As a result of this notice, the Indians took to the woods and the French villagers shut themselves in their homes. Clark and his men soon rushed into the town and surrounded Fort Sackville. The next day a party of “British” Indians came into town on their ponies, grinning and shaking the scalps they had taken from a number of Kentucky settlers. These Indians on the warpath did not know of the presence of the little American army until some wrathful Kentuckians fell upon and killed every one of them in plain view of Hamilton and his soldiers. The besieged garrison fought desperately for days, but the pioneer sharpshooters with their deadly aim forced them to surrender. The British never attempted to take the little river fortresses again. And when the treaty of peace was signed between the young United States and old England, that vast Northwest Territory was safe in the hands of the new nation. But for the great thought so heroically carried out by George Rogers Clark and his men, that western empire--now occupied by the states of Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin--would at the end of the war have belonged to England. As Clark said to Governor Patrick Henry when he outlined his plan of capturing the three river forts and holding all that territory for the United States of America: “A country which is not worth defending is not worth claiming.” LEWIS AND CLARK, TWO ADVENTURERS IN THE FAR WEST William Lewis, a nephew of General Washington’s sister Betty, lived near Thomas Jefferson’s beautiful estate in Albemarle County, Virginia. Two years before Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, a boy was born into the Lewis family. This baby was given his mother’s maiden name, Meriwether. Twenty-five years after writing the Declaration Jefferson became President of the United States and went to live in the still unfurnished White House in the new city of Washington. Then he chose for his secretary Meriwether Lewis, whom he had seen grow up from boyhood. He was such a remarkable young man that later ex-President Jefferson wrote, in a story of the life of his former secretary: “When only eight years of age, he often went out in the dead of night alone with his dogs into the forest, to hunt the raccoon and opossum (which, seeking their food in the night, can then only be taken), plunging through the winter’s snows and frozen streams in pursuit of his object. “His talent for seeing things led him to a true knowledge of plants and animals of his own country. At the age of twenty, yielding to the ardor of youth and a passion for more dazzling pursuits, he engaged as a volunteer in a body of militia called out by President Washington. At twenty-three he was promoted to a captaincy and appointed paymaster of his regiment.”