Indiana give up: they captured Fort Ouiatenon and Fort Miami during Pontiac's Rebellion. The British royal proclamation of 1763 designated the land west of the Appalachians for Native American use, and excluded British colonists from the area, which the Crown called "Indian Territory". In 1775, the American Revolutionary War began as the colonists sought self-government and independence from the British. The majority of the fighting took place near the East Coast, but the Patriot military officer George Rogers Clark called for an army to help fight the British in the west. Clark's army won significant battles and took over Vincennes and
Fort Defiance (Illinois) of Natural Resources assumed control of Fort Defiance on July 31, 2014 with the goal of returning it to state park status. The park is a satellite of Horseshoe Lake State Fish and Wildlife Area. On his trek up the Mississippi, Frenchman Pierre Laclède was among the first Europeans to land on the southern tip of what is now Illinois. Fort Defiance (Illinois) Fort Defiance, known as Camp Defiance during the American Civil War, is a former military fortification located at the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers near Cairo in Alexander County, Illinois. The strategic significance of the