frontier settlements in eastern Tennessee, South Carolina, and Georgia, The cabins were burnt, the live stock driven off, and the men, women, and children massacred. The southern frontiersmen flew to arms, and before the close of 1776 they inflicted such punishment upon the Cherokees that it was several years before their tribe ventured upon the warpath again. During these years the border settlers were steadily growing stronger and better able to hold their own against the red men. border At first the Indians on the northern border, who had not forgotten their defeat in 1774, were not eager to renew the fighting. But they were soon stirred up by the British agents, The and during 1777 and 1778 the entire western frontier of New northern York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and the infant settlements in Kentucky suffered terribly from the tomahawk and the scalping-knife. Thriving settlements in the Wyoming Valley in northern Pennsylvania and in the Cherry Valley in central New York were ruined by raiding parties of Indians and Tories. We have already seen how General Sullivan punished the Iroquois Indians for their part in these massacres. In Kentucky the backwoodsmen gathered for protection Frontier stations George in the fortified stations like Boonesborough and Harrodsburg. Both of these places were repeatedly besieged by the Indians but always managed to beat off their assailants. It is probable, however, that in the end all the Kentucky settlements would have been destroyed had it not been for the heroic exploit of George Rogers Clark. How George Rogers Clark Won the Northwest.-George Rogers Clark was a young Virginian who became one of the early pioneers in Kentucky. Like Boone, Clark loved the Rogers Clark wild life of the border. Like Sevier, he was a born leader of men, tall and strong, with "a penetrating, sparkling eye," daring, ambitious, and far-seeing. In the importance of his service to the new nation Clark was destined to surpass all the other border heroes of his time. Indians Ohio The vast region north of the Ohio River was the home of warlike Indian tribes. Here and there were a few old French towns like Kaskaskia on the Mississippi and Vincennes on the north of the Wabash River, and a few British military posts like Detroit. These villages and military stations were the centers of British influence in the Northwest. There the Indians were furnished with supplies and incited to take the warpath against the American frontier settlers. Because George Rogers Clark knew these facts he resolved to carry the war into the enemy's country, capture the French towns, and win the Northwest from the British. Clark's expedition Clark returned from Kentucky to Virginia in the fall of 1777 and laid his plan before Governor Patrick Henry who approved it and advanced some money to carry it out. In the spring of 1778 Clark left the settlements on the Monongahela River at the head of one hundred and fifty Virginia frontiersmen. His men were clad in buckskin hunting shirts and carried long flint-lock rifles. In their clumsy flatboats they drifted silently down the Monongahela and the Ohio, past long reaches of Indian-haunted forest, until they reached the falls in the latter river, where the city of Louisville now stands. Here they built a fort and planted a crop of corn. Then Clark went on down the Ohio with a small force of picked men until they passed the mouth of the Tennessee. Leaving the boats at this point he led his men straight across the country to Kaskaskia, which he surprised and captured without striking a blow. Soon the other French towns on the Mississippi were in his hands, and a little later Vincennes acknowledged his authority. When the French inhabitants in this region found that Clark meant to treat them justly they gladly took an oath of loyalty to the United States. When Hamilton, the British commander of the Northwest, heard of Clark's conquests north of the Ohio, he advanced from Detroit to Vincennes, where he spent the winter. It was the The capture British leader's intention to renew the campaign in the spring, of Vincennes Clark's Virginians Crossing the Drowned Lands drive the Americans out of the Northwest Territory, and then lead a strong force of British and Indians against the settlements in Kentucky. But George Rogers Clark was not the man to await attack. He struck first, sure, and hard. Leaving Kaskaskia early in February, 1779, he led his men in a march of almost incredible difficulty across lands flooded by the spring freshets and forced the surrender of the British garrison at Vincennes. There was great rejoicing among the frontiersmen at the news that the "hair-buyer" general, as Hamilton was called, was a prisoner. The importance of Clark's daring and heroic exploit can hardly be overestimated. It not only saved the infant settle The Territory The land states ments in Kentucky from destruction at the hands of the British and the Indians, but it won the vast Northwest Territory for the United States. The British claimed all the country north of the Ohio. By the Quebec Act of 1774 they had made this vast region, the present states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin, a part of the province of Quebec. If they had been in actual possession of all this territory it would have been very difficult, if not impossible, to get them to give it up at the close of the Revolution. But when Franklin, Adams, and Jay were negotiating the treaty of peace with Great Britain they could claim the Northwest Territory on the ground that a large part of it was in the actual possession of their countrymen. It is probable that the conquest of this territory by George Rogers Clark made the Great Lakes instead of the Ohio River the northern boundary of the United States. Rival Claims and Land Cessions.-The Mississippi River was the western boundary of the United States at the close of the Revolution. But, as we have seen, there was a dispute claims of the between the states about the ownership of the land west of the Alleghany Mountains. Massachusetts, Connecticut, Virginia, the two Carolinas, and Georgia each claimed to own the land due west of it because its original charter had defined its territory as extending from "sea to sea." Virginia also claimed the land north of the Ohio River because its charter of 1609 said that its territory extended from "sea to sea, west and northwest." Virginia further held that the Northwest Territory was hers by right of conquest since George Rogers Clark was a Virginia soldier and the expenses of his expedition had been paid out of the treasury of that state. New York claimed some of the western land, on the ground that the Iroquois Indians had ceded it to her by treaty, but such a claim had little value. The accompanying map will make these claims clear. It will be noticed that Massachusetts and Connecticut on the one hand and Virginia on the other were rival claimants to part of the land north of the Ohio River. Western New Hampshire, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland, the six states having no claims in to the United the West, urged that the land in question ought to be given to the United States to be used for the benefit of all the people, land ceded Stat |