companies of fifty men each "in any county of the Commonwealth"
for militia duty in Kentucky, the other, secret, authorizing him to
use this force in an expedition for the capture of the "British post at
Kaskasky." To meet the costs, only twelve hundred pounds in depreciated
continental currency could be raised. But the Governor and his friends
promised to try to secure three hundred acres of land for each soldier,
in case the project should succeed. The strictest secrecy was preserved,
and, even if the Legislature had been in session, the project would
probably not have been divulged to it.

Men and supplies