A Key Strategic Location
In early 1778, George Rogers Clark, eager to defend what was western Virginia and the Kentucky country from attacks by Native Americans allied to the British, led a tiny force down the Ohio River. Clark hoped to achieve a strategic coup by linking his expeditionary column with the French-speaking settlements of the Mississippi Valley.
Clark and his men marched overland from Fort Massac, near the present-day Metropolis, Illinois, to Kaskaskia. They avoided being sighted by the British or their Native allies and arrived at Kaskaskia on July 4, 1778. Most of the Kaskaskia townspeople welcomed them.
After facing a threat from a British force at Vincennes, Indiana, Clark and his men used Kaskaskia as their jumping-off place to capture Vincennes in early 1779. The Americans controlled Kaskaskia and its redoubt throughout the rest of the war, and won legal control of the territory in the 1783 Treaty of Paris.
Read more about this topic: Fort Kaskaskia State Historic Site
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