The War in the Northwest 227 



the fort as Clark had captured Vincennes. He 

 raised some fifty volunteers round Cahokia and Kas- 

 kaskia, perhaps as many more on the Wabash, and 

 marched to the Maumee River. Here he stopped to 

 plunder some British traders ; and in November the 

 neighboring Indians fell on his camp, killed him and 

 thirty or forty of his men, and scattered the rest. 10 

 His march had been so quick and unexpected that 

 it rendered the British very uneasy, and they were 

 much rejoiced at his discomfiture and death. 



The following year a new element of confusion 

 was added. In 1779 Spain declared war on Great 

 Britain. The Spanish commandant at New Orleans 

 was Don Bernard de Galvez, one of the very few 

 strikingly able men Spain has sent to the Western 

 Hemisphere during the past two centuries. He was 

 bold, resolute, and ambitious; there is reason to 

 believe that at one time he meditated a separation 

 from Spain, the establishment of a Spanish- Ameri- 

 can empire, and the founding of a new imperial 

 house. However this may be, he threw himself 

 heart and soul into the war against Britain ; and at- 

 tacked British West Florida with a fiery energy 

 worthy of Wolfe or Montcalm. He favored the 

 Americans ; but it was patent to all that he favored 

 them only the better to harass the British. 11 



Besides the Creoles and the British garrisons, 

 there were quite a number of American settlers in 

 West Florida. In the immediate presence of Span- 



10 Haldimand MSS. De Peyster to Haldimand, No. 16, 1780. 



11 State Department MSS., No. 50, p. 109. 



