HOW THE EAGLE AND THE LION AND THE BIG BEAR FIGURED IN THE GREAT
NORTH-WEST.
Toward the close of a hazy October day, in the year 1813, two small
armies might have been seen, and according to history were seen, moving
along the banks of the river Thames. Not the Thames which, after winding
among the pleasure-grounds of the English gentry and through the great
city of London, under ever so many bridges, emptied its waters into the
German Ocean; but the Thames which, after winding among the
forest-slopes of Canada West and through or by no cities at all, nor
under any bridges whatever, discharged its waters into Lake St. Clair.
So, along the Canadian Thames, at the time just named, two small armies
were to be seen, each measuring ground with uncommon expedition; the
foremost hurriedly, being in loose retreat; the hindmost rapidly, being
in tight pursuit. Over the van of the retreating army ungallantly
dangled the crimson, lion-emblazoned banner of the United Kingdom of
Great Britain and Ireland; over the van of the pursuing army gallantly
waved the tri-colored, star-emblazoned, eagle-capped flag of the United
States of America.
The Second War between Great Britain and the United States had now been
going on for many a tedious month; sometimes languidly, sometimes
spasmodically, never energetically. Like a slow, dull fever, it had
wasted and enfeebled the two countries without redounding more to the
profit of the one than to the glory of the other; and the glory being
too scant to be divided between them, they wisely left the crimson fog
to the humor of the winds. How the winds disposed of it, the world has
never heard.
And the great Indian sachem had become the ally of the little English
king. And why? Because the little English king and his rich people had
promised the great Indian sachem and his poor people to restore to them
their hereditary lands if they would take up the hatchet and help their
great father--the little English king--to wrest the lands in question
from the Americans, the children who had behaved so unbecomingly to the
great father thirty-seven years before. The hereditary lands in question
were in fact but the disputed territory, the principal cause of the
contests between the two white powers, hence not so much to be viewed as
a lost inheritance to be restored to the rightful owners as a prize to
be secured by the rival claimants. John Bull said, "It is mine, because
I took it from the French;" Brother Jonathan said, "It is mine, because
I took it from the English;" while neither party gave any heed to the
poor Indian, who never ceased saying, "It is mine, because my fathers
gave it to me, and the Great Spirit gave it to my fathers."
A hard, hard necessity must it have been which could have forced the
poor, hunted wanderers of the wilderness to fly for refuge and
protection from the talons and beak of the eagle to the claws and teeth
of the lion. It was but a change, and made with but little hope of its
being for the better. None saw this more clearly, felt it more deeply,
than the sagacious Tecumseh; and his proud spirit groaned under the
humiliating thought that after all he and his warriors were not viewed
as allies having an equal interest in the result of the struggle going
on, but rather as instruments merely, which might be made useful to the
purpose in hand, then dropped. To use his own expression: "They were
but a pack of starved hounds, hallooed upon the Americans by the
English."
Along the Northern lakes and rivers full many a battle had been
fought--on a small scale, it is true, but bloody and ugly enough,
especially to the Americans, who up to this time had usually been the
worsted party. But now the fortunes of war were beginning to turn in our
favor. Perry had won his brilliant little naval victory over the English
fleet on Lake Erie, and had written to the Secretary of the Navy with
Caesar-like conciseness: "We have met the enemy, and they are ours!" By
land, too, the British had been met and beaten back at every point, till
now they were without a foothold on the disputed territory--the
hereditary lands.
But, true to himself, true to the now quite hopeless cause for which he
had labored and fought so long, the magnanimous sachem still kept his
faith with the great father unbroken and inviolable, while the great
father was immensely less concerned that he had failed to restore the
hereditary lands to his red allies than that he had failed to wrest the
disputed territory from his white enemies. So the little English king
went on sipping his dainty wines in his marble palace over yonder on the
other side of the globe, and took no further thought of the great Indian
sachem who was breaking his heart over here in the wilderness of
America, as true to his ally as had he been a Christian, baptized by an
apostolic successor into the Church of England.
But to make another start toward the end of our story. The English
people, like the majority of mankind, are a good enough people in a
general way, and in a general way, like those of most nations, their
soldiers are brave enough. Good people, yet they have had their bad
rulers--the great father, for example; and their brave soldiers have had
their cowardly leaders--for example, General Proctor; concerning whom
we must now say something--a very little; the least possible.
Having with unsoldierly dispatch cleared his red skirts of the disputed
territory, grown at least too hot for comfort, this Proctor--a fat
poltroon--was now in hurried retreat through the forest-wilds of Canada
West, at the head, not the rear, of an army composed of about nine
hundred British regulars and two thousand Indian allies under the
leadership of Tecumseh. On, in swift pursuit, with a stretch of about a
half day's march between, came General Harrison--a gaunt hero--at the
head, not the rear, of an army consisting of two companies of United
States regulars and about three thousand volunteers, nearly all of whom
were tall, stalwart Kentuckians, under the leadership of General Shelby,
the venerable Governor of Kentucky. No Indian allies. In the van of the
pursuing army, at the head of his regiment of mounted riflemen, one
thousand strong, the very flower of green Kentucky's chivalry, rode
Colonel Richard M. Johnson, afterward made Vice-president of the United
States by his grateful countrymen, because--rumpsey-dumpsey--Dick had
killed Tecumseh.
And there in the van, at the head of his company of mounted riflemen,
mounted on a splendid Kentucky bay, and rigged out in his dashing
backwoods uniform, rode Captain Bushrod Reynolds, whom we left
twenty-four years ago in the Paradise a sturdy urchin of nine, and still
a candidate for breeches and boots. Yes, there he rode, a tall, athletic
man, in the prime of his days, frank-faced, clear-eyed, bold-browed, and
with a nose that had gradually ripened from the pug into the Roman, as
he had ripened in years and experience, just as we predicted when
drawing his portrait where he sat on the topmost rail of a scraggy
worm-fence, watching the squirrels and crows. Nor was it true that he
had become a married man and a man of family, and a captain too--all
pretty much as the far-seeing Burl had prophesied at the same early
period.
At present, however, having been married but a year, his family was
small. For, since reaching the stature and years of manhood, Bushrod
Reynolds had spent many years in the great North-west, where as an
Indian-trader he had pushed his fortunes with great energy and success,
yet with clean hands, never in all the time selling or bartering a
single gallon of whisky to the Indians--a virtue quite rare, we fear, in
Indian-traders, and one for which he was highly commended by Tecumseh
himself, who never drank any thing but water. The address, prudence, and
integrity he displayed in this vocation had attracted the notice of
General Harrison, then Governor of the North-west Territory, through
whose influence the young Kentuckian received the appointment of United
States Indian Agent in that quarter. Here again he had acquitted himself
in the same clean-handed manner, never touching a dollar of the money
intrusted to him, saving so far as officially authorized.
And there, conspicuous among the camp-followers, with a fund of good
humor and laughter rich enough to keep the whole rear of the army in
spirits, even when cut down to short rations and pushed to long
marches--there, gigantic as life and shaggy with bear-skin from top to
toe, was our old friend Big Black Burl--Cap'n Rennuls, the Fighting
Nigger, the Big Black Brave with a Bushy Head, Mish-mugwa--whom we left
twenty-four years ago in the Paradise, treading with unmoccasined feet
the peace-path, and filling the resounding woods from morning till night
with the echoes of his peace-songs. Yes, as gigantic as life, and still
as jolly as gigantic, with never a regret in all these years of servile
toil that he had sewed it up in his bear-skin cap instead of accepting
at once the priceless blessing which his good mistress, in the
unspeakable gratitude of her mother's heart, had bidden him to take as
his forever.
Time and the world had evidently dealt kindly by our hero, the ebony
smoothness of his wide-snouted mug unfurrowed as yet by those lines of
care and thought we so often find disfiguring the faces of Shem and
Japheth, nor grizzled yet his fleecy locks, although he had left his
fiftieth year behind him--an age when the heads of most men begin to
whiten under the snows of life's winter. For all that, though they may
not have brought him wrinkles and whitened his locks, the passing years
had brought him wisdom and whitened the color of his thoughts, once so
crimson. In proof whereof, he had long since taken unto himself a wife,
and was now the father of a large family of large children. In further
proof, he had long since left off fighting and gone to preaching, there
being now in the Paradise more black sinners to be mended than red
heathen to be demolished; more friends to be led across the Jordan than
foes to be driven across the Ohio.
Preaching, in a general way, is a good thing, and, in a particular way,
to him who loves to hear himself talk, a pleasant thing, and if he talks
well, rather pleasant to others. Now, the Fighting Nigger loved to hear
himself talk, but unlike many--too many--inflicted with that infirmity
he talked well, as we have had frequent occasion to notice; while again,
unlike the majority of the few who talk well, he listened well, which,
also, we have once or twice remarked. As his walks through life should
lead him no more upon the war-path, and as his color and condition
forbade his taking the stump, or appearing at the bar, or sitting in the
senate-house, he needs must take to preaching, as the only shift by
which he could hope to retain that preeminence among his fellows which
his prowess in arms had won for him. Such a calling would give his
oratorical powers full scope--a desperate revival among the ebony
brotherhood, from time to time, with two or three funeral-sermons to
each lay brother or lay sister of peculiar sanctity, being just the
thing to set them off to the highest advantage. Nor would this be all.
While making the great display, he would be doing a little good--casting
bread upon the waters, to be found many days hence; _i.e._, spreading
the glad tidings of damnation to nearly everybody born to die, and of
salvation to a select few--just enough to keep the angels from getting
lonesome--conspicuous among whom were our good old Abram, John Calvin,
and Burlman Reynolds.
The lucky sect thus reenforced was that once known as the
Anti-missionary Baptists, sometimes called the "Ironside Baptists,"
sometimes the "Hard-shell Baptists," having, as is usually the case with
hard cases, hard names. I use the expression "once known," since, if I
mistake not, the order has, in these latter days, deceased; dying of
sheer decrepitude, with no weeping mourners around it, being intestate
and insolvent, and is now to be numbered with the things that were--an
old man's tale, the blunder of an hour.[3] That so broad and warm and
genial a nature as that of our hero should have gone for refuge and
spiritual comfort to a creed so narrow, cold, and gloomy, admits of no
easy explanation, especially when we consider that remarkable clearness
of mental vision which enabled him to see the reason existing in all
things; often, too, when a Solomon, or a Socrates, or a Seneca, might
have stared his eyes out in trying to see it for himself. But when he
took to preaching, he was dwelling in the midst of a Hard-shell
community; and, perhaps, like the overwhelming majority of mankind, from
enlightened to savage, from Christian to fetich, Burlman Reynolds was
but chameleon to his surroundings. Yet, notwithstanding the somber
complexion of his new vocation, and the more than somber complexion of
his creed, outside of the pulpit his reverence was as genial, jolly, and
joky as the cheeriest, smilingest, comfortingest, most latitudinarian
Methodist preacher you ever had at your bedside to help you look your
latter end in the face, through the dubious issues of a surprise attack
of cramp colic, or an overwhelming onslaught of cholera morbus. Indeed,
it not unfrequently happens that the human heart is better than the
human creed, and the Rev. Burlman Reynolds was wont to square his life
by the dictates of his inward monitor rather than by the dogmas of his
outward mentor. Many of these dictates he embodied in words, a few of
which I shall take the liberty of quoting _verbatim_. Among them are
some of his religious opinions, which will be found to have a somewhat
latitudinarian smack, as is often the case where the heart is better
than the creed:
[Footnote 3: Since writing the above, the author has learned that,
outside of Kentucky, the sect alluded to still exists to some extent in
some of the neighboring States.]
"Dar's reason in all things, ef dar's reason in people."
"Baptizin' won't do you no good, onless you let it wash you clean all
ober, an' keep you clean foreber."
"Ef a pusson wants to be a Chrischun jes' about in spots, w'y, den
sprinklin' will do; but ef he wants to be a Chrischun all ober, he mus'
go clean under an' make a soaker uf it."
"De Lord ain't gwine to lub you much, onless you lub yo' neighbor."
"Don't tickle yo'se'f a-thinkin' you 'll eber be a angel up dar, onless
you's been a good S'mar'tan here."
"De Lord help dem to 'lect dem who helps to 'lect demselves."
"Don't you think, beca'se you's got a leetle grace, you kin do what you
please in dis worl', den say yo' pra'rs befo' you die an' go right
straight to heaben. G'long wid sich grace!"
"Whar's de use an' de sense uf a pusson's bein' mizzible an' out uf
sorts when he's 'live an' ain't a-sufferin', an' got a good home to go
to when it's all ober? Git out!"
Less elegant in manner, it may be, but quite as good, we think, in
matter, as many a saw and dogma that have been flung at our foolish
world, time out of mind.
We have more than once paralleled our hero, in his passion for martial
renown, to Alexander the Great, Napoleon the Great, and Mumbo Jumbo the
Great. Somewhat singular to say, the parallel does not stop with this
point of common resemblance. According to Mr. Abbott's interminable
eulogy--Mr. Abbott was an American and a clergyman, consequently a
Republican and a Christian--the hero of the Russian Campaign, of
Waterloo, etc., after his retirement to the Rock, became deeply
interested in theology, fighting being no longer a pastime he could
indulge in unless by pugilistic assault on the British guards, which,
contrary to his past experience, would have been entirely at his own
expense, hence uncomfortable. And here we find him talking so well--this
grand disturber of the world's peace--so profoundly, so beautifully, so
reverently, of the Prince of Peace, that we cannot help wondering why he
had never allowed some evidence of his religious sentiments to appear in
his actions, when he stood so conspicuous before the world, and such a
display would have redounded so vastly to his credit--made him "the
Washington of worlds betrayed."
As respects Alexander, the parallel still shows a shadow, though over
the left. The Fighting Nigger, upon retiring from his war-path, tried
his best to do the godly thing, and made his Christian convictions
manifest in the life he wished to live. Alexander, on retiring from his
great war-path, tried to do the godlike thing, and made his heathenish
hallucinations manifest in the death he didn't wish to die.
As to the third worthy in our list, I cannot continue the parallel with
due regard to facts, the imagination of the historian having thrown as
yet no light on the latter days of the great Mumbo Jumbo. But that the
parallel should he found to hold good to the last degree of coincidence,
may safely be inferred from what the lights of our age have been telling
us for the last forty years of the latent saint inherent in the nature
of ebony, from Ham, the favorite son of Noah, down to Uncle Tom, the
best man that ever lived.
But to return and make a third start toward the end of our story. When
he heard that his young master had received a captaincy in the Johnson
regiment of mounted riflemen--the finest regiment, by the way, that
figured in the Second War--Big Black Burl felt his heart beginning to
glow with the martial ardor of his younger days. But when he saw the
young captain, where, in the broad green meadow in front of the house,
he was drilling his company, all mounted on fine horses and arrayed in
their gallant backwoods uniforms, then did Burlman Reynolds feel the
Fighting Nigger rising rampant within him, insomuch that he could not
endure the thought of being left behind. So he made an earnest petition
to his master to be allowed to go along, just to groom the "Cap'n's
horse," to clean the "Cap'n's gun," and to see that the "Cap'n always
got plenty to eat--mo' dan his dry rations--a squirrel, or a partridge,
or eben a fat buck, which he an' Betsy Grumbo would take a delight in
providin' fur him." And to humor the good old fellow, Captain Reynolds
bid him go and don his bear-skin rigging, shoulder Betsy Grumbo, mount
young Cornwallis, and take his place in the ranks of war. But here we
are at the end of our chapter, and not a word of the figure the Big Bear
made in the great North-west. This, though, amounts to but little--the
omission amounting to nothing.