In the Current of the Revolution 109 



port of the Americans, but Clark answered that all 

 he asked of the red men was that they should for 

 the moment remain neutral. A few of the young 

 Creoles were allowed to join in the attack, however, 

 it being deemed good policy to commit them defi- 

 nitely to the American side. 



Fifty of the American troops were detached to 

 guard against any relief from without, while the 

 rest attacked the fort; yet Hamilton's scouting 

 party crept up, lay hid all night in an old barn, and 

 at daybreak rushed into the fort. 37 Firing was 



37 Hamilton's Narrative. Clark in his "Memoir" asserts 

 that he designedly let them through, and could have shot 

 them down as they tried to clamber over the stockade if he 

 had wished. Bowman corroborates Hamilton, saying: "We 

 sent a party to intercept them, but missed them. However, 

 we took one of their men, . . . the rest making their escape 

 under the cover of the night into the fort." Bowman's jour- 

 nal is for this siege much more trustworthy than Clark's 

 "Memoir." In the latter, Clark makes not a few direct mis- 

 statements, and many details are colored so as to give them 

 an altered aspect. As an instance of the different ways in 

 which he told an event at the time, and thirty years later, 

 take the following accounts of the same incident. The first 

 is from the letter to Henry (State Department MSS.), the 

 second from the "Memoir." i. "A few days ago I received 

 certain inteligence of Wm. Moires my express to you being 

 killed near the Falls of Ohio, news truly disagreeable to me, 

 as I fear many of my letters will fall into the hands of the 

 enemy at Detroit." 2. "Poor Myres the express, who set out 

 on the 1 5th, got killed on his passage, and his packet fell into 

 the hands of the enemy ; but I had been so much on my guard 

 that there was not a sentence in it that could be of any dis- 

 advantage to us for the enemy to know; and there were 

 private letters from soldiers to their friends designedly wrote 

 to deceive in cases of such accidents." His whole account of 

 the night attack and of his treating with Hamilton is bom- 



