ring the cold weather, he
allowed the Indians to scatter back to their villages for the winter,
and sent most of the Detroit militia home, retaining in garrison only
thirty-four British regulars, forty French volunteers, and a dozen white
leaders of the Indians [Footnote: _Do._ B. Vol. 122, p. 287. Return of
Vincennes garrison for Jan. 30, 1779.]; in all eighty or ninety whites,
and a probably larger number of red auxiliaries. The latter were
continually kept out on scouting expeditions; Miamis and Shawnees were
sent down to watch the Ohio, and take scalps in the settlements, while
bands of Kickapoos, the most warlike of the Wabash Indians, and of
Ottawas, often accompanied by French partisans, went towards the
Illinois country. [Footnote: Hamilton's "brief account," and his letter
of December 18th.] Hamilton intended to undertake a formidable campaign
in the spring. He had sent messages to Stuart, the British Indian agent
in the south, directing him to give war-belts to the Chickasaws,
Cherokees, and Creeks, that a combined attack on the frontier might take
place as soon as the weather opened. He himself was to be joined by
reinforcements from Detroit, while the Indians were to gather round him
as soon as the winter broke. He would then have had probably over a
thousand men, and light cannon with which to batter down the stockades.
He rightly judged that with this force he could not only reconquer the
Illinois, but also sweep Kentucky, where the outnumbered riflemen could
not have met him in the field, nor the wooden forts have withstood his
artillery. Undoubtedly he would have carried out his plan, and have
destroyed all the settlements west of the Alleghanies, had he been
allowed to wait until the mild weather brought him his hosts of Indian
allies and his reinforcements of regulars and militia from Detroit.

Panic among the Illinois French.

But in Clark he had an antagonist whose far-sighted daring and
indomitable energy raised him head and shoulders above every other
frontier leader. This backwoods colonel was perhaps the one man able in
such a crisis to keep the land his people had gained. When the news of
the loss of Vincennes reached the Illinois towns, and especially when
there followed a rumor that Hamilton himself was on his march thither to
attack them, [Footnote: The rumor came when Clark was attending a dance
given by the people of the little village of La Prairie du Rocher. The
Creoles were passiona