E. Alexander Powell

“ I am going back the long and sad trail to my people in the dark land. You make my feet heavy with gifts, and my moccasins will grow old in carrying them; yet the Book is not among them. When I tell my poor, blind people, after one more snow, in the big council that I did not bring the Book, no word will be spoken by our old men or by our young braves. One by one they will rise up and go out in silence. My people will die in darkness, and they will go on a long path to other hunting-grounds. No white man will go with them and no white man’s Book to make the way plain. ”

“ Perhaps the most brilliant orator the Indian race has ever produced and gifted with extraordinary personal magnetism, he held his audience spellbound as, standing in the circle of light thrown by the council-fire, ringed about by row on row of blanketed and feathered warriors, he outlined his scheme for a union of all the Indians of the West in a confederation powerful enough to bid defiance to the white man. ”

“ Man after man fainted from heat and exhaustion. Miasma rose in clouds from the jungle. The pitiless sun beat down from a sky of brass. The country was so swampy that the pioneers had to fell trees and build bridges before the column could advance. Every few minutes a gun would sink to the hubs in quicksand and a whole company would have to man the drag-ropes and haul it out. This overland march, through a roadless and pestilential jungle, was one of the most remarkable exploits and certainly one of the least known of the entire war. ”

“ It was felt to be beyond the natural limits of the world, and the glamour which hovered over this mysterious and forbidden land lured to its conquest the most picturesque and hardy breed of men that ever foreran the columns of civilization. A contempt for the Spanish, a passion for adventure were the attitude of the people of our frontier as they strained impatiently against the Spanish boundaries. The American Government had nothing to do with winning Texas for the American people. ”

“ THIS is the forgotten story of the greatest ride. The history of the nation has been punctuated with other great rides, it is true. Paul Revere rode thirty miles to rouse the Middlesex minutemen and save from capture the guns and powder stored at Concord; Sheridan rode the twenty miles from Winchester to Cedar Creek and by his thunderous “Turn, boys, turn—we’re going back!” saved the battle—and the names of them both are immortalized in verse that is more enduring than iron. Whitman, the missionary, rode four thousand miles and saved us an empire, and his name is not known at all. ”

“ Nothing more graphically illustrates the savagery and determination with which the American frontiersmen prosecuted their campaign against the Indians than the story of Sam Dale’s canoe fight. Dale, who was a veritable Hercules of a man, while scouting with some companions in advance of Jackson’s army, saw floating down the Alabama a war canoe containing eleven Creeks. Ambushing themselves amid the bushes on the bank, the Americans poured in a volley as the canoe swept by and five of the Indians fell dead. ”

“ When the great ship, with the grim muzzles of her one hundred and two guns peering from her three tiers of port-holes, majestically entered the European harbors under her cloud of snowy canvas, the natives were goggle-eyed with admiration and amazement, for in those days most Europeans thought of America—when they gave it any thought at all—as a land of Indians, grizzly bears, and buckskin-clad frontiersmen. As executive officer, Perry’s duties comprised pretty much everything which needed to be done on deck. ”

“ Others, when their weapons broke, sprang at their enemies with their naked hands and tore out their throats as hounds tear out the throat of a deer. Such was the battle of the Medina, fought on August 18, 1813. Of the eight hundred and fifty Americans who went into action only ninety-three came out alive. If the battle itself was a bloody one, its aftermath was even more so, the Spanish cavalry pursuing and butchering without mercy all the fugitives they could overtake. ”

“ There was no road, not even a path, leading from Fort Leavenworth into the Santa Fé trail, and, as the intervening country was slashed across by innumerable streams and canyons, bridges and roads had to be built for the wagons. The progress of the column was frequently interrupted by precipitous bluffs whose sides, often two hundred feet or more in height, were so steep and slippery that it was impossible for the mules to get a foothold, and the heavily laden wagons, with a hundred sweating, panting, cursing men straining at the drag-ropes, had to be hauled up by hand. ”

“ When Kemper learned of this butchery of defenseless prisoners he strode up to Gutierrez and, catching him by the throat, held him at arm’s length and shook him as a terrier does a rat, meanwhile ripping out a stream of invectives that would have seared a thinner-skinned man as effectually as a branding-iron. Then, refusing to longer serve under so barbarous a leader, Kemper resigned his commission and, followed by most of the other American officers of standing, set out for New Orleans. ”

“ By three o’clock the battle of the Horseshoe Bend had become a part of the history of the frontier. So completely had Jackson done his work that only twenty Indians escaped. Eight hundred copper-colored corpses lay upon the blood-soaked ground beside the Tallapoosa; the rest were prisoners. It is a significant fact that there were no wounded among the Indians. The Americans had nearly two hundred killed and wounded, among the latter being Jackson himself and a youngster named Sam Houston, who, in after years, was to win fame fighting a no less savage foe on the banks of the Rio Grande. ”

“ Across the huge canvas, in a whirlwind of dust and color, sweeps an avalanche of horsemen—cuirassiers, dragoons, lancers, guides, hussars, chasseurs—with lances levelled, blades swung high, banners streaming—France’s unsung heroes in mad pursuit of Glory.
That picture brings home to the youth of France the fact that the nation owes as great a debt of gratitude to men whose very names have been forgotten as to those whom it has rewarded with titles and decorations; it teaches that a man can be a hero without having his name cut deep in brass or stone ”

“ There have been few more gallant or daring actions in the history of the sea, for the boarders numbered less than twoscore men all told, and awaiting them on the decks above were three hundred desperate and well-armed natives. Though bullets and arrows and javelins were rained down upon them, the Americans went up the side with the agility of monkeys; though the Malays slashed at them with scimitars and krises and lunged at them with spears, the seamen, their New England fighting blood now thoroughly aroused, would not be denied. ”

“ The mules grew weak from thirst and some of the wagons had to be abandoned. Horses fell dead from heat and exhaustion, but the men thus forced to march on foot managed to keep pace with the mounted men. Their boots gave out, however, and for miles the line of their march could be traced by bloody footprints. Wind-storms drove the loose sand of the desert against them like a sand-blast, cutting their lips, filling their eyes and ears and sometimes almost suffocating them. ”

“ For more than an hour the bombardment continued, the American gunners choosing their marks, laying their guns, and placing their shots with the same coolness and accuracy which, years later, was to distinguish their successors at Santiago and Vera Cruz. The Qualla Battooans were even more terrified by the thunder of the Potomac’s broadsides than by the havoc that they wrought, for they had never heard big guns or seen a war-ship in action before. ”

“ News of Harrison’s call for men spread over the frontier States as though disseminated by wireless, and soon the volunteers came pouring in: frontiersmen from Kentucky and Tennessee in fur caps and hunting-shirts of buckskin; woodsmen from the forests of Michigan and Wisconsin, long-barrelled rifles on their shoulders and powder-horns slung from their necks; militiamen from Indiana and Illinois, and grizzled Indian-fighters from the towns along the river and the backwoods settlements, who volunteered as much from love of fighting as from hatred of the Indians. ”

“ But the Spaniards were driven back everywhere by the fierceness of the American assault, whereupon the governor, seeing that further resistance was useless, sent a messenger to the American commander to inquire what terms he would grant him. “Nothing but unconditional surrender,” answered Jackson, and the haughty Spaniard had no alternative but to accept his terms. Slowly the flag of Spain, which had flaunted defiantly above the fort, sank down the staff and in its stead rose a flag of stripes and stars. ”

“ How many of the students who can glibly rattle off the details of Xenophon’s march across the Mesopotamian plains have ever even heard of Doniphan’s march across the plains of Mexico? During that march, which occupied twelve months, a force of American volunteers, barely a thousand strong, traversed upward of six thousand miles of territory, most of which was unknown and bitterly hostile, and returned to the United States bringing with them seventeen pieces of artillery and a hundred battle-flags taken on fields whose names their countrymen had never so much as heard before. ”

“ Perry, white with anger, told the governor that the nation which he had the honor to serve was the equal of any monarchy on earth, and that unless he received an assurance that his salute would be returned gun for gun, he would fire no salute at all. That afternoon the Cyane sailed past the batteries, over which flew the Portuguese flag, in a silence which unmistakably spelled contempt. Though personally Perry was the most peaceable of men, as the representative of the United States in distant oceans he perpetually carried a chip on his shoulder and defied any one to knock it off. ”

“ HAD you stood on the banks of the Brazos in December of the year in which the nineteenth century became old enough to vote and looked northeastward across the plains of central Texas, your attention would doubtless have been attracted by a rolling cloud of dust. From out its yellow haze would have crept in time a straggling line of canvas-covered wagons. Iron-hard, bearded men, their faces tanned to the color of a much-used saddle, strode beside the wheels, their long-lashed blacksnakes cracking spasmodically, like pistol-shots, between the horns of the plodding oxen. ”

“ The rajah fought with the ferocity of a Sumatran tiger, even after he was dying from a dozen wounds, slashing with his scimitar at every American who came within reach, until a bayonet thrust from a marine sent him to the Moslem paradise. As he fell, a young and beautiful woman, who, from her dress, was evidently one of his wives, sprang forward and, snatching up the scimitar which had dropped from his nerveless fingers, attacked the Americans like a wildcat, laying open [151] one man’s head and slicing off the thumb of another. ”

“ Governor Harrison was admittedly the highest authority on the northwestern Indians. He kept his fingers constantly on the pulse of Indian sentiment and opinion and often said that he could forecast by the conduct of his Indians, as a mariner forecasts the weather by the aid of a barometer, the chances of war and peace for the United States so far as they were controlled by the cabinet in London. The remark, though curious, was not surprising. Uneasiness would naturally be greatest in regions where the greatest irritation existed and which were under the least control. ”

“ Then Jackson, who was always for getting to hand-grips with an enemy, told his men to go in and do the job with the bayonet. Whereupon the Tennesseeans, who had been as fidgety and impatient as hounds in leash, swept forward with a whoop. As regardless of the withering fire poured into them as if it had been hailstones instead of bullets, they hacked their way through the abatis of branches and clambered over the wall, shooting, bayonetting, clubbing with a ferocity which matched that of the Indians. ”

“ But Humbert’s republican convictions did not jibe with the imperialistic ambitions of Napoleon, and the former suddenly decided that a life of exile in America was preferable to life in a French prison. For a time he supported himself by teaching in New Orleans, but it was like harnessing a war-horse to a plough; so, when the Mexican junta sought his aid in 1814, the veteran fighter raised an expeditionary force of nearly a thousand men, sailed across the Gulf, landed on the shores of Mexico, and marched up to join Toledo at El Puente del Rey. ”

“ When affairs in Europe compelled him to abandon his contemplated American campaign, the Indians turned to the British for sympathy and assistance—and the British were only too glad to extend them a friendly hand. From Maiden, opposite Detroit, the British traders loaded the American Indians with gifts and weapons; the governor-general of Canada intrigued with the more powerful chieftains and assured himself of their support in the war which was approaching; British emissaries circulated among the tribes, and by specious arguments inflamed their hostility toward Americans. ”

“ It was as though a man had gone to buy a cow and the owner had suddenly offered him his whole farm. Though astounded and embarrassed, for they had been authorized to spend but two million dollars in the contemplated purchase, the Americans had the courage to shoulder the responsibility of making so tremendous a transaction, for there was no time to communicate with Washington and no one realized better than they did that Louisiana must be purchased at once if it was to be had at all. ”

“ During the first decade of the nineteenth century there was really no perfect peace with any of the Indian tribes west of the Ohio, and Harrison’s abilities as a soldier and a diplomatist were taxed to the utmost to prevent the skirmish-line, as the chain of settlements and trading-posts which marked our westernmost frontier might well be called, from being turned into a battle-ground. Harrison’s most formidable opponent in his task of civilizing the West was the Shawnee chieftain Tecumseh, perhaps the most remarkable of American Indians. ”

“ Houston was shot through the ankle and his horse was dying, but man and horse struggled on. Deaf Smith drove his horse into the thick of the fight and, as it fell dead beneath him, he turned his long-barrelled rifle into a war-club and literally smashed his way through the Mexican line, leaving a trail of men with broken skulls behind him. An old frontiersman named Curtis went into action carrying two guns. “The greasers killed my son and my son-in-law at the Alamo,” he shouted, “and I’m going to get two of ’em before I die, and if I get old Santa Anna I’ll cut a razor-strop from his back.” ”