XXIII
_MISSISSIPPI TROUBLES_
For the first time in their stormy history, the front and rear gatesof the Kentucky forts lay back on their enormous wooden hinges, andall day long men and teams passed in and out with waggon loads ofgrain from the harvest fields. So hushed and still was the air, itseemed the old Indian days were gone for ever. At night the animalscame wandering in from the woods, making their customary way to thenight pens. Fields of corn waved undisturbed around the forts.
But the truce was brief. Already the Cherokees were slaughtering onthe Wilderness Road, and beyond the Ohio, Shawnee and Delaware, wildat the sight of the white man's cabin, rekindled the fires around thestake.
Thousands of emigrants were coming over the mountains from Carolina,and down the Ohio from Pittsburg social boats lashed together rode incompany, bark canoes, pirogues, flatboats, keelboats, scows, barges,bateaux and brigades of bateaux, sweeping down with resistlessEnglish, Scotch, Irish, Germans, Huguenots, armed for the battle ofthe races.
Still the powerful fur traders of Quebec and Montreal hung on toDetroit and Mackinac, still De Peyster opposed giving up thepeninsulas of Michigan.
"Pen the young republic east of the Alleghanies," said France, Spain,England, when the Peace Treaty was under consideration. But Clark'sconquest compelled them to grant the Illinois.
Before the ink was dry on the documents, Kentucky was trading down thegreat river of De Soto.
"The West must trade over the mountains," said the merchants ofPhiladelphia and Baltimore.
"The West will follow its rivers," answered Kentucky.
"Spain is Mistress of the Mississippi," said the Spanish King to JohnJay, the American minister at Madrid.
In vain flatboatmen with wheat and corn said, "We are from Kentucky."
"What Kaintucke?" brayed the commandant at Natchez. "I know noKaintucke. Spain own both side de river. I am ordered to seize allforeign vessel on de way to New Orleong."
Without the Spaniard the trip was sufficiently hazardous. Indianswatched the shores. Pirates infested the bayous. Head winds made thefrail craft unmanageable,--snags leered up like monsters to pierce andswallow. But every new settler enlarged the fields, and out of thevirgin soil the log granaries were bursting.
"Carry away our grain, bring us merchandise," was the cry of expandingKentucky.
But to escape the Indian was to fall into the hands of the Spaniard,and the Spaniard was little more than a legalised pirate.
Even the goods of the Frenchmen were seized with the warning, "Try itagain and we'll send you to Brazil."
The Frenchmen resented this infringement on their immemorial right.Since the days of the daring and courageous Bienville who founded NewOrleans, no man had said them nay. A tremendous hatred of the Spaniardgrew up in the hearts of the Frenchmen.
In the midst of these confiscations there was distress and anarchy inthe Illinois. The infant republic had not had time to stretch outthere the strong arm of law. Floods and continental money had ruinedthe confiding Frenchmen; the garrisons were in destitution; they werewriting to Clark:--
"Our credit is become so weak among the French that one dollar's worthof provisions cannot be had without prompt payment, were it to savethe whole country."
"And why has our British Father made no provision for us," bewailedthe Indians, "who at his beck and call have made such deadly enemiesof the Long Knives? Our lands have been ravaged by fire and sword, andnow we are left at their mercy."
"Let us drive the red rascals out," cried the infuriated settlers.
"No," said Washington, who understood and pitied the red men. "Forgivethe past. Dispossess them gradually by purchase as the extension ofsettlement demands the occupation of their lands."
But five thousand impoverished Indians in the Ohio country kept thirtythousand settlers in hot water all the time. No lock on a barn doorcould save the horses, no precaution save the outlying emigrant fromscalping or capture. Red banditti haunted the streams and forests,dragging away their screaming victims like ogres of mediaeval tragedy.
Clark grew sick and aged over it. "No commission, no money, no rightto do anything for my suffering country!"
"Your brother, the General, is very ill," said old John Clark, comingout of the sick chamber at Mulberry Hill. In days to come there weregenerals and generals in the Clark family, but George Rogers wasalways "the General."
Into ten years the youthful commander had compressed the exposure of alifetime. Mental anguish and days in the icy Wabash told now on hisrobust frame, and inflammatory rheumatism set in from which he neverrecovered.
"The Americans are your enemies," emissaries from Detroit werewhispering at Vincennes. "The Government has forsaken you. They takeyour property, they pay nothing."
"We have nothing to do with the United States," said the Frenchcitizens, weary of a Congress that heeded them not. "We considerourselves British subjects and shall obey no other power."
Even Clark's old friend, The Tobacco's Son, had gone back to hisBritish father, and as always with Indians, dug up the red tomahawk.
A committee of American citizens at Vincennes sent a flying express toClark.
"This place that once trembled at your victorious arms, and thesesavages overawed by your superior power, is now entirely anarchicaland we shudder at the daily expectation of horrid murder. We beg youwill write us by the earliest opportunity. Knowing you to be a friendof the distressed we look to you for assistance."
Such a call could not be ignored. Kentucky was aroused and summonedher favourite General to the head of her army. From a sick bed hearose to lead a thousand undisciplined men, and with him went hisbrother William.
The sultry sun scorched, the waters were low, provisions did notarrive until nine days after the soldiers, and then were spoiled.Fatigued, hungry, three hundred revolted and left; nevertheless, theIndians had fled and Vincennes was recovered.
Just then up the Wabash came a Spaniard with a boatload of valuablegoods. Clark promptly confiscated the cargo, and out of them paid hisdestitute troops.
"It is not alone retaliation," said Clark, "It is a warning. If Spainwill not let us trade down the river, she shall not trade up."
Kentucky applauded. They even talked of sending Clark against theSpaniards and of breaking away from a government that refused to aidthem.
"General Clark seized Spanish goods?" Virginia was alarmed andpromptly repudiated the seizure. "We are not ready to fight Spain."
Clark's friends were disturbed. "You will be hung."
Clark laughed. "I will flee to the Indians first."
"We have as much to fear from the turbulence of our backwoodsmen,"said Washington, "as from the hostility of the Spaniards."
But at this very time, unknown to Washington, the Spaniards werearming the savages of the south, to exterminate these recklessambitious frontiersmen.
Louisiana feared these unruly neighbours. Intriguers from New Orleanswere whispering, "Break with the Atlantic States and league yourselfwith Spain."
Then came the rumour, "Jay proposes to shut up the Mississippi fortwenty-five years!"
Never country was in such a tumult.
"We are sold! We are vassals of Spain!" cried the men of the West."What? Close the Mississippi for twenty-five years as a price ofcommercial advantage on the Atlantic coast? Twenty-five years when ourgrain is rotting? Twenty-five years must we be cut off when theWilderness Road is thronged with packtrains, when the Ohio is blackwith flatboats? Where do they think we are going to pen our people?Where do they think we are going to ship our produce? Better puttwenty thousand men in the field at once and protect our owninterests."
The bond was brittle; how easily might it be broken!
Even Spain laughed at the weakness of a Union that could not commandKentucky to give up its river. And Kentucky looked to Clark. "We mustconquer Spain or unite with her. We must have the Mississippi. Willyou march with us on New Orleans?"
Then, happily, Virginia spoke out
for the West. "We must aid them.The free navigation of the Mississippi is the gift of nature to theUnited States."
The very next day Madison announced in the Virginia Assembly, "I shallmove the election of delegates to a Constitutional Convention." Thestability of the Union seemed pivoted upon an open river to the Gulf.
Veterans of the Revolution and of the Continental Congress met toframe a constitution in 1787. After weeks of deliberation with closeddoors, the immortal Congress adjourned. The Constitution was secondonly to the Declaration of Independence. Without kings or princes afree people had erected a Continental Republic.
The Constitution was adopted, and all the way into Kentucky wilds wereheard the roaring of cannon and ringing of bells that proclaimed theFather of his Country the first President of the United States.
"We must cement the East and the West," said Washington. But that Westwas drifting away--with its Mississippi.
About this time young Daniel Boone said, "Father, I am going west."
Just eighteen, one year older than William Clark, in the summer of1787, he concluded to strike out for the Mississippi.
"Well, Dannie boy, thee take the compass," said his father.
It was the old guide, as large as a saucer, that Lord Dunmore gaveBoone when he sent him out to call in the surveyors from the Falls ofthe Ohio thirteen years before.
Mounted on his pony, with a wallet of corn and a rifle on his back,Boone rode straight on westward thirty days without meeting a singlehuman being. Pausing on the river bank opposite St. Louis he hallooedfor an hour before any one heard him.
"Dat some person on de oder shore," presently said old ReneKiercereaux, the chorister at the village church.
A canoe was sent over and brought back Boone. As if a man had droppedfrom the moon, French, Spanish, and Indian traders gathered. He spokenot a word of French, but Auguste Chouteau's slave Petrie could talkEnglish.
"Son of Boone, de great hunter? Come to my house!"
"Come to _my_ house!"
The hospitable Creoles strove with one another for the honour ofentertaining the son of Daniel Boone. For twelve years he spent hissummers in St. Louis and his winters in western Missouri, hunting andtrapping.
"The best beaver country on earth," he wrote to his father. "You hadbetter come out."
"Eef your father, ze great Colonel Boone, will remove to Louisiana,"said Senor Zenon Trudeau, the Lieutenant-Governor, "eef he will becomea citizen of Spain, de King will appreciate de act and reward himhandsomely."