In the Footsteps of Lewis & Clark
Marching with George Rogers Clark
Day 1: Fort Harrod and Blue Licks
In this series of posts, I'll share our experiences and thoughts as we followed George Rogers Clark's Revolutionary campaign trail in 2006. We took our trip with an excellent tour company called HistoryAmerica, with whom we've traveled several times. This time our historian-guide was Jim Holmberg, the curator of special collections at the Filson Historical Society in Louisville. Jim is an expert on the history of the Ohio River Valley and on the Clark family. He's also extremely knowledgable and genuinely nice.
Our first day was spent exploring and learning about the early settlement of Kentucky. From our home base in Louisville, we headed east for Harrodsburg. In many places the modern-day highways were built directly atop the old pioneer traces that originally linked these two settlements. Along the way Jim Holmberg filled us in with interesting stories about the founders of Kentucky, their adventures, and the Indian wars that defined the era. This is a topic about which I still have much to learn.
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Old Fort Harrod, Kentucky |
The big stop of the morning was Fort Harrod, a reconstruction of the first settlement in Kentucky. Harrodsburg was founded in 1774 by James Harrod and was almost immediately abandoned during Lord Dunmore's War. Kentucky was then part of the colony of Virginia, and Dunmore's War was a British punitive expedition against the Shawnee and Mingo Indians, who had taken violent umbrage with settlers moving in to modern-day West Virginia and Kentucky. At age 22, George Rogers Clark had his first military experience in Dunmore's War.
In 1775, Harrod and about 50 intrepid frontiersmen--mostly surveyors and hunters--restarted Harrodsburg, laid out a town, and began to raise corn. Clark spent some time roving around the woods and rivers of Kentucky before attaching himself to Harrodsburg, which was badly in need of a leader. Despite their youth, Clark and his friend Gabriel Jones were chosen to represent Harrodsburg to the Virginia colonial assembly in Williamsburg.
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Liz at the heroic memorial built in the 1930s |
Pioneer cemetery. A nearby centograph reads To the Wilderness Dead "Those without graves ... Unknell'd .. uncoffin'd and unknown" |
Clark was the driving force behind the construction of Fort Harrod, a palisaded fort to which the settlers could run in the event of an Indian attack. The fort concept was absolutely critical to the survival of this, and any other, frontier settlement. Inside, we saw how the settlers carried on their daily lives with demonstrations and exhibits of the schoolhouse, weaver, basketmaker, and blacksmith. By 1777 there were about 80 men in Harrodsburg along with two dozen women, over fifty children, and a number of black slaves.
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Recreation of the cabin and desk where George Robers Clark planned his brilliant strike at the British in 1778 |
In one of the corner blockhouses, George Rogers Clark planned his 1778 campaign against the British. Tiny Fort Harrod was under a desperate siege by Indians with British backing, and the conventional wisdom held that the West was lost to the fledgling United States. Someone forgot to tell Clark. There is a great account of this event in James Alexander Thom's book From Sea to Shining Sea.
Great pictures of Old Fort Harrod
Next, we headed north past Shaker Village, Lexington, and Paris to Blue Licks State Park. We also headed forward in time from the beginning of the Revolution to the end, when this beautiful spot was the site of a devastating battle in August 1782. Ten months after Cornwallis had surrendered at Yorktown, the war in the West was still in full swing.
Enjoyed a yummy buffet lunch in the visitors' center and then visited the small museum on the premises, which included mastodon bones and Indian artifacts excavated from the park. Then we trekked to a neat old bridge that overlooks the pretty Licking River and the battle site.
As Jim related, Blue Licks, named after a nearby salt lick, was a major debacle for the Kentucky militia. In early August, the notorious Tory renegade, Simon Girty, organized a combined force of about 300 Shawnee, Iroquois, and Mingo to attack Bryan's Station and Lexington. A small force of British rangers under Captain William Caldwell also marched with the Indians.
The attack was very well planned. Half the force would hide at Blue Licks while the other half attacked Bryan's Station. When the rescue forces poured out of Lexington to pursue the raiders, they would really be led into a trap at Blue Licks.
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Mary & Liz at Blue Licks, Kentucky |
This was exactly what happened. About 180 Kentuckians under the leadership of the most prominent men in the area set off in hot pursuit of the Indians. Daniel Boone, in command of Fayette county militia, became alarmed when he noticed how obvious the Indians' trail was. But he was overruled by other militia leaders who wanted to continue the pursuit.
The result was disaster. When the trap closed on the Kentuckians, 72 were killed, including some of the most important leaders of the settlements. Boone escaped but his son, Israel, was killed.
The political fallout in the battle's aftermath marked the beginning of Kentucky's disillusionment with George Rogers Clark. Clark was the leader of the state militia, and although he was nowhere near the battle site, Kentuckians were bitterly disappointed that he hadn't somehow prevented the disaster. Clark organized a massive punitive raid into the Ohio country in November 1782 in which five Shawnee villages were destroyed. This expedition is generally considered the last engagement of the Revolutionary War.
Good article about the Battle of Blue Licks
After viewing the mass grave and monument to the Blue Licks dead, it was back to Louisville and a nice dinner at a riverside restaurant called Captain's Quarters.
Day 2: Cave-In-Rock and Fort Jefferson
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Beneath the giant statue of Clark by Felix de Weldon |
On our second day following the trail of George Rogers Clark, our group started the day on the Belvedere in Louisville, a beautiful pedestrian plaza that overlooks the Ohio River. Jim gave us a talk about Clark as the founder of Louisville. After planning his strike at the British at Fort Harrod, Clark went to Virginia and Pennsylvania and recruited about 150 men into a secret expeditionary force that later became known as the Illinois regiment.
Together with about 80 civilians, Clark and his men came down in May 1778 from Pennsylvania and landed at the Falls of the Ohio. The presence of the settlers helped Clark conceal his true purposes, and the regiment was able to help the settlers get set up on Corn Island in the middle of the Ohio (the island is now underwater). This was the founding of the settlement that became known as Louisville.
As an interesting footnote, Jim also told us about the ferries that once crossed over to the Indiana side in the early days. Two of these ferries had Lewis & Clark connections. One was operated by the Floyd family, which gave Charles Floyd to the Expedition. Another ran from Locust Grove, the Croghan estate and home of Lucy Clark Croghan, George and William's sister.
A few weeks after arriving at Corn Island, Clark and his men headed downriver in canoes. Now it was our turn to retrace his journey by modern means.
For anyone thinking of following this itinerary, I have to say that we had too much driving planned today and not enough stops, though what we did see was fun. Leavenworth, Indiana, has a stupendous overlook of the Ohio. We hit it just in time to see thick fog rising from the river. It was lovely to watch it burn off to reveal barges plying their trade.
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Early morning fog on the Ohio River |
The rest of the morning we wove our way through small river towns until we finally arrived at Cave-In-Rock State Park in far southern Illinois. We nooned it with a surprisingly good lunch of chicken-fried steak at the park restaurant and Jim filled us in with tales of early river pirates and outlaws. Cave-In-Rock had been a landmark on the river since at least 1729, and would have been known to George Rogers Clark and later to Lewis & Clark and other river explorers. Bad men such as Sam Mason and the Harpe Brothers used the cave to ambush and attack pioneers traveling the river.
The cave itself is the stuff of every kid's Mark Twain fantasies, a huge deep cavern in a cliff far above the river, with a hole in the top for light and a secondary cavern that could be used for sleeping or hiding. I was horrified to learn that in 1962, the evidence of 10,000 years of human habitation was shoveled wholesale out of Cave-In-Rock and thrown away so a scene could be filmed here for the execrable epic film How the West Was Won. What a short-sighted waste!
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The gigantic "Cross at the Confluence" at the site of old Fort Jefferson is a project of about 50 local churches and is visible from the tri-states of Kentucky, Missouri, and Illinois |
We crossed back into Kentucky on a ferry and proceeded on. If you need a bathroom break, you could do worse than Smithland, where the Cumberland River empties into the Ohio. The Gower House, an old tavern and hotel dating from the 1820s, is an interesting ruin. The Marquis de Lafayette stayed here during his famous 1824-25 tour of the United States. You can also take in a neat folk art statue of Kentucky statesman Henry Clay here, carved from a single log.
Our last and best stop of the day was at the site of old Fort Jefferson near Wickliffe. Clark established Fort Jefferson in 1780 to guard the confluence of the Ohio and the Mississippi from Spanish incursions coming upstream and Revolutionary War deserters going downstream. Free land was offered to settlers to come to Fort Jefferson, and Clark and others expected a major river town to develop here, as happened in places like Pittsburgh, Louisville, and St. Louis.
Instead, Fort Jefferson was abandoned after only about a year, becoming another might-have-been in the life of George Rogers Clark. What happened? Evidence shows that the settlers built a stockade and put in crops in the summer of 1780. However, the fort was harried by the Chickasaw Indians in alliance with the British. In August, the Chickasaws burned the corn crop and killed most of the livestock. Then malaria and flu hit with a vengeance. By the end of 1780, most of the settlers had left, tired of famine, sickness, and Indian attacks. The place flooded in 1781 and was evacuated by June of that year.
Good article about Fort Jefferson
We stayed tonight at an excellent hotel, the Holiday Inn Express in Paducah. Applebee's next door made for an easy dinner.
Day 3: Fort Massac, Kaskaskia, and Fort de Chartres
A fascinating day on the trail of George Rogers Clark!
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Fort Massac. Foundations of original fort in foreground; reconstruction in back |
We headed out early to Fort Massac, a reconstruction of a fort that was a major control point on the Ohio for decades. (It's near Metropolis, Illinois, home of Superman.) A fort was originally constructed here by the French in 1757, though the Spanish may have been here even before that date. The fort was burned down by the Chickasaws after the French and Indian War, and the British never rebuilt here. It was at this spot that George Rogers Clark and the Americans beached their canoes and began their overland march into Illinois in 1778.
During the Indian Wars of the 1790s, the fort was rebuilt, and it remained a prime American fort in Lewis & Clark's day. It was at Fort Massac that they recruited George Drouillard, the half-breed hunter who became a critical member of the Expedition, John Newman, and Joseph Whitehouse. It was interesting to realize that Daniel Bissell, the commander of the fort in 1803, was not too thrilled to have Lewis & Clark sweep through and recruit his best men. Three years later, Aaron Burr and James Wilkinson met here while hatching their ill-fated treasonous plot.
The fort itself has been recently reconstructed and consists of a four-sided wooden fort surrounded by trenches and palisades. Inside were wooden buildings and barracks. The design and construction of Fort Massac would have been typical of other frontier forts such as Fort Jefferson, the site of which we saw yesterday, and Fort Washington, the Cincinnati-area fort where Lewis & Clark first met in the 1790s. Lewis & Clark's Expedition forts, Fort Mandan and Fort Clatsop, would have followed the same model.
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Clark overlooking the Ohio, by Leon Hermant |
There's a good introductory film at the visitor's center. Jim gave us a talk by a quaint 1930s statue of George Rogers Clark and allowed us to spend some time exploring the outline of the original fort.
Our next stop was Grand Tower or Tower Rock, one of the great landmarks of the Mississippi. As at Cave-In-Rock, river pirates sometimes used this spot, hiding in the turbulent waters around the rock and then attacking travelers. Lewis & Clark camped here on their way to St. Louis, and the meticulous Lewis climbed and measured the castle-like formation (92 feet). Lewis also noted:
This seems to be a place of the tropics or equinoxial line, those who are unfamiliar with it are always compelled to stop for a drink.
We proceeded on to the site of Old Kaskaskia. Today, most of the town has been undermined and consumed by the river. In George's day, Kaskaskia was a thriving French village and one of the key towns on the Mississippi. Hence, it became Clark's first target in the Illinois campaign, seized in a surprise raid on July 4, 1778.
We took a look around at a few historic buildings. The most interesting sight is the "Liberty Bell of the West," rung by the French villagers in celebration when tbey realized Clark and his terrifying Virginians weren't going to slaughter them. We listened to a good talk by Jim and played with a beagle puppy who was overjoyed to have so many visitors.
We had lunch at a smorgasbord in nearby Chester, Illinois (home of Popeye -- our second comic book stop of the day), then headed for Fort Kaskaskia State Park. This beautiful manicured park, replete with enormous walnuts, was the site of the town's fort. This was a very important stop for Lewis & Clark in 1803. They recruited about a dozen more men here, including John Ordway and Patrick Gass, along with the French boatman Francois Labiche. The white pirogue was probably acquired here. Once again, the fort's commander probably wasn't too happy to have Lewis & Clark run off with his best men and best boat.
Nearby we took a quick look at the Pierre Menard House before heading on to our last big stop of the day, the very impressive Fort de Chartres, a fantastic restored fort originally built by the French in the 1720s. A classic stone fort was in place by the 1750s, only to be abandoned after the French and Indian War. The British and the Americans did little with the fort, which was vulnerable to flooding. It gradually fell into ruin until restoration began in the 20th century.
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Fort de Chartres. The building with the pointy roof is the powder magazine. |
A park volunteer gave us a musket demonstration and a good history of the fort and showed us pictures of the spectacular flooding of 1993. We got to spend a nice amount of time exploring the stone buildings and powder magazine, which has the distinction of being the oldest building in Illinois.
We headed for St. Louis; overnight at our old haunt, the Drury Plaza. We got a decent supper at Max and Erma's nearby, then crossed the street for a look at the river and the delightful sight of the moon hanging inside the Gateway Arch.
Day 4: Battle of San Carlos, Old Cahokia, and the March to Vincennes
There's no sleeping in with History America. After a quick breakfast, we all assembled just outside the Drury Inn for a lecture about the Battle of San Carlos. George Rogers Clark had formed a close alliance with the Spanish lieutenant governor, Fernando de Leyba, who naturally wanted to see the British expelled from the western territories. The two men became personal friends, and tradition has it that Clark and de Leyba's sister, Teresa, were in love and wanted to marry.
On an international level, Spain entered the war against the British as an ally of France. Spanish troops attacked British posts on the lower Mississippi. De Leyba was convinced that St. Louis would be attacked in retaliation and spent a great deal of time and money constructing fortifications, including a stone tower called Fort San Carlos. In May 1780, he was proved right when a combined force of at least 1300 British and Indian troops attacked St. Louis and Cahokia (at that time a larger settlement than St. Louis).
In St. Louis, close to 100 settlers and slaves were killed before De Leyba skillfully managed a repulse of the attack from his just-completed entrenchments. On the Illinois side, Clark and his men drove off the attackers from Cahokia.
The consequences were anything but minor. Because of the Spanish and American victory at San Carlos, along with other Spanish triumphs at Mobile and Pensacola, the United States and Spain retained control of the West, and the Spanish retained possession of the Mississippi. If this battle had gone the other way, the effect on American history could have been incalculable.
Good account of the Battle of San Carlos
Unfortunately, De Leyba never got to enjoy any laurels. He died just one month after the Battle of San Carlos. Historians still dispute whether there was really an affair between George and Teresa de Leyba, but one thing is for certain: Clark never got married, to Teresa or anyone else.
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Mary at the old Cahokia Courthouse |
We bugged out of St. Louis and went across the river for a very interesting visit to Old Cahokia. We're particularly fond of this place as the opening scene of To the Ends of the Earth takes place here. It was great to finally see it in person! The Old Courthouse (of "post on sill" construction) was a private home back in the day of George Rogers Clark. In Lewis & Clark's time, it was a post office that Lewis used heavily while the Corps of Discovery was training at nearby Camp River Dubois.
We also visited the Old Church, where the church historian gave a neat talk and showed us the chalice brought by French missionaries in the early 1700s. Even the chalice case was over 200 years old. This early period of western history holds so many mysteries for me. I look forward to learning more.
That St. Louis and Cahokia were still in the hands of the good guys at all was due to Clark's most famous feat. In early 1779, George Rogers Clark and his band of 172 intrepid volunteers set off for a surprise winter attack against British forces who controlled Fort Sackville on the Wabash River near the French village of Vincennes. Acting on the time-honored underdog principle that the best defense is a good offense, Clark aimed to destroy the forces of British General Henry Hamilton (despised on the American frontier as the "Hair Buyer" for his practice of encouraging Indian scalping raids) before Hamilton could bring his superior forces out in the spring and destroy Clark's.
Whereas Clark and his men suffered in the desolate frozen swamps, we followed in their footsteps through cultivated fields and many little Illinois towns of varying degrees of prosperity. Lunch was Taco Bell in Salem, Illinois. As we drew closer to Vincennes, we left the main highways and took tiny backroads that closely followed the trail of Clark and his men. This was a great example of the kind of experience that History America Tours does best.
Fortunately, we could cross ravines on old railroad bridges with names like Wabash Cannonball and Baby Bear. Clark and his men weren't so lucky. They encountered a completely flooded landscape. The account of their courageous approach to Vincennes is the centerpiece of James Alexander Thom's Long Knife. Many of these men would never be the same after the physical suffering they underwent here.
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George Rogers Clark Memorial, Vincennes, Indiana |
This was a really interesting and educational way to approach the site of old Fort Sackville, where the magnificent George Rogers Clark Memorial now stands. We had been here two years ago, but still enjoyed the excellent orientation film, the gigantic monument, and the great statue of George inside with his famous quotations and the murals by Ezra Winter.
Here Clark pulled off one of the great bloodless victories of all time, a colossal, audacious bluff in which he convinced Hamilton that he was camped on his doorstep with five times the forces he actually had. The befuddled general surrendered to Clark without firing a shot. Imagine Hamilton's surprise when Clark's array of starving frontiersmen trooped into Fort Sackville to take possession, and he realized he'd been had by a 26-year-old Virginian who just happened to be a military genius.
Much more on the fall of Fort Sackville
Frankly, I was pretty pooped, but we had a special event on deck for the evening. We traveled the short distance to Grouseland, the home of William Henry Harrison, who governed this territory from 1800-1812. There Jim helped dedicate a new historical marker that commemorated Harrison's hosting of Lewis & Clark here on their return from the Pacific in 1806. Harrison is a character in our novel-in-progress, and we kept chuckling during the ceremony thinking of our scenes where Harrison, Lewis, and Clark don't get along so well.
Lastly we all got to attend a lovely dinner at Vincennes University hosted by the Vincennes Historical and Antiquarian Society. We got to sit with two really nice fellows who work at the Clark Memorial and their wives. The highlight was getting to see a neat 1812 portrait of Clark from life of which we'd been previously unaware. At age 60, Clark looked weary, sad, and bitter. More on that in the next journal entry, which will cover our return to Louisville and the scenes of Clark's later years.
Crashed at the Comfort Suites. Long day!
Day 5 : Return to Louisville
This is the last journal entry about the trip we took last fall retracing the campaigns of George Rogers Clark.
If there was ever a great figure in American history who got shafted worse than George Rogers Clark, I don't know who it would be. His victories in the Revolution gave the United States possession of the "Old Northwest," 260,000 square miles of territory that included all of the modern states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin, as well as the northeastern part of Minnesota. By the time he was 30, Clark was known as the "Hannibal of the West." The Indians, who feared and respected him, called him "The First Man Living."
But though he couldn't have known it at the time, Clark's life had already peaked. As was customary at the time, Clark had financed the war in the West using his own credit, signing personal vouchers for arms and supplies with the full expectation of being reimbursed by the state of Virginia (Clark was a general in the Virginia state militia, and never served in the United States army). In a series of events that almost defies credulity, he submitted the vouchers to Virginia, only to be told later that the state had lost them. Without the original documentation, he was told, he was on his own for the debts -- some $12,000 (about $137,000 in today's money).
Clark's life entered a downward spiral from which he never pulled out. Because he could not pay his debts, scores of people who had extended credit to help the Revolution went broke. Clark was hounded by debt collectors and was apparently even arrested at least once. He entered into ill-advised schemes to recover his fortune and reputation. Most notoriously, he partnered with James Wilkinson in a separatist scheme eerily reminiscent of Wilkinson's later involvement with Aaron Burr. Clark even went so far as to renounce his American citizenship before, as with Burr, Wilkinson betrayed him and left his reputation in ruins.
Worst of all, Clark became a heavy binge drinker. Observers record his horrific physical deterioration from a magnificently handsome man to a fragile old drunk, and record him lying passed out in the gutters of Louisville.
More about the final years of George Rogers Clark
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Grouseland, home of William Henry Harrison |
We kicked off our final day of the tour in Vincennes with a return to Grouseland. We heard an excellent talk from a local historian about William Henry Harrison and the house, though we didn't get to go inside. I was glad we'd been before. The most interesting new fact we learned was how differently the town was laid out back in Harrison's day, so that the approach from the Wabash to Grouseland would have been splendid. It turns out that Harrison didn't really build his house facing the railroad tracks!
We also got to go through the nearby reconstructions of early Indiana government buildings. These were interesting, though I admit to being spoiled in such matters by our trip to Williamsburg a few months back. It sounded like Harrison was the virtual dictator of the Indiana Territory, and Vincennes began to wither in importance after he moved away to take command of the army during the War of 1812.
Believe it or not, Harrison was quite fascinating. I highly recommend Pierre Berton's The Invasion of Canada as the place to start.
Good website on William Henry Harrison
Bugged out for Louisville through the rolling hills of southern Indiana. We ate lunch at a place called Sam's in New Albany, Indiana.
The afternoon back in Louisville was a blast. We started off at Locust Grove, probably the best of all the Clark sites. This was the genteel home of Lucy Clark Croghan and her husband William, and the last home of George Rogers Clark. At George's urging, the Clark family moved to Louisville from Virginia in 1784 at the end of the Revolution. William Croghan, a long-time friend of the Clark family, and Lucy built a fine home in 1790 on the proceeds of Croghan's success in business, and Locust Grove became a hub for the family and almost a hotel for traveling friends, including Meriwether Lewis.
We got a great tour of the place from Nancy, one of our fellow History America travelers who happened to be a docent at Locust Grove. The house is both beautiful and cozy, and it is easy to imagine the large, loving Clark/Croghan clan living, eating, talking, and sleeping here.
In 1809, George Rogers Clark came to live here with Lucy and her family after losing his leg in a terrible household accident. It's touching to see the downstairs bedroom fixed up for him and the porch where he spent most of his days. By this time, George was a bitter, tragic figure, but I felt glad to know that at least he was loved, cared for, and surrounded by family at the end of his days. We checked out the family cemetery, which we had missed on our previous visit, and visited the excellent gift shop.
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Clark family gravesites at Mulberry Hill |
We proceeded on to George Rogers Clark Park, the site of Mulberry Hill. John and Ann Clark, the parents of George, William, and eight other outstanding children, made their home here, and Mulberry Hill became the center of Clark family life for decades. Because he could not afford a home of his own, George lived here much of his life and helped his father direct the farm and mill. When John Clark died, however, the farm was left to William, the youngest son, not to George. In fact, John was forced to disinherit George to prevent any money or property he received from being seized by debt collectors.
Sadly, Mulberry Hill was razed to make room for a National Guard encampment during World War I. You can visit the family cemetery, and we paid our respects to the kindly John and Ann and several other relations. Today there's a lively park here with tennis courts and a playground. I'm sorry the house no longer stands, but I wonder if John and Ann Clark might not have preferred the park full of kids to a museum anyway.
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George Rogers Clark's cabin at the Falls of the Ohio |
Our last big stop was Point of Rocks at the Falls of the Ohio, where you can visit a recreation of the cabin where Clark lived from 1803-1809. William Clark had taken on the role of George's caretaker and lived with him at Mulberry Hill and here until the Lewis & Clark Expedition departed from Point of Rocks in October, 1803.
This is truly the simple log cabin of a penniless man, and stands in great contrast to Locust Grove and the life George might have had. But Clark did achieve richness of the mind in spite of his troubles. He immersed himself in the study of the incredible Devonian fossil beds at the falls as well as other fossil sites in Kentucky, corresponded with Thomas Jefferson about natural history, constructed globes, and collected (and read!) one of the first libraries in the western United States.
On the day we visited, the river was high and turbulent, and it was easy to imagine that Clark found some peace and freedom here for his troubled soul.
Back to the Galt House for a farewell dinner with Jim Holmberg and all our good History America friends. It was a very full week. There is nothing more educational than seeing in person the vivid reality of the greatness of America and what it cost. God Bless George Rogers Clark!