Ethel T. Raymond

“ The chain of friendship, which united the whites with the Indians, may be renewed and be as strong as ever. A great deal of that work depends on you—the destiny of those who are under your direction depends upon the choice you may make of the two roads which are before you. The one is large, open and pleasant, and leads to peace, security, and happiness; the other, on the contrary, is narrow and crooked, and leads to misery and ruin. Do not deceive yourselves; do not believe that all the nations of Indians united are able to resist the force of the Seventeen Fires. ”

“ The wild grass grew rank and high and afforded sufficient concealment. The Indians threw themselves down to await the enemy, and their example was followed by the British. Tecumseh and his men, peering from their covert, soon distinguished the main body of the enemy marching in two lines, slowly and steadily. As they came within range a single shot rang out—the signal for battle. The Indians fired one deadly volley, and, with the blood-curdling cry that the Americans had learned to dread, burst wildly from their hiding-place. ”

“ Tecumseh was not content with the narrow territory which satisfied his tribesmen. He desired to explore regions far remote from the hunting-grounds of the Shawnees. The same wandering instinct that had led his father to the Ohio country awakened within him. His fancy roamed beyond the familiar trails and peopled foreign regions with strange tribes. By his eloquence he played upon the responsive minds of his companions until they were fired with the same restless spirit. A wandering life became the theme of general interest as they smoked round the evening camp-fire. ”

“ In 1806 the governor of Indiana Territory sent an envoy to the Delawares to deliver the following message:
The dark and thorny road you are now pursuing certainly will lead you to endless woe and misery. And who is this pretended prophet, who dares to speak in the name of the Great Creator? Examine him. Is he more virtuous than you are yourselves that he should be selected to convey to you the orders of your God? Demand of him some proof at least of being the messenger of the Deity. ”

“ Perched on a safe eminence, the Prophet looked down upon the fight, chanting his war-song further to excite the savages, and rattling deers' hoofs as signals for advance or retreat. Under the influence of their fierce fanaticism the Indians abandoned their usual practice of fighting from behind cover, and braved the enemy in open conflict. In spite of Tenskwatawa's prophecies, the American bullets wrought deadly havoc among the warriors, who, seeing that they had been deceived, began to waver. ”

“ If the barbarous and savage policy of Great Britain be pursued, and the savages let loose to murder our citizens, and butcher our women and children, this war will be a war of extermination. The first stroke of the tomahawk, the first attempt with the scalping-knife, will be the signal for one indiscriminate scene of desolation! No white man found fighting by the side of an Indian will be taken prisoner ”

“ While guiding some white settlers along unfamiliar trails on their way to safety, he was severely wounded by the bullets of other whites waiting for him in ambush.
Such deeds as these urged on the inevitable war, for which the Indians now openly prepared. Even the mighty Mingo chief, Logan, who had ever extended the hand of friendship to the white man, now appeared with uplifted tomahawk to avenge the unprovoked murder of his friends. Some eight hundred warriors were soon assembled, thirsting to avenge these recent murders, and eager to establish their right to the disputed territory. ”

“ Tecumseh had taken his stand for the coming war: the flag of Britain should be his flag, and her soldiers his comrades-in-arms. To him, indeed, it was that Britain owed her Indian allies in the War of 1812. Canadians and Indians stood side by side in face of a common peril and were inspired by a common purpose. To Canada defeat meant absorption in the United States and the loss of national life; to the red men it meant expulsion from their homes and hunting-grounds and the ultimate extinction of their race. ”

“ Cheeseekau was now as noted a warrior as his father had been, and became the leading spirit in many fierce frontier encounters. At the camp-fire Tecumseh listened eagerly as his brother told his thrilling tales. So persistent was Tecumseh's plea to be allowed to go on the war-path that Cheeseekau promised to let him taste real fighting in an attack on a party of whites encamped a few miles south of Piqua. The youth, impatient for the fray, set out bravely with Cheeseekau and his warriors, but when the actual horrors of war, with its blood and confusion, burst upon him, he fled from the field. ”

“ Father, listen! The Americans have not yet defeated us by land, neither are we sure they have done so by water; we, therefore, wish to remain here and fight our enemy should they make their appearance. If they defeat us, we will then retreat with our father.
At the battle of the Rapids, last war, the Americans certainly defeated us; and when we returned to our father's fort at that place, the gates were shut against us. We were afraid it would again be the case, but instead of closing the gates we now see our British father preparing to march out of his garrison. ”

“ But his courageous spirit revolted at the thought of retreat: to fly before the enemy without striking a blow seemed to him the action not of warriors but of cowards.
Procter pointed out that the fort, which had been dismantled to equip the Detroit, was open to attack from the river; that the hospital was filled with sick soldiers; and that starvation stared the British in the face. But the argument which weighed most with Tecumseh was that they would be able to find along the river Thames a place much better suited for battle. ”

“ Again a youth, he threaded his way through the gloom of the forest, seeking the guiding spirit of his manhood, until a bright star fell across his path. Then, in vivid memory, came the tortures of initiation. A man, he journeyed in strange lands beneath a scorching sun, or felt the biting winter blasts. ”

“ The Prophet exhorted the young to help the aged and the infirm; he forbade Indian women to intermarry with the whites, since the outcome would be inevitable misery; he condemned the accursed fire-water, which had caused such contention among the Indians, and threatened with never-ending flames all those who should persist in its use. He referred in glowing terms to the boundless hunting-ground of the red men before the coming of the whites, and contrasted it with their rapidly narrowing territory. The Indians, he said, should hold all their lands in common. ”

“ It was evident that they could not reach Brownstown before night, and Major Muir, after a hasty consultation with Tecumseh, decided to meet the enemy at Maguaga, a small Indian village between Brownstown and Detroit. The Indians in their scant habiliments of war, their dark bodies grotesquely painted in varied colours, strode silently by the side of the British soldiers. The allies rapidly pushed their way along the muddy road, past the scene of the recent attack, where carcasses of men and horses still lay by the roadside. ”

“ The hardy frontier men of the American lakes are as able to endure fatigue, as ready to engage and as constant in battle as the seamen of any marine in the world. They merely require good leaders, and this the English appear to have possessed in Captain Barclay and his assistants.
It was three o'clock in the afternoon when the flag of the Detroit was lowered, and Captain Barclay with his officers, amidst the dead and dying who cumbered her decks, gave up their swords to Perry on the Niagara. The American commander could not but feel the greatest admiration for his courageous opponent. ”

“ Our lives are in the hands of the Great Spirit. We are determined to defend our lands, and if it be His will, we wish to leave our bones upon them.
This challenging, straightforward, and heroic speech failed to move Procter. He stubbornly refused to make a stand at Amherstburg, which, indeed, would have been fatal. Tecumseh, however, accused him of cowardice, contrasting his conduct with that of the courageous Barclay, and expressed his own fixed determination to remain and meet the enemy. ”

“ If he is really a prophet, ask him to cause the sun to stand still, the moon to alter its course, the rivers to cease to flow, or the dead to rise from their graves. If he does these things, you may then believe that he has been sent from God.
In reply to this unexpected attack Tenskwatawa assured his followers that he would give them convincing proof of his being the true messenger of the Great Spirit, and he boldly predicted that on a certain day he would draw a veil of darkness over the sun. Many Indians assembled to witness the test of his supernatural power. ”

“ But as the consent of such an influential chief was necessary to any Indian treaty, Dunmore sent a special messenger to him in the person of Colonel Gibson. Gibson met Logan in the forest, and there Logan gave vent to his pent-up feelings with passionate eloquence.
I appeal to any white man to say if he ever entered Logan's cabin hungry and he gave him not meat; if ever he came cold and naked and he clothed him not. During the course of the last long and bloody war, Logan remained idle in his cabin, an advocate of peace. ”

“ Nature herself apparently was aiding the Prophet's plans. All being ready, he concocted some charmed fluid, over which he muttered curious incantations. He assured his credulous followers that half the enemy were mad and the remainder dead; and he solemnly promised them that bullets would glance harmlessly from their own bodies. The superstitious Indians, thus excited to an intense pitch of religious fanaticism, were prepared to dare anything.
Shortly before daylight on November 7 the whole Indian force crept stealthily through the grass towards the fires of Harrison's camp. ”

“ After the treaty of peace between the English and Americans, the summer before Wayne's army came out, the British held a council with the Indians and told them if they would turn out and unite as one man, they might surround the Americans like deer in a ring of fire and destroy them all. ”

“ You have called in a number of men from the most distant tribes, 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 desire to have the impostor with them, they may carry him. Let him go to the lakes; he can hear the British more distinctly.
Tecumseh was absent from Greenville when this message was received, and it fell to the Prophet to make a reply. ”

“ Colonel Hardin had returned with five hundred militia and sixty regulars to take vengeance on his savage foes. The regulars remained at the village, while the militia, bent on revenge, routed the few Indians whom they found lurking about. But the Indians were not really beaten. Blue Jacket of the Shawnees and Little Turtle of the Miamis concealed their assembled warriors in another ambush. At the critical moment the Indians rushed from their ambuscade, fell upon both regulars and militia, and pitilessly drove them ever farther back. ”

“ Other Indians across the river, alarmed by the sound of shooting, sent two canoes to the rescue, but the whites drawn up on shore fired upon their occupants, killing twelve and wounding several more. The Indians were further incensed by the murder of Bald Eagle, a sachem of the Delawares, who was attacked and scalped while returning from a visit to a fort at the mouth of the Great Kanawha, and whose body, placed in an upright position in his canoe, was found drifting down the Ohio by his enraged followers. Even Silver Heels, a favourite Shawnee chief, barely escaped death. ”

“ Canada's position at the opening of hostilities was far from reassuring. The population of all British North America was only half a million of whites at most, as compared with about eight million in the United States. Great Britain was engaged elsewhere in a life-and-death struggle and could spare but few troops to support the Canadian militia. Indeed, there were not fifteen hundred British soldiers along the whole Canadian frontier; while, even before the declaration of war, to Detroit alone had been dispatched more than two thousand American troops. ”

“ During Tecumseh's childhood the Indians north of the Ohio were in a state of unrest. They had been subdued by Bouquet, [footnote: See The War Chief of the Ottawas in this Series.] but the leniency of that humane leader, in merely exacting that they should return their white prisoners and remain at peace, was looked on by the tribes as a mark of weakness; and, while no open war broke out, young warriors occasionally attacked traders and settlers. By the Treaty of Fort Stanwix, in 1768, the Six Nations had ceded to the whites the land between the Ohio and the Tennessee. ”

“ But do not harbour a thought that mine is the joy of fear. Logan never felt fear. He will not turn on his heel to save his life. Who is there to mourn for Logan? Not one.
Gibson recorded the words of Logan, and they were duly presented to Dunmore. A treaty of peace was drawn up, by which the Indians agreed to give up all white prisoners and stolen horses and to surrender all claim to the land south of the Ohio.
The effect of Lord Dunmore's war was to make peace in the hinterland, a matter of vast importance to the Americans on the eve of the Revolution. ”