Nor was this all. As in Count Frontenac’s time, and with much the same ruthlessness as in those earlier days, Canada was defended by counter attacks upon the border settlements of the revolting colonies, Loyalists and Indians dealing the blows and bearing the penalties. In May and June of 1778, Brant harried the New York frontier and burnt the town of Springfield; in July, in order, it was said, to counteract American designs against Niagara, Colonel John Butler, with a force of Rangers and Indians, carried war far into the enemy’s country and uprooted the settlements at Wyoming, on the eastern branch of the Susquehanna river within the borders of Pennsylvania. Fact and fiction have combined to keep alive the memories of the massacre at Wyoming; and, together with the even more terrible tragedy of Cherry Valley which followed, it stands to the discredit of England in the story of these most barbarous border wars.[150] In September the Mohawk leader burnt to the ground the houses and barns at the German Flatts, though the settlers had been warned in time to take refuge in Fort Dayton. In November Brant joined forces with Walter Butler, son of the raider of Wyoming; and together they carried death and desolation into the Cherry Valley settlement in Tryon county. In the following year the Americans took a terrible revenge for these doings, and a strong force under General John Sullivan turned the country of the Six Nation Indians into a wilderness. ‘General Sullivan,’ wrote Washington to Lafayette, ‘has completed the entire destruction of the country of the Six Nations, driven all the inhabitants, men, women, and children out of it’. [Sidenote: George Rogers Clark in the West.] Further west, in 1778 and 1779, the Illinois region and the settlements on the middle Mississippi fell into American hands, never to be regained, the leader of the backwoodsmen in this quarter being George Rogers Clark, a young Virginian, one of the pioneers of settlement in Kentucky, a most able leader and a hard determined man. In July, 1778, Clark surprised and took the fort and settlement of Kaskaskia standing on the river of that name a little above its junction with the Mississippi, and immediately afterwards he received the submission of the post at Vincennes on the Wabash river. A few months later, in December, 1778, Vincennes was re-occupied by Hamilton, Lieutenant-Governor of Detroit, with a handful of men. Before the following February ended, Hamilton was in turn attacked and overpowered by Clark who carried out a daring winter march; and, being forced to surrender at discretion, the English commander was, according to English accounts, treated through long months of imprisonment with unmerited harshness. The truth was that, as the war went on, bitterness increased, and when, as in the West and on the border the combatants were backwoodsmen, Rangers and Indians, the fighting became a series of ruthless reprisals. [Sidenote: Later raids from Canada.]