From Sea to Shining Sea

by JAMES ALEXANDER Thom

  They rode over a rise later, and George paused to point. “See that next range o’ hills there? It’s a honeycomb o’ caves. I’ve slept in many a cave while passin’ through here. Places where ’ere’s stone chips from making weapons, tools. And in the river valleys, strange thing: There’s huge mounds o’ mussel shells. They say a people, God knows how long ago they lived, ate mostly mussels. Those shells would pile up fifteen, twenty feet high, and they’d build their villages atop ’em. One I saw where you could tell there’d been ditches and streets.

  “Billy, I want us t’ study all that. Come peace, we’ll wander over this territory, you and me. Take notes. Just like Tom Jefferson. A little way on, there’s a lick where the water smells like bad eggs. The French and the Indians both take it as medicine.”

  On the next day out, George got to a point he seemed to have been building to in all this talk. “Listen, Billy,” he said, “you’re most excited about goin’ to war, eh? Aye. I remember how that is. Like wanting a woman, that first time is. Your blood runs so high y’ think you’ll die with being eager. Some people like it so much they want to go at it every year. Well as I see it, brother, there’ll be war over this land for a hundred years. You’ll be in it, so much you’ll be sickened. It’s duty. But there’ll come a time when you’ll know as well as I do what a blessing peace is.

  “Y’ve met Indians you liked. At Fort Finney. Well, someday, maybe next week, if we ever get there, you’ll be a-facin’ the ones you like, over a gunsight. And there’ll be times when you admire some o’ them more than ye do some of your own.

  “When matters are like that, Billy, duty’s a curse. I tell you, there’s more glory in seeing a new horizon, in finding a new river, or understanding someone else’s God, than there is in makin’ war. Remember how Pa would use to preach at us on that? Well, he was right. Somehow in his wisdom he’s learned the direct way, without havin’ blood on his own hands, what a false glory making war is. Y’ll see, Billy. God damn it, ye will if you live long enough.”

  William could remember the exuberant, whooping, happy George who had used to roar into Virginia from the West, and it was plain that much had happened to change him. George now was like those elder chiefs at the treaty council.

  “Here,” George said, now pointing up a ravine on their left, “is where Dickie’s saddle was found. Likely his bones are up in a glade someplace, unburied. But …” He reached across and put a hand on William’s arm. “Never say that to family. It’s no picture we’d want in their minds, hear?”

  BY THE SIXTH DAY, THE ARMY HAD COME DOWN OFF THE slopes and rolling woodlands onto plains as flat as a tabletop. They were in the Wabash flood plain. “All this,” George told William, with a wide sweep of his arm, “it was all ice water up to a man’s middle in February of ’79. By the Eternal, I still shake to think of it. Past this wood here y’ll see Vincennes.”

  They rode out into a vast clearing then, and there, trembling in heat waves from the sunbaked meadows and grain fields, lay the distant cluster of houses, and beyond, the long palisades and squat blockhouses of the fort on the bank of the Wabash.

  William saw the distances and the grim prominence of the fort, and now, even though the season was green and hot, the whole panorama of that bleak, drowned landscape and the desperate drama of the battle, which he had heard told and retold so many times by so many veterans, coalesced at last in his understanding, and became even more marvelous. William looked at the lean, hard, brown profile of his brother, saw him squinting across space and time, this familiar, this blood, of his very own, and his heart squeezed so hard in his breast that it seemed to block his breath.

  Now the people of Vincennes were pouring out of their houses and across the commons, racing toward him, waving, yelling their greetings in French and English, joyous at the return of their old friend and protector.

  And William wondered, without thinking it in words, whether he could ever, somehow, be a man of such a stature.

  THE PEOPLE OF VINCENNES WERE CHEERFUL, VIVACIOUS, and shabby. They were desperately poor. While the army waited at Vincennes for the boats to come up the Wabash with flour and meat, William met the townspeople, learned of their love for George, and came to understand the straits they had been put in by allying themselves with the Americans in the Revolution.

  Virginia had promised the French habitants a strong and protective government, advantages in trade, and compensation for the help they had given the Long Knives. None of these promises had been fulfilled. And then Virginia had ceded their country to Congress, and Congress had shown them even less concern. Under the rule of the United States, they complained, they had been like abandoned children. Being “Americans” now, they could no longer trade through New Orleans because of Spain’s blockade of the lower Mississippi. Their farming tools were worn out, they had little food or powder and shot. Only Spanish traders came to Vincennes anymore, and they charged cruelly high prices. Furthermore, they were believed to be selling guns and ammunition to Little Turtle’s Indians.

  And now the Wabash Confederacy with its 1500 warriors hovered a hundred miles above them on the Wabash, and was expected to fall upon them any day.

  It was no wonder that the people of Vincennes were so delighted to see this army from Kentucky.

  And yet, the army’s presence here could cause difficulties, of course, Major LeGras noted apologetically. The habitants could scarcely feed themselves. To try to quarter 1200 soldiers upon the town would be impossible.

  And so, the Army of Kentucky would make its camp across the river from Vincennes and await its supply boats. And it obviously was going to be a very long wait. The Wabash was so low that boats would have to be dragged. George took one look at the river, grumbled a curse, and called a meeting of his officers.

  “Now look at that river,” he told them. “It will be a week at the very least before those boats get here, if they can get here at all. They’re bringing five days’ provisions. Damn it all, we’ll eat more than that sitting here waiting for ’em! I told you before we started that it would be a fool’s errand to come to Vincennes! If we’d marched straight for the enemy, we’d have been at his throat by now. Listen to me, and listen well: we’ve still got ten days’ rations. We can march on Little Turtle in three days, strike him, and be back here by the time those bedamned scows arrive. I say we march now. We’d be idiots to sit here and wait ten days for five days’ grub, all the while the Shawnees are joining Little Turtle. Idiots we’d be! D’you choose to behave like idiots?”

  They chose to do so. George was overruled. And so his army sat on the west bank of the Wabash, consuming its flour and cattle, and waiting.

  The Indians, of course, knew of Long Knife’s arrival at Vincennes, and soon an important Miami chief named Pacane appeared, bringing a message. George arranged to meet him in the fort. Pacane was a richly dressed, lordly chief with finely sculptured features, kindly eyes, and a small, prim mouth. He could have passed for a schoolmaster except for his ornaments: a silver ring in the tip of his nose, long earrings made of ten beaded pendants, silver armbands, and one long, tightly braided queue hanging from the crown of his otherwise shaven head. George knew Pacane, an old friend of the British who still carried as his most cherished possession a silver-mounted knife given him in 1778 by General Hamilton.

  Pacane now came to profess that he was not hostile to the Long Knife and wished for peace. “If that is true,” George said, looking straight into his sleepy-looking eyes, “you should tell it to your warriors.” He then named several of Pacane’s chieftains who had been recognized on raiding parties in Kentucky. Pacane’s eyes shifted, but he made no explanation or apology. George continued: “I am glad you came to see me. You can tell the tribes on the Wabash, who said that I dared not come into their country, that I am here. If they are men, let them come and fight men, and not be killing our women and children!” He gave Pacane a belt of red beads, saying, “I send these bloody strings that they may accept my challenge.”
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  Pacane nodded his handsome head politely, took the war belt, and strode straight for the open gate of the fort, his escort around him. George noted that the log gates were about to collapse. In the seven years since he had captured this stronghold from Hamilton, it had been standing here rotting. He gazed at the open gateway and remembered the day when his troops had carried him through it on their shoulders.

  Then he looked at Colonel Todd and Colonel Barrett and the junior officers. They were well fed, well armed, tanned, healthy.

  They’re ten times as numerous and ten times as robust as my old boys were, he thought. So why in hell should it be that they’ve got a tenth of their spirit?

  “Well, gentlemen,” he said. “Let’s get back to camp and put those boys to drill. When and if those boats get here, and all our stalling is done, we’d best be well fit to fight.”

  Pacane came back in a few days. He brought a red belt, but also some strings of white wampum and a peace pipe. He presented a sarcastic letter from Little Turtle, written in the hand of some white man, likely a British agent or officer. It said the confederacy was glad to hear the Long Knife announce his presence, and added that the Indians would be pleased to talk with him before he marched. To George’s mind it was nothing more than a feeble ploy to delay the confrontation until the arrival of the Shawnees from Ohio. And so he gave it no reply.

  By the time the boats from Kentucky arrived, two weeks had passed. The new provisions on the boats amounted to nothing but five days’ worth of flour. The beef had become so spoiled it had had to be thrown overboard. George’s quiet fury was like a blue flame.

  “Well, gents, y’ve had your way,” he told the officers. “We’ve fiddled a half a month away, and now we’ve just got food enough to feed us a week, which should be just enough if we march quick and attack and return—as we should have done in the first case. Now we have no leeway. Either we go right now, or we give it up, and leave the savages free to massacre your families. And listen:

  “If you fail me now, by Heaven, their blood will be on your hands, NOT MINE!” He glowered around the table at them. Most of them looked sheepish.

  “May I speak, sir?” It was Levi Todd. He stood and leaned toward them with his knuckles on the table. Colonel Todd had been a back-stabber in the closing days of the war, and George had no idea what his unexpected speech was going to contain. If Levi Todd talked doubt now, the whole expedition might as well be abandoned. George tried to plumb his eyes, but they revealed nothing except anger.

  “Gentlemen,” Todd began, “this expedition has been lame from the start. Our boys been knowing the Invasion Law, and their rights by it. I daresay I made sure mine did. So now, seems like what we got us here is not an army o’ soldiers, but an army o’ lawyers. An army of lawyers! And boys, you know how bad one is!” Several of the officers laughed. Todd’s family was full of lawyers. Todd went on: “Now, do we need reminding, that it was our own selves that begged Gen’l Clark to lead us against the Wabash Indians? Aye! It was! And why did we? Because we know he’s the best soldier in Kentucky and always was! In God’s name! No wonder he took pause about taking us on! Who in hell would want to lead twelve hundred lawyers? Well, we’ve put Gen’l Clark in such tight sleeves he just can’t hardly move an arm. Well, I’ve seen the light. As for me, by God, I’ll vow that my boys and I are going to follow the best soldier in Kentucky, and”—he banged his fist on the table—“we’re going to do whatever he requires!”

  George looked down the table at Todd and swallowed. He glanced at William, who seemed scarcely able to contain his emotions.

  “Nicely spoken,” George said, his voice warm and calm. “That kind o’ sentiment overcomes everything. Now, gents, get your boys fixed to march. We’ll forget the bad feelings we’ve had, and head up the Wabash at daybreak, all of one heart, and God willing, we’ll be marching back to a safe Kentucky inside of a week!”

  AND SO THEY HAD STARTED OUT, UP THE WEST BANK OF THE Wabash, while the people of Vincennes waved and cheered from across the river.

  They had forded to the east bank and gone in good order for two days, with scouts out ahead, and the weather had been mild; the cottonwoods and sycamores along the Wabash had begun to turn yellow; the Jefferson and Fayette troops had sung heartily in the fresh air of early October. William had ridden beside George through the sun-dappled bottomlands, swearing over and over to himself that in the battle he would not flinch or cower, but stay at George’s shoulder so that his brother could see him and be proud of him.

  And now it was the morning of the third day, and they were opposite the mouth of the Vermillion River, one day’s forced march from Little Turtle’s camp, which meant they might meet the first lines of resistance within hours. They had breakfasted on mush and jerky and folded their camp and loaded the horses, and were forming for the march. William was honing his saber, a ritual he had observed every morning at breakfast. “Keep grinding that thing down,” George joked, “and ye won’t have enough steel left for a knitting needle.” William grinned, picked up a fibrous stalk of horseweed, and swished the blade through as if it were butter, saying:

  “It’s sharp enough to shave with.”

  “Ha, ha! Aye, if y’had anything to sh—”

  He rose, suddenly looking down along the column. Someone was yelling:

  “Who’s for home? Hey! Who’s for home?” And in an instant, other voices, many voices, were chorusing, “Who’s for home?”

  “What’s this now?” George muttered, and he grabbed the reins of his big dappled gray from the soldier who held them, swung into the saddle, and thundered off toward the uproar. William in a flash had his sword sheathed and was mounted and off after him. Captain Morrison, head of a troop of cavalry, galloped up and fell in alongside George. “It’s the Lincoln men,” he cried. “Th’ bloody cowards are turnin’ back!”

  George and William galloped among the trees, following a wake of dust and loud voices. Off to the left, on a low bluff, stood Colonel Todd’s Fayette troop, already in ranks, watching the scene in silence.

  In a moment George overtook the tail of the column. The soldiers heard him coming and cringed aside as he galloped past, his jaw set in a fury, his young brother at his heels. As he rode toward the head of the file he could hear them shouting, “What use goin’ on, nothin’ to eat?” “We’re for home, Gen’l! Ya-haw!”

  At the head of the column rode an officer waving his hat in the air, a Lieutenant Robards. He turned as he heard the hoofbeats coming behind him, and a grin dissolved from his face when he saw that it was General Clark.

  George halted and wheeled his horse in front of Robards, grabbing the reins from him and shouting: “Stop right there!” His voice was curdled with rage and contempt. “The enemy’s back that way, ye bedamned poltroon!”

  Robards’ chin was trembling, but he retorted:

  “What’s the use o’ going on, Gen’l? With nothing to eat?”

  “Where’s Colonel Barrett?” George demanded. The troops were drawing up behind Robards, and fanning out to make a semicircle and watch this confrontation. “I said, where’s Barrett? Answer me, pup, or I’ll use your guts for garters!”

  “I—I don’t know, sir.”

  “Don’t know where your colonel is? B’god! Go find him! I want him up here in two minutes answering to me!” He flung the reins into Robards’ face and the young man rode away, flushing, eyes full of tears. George and William sat their horses in the path of the Lincoln troops. George’s eyes were flashing and his nostrils were distended, white-edged, his clenched jaw muscles working, his hands shaking. The troops were gathering around like an armed mob now to look insolently at the general and his ashen-faced young brother. William could see that George was having one of his legendary struggles with his own volcanic temper. At last George began looking into faces, and their eyes fell before his.

  “You, Larkins! You’re an old soldier of mine; you’re no coward. What’s this, turnin’ your tail on Indians?”


  The man dropped his eyes. “We all voted, sir.”

  “Voted? Who? Where’s your colonel?”

  “We don’t have to go, Gen’l!” someone yelled from far back out of sight. Now the others began yelling.

  “What use goin’ on?”

  “Nothin’ to eat!”

  “We don’t have to go! Don’t have to! Nothin’ to eat!”

  George bellowed over them:

  “Nothing to eat? Hey, you all sound like you’ve memorized that song! Listen to me! There’s enough and you know it! We’ll take more at the Indian towns! And there’s hundreds o’ horses, if we get that hungry! Where are your officers, I want to know! I want to see Barrett!”

  Now most of the five hundred Lincoln County militiamen were in a gawking, jabbering circle around George and William. George turned his horse around, looking for Barrett or his subalterns. He could not see a one of them, although some of the Fayette officers had ridden down. He could see Captain Moses Boone, and Captain Gaines, and Lieutenant Anthony Crockett, and Lieutenant Craig, all of Fayette County, but not one of the Lincoln officers. Robards seemed to have vanished. Now, with none of the officers to direct his fury at, George took off his hat and stood in his stirrups, and his eyes now looked wet, and his voice quavered a little as he cried out:

  “Don’t shame yourselves! D’you know what mutiny is? It’s an unspeakable shame, that’s what it is!” Some of them were listening and looking ill at ease, others were laughing at him. William watched George, and his heart twisted with pity as he heard him plead: “Listen, you men! Only promise to go on with me, and if I don’t give you victory and a mountain o’ food in two days, I’ll forget and forgive this mutiny, and go back with you! Don’t make me ashamed of Kentucky men! Don’t make Kentucky ashamed of Lincoln County!” He was almost weeping now, and William was so knotted with chagrin, so frustrated for him, he was almost crying himself, and wanted to whip out his sword and slice the rude mockery off the hundreds of faces around him.