HOW THE GLORY OF HIS RACE FIGURED IN HIS RISING.
Listen! There lived an Indian--a sachem of the powerful and warlike
Shawnees; an Indian who loved his wild people, his wild land, and his
wild freedom dearer than his life, and for their defense and weal he
labored, and fought and died. Why and how, and to what end--listen!
The sachem looked around him. He saw his people, wasted to but the
shadow of what they once were, slowly moving toward the setting sun. He
saw them at deadly strife one with another--tribe with tribe, and
kindred with kindred. He marked how they were falling away from the
sober lives and pure faith of their fathers, and losing their wild
independence in the slothful and corrupting habits of vagabond
existence. He beheld his native wilderness gradually waning as from
before a slow-approaching, far-extended fire. In terror at the sight,
the animals of the chase, so needful to man in the savage state, went
flitting by, outstripping his people in their journey toward the setting
sun.
The sachem looked far forth toward the regions of the rising sun, and
there beheld the civilized and powerful white man, whose star of empire
was leading him onward in his resistless progress toward the mighty
rivers and the boundless plains of the far West--the land of the future.
The powerful stranger laid his hand upon the woody hills, and they
smoked; he set his foot upon the grassy plains, and they withered. He
lifted the hand of violence against the red sons of the forest, and they
fled; he breathed upon them, and they became diseased, corrupt, and
feeble; he sowed the seeds of strife among them, and straightway they
fell to wrangling and warring one with another, more fiercely than ever
before; he stretched his long arm over their heads and thrust his
terrible sword into the heart of their wilderness, now here, now there,
saying: "This pleasant valley is mine, here will I make my
dwelling-place; this fertile plain is mine, it shall yield me riches;
this broad river is mine, it shall be a highway between my great towns.
Then, westward, red man, farther westward; nor think of rest, while you
have the setting sun and this fair land before you!" Still onward and
westward the white man held his ever-widening, overwhelming course. A
little while and the red man should not have in all the green earth
where to lay his weary head and say: "This is my home--here dwelt my
fathers before me, and here they be buried; here with them shall I rest
when my race is run." The sachem saw all this, and his mighty spirit was
stirred within him.
"The Shemanols,"[1] said the sachem to his people, "have united their
seventeen great fires[2] into one, and the union has made them strong
and happy. We must profit by the example. I will go forth among the
tribes of red men, and by the help of the Great Spirit unite them into
one people; make of them a dam to stay the flow of this mighty water,
lest it utterly sweep away our forest and cast us like driftwood, broken
and scattered, on the far-off shores beneath the setting sun. We have
warned the white stranger to come no farther, but have spoken to the
winds that hear not; we have entreated him to come no farther, but have
prayed to the rocks that feel not. Then, let him come. I see his
warriors in the east, in the south, in the north, and in numbers like
the leaves of the forest when rolling and rustling before the blasts of
autumn. Shall the sachem of the Shawnees tremble? Shall they say he
hated the foe of his race and feared him? I too have my warriors, strong
and brave and true; and many a forest and mountain and plain, left us by
our fathers, have we still behind us and around us. Then let us stand up
like men and defend them. Or, if fall we must, at least then here, where
lie our fathers, let us leave our bones to cry out against the destroyer
of our race, and our dust to poison the air his children shall breathe.
If such must be our fate, it is well. Wahcoudah's will be done!"
[Footnote 1: The Shawnese for Americans.]
[Footnote 2: The seventeen States of the Union.]
Then did the sachem gird up his loins and go forth, like a strong man
armed for the battle. Verily, it was a vast enterprise, difficult and
hazardous--all but hopeless; but his spirit, strong to endure and brave
to encounter, rose with it. From the great lakes of the North to the
flowery forests of the far South, from the great hills of the East to
the grassy plains of the far West, month after month, year after year,
from hopeful youth to sober prime, he roamed the wilderness. Everywhere
he called upon his countrymen to cease from warring among themselves and
unite their tribes, that as one people they might stand up in the
defense of their native land, given them by the Master of Life to be the
one home and common possession of them all.
To impress their minds with the necessity of such a league he held up
before them the example of their white invaders, who had united all
their "great fires" into one, and in that union had found strength,
harmony, and prosperity. He appealed to every sentiment in human nature
that can rouse to high and noble purpose--the love of country, of
kindred, of freedom, of glory. He flattered their pride with glowing
allusions to the antiquity and renown of their race, and by repeating to
them their traditions which described them as having once been the
favorite children of the Great Spirit, and again to be taken under his
peculiar care whenever they should return to the bosom of their ancient
brotherhood, and to the sober, simple habits and the pure faith of their
fathers. He roused their resentment and the desire of vengeance by
holding up to them the wrongs which they had suffered at the hands of
the proud and powerful pale-face, whose presence in their midst had
grown insupportable, and whose onward progress, unless cheeked at once,
would soon become irresistible. He threatened them with disgrace,
poverty, and ruin--yea, the final extinction of their race, which would
assuredly be visited upon them, should they neglect or delay to profit
by his warning.
His labors grew upon him, yet wearied him not; disappointments baffled
his endeavors, but discouraged him not; difficulties met him at every
step, but turned him not aside; dangers thickened around him, but
daunted him not; untoward conjunctures confused and enfeebled his vast
scheme, but shook not the constant purpose of his mind; friends
dissuaded, rivals opposed, enemies threatened, traitors
undermined--still the heroic sachem, unshaken, undismayed, unsubdued,
maintained his course onward and upward in the high destiny which long
years before he had marked out for himself, and his trust was in the
Great Spirit.
When he first set out on his great mission, this wandering patriot of
the wilderness found the minds of his countrymen we cowed with fear, or
so benumbed with indifference as to their fate, that there was scarcely
a man among them all, outside his own near kindred, to lend him an ear,
or join him in his self-imposed, herculean labor. But toward the end,
when every hill and valley, plain and forest, river and lake of the
great North-west had been made to resound full many a year with the
echoes of that awakening voice, behold the result. Persuaded that their
hour of deliverance and vengeance was come at last, thousands of the
tawny warriors of the wilderness, drawn from the numerous tribes which
he had succeeded in uniting, came flocking around him, ready to do his
bidding, as one commissioned by the Great Spirit to be their leader and
deliverer. Never, since their first landing on the Continent, had the
whites beheld arrayed against them, by the energy and power of one mind,
a league of the Indian tribes so formidable and wide-spread.
That the sachem was in error, there can of course be no doubt--all are
who undertake to withstand the progress of a Christian civilization; but
no less certain is it that he erred not because his heart was wrong, but
that his mind was unenlightened. And in fair truth, with such limited
views as to the right and wrong in human motive and action as the rude,
narrow sphere in which his lot was cast enabled him to make, what other
course could he in his own judgment have chosen, without dishonor to
himself and injury to the people whose weal he most assuredly had
earnestly at heart. Had his mind--crude as his own wilderness, as vast
too, and as fertile and varied--been duly cultivated and enlightened, he
would not have viewed the progress of civilization as a destroying
flood, against which it behooved him as a patriot to array his people,
lest thereby they be swept away from the earth. Rather would he have
perceived that it was a life-giving, beneficent light, into which it was
his highest duty, as a lover of the great brotherhood of man, to lead
his people, that with it they might spread themselves over the earth,
and in it grow strong and prosperous and happy.
During all this time, though his labors were of a nature to keep the
wrongs and woes of his people and the power and pride of their white
oppressors continually fresh in his mind, never did the savage hero lift
the hand of violence against the aged, the helpless, or the unarmed. To
his magnanimous spirit, Indian heathen though he was, the captive was a
sacred trust, and many a man of the hated race, thrown by the chances of
war within their direful grasp, did he rescue from horrible death at the
hands of his injured and exasperated countrymen. The booty taken by his
hands from the whites in their raids across the border was immense; but
the spoils of war, though he might well have claimed the lion's share,
he left, with magnificent generosity, to his followers--the glory of war
being all that a true hero could covet.
In his habits of life the sachem was abstemious even to austerity, yet
frank end popular in his manners, entering heartily into the rude
amusements and athletic sports of his people. In the latter, such was
his strength and activity of body, he rarely met his equal; and in
hunting and wood-craft he was, even in the eyes of his hunter-race, a
marvel of skill and address. He was the very soul of integrity and
truth; and though born of a race proverbial for cunning and craft, he
was of a nature singularly frank and straightforward, as he showed by
the boldness and openness with which he was accustomed, even in the
presence of his enemies, to acknowledge and discuss his great project.
As a warrior-chieftain, he stands unrivaled in the barbarous traditions
of his race, and as an orator, with scarcely a superior. His oratory was
of the highest order, inasmuch as it was the outgrowth of a great
intellect, active, powerful, and wide-grasping in its operations, and
the outpouring of a mighty spirit, deep and earnest, pure and generous,
and often sublime in its emotions. Whenever he made the great mission of
his life the theme of his declamations--and he took every suitable
occasion for doing so--let his listeners be friends or foes, his
appearance, at all times striking and prepossessing in the extreme,
became as that of one inspired. His ample chest expanded with noble
feeling; every gesture of hip hand, every movement and posture of his
commanding form, grew eloquent with meaning. Unmasked of its habitual
cast of reserve, his handsome face, clear, strong, and firm in its
lines, yet flexible in its play of muscle and feature, reflected with
mirror-like distinctness the passing emotions of his heart. His eye,
eagle-like in its unflinching brightness, flashed forth the lightnings
of the fiery and haughty spirit within. Language, direct in its
unstudied simplicity, graphic and vigorous, and glowing with the
thoughts and images of a luminous though unpolished mind, flowed from
his lips majestic and resistless. Added to all was that awakening voice
whose echoes had so long resounded through thy great North-west. Now it
rang out, stern, abrupt, imperious, like the call of a trumpet to
battle; now softened down to tones broken, tender, and pitying as those
of a bereaved father sorrowing over his hapless children; then, as
visions of the utter extinction of his race would break upon his
prophetic soul, it would come wailing out like the despairing cry of a
Hebrew prophet lamenting the impending desolation of Zion.
Such was Tecumseh. Thus he lived, this Indian Hannibal; thus he rose,
this Glory of his Race.