British regular troops at his command, and the natives of the region—French Canadians and American Indians—were not all supporters of the British regime. Normand Macleod, a local fur trader and army officer, acted as the temporary "town major", a British government official in command of a fortified town, before Hamilton's arrival. British war policies on the western frontier Governor Henry Hamilton became adept at diplomacy with Native Americans, establishing good relations with local Indian leaders of the Huron and Ottawa tribes. An amateur artist, Hamilton also sketched portraits of many Native Americans while in Detroit, leaving what has been called the "earliest and largest collection of life portraits of Native Americans of the Upper Great Lakes." This is now held by Houghton Library at Harvard University. At the beginning of the war, British policy encouraged neutrality among the Native American leaders. But in 1777 Hamilton received instructions to encourage Indian raids against the American frontier settlements in Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Kentucky. This was a controversial policy, because he and other officials realized that American Loyalists would inevitably be killed in these raids. Hamilton tried to limit civilian casualties by sending British Army officers and French-Canadian militia alongside the Native American war parties. Despite this, the Indian tribal warriors carried out their own customs during the raids, resulting in hundreds of women and children in Kentucky and western Pennsylvania being killed and ritually scalped during the war. This, as feared, led to an increase in anti-British feelings in the region. According to an early 20th-century local history, the frontier Americans accused Hamilton of paying bounties for prisoners and scalps brought in by the Indian warriors, calling him the "Hair-buyer General". Hamilton denied ever paying for scalps. George Rogers Clark and Illinois Regiment, Virginia state forces in the Illinois Country In 1778, Patriot Colonel George Rogers Clark, commanding Virginia state forces, captured several undermanned British posts in the Illinois Country, including Fort Sackville at Vincennes (then in Virginia-claimed land, now in present-day Indiana). Hamilton led an armed party from Detroit on 7 October 1778 to recapture the British post, 600 miles away. His small force gathered Indian warriors along the way, and entered Vincennes on 17 December 1778. They captured Fort Sackville and the American commandant, Captain Leonard Helm. In February 1779, however, Colonel Clark returned to Vincennes in a surprise march, recapturing the outpost and taking Hamilton prisoner. Defeat and prisoner