They marched back to Vincennes in furious anger, and finding an Indian in the house of a Frenchman, they seized and dragged him to their block-house, where the wife of the scalped man, whose name was Donelly, shot and scalped him.
French Threaten Americans.
This greatly exasperated the French, who kept a guard over the other Indians who were in town, and next day sent them to the woods.

Then their head men, magistrates, and officers of the militia, summoned the Americans before a council, and ordered all who had not regular passports from the local court to leave at once, "bag and baggage." This created the utmost consternation among the Americans, whom the French outnumbered five to one, while the savages certainly would have destroyed them had they tried to go back to Kentucky.

Their leaders again wrote urgent appeals for help to Clark, asking that a general guard might be sent them if only to take them out of the country.

Filson had already gone overland to Louisville and told the authorities of the straits of their brethren at Vincennes, and immediately an expedition was sent to their relief under Captains Hardin and Patton.
Indians Attempt to Destroy Americans.
Meanwhile, on July 15th, a large band of several hundred Indians, bearing red and white flags, came down the river in forty-seven canoes to attack the Americans at Vincennes, sending word to the French that if they remained neutral they would not be molested.

The French sent envoys to dissuade them from their purpose, but the war chiefs and sachems answered that the red people were at last united in opposition to "the men wearing hats," and gave a belt of black wampum to the wavering Piankeshaws, warning them that all Indians who refused to join against the whites would thenceforth be treated as foes.