BRIGADIER GENERAL TECUMSEH (1812-1813)
THE RISE AND FALL OF A STAR
In Vincennes, the white chief, Governor William Henry Harrison, had
grown tired of the insults and defiance from the Prophet. He took nine
hundred regulars and rangers, to visit the Prophet's Town, himself, and
see what was what.
He camped within a mile of the sacred place, on a timber island of the
marshy prairie seven miles north-east of the present city of Lafayette,
Indiana. During the darkness and early daylight of November 7, this
1811, he was attacked by the Prophet's warriors. He roundly whipped
them in the hot battle of Tippecanoe.
The Prophet had brewed a kettle of magic, by which (he proclaimed to
his warriors) he had made one half of the American army dead, and the
other half crazy. During the attack he sat upon a high piece of
ground, and howled a song that should keep his warriors invisible and
turn the bullets of the white men.
But something was wrong with the kettle, and something was wrong with
the song; for the Americans fought hard when surprised, and none seemed
to be dead; and of the one thousand Shawnees, Winnebagos, Chippewas,
Kickapoos, forty were killed by the bullets and many more wounded.
Of the Americans, thirty-seven were killed and one hundred and
fifty-two wounded. They pressed on to the town, and burned it in spite
of the Great Spirit.
"You are a liar!" accused a Winnebago, of the Prophet. "You said that
the white people were dead or crazy, when they were all in their senses
and fought like demons!"
When Tecumseh arrived with his good news, the Indians were scattered.
In his camp the "Prophet" was being hooted at by even the children.
Tecumseh was so enraged with his brother for not having somehow kept
the peace until the time for war was ripe, that he seized him by the
hair of the head and shook him until his teeth rattled.
To Governor Harrison, Tecumseh announced that he was well-minded for
the visit with the President.
"If you go, you must go alone, without any company of warriors,"
replied the governor.
"I am a great chief, and I will not go in such a shameful fashion,"
said Tecumseh. So he went to Canada instead.
Now the game was up. The Prophet had proved to be no prophet from the
Great Spirit. The Indians felt cheated, and were not afraid to speak
boldly.
Councils were held by twelve tribes, together. Band opposed band. The
Delawares, the Miamis, the Kickapoos, most of the Wyandots, were for
peace with the Americans, and for letting the British alone. So were
the Potawatomis; they accused the Prophet of leading them falsely.
Captain Elliott, the traitor and British agent, threatened to have the
Wyandots arrested for their talk.
The band of Canadian Wyandots touched the British war-hatchet; so did
Tecumseh and the Prophet. The war between the white people had
commenced.
Between-the-logs brought a message to the Canadian Wyandots, from Head
Chief Crane, of all the Wyandots. They were to come back to their
hunting-grounds.
Round-head of the hostile Wyandots spoke.
"Tell the American commander it is our wish that he should send more
men against us. We want to fight in good earnest."
The British agent Captain Elliott spoke. "Tell my wife, your American
father, that I want her to cook the provisions for me and my red
children more faithfully than she has done. If she wishes to fight
with me and my children, she must not burrow in the earth like a
ground-hog. She must come out and fight fairly."
Between-the-logs answered valiantly, in behalf of Chief Crane the wise
man:
"Brothers! I entreat you to listen to the good talk I have brought.
If you doubt what I have said about the force of the Americans, you can
send some of your people to examine it. The truth is, your British
father tells you lies and deceives you.
"And now, father, I will bear your message to my American father. You
compare the Americans to ground-hogs. I must confess that a ground-hog
is a hard animal to fight. He has such sharp teeth, such a stubborn
temper, and such unconquerable spirit, that he is truly a dangerous
animal, especially when in his own hole. But, father, you will have
your wish. Before many days you will see the ground-hog floating on
yonder lake, paddling his canoe toward your hole; and then you may
attack him to suit yourself!"
This council was held at Brownstown, beside Lake Erie, south of
Detroit. Nobody cared anything about the Prophet--he was no warrior.
But an invitation was sent to Tecumseh, in Canada, across the Detroit
River.
"No," he answered. "I have taken sides with the king, my father, and
my bones shall bleach upon this shore before I will recross that stream
to join in any good words council."
The Wyandots privately told Between-the-logs that the most of them were
being held prisoners by the British; but that they accepted the belt
from Head Chief Crane, and would return to the Americans as soon as
possible. And they did.
Tecumseh, however, had made up his mind. He was an honest enemy.
There never was anything half-way about Tecumseh. His promised army of
five thousand warriors had shrunk to less than one hundred; only thirty
of these were with him, but he set about getting more.
The Prophet his brother was down at the Fort Wayne agency in Indiana.
"Open Door" had partly explained away his failure in the battle of
Tippecanoe. His wife, he said, had touched his medicine and spoiled
its power, before the battle, and he had not known.
Tecumseh sent a rider with word for the Prophet to remove all the
Indian women and children to the Mississippi, and to bid the warriors
strike Vincennes. He himself would join, if he lived, in the country
of the Winnebagos--which was Wisconsin.
Delawares, Senecas, Chief Crane's Wyandots and the majority of the
Shawnees themselves refused to rise against the Americans. The other
Indians waited for stronger signs. But they did not need to wait long.
Tecumseh's star became fixed in the sky--he won the first battle of the
war and won it for the British. Commanding seventy Indians and forty
soldiers he whipped an American force at Brownstown.
In a second battle there, although the Americans were not captured it
was Tecumseh again who held his position longest. As reward, he was
promoted to brigadier general in the army of the king.
The Americans surrendered Michilimackinac. The American big chief,
General Hull, retreated out of Canada.
Runners from Brigadier General Tecumseh spread the news. The Indians
waited no longer. The Potawatomis rose, the Miamis rose, the Ottawas
and Winnebagos and Kickapoos rose. Sioux of Minnesota and Sacs of
Illinois hastened forward. General Tecumseh ruled.
To the Miamis and Winnebagos was assigned the task of taking Fort
Harrison near present Terre Haute of Indiana; to the Potawatomis and
Ottawas, aided by Tecumseh and some English, was assigned the task of
taking Fort Wayne.
But the Shooting Star's old foe, William Henry Harrison, was out upon
the war trail again. He lifted the siege of Fort Wayne. The attack
upon Fort Harrison also failed. From now on he and Tecumseh fought
their fight, to a finish.
This fall and winter of 1812 Tecumseh traveled once more. From Canada
he journeyed south across a thousand miles of forest, prairie and
waters clear to the Indians of Georgia, Tennessee and Alabama. He did
not now come with word from any Prophet, to make the red people one
nation and a better nation.
He came as a British officer, to bid the Southern Indians join the
king's standard, and fight the Americans into the sea while he and the
English did the same work in the north.
He distributed bundles of red sticks for them to count--one stick a
day. With the last stick, they were to strike.
The Creeks and Cherokees were persuaded, and strike they did. A bloody
trail they made, which many rains did not wash clean.
Back to the war in the spring of 1813, Tecumseh brought into camp six
hundred fresh warriors from the Wabash. Now two thousand fighting men
obeyed his orders alone. His command frequently out-numbered the
British command. He was not a general in name only; he knew military
strategy--"he was an excellent judge of position," admitted the British
officers. He was consulted in the war councils.
The British thought much of him; the Americans were obliged to think
much about him. But the star of Harrison also was marching on. The
two stars came together, in the trail.
Tecumseh with his Indians, and the British General Proctor with his
soldiers besieged the troublesome American general at Fort Meigs, near
by the battle field of Fallen Timbers. So again the two rival chiefs
were face to face.
An American detachment was surprised and captured. The Indians
commenced to kill and torture. General Proctor looked on. Tecumseh
heard and rushed to the scene. He had given his word to General
Harrison, two years ago, and he was furious at the insult to his honor.
Defending the prisoners with knife and tomahawk, he sprang for the
British general.
"Who dares permit such acts!"
"Sir, your Indians cannot be controlled."
"Begone!" roared Tecumseh. "You are unfit to command; go and put on
petticoats."
After that he openly despised General Proctor.
He sent a note in to his American foeman:
"General Harrison: I have with me eight hundred braves. You have an
equal number in your hiding place. Come out with them and give me
battle. You talked like a brave when we met at Vincennes, and I
respected you; but now you hide behind logs and in the earth, like a
ground-hog. Give me answer. Tecumseh."
But General Harrison knew his business, and carried on to the
successful end.
That end was not far distant. General Tecumseh and General Proctor
together failed to take Fort Meigs. General Proctor ordered a retreat.
General Harrison followed on the trail. General Tecumseh hated to
retreat. At every step he was abandoning Indian country.
The retreat northward to Canada continued. Tecumseh was fighting the
battle of his people, not of the English; he wished to go no farther.
He proposed to his warriors that they leave for another region, and let
the Americans and British fight their own war.
"They promised us plenty of soldiers, to help us. Instead, we are
treated like the dogs of snipe-hunters; we are always sent ahead to
rouse the game."
"You got us into this war by your promises," retorted the Sioux and the
Chippewas. "You have no right to break us."
Any appeal to Tecumseh's honor was certain to win; he stuck. Then
American ships under Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry fought British ships
under Commodore Barclay, on Lake Erie, and gained a great victory.
From an island near shore the Tecumseh warriors peered eagerly, to the
sound of the heavy guns.
"A few days since you were boasting that you commanded the waters," had
said Tecumseh, to General Proctor. "Why do you not go out and meet the
Americans? They are daring you to meet them; you must send out your
fleet and fight them."
Now, after the battle, the British general asserted:
"My fleet has whipped the Americans, but the vessels are injured and
have gone to Put-in Bay, to refit. They will be here in a few days."
Tecumseh was no fool. He had before caught the general in a lie. Here
at Fort Maiden opposite Detroit he challenged him in a hot speech.
Father! Listen to your children. You have them now all before you.
The war before this, our British father gave the hatchet to his red
children, when our old chiefs were alive. They are now dead. In that
war our father was thrown flat on his back by the Americans, and our
father took them by the hand without our knowledge. We are afraid that
our father will do so again.
Summer before last, when I came forward with my red brothers, and was
ready to take up the hatchet in favor of our British father, we were
told not to be in a hurry--that he had not yet decided to fight the
Americans.
Listen! When war was declared, our father stood up and gave us the
tomahawk, and told us that he was then ready to strike the
Americans--that he wanted our aid--and that he would surely get us our
lands back, which the Americans had taken from us.
Listen! When we were last at the Rapids [Fort Meigs] it is true that
we gave you little assistance. It is hard to fight people who live
like ground-hogs.
Father, listen! Our ships have gone out; we know they have fought; we
have heard the great guns; but we know nothing of what happened. Our
ships have gone one way, and we are much astonished to see our father
tying up everything and preparing to run away the other, without
letting his red children know what it is about.
You always told us to remain here, and take care of our lands; it made
our hearts glad to hear that was your wish. You always told us you
would never draw your foot off British ground. But now, father, we see
you are drawing back, and we are sorry to see our father doing so
without seeing the enemy. We must compare our father's action to a fat
dog, that carries its tail upon its back, but when frightened, drops it
between its legs and runs off.
Father, listen! The Americans have not yet defeated us by land;
neither are we sure that they have done so by water.
We wish to remain here, and fight the enemy, should they appear. If
they defeat us, we will then retreat with our father.
At the battle of the Rapids [Fallen Timbers] 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. Now instead of that, we
see our British father making ready to march out of his garrison.
Father! You have got the arms and ammunition which our great father
sent for his red children. If you have an idea of going away, give
them to us, and you may go and welcome. Our lives are in the hands of
the Great Spirit. We are resolved to defend our lands, and if it be
his will, we wish to leave our bones upon them.
General Proctor writhed under this speech, but he had to swallow it.
He might have done better by taking council with Tecumseh and attacking
the Americans at the instant of their landing on the Canadian shore.
The Indians would have fought very hard, even yet, for him. But he
ordered the retreat again, he burned Fort Maiden, and marched inland up
the Thames River of southwestern Ontario.
Tecumseh went unwillingly. His Indians were down-hearted. General
Harrison crossed from Detroit, and pursued. Tecumseh felt the sting.
"We are now going to follow the British," he said to Jim Blue-jacket,
son of old Chief Blue-jacket, "and I believe we shall never return."
He rode with General Proctor in a buggy, and suggested several places
that looked good for making a stand.
Once General Proctor agreed. It was indeed an excellent spot, where a
large creek joined the Thames.
"We will here defeat General Harrison or leave our bones," he declared.
That was a talk right to Tecumseh's liking.
"When I look upon these two streams they remind me of the Wabash and
the Tippecanoe of my own country," he said hopefully.
But after Tecumseh had gladly arranged his warriors, General Proctor
decided to leave them as a rear guard and to march on with his
soldiers. The Americans brought up ten cannon, and Tecumseh was
wounded in the left arm, and the Indians had to retreat, also.
On the fourth of October, which was a few days afterward, at another
good place Tecumseh said that he would go no farther into Canada. This
was British soil, not Indian soil. Unless the Americans were whipped
and the trail home was opened, how were his Indians ever to help the
other Indians fight?
On the morning of the next day, October 5, 1813, he and General Proctor
made their battle plans.
"Shall we fight the Americans, father?" asked Sagaunash, or Billy
Caldwell. He was half English and half Potawatomi, and acted as
Tecumseh's secretary, to translate Shawnee into French or English.
Tecumseh was gloomy. He had no faith in the British general.
"Yes, my son. Before the sun sets we shall be in the enemy's smoke.
Go. You are wanted by Proctor. I will never see you again."
He posted his men. Then he addressed his chiefs.
"Brother warriors! We are about to enter a fight from which I shall
not come out. My body will remain." He handed his sword and belt to a
friend.
"When my son becomes a great warrior, and able to use a sword, give him
this."
Then Tecumseh stripped off his red uniform coat, bearing the gold
epaulets of a British brigadier general. He was to fight as an
ordinary Indian, in buckskin hunting-shirt.
There were nine hundred British soldiers and one thousand Indians.
They were well stationed. The left flank, British, was protected by
the deep Thames River; the right flank, Indian, was protected by a soft
swamp. The Americans of General Harrison came on. They numbered three
thousand: one hundred and twenty United States regulars, the rest
Kentucky volunteer infantry with one regiment of mounted riflemen under
bold Colonel Richard M. Johnson of Kentucky.
Tecumseh would have given a great deal to whip this doughty General
Harrison who had come out of his "hole" at last. There were old scores
between them. But, as Between-the-logs had warned, "a ground-hog is a
very difficult animal."
General William Henry Harrison of Virginia knew how to fight when in
his "hole," or fort--and he knew how to fight when out of his "hole,"
and he knew Indian fighting as well as white fighting.
Here were three brigadier generals--Harrison, Tecumseh, and Proctor.
But the battle was soon over. General Proctor had made the mistake of
posting his soldiers in open order. General Harrison's eye was quick
to note the weakness. He let the Indians alone, for a few minutes, and
sent the right of the mounted backwoodsmen in a charge against the
British.
The horses broke clear through, wheeled--and the deed had been done.
The British soldiers threw aside their guns, to surrender; General
Proctor dashed furiously away in his buggy.
Headed by Colonel Johnson himself, the left companies of the mounted
riflemen now charged upon Tecumseh. The infantry followed.
The Indians had small chance, but they fought well. Tecumseh waited
until they could see the flints in the American rifles. Then he fired,
raised the Shawnee war-whoop, they all fired, and rushed with their
tomahawks to the encounter.
Yes, they fought well. Their close volley had killed many Americans.
The horse leader, who was Colonel Johnson, had been wounded; the horse
soldiers were fighting on foot, because the swamp had entangled the
horses' legs. The American infantry barely stood fast, under the first
shock.
Tecumseh's voice had been heard constantly, shouting for victory--as
before him old Annawan the Wampanoag and Cornstalk the other Shawnee
had shouted. Suddenly the voice had ceased.
A cry arose instead: "Tecumseh is dead! Tecumseh is dead!" And at
that, as a Potawatomi afterward explained, "We all ran."
Some people said that Tecumseh had charged with the tomahawk upon the
wounded Colonel Johnson, and that Colonel Johnson had shot him with a
pistol, just in time. Some people denied this. Colonel Johnson
himself said that he did not know--he did not pause to ask the Indian's
name, and did not stay to examine him! There was quite an argument
over the honor--but Tecumseh did not care. He was lying dead, in his
simple buckskin, and for a time was not even recognized.
A gaudily dressed chief was mistaken for him, until friendly Indians
with General Harrison stated that the great Tecumseh had a ridge on his
thigh, from a broken bone.
By this he was found, after nightfall. He was brought to the
camp-fires, where a circle of the Kentuckians gathered about him, to
admire his fine figure and handsome face. He had been a worthy foeman.
So Tecumseh quit, at last. He never could have lived to see the white
men pushed across the Ohio, and all the red men occupying the West as
one nation. That was not written of his star, or any other star.
But he left a good reputation. He had been of high mind and clean
heart, and he had fought in the open. The British adjutant-general at
Montreal issued public orders lamenting his death and praising his
bravery. The British throne sent his young son, Puck-e-sha-shin-wa, a
sword, and settled a pension upon the family, in memory of the father.
The Prophet received a pension, too. He stayed in Canada until 1826,
when he moved down among the Shawnees of Ohio again. He long out-lived
his greater brother, and died in the Shawnee village in present Kansas,
in 1837. He posed as a prophet to the very last.
As for General William Henry Harrison, who had broken them both--borne
onward by his nickname "Old Tippecanoe" he became, in 1841, ninth
President of the United States; and on his reputation of having "killed
Tecumseh," Colonel Johnson already had been a vice-president.