[Illustration: Map showing the Forts at Detroit, Kaskaskia, and
Vincennes, with the line of Clark's march.]
Colonel Hamilton, the British commander at Detroit, was determined
to drive the American settlers out of the west. In the beginning of
the Revolution the Americans resolved to hire the Indians to fight
for them, but the British found that they could hire them better than
we could, and so they got their help. The savages did their work in
a terribly cruel way. Generally they did not come out and do battle
openly, but they crept up secretly, by night, and attacked the
farmers' homes. They killed and scalped the settlers in the west,
burned their log cabins, and carried off the women and children
prisoners. The greater part of the people in England hated this sort
of war. They begged the king not to hire the Indians to do these
horrible deeds of murder and destruction. George the Third was not
a bad-hearted man; but he was very set in his way, and he had fully
made up his mind to conquer the "American rebels," as he called them,
even if he had to get the savages to help him do it.
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