Fort Massac

Six years before signing on with the Lewis and Clark Expedition, George Drouillard took part in a sensitive international mission for the United States Army. What’s more, this mission was probably just one of Drouillard’s many services to the United States in the last decade of the eighteenth century.

The setting was Fort Massac, an army stronghold on the lower Ohio River in what is now southern Illinois, less than 40 miles above the Mississippi River. The time was July 1797. The backdrop was the long-delayed evacuation of Spain’s Mississippi River posts in accordance with the Treaty of San Lorenzo, commonly called Pinckney’s Treaty, of 1795. How Drouillard got involved as an army auxiliary requires a little background information.

Spain made four major concessions to the United States when its minister, Manuel de Godoy, signed Pinckney’s Treaty. First, it agreed to abandon its fortifications east of the Mississippi River and north of Spanish Florida. Second, it granted Americans the right to freely navigate the Mississippi. Third, it guaranteed Americans the right to store their commercial wares in New Orleans for ocean transshipment. And last of all, it promised to stop stirring up the tribes east of the Mississippi.^[2]Arthur Preston Whitaker, The Mississippi Question, 1795–1803: A Study in Trade. Politics & Diplomacy (New York: D. Appleton-Century Company, 1934), 51.

The first and last points were mutually contradictory: by abandoning its eastern posts, Spain would surely aggravate the Native Americans who looked to these strongholds for protection and support—the Chickasaws, Choctaws, Cherokees, and Creeks. Many expected these tribes to avenge themselves on the incoming American forces.

George Drouillard and his maternal relatives—who were Shawnee—apparently had settled in the Mississippi Valley by this time. They must have felt the tension created by these changes, whether through dealings with the above tribes or through their kinship with Louis Lorimier, commandant of Cape Girardeau, a Spanish post on the west side of the Mississippi River.^[3]M.O. Skarsten, George Drouillard, Hunter and Interpreter for Lewis and Clark and Fur Trader, 1807-1810 Glendale, California: (A. H. Clark Co., 1964), 20–22. Like other post commanders, Lorimier had the difficult task of keeping the peace throughout the political transition.

Abandonment at Chickasaw Bluffs

Madrid first ordered Governor Hector Baron de Carondelet in New Orleans to abandon the eastern posts in compliance with the treaty. No sooner had the baron dispatched express riders to the faraway posts with orders to this effect than new orders to the opposite effect arrived from Spain. Due to friction among the European superpowers of that day—France, Spain and England—the baron was now instructed to hold on to the posts as bargaining chips for as long as possible.

Again, he sent express riders galloping north and east from New Orleans in an effort to beat the first group. Carondelet was partially successful. The new orders reached the forts at Natchez, Walnut Hills—now Vicksburg, Mississippi—and St. Stephen—in southern Alabama—in time. But the Spanish commander at the far-flung post named San Fernando de las Barrancas, at what Americans of that era called the Chickasaw Bluff—later the site of Memphis, Tennessee—had carried out the first set of instructions immediately. By the time Carondelet’s revised mandate arrived in the spring of 1797, Fort San Fernando’s contingent had already dismantled and abandoned their fort. This left the bluffs open—an inviting toehold for American forces.^[4]Ibid., 52–57.

American Forces Move In

News of the evacuation reached Fort Massac, where Captain Isaac Guion of the Third U.S. infantry and two companies of his regiment, along with a handful of artillerymen, waited impatiently to proceed downriver and take command. Guion, a “singularly hand­some man, with a military port and manner,” was a native New Yorker and a Revolutionary War veteran, and had served once before at Fort Massac.^[5]“Military Journal of Captain Isaac Guion, 1797–1799.” Seventh Annual Report of the Director of the Department of Archives and History of the State of Mississippi (Nashville, Tennessee, … Continue reading Ordered by General James Wilkinson to take possession of the Mississippi River posts and co-establish American jurisdiction in the ceded area, Guion and his command had left Fort Washington at Cincinnati on 26 May 1797 and stopped briefly in Louisville on their way down the Ohio River.

William Clark, recently retired from the army, had been noting American troop movements from his home near Louisville since February of that year when he wrote his brother Edmund, “a Detachment of about 100 men is hear on the way to take possession of Nautchez.”^[6]William Clark to Edmund Clark, 22 February 1797. Draper Manuscripts 2L44, State Historical Society of Wisconsin. It was fitting for a Clark to notice a military party headed toward Massac. Clark’s famous brother, George Rogers Clark, had made brilliant use of this site in 1778 when he and his ragtag band of Virginians conquered the Illinois country for the American cause.

Back then, Fort Massac—commonly called Fort Massacre—was an abandoned French outpost separated by miles of rough country from settlements at Vincennes and Kaskaskia. American forces continued to use this site long after the revolution ended British control of the Ohio Valley. They found the remaining defenses helpful in keeping the native peoples in check and in monitoring conspiracies among those who were plotting to separate Kentucky and Tennessee from the United States. George Rogers Clark, hounded by creditors and disillusioned by the United States’ refusal to pay the debts he incurred in his country’s service during the revolution, was involved in one such intrigue in 1793.

General Wayne Meets Drouillard

So worrisome were these rumors of conspiracy and Indian troubles that the following year Gen. Anthony Wayne put together an expedition to rebuild the fortifications at Massac. This led to Wayne’s meeting a remarkable young Shawnee hunter named George in 1795, after he received a glowing letter praising George’s linguistic and hunting abilities. Two years later, Isaac Guion sent a letter to Wayne’s successor, General James Wilkinson, in which he mentioned sending George Drouillard on a diplomatic mission.

Because the first letter does not give George a surname, it cannot be proven beyond a doubt that it refers to Drouillard. Still, both messages stand as testimonials to the same talents and attributes that Lewis and Clark noted a decade later in their “Drewyer.”

Wayne met “George” through Maj. Thomas Doyle, whom he put in charge of rebuilding Massac. Doyle directed Capt. Isaac Guion’s company and a group of artillerymen to erect a blockhouse and a redoubt on a bluff overlooking the river. Although these and the other buildings of that era have not survived, enough of their contours remained in the soil to make possible a twentieth-century reconstruction of the fort now open to the public at Fort Massac State Park, near Metropolis, Illinois. This reconstruction includes a palisade of upright logs, a surrounding ditch, and several two-story bastions. About 60 surrounding acres were originally cleared to make a parade ground and to afford an unobstructed view.^[7]For details on the reconstruction of Fort Massac, see Norman W. Caldwell’s “Fort Massac: the American Frontier Post, 1778–1805,” Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, … Continue reading

Major Doyle and his men had good reason co take such precautions. Although rumors of conspiracies continued to bubble, the neighboring Indians presented an immediate threat. Bands of Shawnees and Lenape Delawares found the activities at Fort Massac so alarming that they called a council if war across the Mississippi at New Madrid, where they cried to arouse Spanish authorities against the Americans. But the Spanish threw their support to Doyle and his forces, and negotiations began with the disgruntled Indians.

Doyle praised “George” in a letter to General Wayne dated 23 August 1795:^[8]Wayne Manuscripts, Ohio Forts Subject Collection (MMC) Library of Congress.

I had the honor to mention to Your Excellency the Services the Garrison of Fort Massac had received from George a young Shawanee lad. This young man has just come up, led altogether by a desire of seeing the Army & some relations among his tribe. I take the liberty to present him to your Excellency, as a young man deserving your Notice & Encouragement. When he came to me last October he could not speak a word of English but now can understand Whatever is said to him. he is remarkably Sober and has a strong desire to live among the White people, he understand[s] seven Indian Languages in a short time would make an excelant interpreter. No allowance or present of any kind has ever been made to him from the public altho he served me as an Interpreter & a Messenger, at several times, & has for some time Suported the Garrison by his hunting.

Capt. Guion’s Mississippi Mission

Fast forward to 1797, when the handsome Isaac Guion was moving against the old Mississippi Forts of Spain. On 9 June of that year, Guion and the vanguard of the army’s occupational force tied up their flatboat, the Experiment, at the foot of Fort Massac. There to greet them was the post’s commander, Capt. Zebulon Pike, father of Zebulon Montgomery Pike, who later explored the southern Rocky Mountains.

Guion expected resistance from the Spanish before he even reached the Mississippi. Instructed by General Wilkinson to “sail under the flag of the United States, displayed conspicuously” and to notify Spanish authorities of his contingent’s approach but not to stop for anything short of an official order or menace,^[9]J. F. H. Clairborne, Mississippi as a Province, Territory and State with Biographical Notices of Eminent Citizens, Vol. I (Jackson, Mississippi: Power & Barksdale, 1880, reprinted by Louisiana … Continue reading Guion promptly sent a messenger from Massac to the Spanish commander across the Mississippi at New Madrid. Col. Charles Dehault Delassus replied by inviting the captain and his men to linger at New Madrid. Guion refused.^[10]Guion, Military Journal, 34–35.

Alarming news about the southern tribes reached Massac at around the same time. A Kentucky trader who had recently left New Orleans told Guion that although the Choctaw and Chickasaw nations appeared friendly, the Spanish had been inciting the Creeks to strike against the United States—a violation of the new treaty, if true. With Guion’s assent, Massac commander Pike sent a small contingent downstream to notify the Chickasaws of Guion’s coming.^[11]Ibid., 29–32.

Drouillard’s New Madrid Trip

On 8 July five Chickasaw hunters showed up ar Fort Massac, claiming to have no knowledge of Pike’s messengers. Guion gave them presents, noting that they were “apparently highly satisfied,” and persuaded one of them to descend the Mississippi with him as far as the Chickasaw Bluffs. He also plied a peaceful band of neighboring Cherokees with flour and salt, but was unable to meet their needs for tobacco.^[12]Ibid., 31–34.

In a letter dated 9 July 1797 Guion reported to General Wilkinson that two of these Cherokees, an influential man named Longhair and his English-speaking wife, had agreed to join the party to the bluffs. Then, almost as an afterthought, he added, “George Drouillard the young half-breed also goes.” Before closing the letter, Guion wrote, “As soon as l have passed New Madrid I shall send George Drouillard back to Massac with the report of the event.”^[13]Ibid., 33.

Why George Drouillard? Years later, Lewis and Clark praised his abilities as a hunter and a master of Indian languages, but Guion’s offhand mention of Drouillard suggests that by 1797, this son of a French Canadian father and a Shawnee mother had already earned a reputation as a go-between in the Illinois country. It seems likely that Captain Guion had become acquainted with young Drouillard and his valuable skills during Guion’s rebuilding of Fort Massac in 1794.

George Drouillard went on to carry important messages for the Corps of Discovery. Even before the expedition got underway, he delivered letters and necessary items between Lewis in St. Louis and Clark at the Wood River campsite. After the death of Sgt. Charles Floyd, both the commanders relied on “Drewyer” to carry messages, as well as to hunt and interpret for the party.^[14]Skarsten, 29.

Establishing Fort Pickering

Captain Guion found conditions around the Chickasaw Bluffs peaceful enough to co-establish a garrison . Although this post was christened Fort Adams, it soon became known as Fort Pickering, the name by which it was known when Meriwether Lewis arrived on his fatal post-expedition trip to Washington in 1809.

Guion turned over command of the Chickasaw Bluffs fort in November 1797 and continued downriver co complete his mission. The Spanish soon withdrew from the last of their posts. When Captain Guion reached Natchez, he prepared the vast area known as the Mississippi Territory for civil government. Considering the obstacles facing him at the beginning of his mission—the lack of cooperation from the Spanish and the understandable fears of the area’s tribes—Guion presided over a remarkably smooth transfer of international power. His journal makes no further mention of Drouillard.

There are no other details known about the young man’s mission between Fort Massac and New Madrid. Aside from Lewis and Clark’s enlistment of Drouillard in November 1803, the sketchy records of this era have little else to add until February of the following year, when Drouillard returned to Fort Massac from St. Louis and executed a promissory note for just over $300 to a creditor named Frederick Graeter.^[15]Ibid., 23–24.

That Lewis and Clark let Drouillard travel so far away from their base on personal business testifies to the respect he must have earned in their eyes—before the expedition even began. Or possibly the commanders were responding co the high praise of authorities such as Capt. Isaac Guion and Maj. Thomas Doyle. For whatever reason, Lewis and Clark never regretted enlisting “George Drouillard the young half-breed” and thereafter relied upon him perhaps more than they relied on any other member of the expedition.