Retaliation of the Frontiersmen.

Outrages of this kind, continually happening alike to Americans and to Creoles under American protection, could not have been tamely borne by any self-respecting people.  The fierce and hardy frontiersmen were goaded to anger by them, and were ready to take part in, or at least to connive at, any piece of lawless retaliation.  Such an act of revenge was committed by Clark at Vincennes, as one result of his ill-starred expedition against the Wabash Indians in 1786.  As already said, when his men mutinied and refused to march against the Indians, most of them returned home; but he kept enough to garrison the Vincennes fort.  Unpaid, and under no regular authority, these men plundered the French inhabitants and were a terror to the peaceable, as well as to the lawless, Indians.  Doubtless Clark desired to hold them in readiness as much for a raid on the Spanish possessions as for a defence against the Indians.  Nevertheless they did some service in preventing any actual assault on the place by the latter, while they prevented any possible uprising by the French, though the harassed Creoles, under this added burden of military lawlessness, in many instances accepted the offers made them by the Spaniards and passed over to the French villages on the west side of the Mississippi.

    Clark Seizes a Spanish Boat.

Before Clark left Vincennes, he summoned a court of his militia officers, and got them to sanction the seizure of a boat loaded with valuable goods, the property of a Creole trader from the Spanish possessions.  The avowed reason for this act was revenge for the wrongs perpetrated in like manner by the Spaniards on the American traders; and this doubtless was the controlling motive in Clark’s mind; but it was also true that the goods thus confiscated were of great service to Clark in paying his mutinous and irregularly employed troops, and that this fact, too, had influence with him.

    The Backwoodsmen Approve Clark’s Deed.

The more violent and lawless among the backwoodsmen of Kentucky were loud in exultation over this deed.  They openly declared that it was not merely an act of retaliation on the Spaniards, but also a warning that, if they did not let the Americans trade down the river, they would not be allowed to trade up it; and that the troops who garrisoned Vincennes offered an earnest of what the frontiersmen would do in the way of raising an army of conquest if the Spaniards continued to wrong them. [Footnote:  Draper MSS.  Minutes of Court-Martial, Summoned by George Rogers Clark, at Vincennes, October 18, 1786.] They defied the Continental Congress and the seaboard States to interfere with them.  They threatened to form an independent government, if the United States did not succor and countenance them.  They taunted the eastern men with knowing as little of the West as Great Britain knew of America.  They even threatened that they would, if necessary, re-join the British dominions, and boasted that, if united to Canada, they would some day be able themselves to conquer the Atlantic Commonwealths. [Footnote:  State Dept.  MSS.  Reports of John Jay, No. 124, vol. iii., pp. 31, 37, 44, 48, 53, 56, etc.]