A thrilling story of heroism, of Indian raids, of pioneering and of men building a new nation in the face of tremendous hardships. This is the story of George Rogers Clark—pioneer, Indian fighter and hero of the American Revolution, who helped shape the first governments of Illinois and Kentucky.

In 1772, when George Clark left Caroline County in Virginia to homestead in the Ohio Valley, his youngest brother William, who would one day lead the Lewis and Clark expedition across the Rocky Mountains, was still a baby. His older brother Joseph was talking of war with England and of the Continental Congress.

Few pioneers had ventured beyond the Blue Ridge Mountains where fierce tribes of Indians roamed through Illinois and Kentucky. But Daniel Boone was building the Wilderness Road. With each passing year the number of immigrants grew, and settlements began to spring up along the Ohio River. A trading post had been established at St. Louis many years before by the French, and the forts they had built at Vincennes, Detroit, Sackville and Fort Pitt were now garrisoned by the British.

Clark realized that these garrisons would be serious threats to the colonists in the event of war, and his concern was fully justified as soon as hostilities began. The British used these vantage points to rouse the Indians against the colonists, sending them on the war-path to pillage and burn settlements as far south as Louisville.

How Clark, with a small band of ill-equipped volunteers, attacked and captured these strategic forts and quelled the Indian uprisings is one of the many exciting stories that have come out of the Revolutionary War.

From the book