The hoisting of the American flag over Fort Sackville (the fort at Vincennes was called Fort Sackville when held by the English) by George Rogers Clark was the beginning of the end of a phase of life on Indiana soil that is now only a dim and romantic memory. The fate of the poor French who had settled in the Wabash Valley was, from the viewpoint of race extinction, something of a tragedy. Good and loyal sons of their motherland, they had come to this far wilderness when it was a province of France with no thought of its ever being other. Then the unexpected fortunes of war left them stranded here, thousands of miles from their native home, an isolated handful aliens, subject to the rule of England. For sixteen years they were under the jurisdiction of their foreign masters, and then, with the bold and sudden advent of Clark and his little army of Americans, they rallied with true Gaelic enthusiasm to his support, as we have seen, and were an instrument of importance to his success. So far as their gain was concerned, however, it must be said that they only jumped from the frying-pan into the fire, the unhappiness of their situation, indeed, being the more accentuated because the incoming Americans dominated the community as the English had not, taking possession as they did in a more permanent way. The invaders came to stay, not only as soldiers but also as settlers.