“ With the exception of Detroit and several other posts on the Canadian frontier the whole of the North-West was thus brought under American influence; many of the Indians, previously hostile, became friendly, and the United States was put in a position to demand the cession of the North-West in the treaty of 1783. For this valuable service, in which Clark had freely used his own private funds, he received practically no recompense either from Virginia or from the United States, and for many years before his death he lived in poverty. ”

“ CLARK, GEORGE ROGERS (1752–1818) , American frontier military leader, was born near Charlottesville, in Albemarle county, Virginia, on the 19th of November 1752. Early in life he became a land-surveyor; he took part in Lord Dunmore’s War (1774) , and in 1775 went as a surveyor for the Ohio Company to Kentucky (then a district of Virginia) , whither he removed early in 1776. His iron will, strong passions, audacious courage and magnificent physique soon made him a leader among his frontier neighbours, by whom in 1776 he was sent as a delegate to the Virginia legislature. ”

“ In 1793 he accepted from Citizen Genet a commission as “major-general in the armies of France, and commander-in-chief of the French Revolutionary Legion in the Mississippi Valley,” and tried to raise a force for an attack upon the Spanish possessions in the valley of the Mississippi. ”