Boys' Book of Indian Warriors Part 18

"These lands are ours; no one has a right to remove us, because we were the first owners. The Great Spirit above knows no boundaries, nor will his red people know any. If my father, the President of the Seventeen Fires, has anything more to say to me, he must send a big man as messenger. I will not talk with Captain Wells."

"Why does not the President of the Seventeen Fires send us the greatest man in his nation?" demanded the Prophet. "I can talk to him; I can bring darkness between him and me; I can put the sun under my feet; and what white man can do this?"

This month of May, 1807, fifteen hundred Indians had visited the Prophet. They came even from the Missouri River, and from the rivers of Florida. A general up-rising of the tribes was feared.

Governor Harrison worked, sending many addresses. He could not stem the tide set in motion by the Prophet and kept in motion by Tec.u.mseh.

"My children," appealed Governor Harrison, "this business must be stopped. You have called in a number of men from the most distant people to listen to a fool, who speaks not the words of the Great Spirit, but those of the devil and of the British agents. My children, your conduct has much alarmed the white settlers near you. They desire that you will send away those people, and if they wish to have the impostor with them they can carry him. Let him go to the Lakes; he can hear the British more distinctly."

"I am sorry that you listen to the advice of bad birds," answered the Prophet, of the one eye and the cunning heart. "I never had a word with the British, and I never sent for any Indians. They came here themselves, to hear the words of the Great Spirit."

Tec.u.mseh also made speeches, at the councils. Once he spoke for three hours, accusing the whites of having broken many treaties. Some of his sentences the interpreter refused to translate, they were so frank and cutting. The teachings of the Prophet his brother were apparently all for peace, and against evil practices such as drinking and warring; and Governor Harrison could only wait, watchfully. But he did not like the signs in the horizon. There were too many Indians traveling back and forth.

The war of 1812 with Great Britain was drawing nearer. The Sacs and Foxes of the Mississippi country had accepted presents from the British. Governor Harrison was warned that the Prophet and Tec.u.mseh had been asked to join.

In the summer of 1808 the Prophet moved his town to the north bank of the Tippecanoe River, on the curve where it enters the upper Wabash River in northern Indiana. He still had a following of Shawnees, Chippewas, Potawatomis, Winnebagos, and so forth.

This was Miami land, shared by the Delawares. They objected. But the Prophet's Town remained.

In 1809 the United States bought from the Miamis a large piece of territory which included this land. The Prophet's people refused to move off. The Great Spirit had told them that the Indians were to hold all property in common; therefore no tribe might sell land without the consent of all the tribes.

Tec.u.mseh was absent, on a visit to other tribes. He asked the Wyandots and the Senecas to come to Prophet's Town on the Tippecanoe. But the Wyandots and the Senecas had no wish to offend the United States again.

They remembered that the British had not opened the gates of the fort to them, when the "Big Wind" was blowing them backward--"You are painted too much, my children," they accused the British of saying--and they were wary of Tec.u.mseh.

He asked the Shawnees of the upper country, also, to join him and the Prophet. But they declined to meddle. Old Black Hoof, a chief whose memory extended back ninety years, advised against it.

The Prophet was more clever than Tec.u.mseh. The Wyandots were the keepers of the great belt which had bound the Ohio nations together in Little Turtle's day. The Prophet asked them if they still had it, and if they, the "elder brothers," would sit still while a few Indians sold the land of all the Indians.

They replied they were glad to know that the belt had not been forgotten. Let the Indians act as one nation. They pa.s.sed the belt to the Miamis--and the Miamis were forced to obey.

Governor Harrison was told that there were eight hundred warriors at the Prophet's Town, and that Vincennes was to be attacked.

News of Tec.u.mseh came from here, there, everywhere. He seemed to be constantly traveling, carrying the words of the Prophet his brother.

Something was going on, underneath the peace blanket. Governor Harrison and others of the whites read the puzzle in this wise:

The peace blanket spread by the Prophet to cover all red nations and make them one, concealed a hatchet, as the blanket of Pontiac concealed a gun. The Indians were to be increased and strengthened by right living and good habits, until fitted to stand on their feet without aid. Then, all together, as one nation, they could strike for their country, from the Ohio River west to the Missouri.

Tec.u.mseh was to be the Pontiac who would lead them. It was a scheme so wonderful, so patient and so shrewd, that the Western whites might well gasp before it.

The governor and Tec.u.mseh had never met. The Prophet had been in Vincennes several times, to explain that he preached only peace--which was true. But the town at the Tippecanoe was getting to be a nuisance.

Horse-thieves and murderers used it as a shelter, and the authority of the United States was defied. A messenger sent there by the governor was threatened by the Prophet with death.

The message was sent to warn the brothers that the Seventeen Fires were surely able to defeat all the Indians united, and that if there were complaints, these should be taken directly to the President. Tec.u.mseh replied:

"The Great Spirit gave this great island to his red children. He placed the whites on the other side of the big water. They were not contented with their own, but came to take ours from us. They have driven us from the sea to the lakes; we can go no farther. They say one land belongs to the Miamis, another to the Delawares, and so on; but the Great Spirit intended it as the property of us all. Our father tells us we have no right upon the Wabash. The Great Spirit ordered us to come here, and here we will stay."

However, Tec.u.mseh said that he remembered the governor as a very young man riding with General Wayne, and he would go to Vincennes and talk with him. He probably would bring thirty of his men.

"The governor may expect to see many more than that," added the Prophet.

Tec.u.mseh brought not thirty, but four hundred warriors, painted and armed. Attended by a small guard, the governor stood to receive him on the broad columned porch of the official mansion. Tec.u.mseh, with forty braves, approached, and halted. He did not like the porch; he asked that the council be held in a grove near by.

"Your father says that he cannot supply seats enough there," answered the interpreter.

"My father?" retorted Tec.u.mseh, his head high. "The sun is my father, the earth is my mother, and on her bosom will I repose!"

In the grove he made a ringing, fiery speech. He accused the United States of trying to divide the Indians, so as to keep them weak. He blamed the "village" or "peace" chiefs for yielding, and said that now the war chiefs were to rule the tribes. He warned the governor that if the lands along the Wabash were not given back to the Indians, the chiefs who had signed the sale would be killed, and then the governor would be guilty of the killing. He threatened trouble for the whites if they did not cease purchasing Indian land.

"It is all nonsense to say that the Indians are all one nation,"

reproved Governor Harrison, who was as fearless as Tec.u.mseh. "If the Great Spirit had intended that to be so, he would not have put six different tongues into their heads. The Miamis owned these lands in the beginning, while the Shawnees were in Georgia. You Shawnees have no right to come from a distant country, and tell the Miamis what shall be done with their property."

Tec.u.mseh sprang up and angrily interrupted.

"That is a lie! You and the Seventeen Fires are cheating the Indians out of their lands."

The warriors leaped up, as if to attack. The few whites prepared for defense.

"You are a man of bad heart," thundered the governor, to Tec.u.mseh. "I will talk with you no more. You may go in safety, protected by the council-fire, but I want you to leave this place at once."

Other councils were held. Tec.u.mseh stood as firm as a rock, for what he considered to be the rights of the Indians. He was very frank. He said that if it were not for the dispute about the land, he would continue to be the friend of the Seventeen Fires. He would rather fight with them than against them. He had no love for the British--who clapped their hands and sicked the Indians on as if they were dogs. As for making the Indians one nation, had not the Seventeen Fires set an example when they united? It was true, he said, that now all the Northern tribes were one. Soon he was to set out, and ask the Southern tribes to sit upon the same blanket with the Northern tribes.

The governor knew. From Governor William Clark of Missouri he had received a letter telling him that friends.h.i.+p belts and war belts were pa.s.sing among the nations west of the Missouri River, calling them to an attack on Vincennes. The Sacs of the upper Mississippi had sent to Canada for ammunition.

From Chicago had come word that the Potawatomis and other tribes near Fort Dearborn were preparing.

Governor Harrison had suggested that the two brothers travel to Was.h.i.+ngton and talk with the President about lands. He himself had no power to promise that treaties should not be made with separate nations. He also said, to Tec.u.mseh:

"If there is war between us, I ask you to stop your Indians from abusing captives, and from attacking women and children."

Tec.u.mseh promised, but he went out upon his trip. Before he left, he asked that nothing should be done regarding the land, before he came back; a large number of Indians were on the way to settle there, and they would need it as a hunting-ground! If they killed the cattle and hogs of the white people, he would fix up everything with the President, on his return.

So in August of 1811 he left, taking twenty warriors. With the fire-brand of tongue and the burning mystery of his presence he kindled the nations of the South. He spoke in the name of the Great Prophet.

He urged them all to join as one people and dam back the white wave that was seeking to swallow them.

He told them that the Prophet had stationed a "lamp" in the sky, to watch them for him--and sure enough, a comet flamed in the horizon. To a Creek chief in Alabama he said:

"You do not mean to fight. I know the reason. You do not believe that the Great Spirit has sent me. You shall know. I go from here to Detroit; when I arrive there I will stamp on the ground with my foot and shake down all your houses."

In December occurred an earthquake which destroyed New Madrid town on the Mississippi in southern Missouri, and was felt widely. The ground under the Creek nation trembled. The Creeks covered their heads and cried aloud:

"Tec.u.mseh has got to Detroit!"

That was so. In December Tec.u.mseh really had got to Detroit. But he had stamped his foot before time, and he had not made the earth to tremble. He had stamped in wrath not at the Creeks, but at his own people.

[Ill.u.s.tration: An Indian brave. Courtesy of The Field Museum.]

When he had left for the North he was ready to strike, at any moment, with five thousand warriors of North, South and West. When he arrived home, he found that his plans were shattered like a bubble; he had no Prophet, and the former Prophet had no town!