The nearest post held by the British was that of St. Joseph, near present South Bend. It had been a garrison in earlier days and was now their westernmost post. During the year 1781, Don Francisco Cruzat, or Cruvat, who succeeded on the death of Leyba, determined to make a return visit to the enemy. Accordingly, in January, he sent Captain Pourré and sixty-five militiamen, French and Spanish, together with Indians, on an expedition of four hundred miles over a country covered with snow and ice. They had to carry their own subsistence and merchandise to secure favor with the Indians they might meet. Louis Chevalier acted as interpreter, and managed to persuade the Indians who were supposed to be allies of the British to remain neutral. Finally, St. Joseph was reached, taken by assault, and plundered, for it was a trading post also; what could not be taken away was destroyed, and the British flag was carried back and delivered to Cruzat. This would seem to be a strange venture, for it involved a long and terrible march to capture an insignificant post; yet it was possibly not without object. By a military fiction the capture of a post carries with it the title to all the surrounding or dependent country, and we find the Spaniards not slow to set up at the proper time that by this invasion they had made their own the whole territory from St. Louis to St. Joseph, if not beyond. If this was Spanish and West Florida was Spanish and there were no Americans between, it would seem as if the Spaniards were securing a hold upon the greater part of the Mississippi valley. It is quite possible that this was the object of the dash at Fort St. Joseph.

However, the claim was never admitted by the Americans, for the old conflict of Latin and Teuton which we have described had not closed without impressing the colonists with a feeling that what had been won was won for their own great future. It would be theirs if they had remained British, it must be theirs all the more if they were to become independent. So that their uniform contention was that the conquests of George Rogers Clark had won this whole country.

The public history of Upper Louisiana was as uneventful as the private life of its inhabitants. They went on in their easy-going way, content with what they had, envying no one, and rejoicing in the paternal government which saved them the trouble of doing anything. Cruzat remained governor until 1787, and our study of Upper Louisiana must leave him in charge. There were, indeed, only Perez, Trudeau, and Dellassus to come before the destiny of the country was entirely changed by a Louisiana Purchase of which the Spaniards did not dream.

CHAPTER XXIII

WIDENING THE SPANISH BOUNDARIES

THERE comes a time in the life of every people when the formal bands which have helped its growth become bonds in turn to retard its progress. If those in power are not able to accommodate the forms to new circumstances, if they attempt to retain the old bottles for the new wine, there is danger that everything will be rent asunder. Bluntschli truly says that every successful war not only settles the questions which gave rise to it but brings in new conditions and is a point of departure for future development. Such was the case with the British colonies in America. French authority had been extinguished and new conditions faced the colonies. The French conflicts had not only conquered the enemy but developed the English colonies themselves. If foreign affairs had been settled, domestic complications now ensued, and there resulted the American Revolution. That story comes later than the story of their colonization, but the colonial period of Spanish Louisiana to some extent overlaps the time of its neighbors' civil war, and so we must give it incidental consideration from the outside. While the thirteen colonies were invading the Latin province of Canada to the north and driving their own loyal inhabitants to the Floridas in the south, while Washington, with the help of France, was seeking from Boston to Yorktown to make the provinces free and independent States, the west bank of Mississippi River remained tranquil.

Neither France nor Spain would ordinarily have aided a revolution designed to increase the liberty of subjects; but on account of their fixed hostility to England, France was assisting the Atlantic colonies against the mother country, and Spain in endeavoring to mediate soon found herself involved in the struggle. She did not, however, enter into an alliance with the Americans as did France, although she was willing to aid them so far as it helped herself, and there was one direction in which she had already been aiding them without its being much observed by the British. Fort Pitt was, of course, in the possession of the insurgents and communication was not much obstructed from there down the Ohio and Mississippi to New Orleans, where Oliver Pollock was still influential. The English remained from the beginning in possession of Detroit, Michilimackinac, and a few other lake posts, for, as the water route was the principal mode of communication, these were practically then as before a part of Canada. There were some attempts to use these as bases of operations against the Virginians west of the Alleghanies, but practically George Rogers Clark made the Americans masters of the Ohio valley. In this way supplies could be brought up the Mississippi and Ohio in comparative safety, if only means could be found to pay for them. Both Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson when governors interested themselves in this subject and through Pollock in New Orleans much was effected. The details are obscure, but certain it is Pollock bought munitions of war and shipped them up to Fort Pitt and the other American posts. The great exploits of Clark would have been impossible without the supplies, and so Oliver Pollock and his work were among the causes which have enabled the United States to claim and hold the great Mississippi valley. Virginia in this way became indebted to Pollock in the amount of $65,8145%, and in 1779 Governor Jefferson asked Galvez to advance this for Virginia. It would seem this was not done, as Galvez needed all the money and means he could command. Virginia paid Pollock in bills