HOW THE GLORY OF HIS RACE FIGURED IN HIS SETTING.
The following day was the fifth of October, 1813, whose sun beheld the
memorable Battle of the Thames, when, for the last time in the regions
of the North, the Lion and the Eagle met in fight.
The final retreat had begun at Fort Malden, a strongly fortified post on
the shores of Lake St. Clair, at the mouth of the Thames, where an
effectual stand might have been made against the farther advance of the
now victorious Americans. Such was the opinion of Tecumseh, and on
learning that his white ally had resolved to destroy and abandon the
fort to the intent of withdrawing still farther, even to the central
regions of Canada, he had boldly opposed the movement as unnecessary,
and being unheeded, had scornfully denounced it to his ally's very face
as unwarrior-like, dishonorable, contemptible. Had the civilized general
hearkened to the savage leader, the result of the war in that quarter,
if not more successful to the British cause, would certainly have been
far less dishonorable to the British name. During the retreat, the
heroic sachem had earnestly and repeatedly recommended a sudden and
determined face-about on their pursuers, and only the night before the
decisive battle he had urged a backward movement, that, under screen of
the darkness, they might surprise the sleeping enemy in his camp, and
overpower him before any combined resistance could be made. But all in
vain. His white ally was but a fat poltroon--"a big, fat, cowardly
dog," to use Tecumseh's own comparison, "that carries his tail curled
fiercely over his back till danger threatens, then drops it between his
legs and slinks away."
Throughout the war, this Proctor had displayed far more enterprise and
address as a plunderer than as a fighter, and now his sole end and aim
was the conveying of his precious booty and his precious body as
speedily as possible to some place of security before he should be
overtaken. But by means of this very booty with which in his greediness
he had overloaded himself, and the keeping of which he had far more at
heart than the maintaining of his own or his country's honor, he was
fated in the end to overwhelm himself with ruin and disgrace, since, by
the unwieldy clog thus laid upon his movements, he had doubled his risk
of being overtaken; and, with such a general, to be overtaken is to be
defeated; and to be defeated, ruined.
At last, after having pursued his heavy, blundering flight far up the
Thames to a place called Willow Marsh, near Moravian Town, and finding
that the American van was pressing close upon his rear, the British
general was prevailed upon by Tecumseh and his own officers to face
about and give the enemy battle. His ground was well chosen. Parallel
with the river and separated from it by a narrow strip of firm land,
over which ran the beaten route, there lay a swamp of considerable
extent which, besides being densely covered with other wet land growth,
was thickly sprinkled over with willows, whence its name, "Willow
Marsh." Across this isthmus Proctor hastily threw his regiment of about
nine hundred regulars, while Tecumseh, with his brigade of about two
thousand warriors, ambushed himself in the fastness of the swamp. On
this occasion, as had he, indeed, on every other occasion of the kind,
the Indian leader displayed a degree of generalship which stands
without parallel in the annals of savage warfare. Pivoting his brigade
on the right of the English regiment, he stretched it out in a long
line, inclined curvingly forward, with the intent of suddenly unmasking
and swinging it round upon the enemy's flank, should he in a body
attempt to force the passage of the isthmus.
About the middle of the afternoon the Americans came marching up in full
force and in orderly array. Inferring at once, from the features of the
ground and from the little that was visible of the enemy, what the
English and Indian line of battle must be, General Harrison promptly
determined upon his plan of attack. The Kentucky regiment of mounted
riflemen, one thousand strong, commanded by Colonel Johnson, he ordered
to open the engagement by falling upon the Indian brigade where he knew
it must be lying concealed in the swamp. His two companies of United
States regulars, with a regiment of volunteer infantry, he sent forward
to make a charge on the British regulars where, with their muskets and
bayonets gleaming in the yellow autumn sunlight, they were seen extended
in a long scarlet line from river to swamp. The general himself would
hold a reserve of fifteen hundred men with which to cooperate as
occasion should direct.
The Americans advanced to the attack with great spirit, and were
received with equal spirit by the Indian wing of the enemy, and with a
steady concert of action unprecedented in Indian warfare. But hardly had
the Kentuckians sent forth their first volley when Proctor, too tender
of his precious body even to strike a single blow for his precious
booty, to say nothing of his precious honor, turned his back square on
the foe and, followed by a small escort of horse, galloped ingloriously
from the field, never drawing bridle till he had gained the shelter of
Fort Chatham, many miles farther up the Thames. Thus hastily deserted by
their general, the regulars, who otherwise had doubtless behaved with
the wonted gallantry of brave Englishmen, threw down their arms with
scarcely a show of resistance and begged for quarter. The white wing of
the enemy thus lopped off at the first blow, the two regiments--the only
part of the American army actually engaged in the contest--now
concentrated upon the red wing, where it still lay concealed within its
swampy covert. Up to this moment the Kentucky regiment of mounted
riflemen had made several ineffectual attempts to dislodge and drive the
Indians from their stronghold, of whom nothing as yet had been seen but
a long, curved line of rifle-smoke which, curling upward from among the
willows and hovering in small blue clouds above the heads of the
ambushed savages, served to trace their order of array.
Meanwhile, the clarion voice of the Indian leader had been heard, in
tones of encouragement, exhortation, and command to his unseen warriors,
rising high and clear above the din of battle. Now, on a sudden, it rang
out stern, abrupt, imperious, like the voice of a trumpet sounding a
desperate charge.
When he found himself deserted by his white ally--the strong hand under
which he and his people had trusted to return to the land of their
fathers--then did the heroic sachem feel that he was fighting the last
battle of a hopeless cause. But too proud to survive a failure so
vast--the blasted hopes of his life, the ruined schemes of his
ambition--he determined to die then and there, and die, too, such a
death as should shed over the very failure an undying glory. To this
intent he would order a general charge, disdaining the further shelter
of his stronghold and meeting the enemy in the open field. True, such a
movement would be utterly at variance with the usages of Indian warfare.
True, also, the enemy to be charged was flushed with present success,
not to mention his being the stronger and made audacious from having
been the pursuer in the chase just ended. But such a movement, from the
fact of its being without example and without hope, would make his skill
as a leader the more apparent, his death as a warrior the more certain
and glorious. Yes, he would order a general charge.
Then, to the amazement of the Americans, the heretofore invisible foe
burst suddenly forth from his ambush, and now, in a long, well-ordered
line, was coming impetuously on to meet them un-Indian-like in the open
field. Headed by their intrepid leader, on they came amain, brandishing
their tomahawks and war-clubs and filling the woods with their appalling
yells and war-whoops. But now, well out of the bushy skirts of the swamp
and able to look about them, they discovered what before their chief had
designedly concealed from them--that the English regulars had all been
captured, and that they were no longer supported by their white allies.
The lengthened array of dusky warriors was observed to pause, to falter,
then, at the next discharge of bullets sent point-blank at them, to
break in pieces, dissolving at once into a mere disorderly rabble. All
order lost, lost was all mutual confidence and all courage. Back, with a
howl of disappointment and dismay, they quailed from before the
advancing foe, and as suddenly as they had appeared, vanished again in
the somber shadows of the marsh.
Hastily rallying about three hundred of his bravest followers,
conspicuous among whom towered the gigantic bulk of Black Thunder, and
inspiring them to heroism by his own example, again was Tecumseh
pressing impetuously forward, his tomahawk brandished aloft and his
trumpetlike voice still ringing high and clear above the rude uproar;
nor paused he till with terrible energy he had hewn his way into the
thick of the enemy's ranks. Now, with tomahawk uplifted, he had planted
himself directly confronting Colonel Johnson, who, mounted on a white
horse, was pressing forward, though desperately wounded, to encounter
the Indian chief, his pistol already leveled. The next instant, and all
in that self-same instant, the white horse dropped dead under his
wounded rider, the pistol went off, a terrible cry was heard, a wild
leap into the air was seen, and hushed was the clarion voice of command.
The red warriors paused, gazed wildly about them, as were they listening
to catch their leader's voice; then, hearing it no more, with a howl of
dismay and despair, which found an echo in a howl as drear from their
fellows crouched in the swamp, they turned and fled. The Battle of the
Thames was over. The might of the Shemanols had prevailed, the blood-red
banner of the English Manakee had been laid in the dust, and the
ambushed army of the red man broken and scattered. The heroic, the
high-minded, the hapless Tecumseh was fallen.
Throughout the action, though he had gallantly headed his company in
every charge, Captain Reynolds had not fired a single shot, lest, by
some unhappy chance, Kumshakah, the preserver of his life, might fall by
his hand. When the battle was over and he had assisted in bearing his
wounded colonel to camp, he hunted up Burl and, bidding him follow,
returned in the course of an hour to the battle-ground, to look once
more on his face who at sunset had said, "Let him sleep; Wahcoudah's
will be done." He had repeated to his old servant what their deliverer
had told them of himself. But having taken in the evidence of his own
senses and already drawn therefrom his own unalterable conclusions, Big
Black Burl could not be made to understand how a man who looked like
Kumshakah, talked like Kumshakah, acted like Kumshakah, called himself
Kumshakah, could be any other than the Kumshakah whom he had met as a
foe, entertained as a guest, parted with as a friend, and ever
afterward loved as a brother. Such was his conviction then, and such it
remained through life.
On reaching the spot where he had seen the hero fall, Reynolds found a
number of his brother soldiers already gathered there, and still others
coming up, all eager either for the first time to behold or to get a
nearer view of the renowned Indian chieftain. With the dead of both
friend and foe strewn thick around him, there he lay, his handsome face
still lighted up with a glorious and triumphant smile, as if the
magnanimous soul that so long had animated those noble features had, in
rising, stamped it there to tell his enemies that, though fallen, he had
fallen and conquered. Beside him, and in striking contrast with his
symmetrical and stately figure, his pleasing and majestic aspect, lay
extended the huge bulk and scowled the terrible visage of Black Thunder.
"Pore, pore Kumshy!" exclaimed Burl, in a pitying voice.
"Yes, poor Kumshakah, and poor Tecumseh, too!" rejoined his master, with
solemn and profound emotion.
"What's dat you say, Mars'er Bushie?" inquired Burl quickly and with a
puzzled look.
Slowly young Reynolds repeated what he had said, and then added: "What
we now see before us, Burl, is all that is left of the great Tecumseh!"
Had this specter of the slain chief risen suddenly from his body and
stood confronting him, the effect on the mind of Big Black Burl could
hardly have been more startling than that caused by this revelation.
Three huge backward strides he made, then motionless stood for many
moments, one foot a step behind the other, his hands uplifted and
outspread, his eyes wide open, staring fixedly with mingled amazement,
incredulity, and awe, at the lifeless body before him.
In his younger days, when the passion for martial glory burned strong
within him, the Fighting Nigger, as we have seen, had been in the habit,
when blowing his own trumpet, of running his warlike exploits into the
fabulous and impossible--not from any direct design of deceiving his
hearers, but merely that he might make his theme as interesting and
wonderful to them as it was to himself; but that the honor of meeting
and overcoming in battle so renowned a warrior as Tecumseh, of whom the
world in which he lived, the great wild West, was so full, should ever
have been his, seemed to Mish-mugwa more fabulous than even his own
fables, and to which all his other achievements, granting them to have
been as prodigious as he was wont to boast them, dwarf into
unmentionable insignificance in comparison. The reader must not fail to
bear in mind that, just here, we are viewing Tecumseh through the eyes
of Burlman Reynolds.
At length, having taken in the evidence of his sight, but as if still
needing that of his touch to set his doubts at rest and convince him
that what he saw there was in verity a bodily form, Burl stole
cautiously up again and softly laid his hand on the breast of the fallen
hero. No sooner had he done so than with a warm, tender rush came
thronging back into his memory all those recollections which, stretching
their bright train from that glorious first of June to that beautiful
Sabbath in the wilderness, he had ever viewed as being the happiest of
his life. But when, linked with these, came back to his mind the
thrilling events of yesterday, suddenly and to the surprise of all
present, excepting his young master, the huge creature, with that
liveliness of feeling peculiar to his race, burst into a blubbering
explosion of tender, pitying, grateful feeling, and cried like a child.
"Pore, pore Kumshy! De good Lord hab pity on yo' soul an' gib you a
mansion, ef it's only a wigwam, somewhar in his kingdom. You's a pore
heathen, we know, but shorely somewhar in his kingdom he'll make room
fur de like uf you." And with this simple oration over Tecumseh's body,
Big Black Burl turned weeping away and followed his sorrowing master
from the field, the stoniness and blindness of Calvinism gone from his
creed forever.
That night, long after the somber autumn sun had set, and the somber
autumn moon had risen, and the victorious foe had laid him down to sleep
in his distant tent, silent as the shadows through which they glided,
they returned to the battle-ground, the red warriors of the wilderness,
to pay the last tribute of respect to their fallen chieftain. Beside a
fallen oak that lay along the verge of the marsh--there, on the spot
where he had made his last stand for the wild people, the wild land, the
wild independence he had loved more than his life--they dug a grave, and
in it laid the mortal remains of the immortal Tecumseh. Then they went
their way, their wild hearts breaking with grief and despair, and he was
left to that solitude of silence and shadow which, like a hallowing
spell inspiring reverence and awe in the minds of the living, ever
lingers round the resting-places of the illustrious dead. But for many a
year thereafter they made it their wont to return thither, as on
pilgrimage to a holy shrine, once more to look with reverent eyes on the
green mound where he lay, and with reverent hands keep back the willows
and wild roses growing too thick around it, that, unshadowed, it might
be ever open to the loving, pitying light of the setting sun.
Thus he died, this Indian Hannibal; thus he set, this Glory of his Race.
Let him sleep! Wahcoudah's will be done! Rule, great Wahcoudah!
THE END.