X Tecumseh
“It is madness to contend against the whites,” said Black Hoof, chief of the Shawnees. “The more we fight the more they come.”
He had led raids against Boonsboro, watched the Ohio, and sold scalps at Detroit. Three times his town was burnt behind him, twice by Clark and once by Wayne. Then he gave up, signed the treaty at Greenville, and for ever after kept the peace. Now he was living with a band of Shawnees at Cape Girardeau, and made frequent visits to his old friend, Daniel Boone.
Indian Phillips was with those who besieged Boonsboro. Phillips was a white man stolen as a child who had always lived with the Shawnees. To him Daniel Boone was the closest of friends. They hunted together and slept together. Boone took Phillips’ bearskins and sold them with his own in St. Louis.
“If I should die while I am out with you, Phillips, you must mark my grave and tell the folks so they can carry me home.”
Long after those Indians in the West had welcomed Boone’s sons, an old squaw said, “I was an adopted sister during his captivity with the Ohio Indians.”
Sometimes Boone went over to Cape Girardeau, and sat with his friends talking over old times.
“Do you remember, Dan,” Phillips would say, “when we had you prisoner at Detroit? You remember the British traders gave you a horse and saddle and Black Fish adopted you, and you and he made an agreement you would lead him to Boonsboro and make them surrender and bury the tomahawk, and live like brothers and sisters?”
“Yes, I remember,” said Boone, smiling at the recollection of those arts of subterfuge.
“Do you remember one warm day when Black Fish said, ‘Dan, the corn is in good roasting ears. I would like to have your horse and mine in good condition before we start to Boonsboro. We need a trough to feed them in. I will show you a big log that you can dig out.’ Black Fish led you to a big walnut log. You worked a while and then lay down. Black Fish came and said, ‘Well, Dan, you haven’t done much.’
“‘No,’ you answered, ‘you and your squaw call me your son, but you don’t love me much. When I am at home I don’t work this way,—I have negroes to work for me.’
“‘Well,’ said Black Fish, ‘come to camp and stay with your brothers.’”
Quietly the two old men chuckled together. Boone always called Black Fish, father, and when he went hunting brought the choicest bit to the chief.
But now Boone’s visits to Girardeau were made with a purpose.
“What is Tecumseh doing?”
“Tecumseh? He says no tribe can sell our lands. He refuses to move out of Ohio.”
Old Black Hoof had pulled away from Tecumseh. The Shooting Star refused to attend Wayne’s treaty at Greenville. In 1805 he styled himself a chief, and organised the young blood of the Shawnees into a personal band.
About this time Tecumseh met Rebecca Galloway, whose father, James Galloway, had moved over from Kentucky to settle near Old Chillicothe. At the Galloway hearth Tecumseh was ever a welcome guest.
“Teach me to read the white man’s book,” said Tecumseh to the fair Rebecca.
With wonderful speed the young chief picked up the English alphabet. Hungry for knowledge, he read and read and Rebecca read to him. Thereafter in his wonderful war and peace orations, Tecumseh used the language of his beloved Rebecca. For, human-like, the young chief lost his heart to the white girl. Days went by, dangerous days, while Rebecca was correcting Tecumseh’s speech, enlarging his English vocabulary, and reading to him from the Bible.
“Promise me, Tecumseh, never, never will you permit the massacre of helpless women and children after capture.” Tecumseh promised.
“And be kind to the poor surrendered prisoner.”
“I will be kind,” said Tecumseh.
But time was fleeting,—game was disappearing,—Tecumseh was an Indian. His lands were slipping from under his feet.
It was useless to speak to the fair Rebecca. Terrified at the fire she had kindled, she saw him no more. Enraged, wrathful, he returned to his band. Tecumseh never loved any Indian woman. A wife or two he tried, then bade them “Begone!”
When Lewis and Clark returned from the West, Tecumseh and his brother, the Prophet, were already planning a vast confederation to wipe out the whites.
Jefferson heard of these things.
“He is visionary,” said the President, and let him go on unmolested.
“The Seventeen Fires are cheating us!” exclaimed Tecumseh. “The Delawares, Miamis, and Pottawattamies have sold their lands! The Great Spirit gave the land to all the Indians. No tribe can sell without the consent of all. The whites have driven us from the sea-coast,—they will shortly push us into the Lakes.”
The Governor-General of Canada encouraged him. Then came rumours of Indian activity. Like the Hermit of old, Tecumseh went out to rouse the redmen in a crusade against the whites. Still Jefferson paid no heed.
About the time that Clark and his bride came down the Ohio, the distracted Indians were swarming on Tippecanoe Creek, a hundred miles from Fort Dearborn, the future Chicago. All Summer, whisperings came into St. Louis, “Tecumseh is persuading the Sacs, Foxes, and Osages to war.”
“I will meet the Sacs and Foxes,” said Lewis.
Clark went out and quieted the Osages. Boone’s son and Auguste Chouteau went with him.
“The Great Spirit bids you destroy Vincennes and sweep the Ohio to the mouth,” was the Prophet’s reported advice to the Chippewas.
“Give up our land and buy no more, and I will ally with the United States,” said Tecumseh to General Harrison at Vincennes, in August of 1809.
“It cannot be,” said Harrison.
“Then I will make war and ally with England,” retorted the defiant chieftain.
The frontier had much to fear from an Indian war. More and more vagrant red men hovered around St. Louis,—Sacs, Foxes, Osages, who had seen Tecumseh. The Illinois country opposite swarmed with them, making raids on the farmers, killing stock, stealing horses. Massacres and depredations began.
“’Tis time to fortify,” said Daniel Boone to his sons and neighbours.
In a little while nine forts had been erected in St. Charles county alone, and every cabin was stockaded. The five stockades at Boone’s Lick met frequent assaults. Black Hawk was there, the trusted lieutenant of Tecumseh. The whole frontier became alarmed.
Then Manuel Lisa came down the river.
“The British are sending wampum to the Sioux. All the Missouri nations are urged to join the confederacy.”
In fact, the Prophet with his mystery fire was visiting all the northwest tribes, even the Blackfeet. Ten thousand Indians promised to follow him back. Dressed in white buckskin, with eagle feathers in his hair, Tecumseh, on a spirited black pony, came to Gomo and Black Partridge on Peoria Lake in the summer of 1810.
“I cannot join you,” said Black Partridge, the Pottawattamie, holding up a silver medal. “This token was given to me at Greenville by the great chief [Wayne]. On it you see the face of our father at Washington. As long as this hangs on my neck I can never raise my tomahawk against the whites.”
Gomo refused. “Long ago the Big Knife [George Rogers Clark] came to Kaskaskia and sent for the chiefs of this river. We went. He desired us to remain still in our own villages, saying that the Americans were able, of themselves, to fight the British.”
“Will anything short of the complete conquest of the Canadas enable us to prevent their influence on our Indians?” asked Governor Edwards of Illinois. Edwards and Clark planned together for the protection of the frontier.
In July, 1811, Tecumseh went to Vincennes and held a last stormy interview with Harrison without avail. Immediately he turned south to the Creeks, Choctaws, Chickasaws, and Seminoles. They watched him with kindling eyes.
“Brothers, you do not mean to fight!” thundered Tecumseh to the hesitating Creeks. “You do not believe the Great Spirit has sent me. You shall know. From here I go straight to Detroit. When I arrive there I shall stamp on the ground, and shake down every house in this village.”
As Tecumseh strode into the forest the terrified Creeks watched. They counted the days. Then came the awful quaking and shaking of the New Madrid earthquake.
“Tecumseh has reached Detroit! Tecumseh has reached Detroit!” cried the frantic Creeks, as their wigwams tumbled about them.
Tecumseh was coming leisurely up among the tribes of Missouri, haranguing Black Hoof at Cape Girardeau, Osages, and Kickapoos, and Iowas at Des Moines.
But Tippecanoe had been fought and lost.
“There is to be an attack,” said George Rogers Clark Floyd, tapping at the door of Harrison’s tent at three o’clock in the morning of November 7, 1811. Harrison sprang to his horse and with him George Croghan and John O’Fallon.
It was a battle for possession. Every Indian trained by Tecumseh knew his country depended upon it. Every white knew he must win or the log cabin must go. In the darkness and rain the combatants locked in the death struggle of savagery against civilisation. Tecumseh reached the Wabash to find the wreck of Tippecanoe.
“Wretch!” he cried to his brother, “you have ruined all!” Seizing the Prophet by the hair, Tecumseh shook him and beat him and cuffed him and almost killed him, then dashed away to Canada and offered his tomahawk to Great Britain.
“The danger is not over,” said Clark after Harrison’s battle.
To save as many Indians as possible from the machinations of Tecumseh, immediately after Tippecanoe Clark summoned the neighbouring tribes to a council at St. Louis. Over the winter snows the runners sped, calling them in for a trip to Washington.
It was May of 1812 when Clark got together his chiefs of the Great and Little Osages, Sacs, Foxes, Shawnees, and Delawares.
“Ahaha! Great Medicine!” whispered the Indians, when General Clark discovered their wily plans.
Nothing could be hid from the Red Head Chief. Feared and beloved, none other could better have handled the inflammable tribes at that moment. Old chiefs among them remembered his brother of the Long Knives, and looked upon this Clark as his natural successor. And the General took care not to dispel this fancy, but on every occasion strengthened and deepened it.
Never before in St. Louis had Indians been watched so strenuously. Moody, taciturn, repelling familiarity, they bore the faces of men who knew secrets. Tecumseh had whispered in their ear. “Shall we listen to Tecumseh?” They were wavering.
Cold, impassively stoic, they heeded no question when citizens impelled by curiosity or friendly feeling endeavoured to draw them into conversation. If pressed too closely, the straight forms lifted still more loftily, and wrapping their blankets closer about them the council chiefs strode contemptuously away.
But if Clark spoke, every eye was attention.
“Before we go,” said Clark, “I advise you to make peace with one another and bury the hatchet.”
They did, and for the most part kept it for ever.
It was May 5 when Clark started with his embassy of ninety chiefs to see their “Great God, the President,” as they called Madison, following the old trail to Vincennes, Louisville, and Pittsburg. Along with them went a body-guard of soldiers, and also Mrs. Clark, her maids, and the two little boys, on the way to Fincastle. Mrs. Clark’s especial escort was John O’Fallon, nineteen years of age, aide to Harrison at Tippecanoe, who had come to his uncle at St. Louis immediately after the battle.
In their best necklaces of bears’ claws the chiefs arrived at Washington. War had been declared against Great Britain. There was a consultation with the President.
“We, too, have declared war,” announced the redmen, as they strode with Clark from the White House. But Black Hawk of the Rock River Sacs was not there. He had followed Tecumseh.
About the same time, on the eastern bank of the Detroit river Tecumseh was met by anxious Ohio chiefs who remembered Wayne.
“Let us remain neutral,” they pleaded. “This is the white man’s war.”
Tecumseh shook his tomahawk above the Detroit. “My bones shall bleach on this shore before I will join in any council of neutrality.”
“The Great Father over the Big Water will never bury his war-club until he quiets these troublers of the earth,” said General Brock to Tecumseh’s redmen. Then came larger gifts than ever from “their British Father.”
“War is declared! Go,” said Tecumseh, “cut off Fort Dearborn before they hear the news!” Two emissaries from Tecumseh came flying into the Illinois.
That night the Indians started for Chicago on her lonely lake. Black Partridge mounted his pony and tried to dissuade them. He could not. Then spurring he reached Fort Dearborn first. With tears he threw down his medal before the astonished commander.
“My young men have gone on the warpath. Here is your medal. I will not wear an emblem of friendship when I am compelled to act as an enemy.”
Before the sun went down the shores of Lake Michigan were red with the blood of men, women, and children. Like the Rhine of old France, the lakes were still the fighting border.
President Madison felt grateful to Clark for the step he had taken with the Indians.
“Will you command the army at Detroit?”
“I can do more for my country by attending to the Indians,” was the General’s modest reply.
The country waited to hear that Hull had taken Upper Canada. Instead the shocked nation heard, “Hull has surrendered!”
“Hull has surrendered!”
Runners flew among the Indians to the remotest border,—the Creeks heard it before their white neighbours. Little Crow and his Sioux snatched up the war hatchet. Detroit had fallen with Tecumseh and Brock at the head of the Anglo-Indian army.
“We shall drive these Americans back across the Ohio,” said General Brock.
At this, the old and popular wish of the Lake Indians, large numbers threw aside their scruples and joined in the war that followed.
In December General Clark was appointed Governor of the newly organised territory of Missouri.
Meanwhile in the buff and blue stage coach, a huge box mounted on springs, Julia and her children were swinging toward Fotheringay. The air was hot and dusty, the leather curtains were rolled up to catch the slightest breeze, and the happy though weary occupants looked out on the Valley of Virginia.
Forty miles a day the coach horses travelled, leaving them each evening a little nearer their destination. The small wayside inns lacked comforts, but such as they were our travellers accepted thankfully. Now and then the post-rider blew his horn and dashed by them, or in the heat of the day rode leisurely in the shade of poplars along the road, furtively reading the letters of his pack as he paced in the dust.
And still over the mountains were pouring white-topped Conestoga waggons, careening down like boats at sea, laden with cargoes of colonial ware, pewter, and mahogany. The golden age of coaching times had come, and magnificent horses, dappled grays and bays in scarlet-fringed housings and jingling bells, seemed bearing away the world on wheels.
To the new home Julia was coming, at Fotheringay.
Before the coach stopped Julia perceived through enshrining trees Black Granny standing in the wide hallway. Throwing up her apron over her woolly head to hide the tears of joy,—
“Laws a-honey! Miss Judy done come hum!”
“Fotheringay!” sang out the dusty driver with an unusual flourish of whip-lash and echo-waking blast of the postillion’s horn. In a trice the steps were down, and surrounded by babies and bandboxes, brass nail-studded hair trunks and portmanteaus of pigskin, “Miss Judy” was greeted by the entire sable population of Fotheringay. Light-footed as a girl she ran forward to greet her father, Colonel Hancock. The Colonel hastened to his daughter,—
“Hull has surrendered,” he said.