[Footnote: _Do._ Haldimand to De Peyster, May 19, 1782.

This is the first record of an effort to make a permanent settlement at Chicago.] At the end of the year 1781 the unpaid troops in Vincennes were on the verge of mutiny, and it was impossible longer even to feed them, for the inhabitants themselves were almost starving.

The garrison was therefore withdrawn; and immediately the Wabash Indians joined those of the Miami, the Sandusky, and the Lakes in their raids on the settlements.
[Footnote: Va.

State Papers, III., 502.] By this time, however, Cornwallis had surrendered at Yorktown, and the British were even more exhausted than the Americans.

Some of the French partisans of the British at Detroit, such as Rocheblave and Lamothe, who had been captured by Clark, were eager for revenge, and desired to be allowed to try and retake Vincennes and the Illinois; they saw that the Americans must either be exterminated or else the land abandoned to them.
[Footnote: Haldimand MSS.