class="x-ebookmaker-pageno" title="[Pg 29]"/> River at Humphry’s Ford, section 30, township 8, range 2E.[11] This was the dry route, the preferable one the year round. Another shorter course ran northwest and crossed many of the streams which the highland route headed. There can be little doubt that Clark’s guides chose this latter course. By Clark’s Memoir we know it to have been a dry season, and the shortest, and probably the least traveled, course would best suit his plan of surprising Kaskaskia. The shortness of the time (four days) in which the distance to Kaskaskia was covered from Phelps Prairie almost precludes the possibility of his having used the longer watershed route.

On the first day of July, then, the little army moved from near the present Bainbridge along a well-known trail which crossed Crab Orchard Creek at Greathouse Crossing[12] (section 2, township 9, range 1W)[13] and the Big Muddy at Marshall’s Shoals, section 6, township 9, range 1W, southwest of De Soto, Jackson County.[14] It is possible that camp, on the night of July 1, was pitched at Greathouse Crossing; if so the day’s march was not a long one. From the Big Muddy the trail struck to the watershed between the Beaucoup and its tributaries on the north and the tributaries of the Big Muddy on the south, running near the present Lenan in Jackson County. The course now was a watershed route from the Big Muddy to the St. Mary River, and is marked today by the significant names of such high altitude towns as Shiloh Hill, Teacup Knob, and Wine Hill. Through these places an ancient highway has coursed from times to which the memory of white men runneth not to the contrary. Water was scarce on the highest grounds, but springs, here and there, were well known, and at one of these, probably near Lenan (section 15, township 8, range 3), the adventurers paused, on the night of September 2, and built their evening fires.[15]

The end was now almost in sight; two days more and the immediate basin of the Mississippi River would be reached, and the success or failure of the daring raid be decided. It can be easily imagined that it was a silent and eager body of men which, on September 3, strode forward over the rolling hills of Randolph County on the old trail. Their excitement must have been intense. The old trail from Lenan entered Randolph County near the center of section 12, township 7, south of range 5 W and passed over Teacup Knob in section 5 and near the present Wine Hill P. O. Pushing on over the hills, the St. Mary River was reached at the site of what became the “Old State Ford,” near Welge Station (formerly Bremen Station) on the Wabash, Chester and Western Railroad—section 1, township 7 S., range 6 W.[16] Here the last camp of the march was pitched on the night of July 3—the “glorious Fourth” was to see the little invading army lying quietly on the outskirts of quaint old Kaskaskia.

From the state ford on the St. Mary, the course was the highland route running near Diamond Cross.[17] Here, on the watershed between the tributaries of the St. Mary and the Kaskaskia, lay the worn Vincennes Trace running northeast from Kaskaskia to the Wabash. It is probable that Clark entered this highway before the Kaskaskia River was reached.[18] And at the end of the journey awaited victory; Governor Rochblave was completely surprised, and Kaskaskia was captured by the perilous feat of actually marching up to it and taking possession of it with the assumed arrogance of a powerful conqueror.

From the moment Kaskaskia was in Clark’s hands he turned his attention to Vincennes, and in July, through the coöperation of the French priest Gibault, the inhabitants were induced to proclaim themselves American subjects and to hoist an American flag. Captain Helm of Clark’s little army was posted at Vincennes with a guard, and Helm it was who was captured in the fall by the British Lieutenant-governor Hamilton of Detroit. The latter had pushed his difficult way up the Maumee and down the Wabash to seize the revolted town.[19] Throughout the winter Clark feared a swift advance from Vincennes; and, to save himself from being captured by Hamilton, Clark desperately resolved to capture him. By February 5 a new “grand army,” of four companies, possibly one hundred and sixty strong, well-armed, but without tents and horse, save a few packhorses, departed from Kaskaskia on the desperate journey across the swimming prairies and flooded rivers of Illinois for Vincennes.[20] Had one man dropped from the ranks each mile, not one of the one hundred and sixty would have reached the Wabash. Few expeditions in American history have been recounted more than this; it is strange that the route of this immortal little army has never been carefully considered—for the story of the route is almost the whole story of the campaign.

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Hutchins’s Sketch of the Wabash in 1768, Showing Trace of the Path to Kaskaskia

[From the original in the British Museum]

Crossing the Kaskaskia River February 5, 1779, Clark’s army lay three miles from Kaskaskia, for two days, “to tighten belts.”[21] It is impossible to determine how much was known of their path onward. To many it had been well known for nearly a century—an old watershed prairie route marked out by the