The rumour that Jay, Secretary of Foreign
Affairs, had approved to Congress the suggestion of Gardoqui, that the
river be closed for ten years as the price of a commercial treaty,
drove them to the point of forcible resistance. The Spanish also
continued to occupy posts on the American side of the Florida boundary
line, but this was a grievance only as they were accused of arousing
the Indians to hostility against American settlers. In truth, these
western pioneers formed a long arm of people thrust out between Indians
under British dominance on the north and Indians under Spanish control
on the south.
Believing themselves outside the pale of eastern protection, the western
people entertained various projects for self-preservation. George
Rogers Clark, whose daring Virginia expedition into the Illinois country
had gained him fame in the Revolutionary days, placed himself at the
head of a volunteer company which called itself the "Wabash regiment,"
and had been recruited in Kentucky for an expedition against the Shawnee
Indians. Clark had degenerated through intemperance into a kind of
border freebooter.
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