youth, tall and sinewy, with a drawn sword, in an attitude of energetic
encouragement, as if getting his army through the drowned lands of the
Wabash." *

* Hosmer, "Short History of the Mississippi Valley." p. 94.

The capture of Vincennes determined the fate of the Northwest. Frontier
warfare nevertheless went steadily on. In 1779 Spain entered the contest
as an ally of France, and it became the object of the British commanders
on the Lakes not only to recover the posts lost to the Americans but to
seize St. Louis and other Spanish strongholds on the west bank of the
Mississippi. In 1780 Lieutenant-Governor Patrick Sinclair, a bustling,
garrulous old soldier stationed at Michilimackinac, sent a force of
some nine hundred traders, servants, and Indians down the Mississippi
to capture both the American and Spanish settlements. An attack on St.
Louis failed, as did likewise a series of efforts against Cahokia
and Kaskaskia, and the survivors were glad to reach their northern
headquarters again, with nothing to show for their pains except a dozen
prisoners.

Not to be outdone, the Spanish commandant at St. Louis sent an
expedition to capture British posts in the Lake country. An arduous
winter march brought the avengers and their Indian allies to Fort St.
Joseph, a mile or two west of the present city of Niles, Michigan.
It would be ungracious to say that this post was selected for attack
because it was without a garrison. At all events, the place was duly
seized, the Spanish standard was set up, and possession of "the fort and
its dependencies" was taken in the name of his Majesty Don Carlos III.
No effort was made to hold the settlement permanently, and the British
from Detroit promptly retook it. Probably the sole intention had been to
add somewhat to the strength of the Spanish position at the forthcoming
negotiations for peace.

The war in the West ended, as it began, in a carnival of butchery.
Treacherous attacks, massacres, burnings, and pillagings were everyday
occurrences, and white men were hardly less at fault than red. Indeed
the most discreditable of all the recorded episodes of the time was a
heartless massacre by Americans of a large band of Indians that had
been Christianized by Moravian missionaries and brought together in a
peaceful community on the Muskingum. This slaughter of the innocents
at Gnadenhutten ("the Tents of Grace") reveals the frontiersman at his
worst. But it was dearly paid for.