Clark's men march through flooded country

This mural, "WABASH: THROUGH WILDERNESS AND FLOOD" depicts the terrible march from Kaskaskia to Vincennes in February 1779. Colonel Henry Hamilton, commander of the English forces in the West, in the fall of 1778 had come down from Detroit with a company of the King's Regiment, a company of Detroit militia, and some Indians. He took possession of Vincennes and rebuilt the old fort there, which he christened Fort Sackville.

Here he was in a position to cut off Clark's expedition from its base. He planned to annihilate the invaders in the spring and to roll back the American frontier to the mountains. This news, which Francis Vigo brought to Clark, caused general consternation.

The intrepid young Virginian, however, succeeded in organizing a force of about one hundred and thirty men, nearly half of them French recruits, for an attack upon the unsuspecting English. It was in Mid-winter. The last ten days of the march the army spent in crossing the flooded valleys of the Little Wabash, the Embarrass, and the Wabash River itself.

On February 22, Washington's birthday, though no one then knew that it would ever be observed as a holiday by a grateful country, Captain Joseph Bowman wrote, "Marched on in the water, those that were weak and faintish from so much fatigue went on in canoes. We came one league further, to some sugar camps, where we stayed all night. Heard the evening and morning guns from the Fort. No provisions yet. Lord help us."

Ezra Winter, Artist