THE INDIAN UTOPIA
Meanwhile time and the fates were weaving a fatal web about the almost
defenseless frontier. The western Indians, awed into submission for
a time by the masterful hand of Wayne, were again stirred by a great
unrest. There were, among others, three important causes for this
condition: the rapid occupation of their hunting-grounds and the
deterioration of the natives by contact with civilization; the steadily
increasing influence of the British, to secure advantages in trade or
help in case of war; and finally, a patriotic movement toward race
unity among the Indians themselves, which had for its object a revival
of the older and happier existence of their forefathers. This movement
was full of danger for the West and of hope for the British.
In the first place, the red and white races were totally different
in physical habits and in processes of thought by which perceptions
become opinions. The Indian had an incomplete and indefinite notion
of a treaty when he signed it, and was utterly unable to comprehend
its final effect; the white man exacted to the utmost all possible
advantages from these agreements. The ideas of the two races with
respect to the ownership and transmission of title to land differed
markedly. The white man appeased his omnipresent land hunger by
inducing representatives of the tribes to make a cession, usually for
a paltry consideration, of the land which was at the moment desired.
The usual method of procuring such cessions was to call the leaders of
the tribe affected together in solemn conclave, where they were plied
with whisky and cajolery, and by alternate threats and appeals to their
cupidity the bargain was extorted from them.[458] If the government did
not itself directly supply the liquor which befuddled the brain and
weakened the will of the red man, it was at least guilty of permitting
its subjects to do so.[459] How the transaction appeared to the Indian,
when he had had time to reflect upon it, is well shown by an appeal of
the Wyandot tribe in 1812 to be allowed to retain possession of the
lands they were then cultivating, which had been ceded to the United
States by a prior treaty. Their description of the process of obtaining
cessions from the tribes can scarcely be improved upon for clarity
and succinctness. "When the United States want a particular piece of
land, all our natives are assembled; a large sum of money is offered;
the land is occupied probably by one nation only; nine-tenths have no
actual interest in the land wanted; if the particular nation interested
refuses to sell, they are generally threatened by the others, who want
the money or goods offered to buy whisky. Fathers, this is the way in
which this small spot, which we so much value, has been so often torn
from us."[460]
[Footnote 458: For an excellent description of the scenes attending a
typical treaty see Latrobe, _Rambler in North America_, II, chap. xi.]
[Footnote 459: There is practically no limit to the number of sources
which might be cited in support of this statement. See for example
Latrobe, _op. cit._, II, chap. xi. At the second Treaty of Greenville,
July, 1814, the government agents seem to have deliberately adopted
the policy of intoxicating the Indians in order to bend them to their
wishes (Dillon, "The National Decline of the Miami Indians," in
_Indiana Historical Society_, Publications, I, 136-37).]
[Footnote 460: _American State Papers, Indian Affairs_, I, 795-96.]
Thus the land hunger of the white man and the discord produced by the
operation of two totally divergent conceptions of land ownership and
alienation furnished the basis for a conflict between the two races
which was probably inevitable under any circumstances. To the shame of
the more enlightened race, however, it must be said that its relations
with its less civilized neighbor were marked by a policy of persistent
abuse and a disregard of justice and treaty obligations which operated
time and again to goad the red man into impotent warfare, and this,
in turn, became the excuse for further spoliation. No government
ever entertained more enlightened and benevolent intentions toward a
weaker people than did that of the United States toward the Indian,
but never in history, probably, has a more striking divergence between
intention and performance been witnessed. The failure was due partly
to ignorance, but also, in large part at least, to the inability or
unwillingness of the government to restrain its lawless subjects, who,
filled with an insatiable cupidity and animated by a wanton disregard
of justice, hesitated at no means to possess themselves of the land and
other property of the Indians.
The truth of these statements is so notorious as scarcely to require
demonstration, were it not for the fact that with the passing of the
relations that prevailed between the two races on the frontier a
century ago our knowledge of them threatens to disappear. Almost any
number of witnesses of unimpeachable authority might be cited to show
the unjust administration of the regulations governing the intercourse
between the two races. Said Hamtramck to St. Clair in 1790: "The
people of our frontiers will be the first to break any treaty. The
people of Kentucky will carry on private expeditions and will kill
Indians whenever they meet them, and I do not believe there is a jury
in all Kentucky who would punish a man for it."[461] This opinion was
substantially repeated by Washington, who affirmed that the "frontier
settlers entertain the opinion that there is not the same crime (or
indeed no crime at all) in killing an Indian as in killing a white
man."[462]
[Footnote 461: Winsor, _Westward Movement_, 421.]
[Footnote 462: _Ibid._]
No man understood better the conditions that prevailed on the
northwestern frontier than did General Harrison. His letters and
messages abound in accounts of acts of violence and other crimes
committed against the Indians, and of the impossibility of obtaining
justice for them. By the treaties the Indians guilty of murder were
to be surrendered to the whites, and whatever the form of trial were
practically certain of punishment, while, as Hamtramck observed,
western juries almost invariably acquitted white men guilty of the same
offense. "The Indian always suffers, and the white man never," said
Harrison to the Indiana legislature in 1806, in a message appealing
for a redress of this grievance.[463] A year later, in discussing the
subject of Indian unrest, the Governor returned to the same theme,
expressing the opinion that the utmost efforts of the British to
incite the Indians to make war upon the Americans would be unavailing
"if one only of the many persons who have committed murders on their
people, could be brought to punishment."[464] It had even come to pass
from the partiality shown the whites in the enforcement of the laws
that the Indians proudly compared their own observance of the treaty
stipulations with that of their boasted superiors.[465]
[Footnote 463: Dillon, _History of Indiana_, 424.]
[Footnote 464: Dawson, _Historical Narrative of the Civil and Military
Services of Major-General William H. Harrison_, 97.]
[Footnote 465: Governor Harrison to the Indiana legislature, printed
in Dillon, _History of Indiana_, 424. In a letter to Harrison from the
War Department (unsigned), July 17, 1806, relative to the murder of an
Indian occurs the following: "It is excessively mortifying that our
good faith should so frequently be called in question by the natives
who have it in their power to make such proud comparison in relation to
good faith."--Indian Office, Letter Book B, 240.]
An event reported by General Harrison in 1802 well illustrates the
workings of the prejudice which rendered persons guilty of acts of
violence against the Indians immune from punishment.[466] An Indian
was barbarously murdered by a white man. The offender was a man of
infamous character for whom no sympathy was felt, and the evidence of
guilt was incontestable. Yet the jury, in obedience to the sentiment
that no white man ought to suffer for the murder of an Indian, in a
few minutes brought in a verdict of acquittal. A case which attracted
a good deal of attention and served to embitter the minds of the
Indians occurred about the beginning of the century. An entire party
consisting of several persons, men, women, and children, was foully
murdered by three white villains for the sake of a paltry fifty
dollars' worth of peltry which they owned. The murder was revealed
through the boasting of the murderers themselves. Governor Harrison
made strenuous efforts to secure their punishment, but because of the
active sentiment against punishing white men for killing Indians these
were rendered of no avail.[467] In a similar manner in 1812 a trader
who had killed an Indian at Vincennes was acquitted by the jury almost
without deliberation.[468] Shortly after this the house of a white
man was robbed by a Delaware Indian. To the demand that the culprit
be given up for trial the chiefs of the tribe replied that they would
never surrender another man until some of the white murderers of
their own people had been punished; they would, however, punish him
themselves, and this promise they kept by putting him to death.[469]
Another illustration of the sense of injustice felt by the Indians over
the one-sided administration of justice as between the two races, is
afforded by the spirited speech of Main Poc, the Pottawatomie chief who
lived near the junction of the Des Plaines and the Kankakee rivers, to
the agent of Governor Edwards in 1811. To the latter's demand for the
surrender of certain red men accused of committing murders among the
whites Main Poc replied: "You astonish us with your talk. When you do
us harm nothing is done, but when we do anything you immediately tie us
by the neck."[470]
[Footnote 466: Dawson, _Harrison_, 45.]
[Footnote 467: _Ibid._, 7-8, 31-32.]
[Footnote 468: Drake, _Life of Tecumseh_, 134.]
[Footnote 469: Dawson, _Harrison_, 178.]
[Footnote 470: Edwards, _Life of Ninian Edwards_, 49.]
Thus to the native mind there were two kinds of justice, one red and
the other white, and moreover the red man was keen enough to observe
that most of the faults for which he was visited with punishment
had been learned from the palefaces. In particular the white man's
fire-water had for him a fatal fascination, leading him into depths
of degradation and crime which beggar description. There is no more
mournful picture in English literature than that of the steady
destruction of the Indian race by this poison dealt out to the red
man by the white trader for the sake of paltry gain. The efforts of
Catholic and Protestant missionaries, and of the governments of France,
Great Britain, and the United States to suppress the accursed traffic
were all alike in vain. The narratives of travelers and the letters and
reports of government officials abound in portrayals of shocking scenes
of debauchery indulged in by the Indians while under the influence of
liquor.[471] "I have witnessed the evils caused by that liquor among
the Indians," wrote Denonville, governor of New France, in an official
memoir in 1690.[472] "It is the horror of horrors. There is no crime
nor infamy they do not perpetrate in their excesses. A mother throws
her child into the fire; noses are bitten off; this is a frequent
occurrence. It is another Hell among them during these orgies, which
must be seen to be credited.... Those who allege that the Indians will
remove to the English, if Brandy be not furnished them do not tell the
truth; for it is a fact that they do not care about drinking as long
as they do not see brandy; and the most reasonable would wish there
had never been any such thing; for they set their entrails on fire and
beggar themselves by giving their peltries and clothes for drink."
"This passion for drink," said General Cass to the chief, Metea, at
the Chicago Treaty of 1821, "has injured your nation more than any
other thing--more than all the other causes put together. It is not a
long period since you were a powerful independent tribe--now, you are
reduced to a handful, and it is allowing to ardent spirits."[473] And
Governor Harrison, pleading for a law to protect the Indians against
the liquor traffic, thus addressed the Indiana legislature in 1805:
"You are witnesses to the abuses; you have seen our towns crowded with
furious and drunken savages, our streets flowing with their blood,
their arms and clothing bartered for the liquor that destroys them, and
their miserable women and children enduring all the extremities of cold
and hunger. So destructive has the progress of intemperance been among
them, that whole villages have been swept away. A miserable remnant
is all that remains to mark the names and situation of many numerous
and warlike tribes. In the energetic language of one of their orators,
it is a dreadful conflagration, which spreads misery and desolation
through their country, and threatens the annihilation of the whole
race."[474]
[Footnote 471: For examples see Volney, _View of the Soil and Climate
of the United States of America_, 354; Latrobe, _Rambler in North
America_, II, chap, xi; Keating, _Narrative of an Expedition to the
Sources of the St. Peter's River_, I, 124-27; Charlevoix, _Letters
to the Duchess of Lesdiguières_, 228-29; and citations collected by
Dillon, in _Indiana Historical Society, Publications_, I, 131-38.]
[Footnote 472: O'Callaghan, _New York Colonial Documents_, IX, 441.]
[Footnote 473: Schoolcraft, _Travels in the Central Portions the
Mississippi Valley_, 351.]
[Footnote 474: Dawson, _Harrison_, 73.]
At an earlier date than the foregoing, in an official communication to
the Secretary of War, Harrison described the general effect upon the
Indians of their intercourse with the whites in these words:
"Killing each other has become so customary amongst them that it is
no longer thought criminal. They murder those whom they have been
most accustomed to esteem and regard--their chiefs and their nearest
relatives fall under the stroke of their tomahawks and their knives....
All those horrors are produced to those unhappy people by their too
frequent intercourse with the white people. This is so certain that
I can at once tell, upon looking at an Indian whom I chance to meet,
whether he belongs to a neighboring, or to a more distant tribe. The
latter is generally well clothed, healthy, and vigorous; the former,
half-naked, filthy, and enfeebled by intoxication; and many of them
without arms, except a knife, which they carry for the most villanous
purposes."[475]
[Footnote 475: Dawson, _Harrison_, 10-11.]
The red men were not unconscious of the evils of intemperance, and
often made pathetic appeals to the whites to protect them from
temptation. "The Indian Chiefs complain heavily of the mischiefs
produced by the enormous quantities of whisky which the traders
introduce into their country," wrote Harrison to the Secretary of War
in 1801.[476] In 1810 the Fox nation requested General Clark, Indian
agent at St. Louis, to prevent whisky from coming among them as it made
them "verry poor."[477] In a speech to the President of the United
States in 1802 Little Turtle dwelt on the demoralization wrought
among his people by liquor, and urged that its sale be prohibited.
"Your children are not wanting in industry," he said, "but it is the
introduction of this fatal poison which keeps them poor. Your children
have not that command of themselves which you have, therefore, before
anything can be done to advantage, this evil must be remedied."[478]
[Footnote 476: _Ibid._]
[Footnote 477: _Edwards Papers_, MSS in Chicago Historical Society
library, L, 77; Maurice Blondeau to Clark, August 25, 1810.]
[Footnote 478: _American State Papers, Indian Affairs_, I, 655.]
The conditions which were working the ruin of the tribes were borne
by the Indians with astonishing patience.[479] "They will never have
recourse to arms," said Harrison in 1806, "unless driven to it by a
series of injustice and oppression."[480] Yet often there were pathetic
protests. "I had not discovered," wrote Black Hawk of the spring of
1812, "one good trait in the character of the Americans that had come
to the country. They made fair promises, but never fulfilled them Why
did the Great Spirit ever send the whites to this island to drive us
from our homes, and introduce among us poisonous liquors, disease, and
death?"[481]
[Footnote 479: Statement of Harrison to the Secretary of War, July 15,
1801, Dawson, _Harrison_, 9.]
[Footnote 480: Dillon, _History of Indiana_, 423.]
[Footnote 481: Black Hawk, _Life_, 34-35.]
With the government demanding more lands and the advancing line of
white settlement pressing ever forward, the game upon which the Indians
subsisted became scarcer, and many of the tribes were reduced to
destitution. Then came the remarkable attempt of Tecumseh, the Indian
Moses, and his brother, the Prophet, to rescue their people from the
impending doom. The story of Tecumseh, the greatest man of the native
race, begins with the birth of three boys to the Cherokee squaw of a
Shawnee warrior about the year 1770, in an obscure village near the
present site of Springfield, Ohio.[482] In the nature of things not
much can be known with certainty of his earlier years. His brother, the
Prophet, has spun a fanciful tale of his descent from the union of a
Creek warrior with the daughter of one of the colonial governors, but
both this and the stories of his youthful precocity and prowess may
be regarded with equal suspicion. In the same light must we view the
story of the effect produced upon Tecumseh by the first spectacle, for
him, of the burning of a prisoner, and his persuading his associates to
abandon the custom,[483] though it is true his later career was marked
by a humanity toward the vanquished foe quite unusual in an Indian.
[Footnote 482: Drake, _Tecumseh_, chaps, i and ii.]
[Footnote 483: _Ibid._, 68-69.]
The young warrior doubtless participated in various warlike forays
during the stormy years prior to Wayne's victory at Fallen Timbers
in 1794. He fought in that battle, but refrained from attending the
council which resulted in the Treaty of Greenville.[484] During
the next few years he assumed the dignity of a chief and gradually
attracted to himself a considerable following. Before long his fame
as an orator and a man of influence among his fellows had spread even
to the white settlers. In 1805 several scattered bands of the Shawnee
tribe, Tecumseh's among the number, united and settled at Greenville,
where Tecumseh's brother began the career which has caused him to be
known in history as the "Prophet."
[Footnote 484: Drake, _Tecumseh_, 81-83.]
Tecumseh was always an enemy of the Americans, but he based his enmity
upon the losses and ills suffered by his people. Evidently the Great
Spirit was angry with his red children, for they were being driven from
their hunting-grounds, were losing their health and vigor, and sinking
into the lowest depths of poverty and depravity. For all these evils
there were two remedies; the first to recover the lost hunting-grounds,
the second to reform the conduct of the warriors; and no European
statesman ever faced an impossible task with greater courage or used
his resources with greater skill than did Tecumseh.
The leading role was taken for some time by Tecumseh's brother the
Prophet, who now took upon himself the name Tenskwautawau, meaning
the "Open Door," signifying that he would point out to the Indians
the new mode of life they should pursue.[485] From the village of the
assembled bands near Greenville was sent out far and wide to the tribes
in the year 1806 this revelation by the Prophet of the will of the
Great Spirit: "I am the father of the English, of the French, of the
Spaniards, and of the Indians. I created the first man, who was the
common father of all these people, as well as yourselves; and it is
through him, whom I have awaked from his long sleep, that I now address
you. _But the Americans I did not make. They are not my children,
but the children of the evil spirit._ They grew from the scum of the
great water where it was troubled by the evil spirit, and the froth
was driven into the woods by a strong east wind. They are numerous,
but I hate them I am now on the earth, sent by the Great Spirit to
instruct you. Each village must send me two or more principal chiefs
to represent you, that you may be taught Those villages which do not
listen to this talk, and send me two deputies, will be cut off from the
face of the earth."[486]
[Footnote 485: _Ibid._, 86.]
[Footnote 486: _American State Papers, Indian Affairs_, I, 798.]
A religious enthusiasm was thus enkindled which soon developed into a
frenzy. The Prophet's teachings in the main were sound, from the red
man's point of view, but they were attended by the excesses inevitable
to such a movement.[487] Witchcraft, drunkenness, and intermarriage
with the whites were declared against, and community of property,
respect for the aged and infirm, and adherence to the native dress
and customs were advocated. To all who would adopt these precepts the
recovery of the comforts and happiness enjoyed by their forefathers
before they were debased by their connection with the whites was
promised. Among the first manifestations of the influence of the
new teachings was the outbreak of a witchcraft delusion, similar in
all essential respects to that in Massachusetts in 1692.[488] Under
the influence of torture those accused confessed the possession of
supernatural powers, and to aerial journeyings by night; but where
staid and civilized Salem had been content to hang her victims, the
untutored red man burned his at the stake.
[Footnote 487: For a statement of the Prophet's teachings at this time
see Drake, _Tecumseh_, 87-88.]
[Footnote 488: _Ibid._, 88-89; Dawson, _Harrison_, 82-83.]
This delusion was soon ended, partly by the good sense of the Indians
reasserting itself, partly through the influence of Governor Harrison,
who sent a ringing protest against it.[489] But the influence of
the Prophet continued to wax, and by the summer of 1807 hundreds of
Indians from far and near had come to visit him and to listen to his
instruction.[490] The British, who feared an outbreak of war and an
invasion of Canada by the Americans following the Chesapeake affair
of 1807, sought to foster the excitement and to turn it to their
own ends by attaching the Indians to their cause in the impending
conflict. Messengers were sent to all the tribes to summon them to
Malden,[491] where for years presents of guns, ammunition, and other
supplies had been distributed to the Indians with a prodigal hand.[492]
Hull at Detroit did his best to counteract the effect of the meetings
at Maiden, but with indifferent success.[493] The British urged the
Indians to join actively in the expected war with the Americans. Hull,
on the other hand, tried to win them to a policy of neutrality, a
role entirely foreign to their savage nature. Many of them stopped at
Detroit on their return from Maiden, and showed great readiness in
inventing excuses for their conduct. "When you first sent for us,"
said one, "we immediately prepared to come to see you. Captain McKee
prevented us from coming then; he renewed his promise of presents to
us, and gave us a keg of spirits; that fatal keg stopped us. We were
stopped a second and a third time; at last, without his knowledge, we
crossed the river. We are now happy on your shore and safe under your
protection."[494]
[Footnote 489: Dawson, _Harrison_, 83-84.]
[Footnote 490: Captain Wells at Fort Wayne estimated that up to May 25,
1807, fifteen hundred Indians had passed that point going to visit the
Prophet (Dawson, _Harrison_, 91).]
[Footnote 491: _Michigan Pioneer Collections_, XV, 44-45, 47-48;
_American State Papers, Indian Affairs_, I, 797 ff.]
[Footnote 492: For a description by a British partisan of the
distribution of goods to the Indians at Maiden, see Weld, _Travels
through the States of North America_, II, Letter 34.]
[Footnote 493: _American State Papers, Indian Affairs_, I, 745-46;
_Michigan Pioneer Collections_, VIII, 568-71.]
[Footnote 494: _American State Papers, Indian Affairs_, I, 745.]
Meanwhile Tecumseh's plans steadily developed. In June, 1809, he
established himself with his brother, the Prophet, and a considerable
number of warriors gathered from various tribes on the "Great
Clearing," where Tippecanoe Creek empties into the Wabash.[495] For
three years this town was the center of Indian intrigue and turbulence
in the Northwest. One hundred miles to the northwest was Fort Dearborn;
about the same distance to the northeast Fort Wayne guarded the
approach to the Maumee; while one hundred and fifty miles to the south
Vincennes protected the Illinois frontier. The new Indian town occupied
the center of the triangle formed by these three posts. Here was to
be worked out, for weal or woe, the great experiment on the outcome
of which depended the future of the red race. That Tecumseh's was the
master mind which guided the enterprise cannot be doubted, although he
made clever use of the influence wielded by his brother, and at times
seemed to shrink into the background in comparison with the latter.
Here at Tippecanoe the Indians proceeded to exemplify the Prophet's
teachings, which shall be given in his own words.
[Footnote 495: Dawson, _Harrison_, 106-7.]
"The Great Spirit told me to tell the Indians that he had made them
and made the world--that he had placed them in it to do good, and
not evil. I told all the redskins that the way they were in was not
good, and that they ought to abandon it. That we ought to consider
ourselves as one man, but we ought to live agreeable to our several
customs, the red people after their mode, and the white people after
theirs; particularly, that they should not drink whisky, that it was
not made for them, but the white people, who alone know how to use
it; and that it is the cause of all the mischiefs which the Indians
suffer;.... Determine to listen to nothing that is bad. Do not take
up the tomahawk, should it be offered by the British, or by the Long
Knives. Do not meddle with any thing that does not belong to you, but
mind your own business and cultivate the ground, that your women and
your children may have enough to live on."[496]
[Footnote 496: Speech to Governor Harrison, August, 1808; Dawson,
_Harrison_, 108-9.]
The extent to which this advice was followed is astonishing, in
view of the fact that it necessitated a complete revolution in the
lives and habits of the natives. The influence of the Prophet's
religious teachings was felt from Florida to Saskatchewan. Most
marvelous of all, the love of liquor which had been the bane of the
Indians from the beginning of their intercourse with the whites was
for a time completely exorcised.[497] Seeking to test the strength
of the Prophet's influence over his followers, Harrison tempted them
with whisky in vain.[498] Even among the distant tribes to which
the Prophet's emissaries came, drunkenness and warfare fell into
disfavor.[499] The Ottawas of l'Arbre Croche were reported in 1807 to
be adhering strictly to the "Shawney Prophet's" advice. The whisky
and rum of the traders had become a drug on the market, not a gallon
a month being purchased. Even when the white men sought to tempt the
natives by urging liquor upon them as a present they refused it "with
disdain."[500]
[Footnote 497: _Wisconsin Historical Collections_, XIX, 322.]
[Footnote 498: Drake, _Tecumseh_, 107.]
[Footnote 499: For evidence on this point see Tanner's Narrative,
155-58; Wisconsin Historical Collections, XIX, 322-23.]
[Footnote 500: _Wisconsin Historical Collections_, XIX, 322-23.]
The settlers on the frontier were filled with apprehensions of danger
from Tecumseh's movement, and protests and appeals for protection
poured in upon Harrison. Yet the brothers protested that they had
no hostile designs against the Americans. In the summer of 1808 the
Prophet visited Harrison at Vincennes and succeeded in convincing
him, apparently, that he desired only peace and the upbuilding of his
race.[501] Meanwhile Tecumseh was conducting missions far and wide
among the Indians, urging upon them his design of a confederation of
all the tribes. In the famous Vincennes Council of 1810[502] he frankly
informed Harrison that his purpose was to form a combination of all
the Indian tribes of the surrounding region, to put a stop to the
encroachments of the whites, and to establish the principle that the
lands should be considered the common property of all the tribes, never
to be sold without the consent of all. There was nothing original in
this, for exactly the same design and contention had been advanced by
the northwestern tribes in their general council at the mouth of the
Detroit River in 1786.[503] The American government had, of course,
ignored their pretensions. Much dissatisfaction was expressed by the
tribes with the treaties of Fort Mcintosh and Fort Harmar, subsequent
to their enactment, many of them refusing to recognize the validity
of the cessions made by these treaties until compelled thereto by
Wayne, in 1795. At the Treaty of Greenville in that year most of the
northwestern tribes were represented; but many individuals belonging to
them held aloof, and among these Tecumseh himself was numbered.
[Footnote 501: Dawson, _Harrison_, 107-9.]
[Footnote 502: For an account of this council see _ibid._, 155-59.]
[Footnote 503: _Michigan Pioneer Collections_, XI, 467-69.]
With the rapid advance of white settlement following Wayne's victory,
new cessions of land were from time to time demanded. That the red man
must go down before this advancing tide of invasion was inevitable.
That he should struggle against his impending fate was but natural. The
plan advanced in 1786 offered the only prospect of even temporarily
holding back the whites, and this the more far-sighted among the
Indians were shrewd enough to perceive. Harrison reported in 1802 the
existence among them of an agreement that no proposition relating
to their lands could be acceded to without the consent of all the
tribes.[504] Nevertheless several treaties carrying large cessions of
land were made during the next few years. One of these, in particular,
made by the Piankeshaws and Delawares in August, 1804, excited the
anger of the other tribes.[505] Others negotiated by Harrison in 1808
and 1809 again aroused them. To an agent of Harrison Tecumseh stated,
in the summer of 1810, that the continuance of friendship with the
United States was impossible unless the encroachment should cease.[506]
"The Great Spirit," he said, "gave this great island to his red
children, he placed the whites on the other side of the big water; they
were not contented with their own, but came to take ours from us. They
have driven us from the sea to the lakes, we can go no farther." This
was repeated to Harrison himself a few weeks later at the Council of
Vincennes, and the determination was proclaimed to put to death all the
chiefs who had been parties to the late treaties, and to take away from
the village chiefs the management of their tribal affairs and place it
in the hands of the warriors.[507]
[Footnote 504: Dawson, _Harrison_, 19.]
[Footnote 505: _Ibid._, 61-63.]
[Footnote 506: _Ibid._, 153.]
[Footnote 507: _Ibid._, 155.]
The Council of Vincennes closed with an ultimatum on the part of
Tecumseh that the President must either agree to give up the lands
recently purchased and promise never to make another treaty without the
consent of all the tribes, or else prepare for war. Harrison agreed to
transmit Tecumseh's demands to the President, but assured him there
was no probability of their acceptance; to which the red leader's
grim rejoinder was that in that event "you and I will have to fight
it out." A year passed, however, and war was not yet begun. In 1811
another council was held between the leaders of the rival races.[508]
Some murders had been committed in Illinois for which Harrison demanded
satisfaction. Tecumseh professed himself unable to afford it. At the
same time he informed the Governor that he had succeeded in uniting the
northern tribes, and at the close of the council would set out for the
south to bring the southern tribes also into union.
[Footnote 508: For an account of this council see _ibid._, 182-85.]
Tecumseh departed on his mission, but returned to find his hopes
of realizing the red man's Utopia forever blasted. The settlers of
Indiana, frantic with fear of the threatened destruction, demanded that
the government take steps effectually to avert it.[509] Equipped at
last with an adequate military force, Harrison determined to forestall
the anticipated blow by striking first. The fight of Tippecanoe
followed in November, 1811, and the Prophet's shrill battle song on
that field was at once the death song to Indian unity and to peace on
the frontier. Henceforth, if the dream of Tecumseh was to be realized,
the Indians must, as he had threatened, throw in their lot with the
British, and improve the opportunity afforded by a war between the two
white nations.
[Footnote 509: _Ibid._, 187-90.]
Thus the agitation fostered by Tecumseh kept the northwestern frontier
in a turmoil for several years, and constitutes for that region the
prelude to the War of 1812. At Chicago there were no actual hostilities
during this time, but the Indians of this vicinity shared the unrest
which existed among their fellows on the Wabash. In June, 1805,
representatives from several of the northwestern tribes journeyed to
Maiden to solicit the assistance of their British Father against the
encroachments of the Americans. Among the speakers were two chiefs
from Chicago, one of them the notorious Black Bird to whom Captain
Heald seven years later surrendered the survivors of the Fort Dearborn
massacre. The burden of their complaint was that the Long Knives were
pressing on them so that they deemed it time to take up the hatchet.
Both the Chicago chiefs professed an attachment to peace hitherto,
but seeing "the White Devil with his mouth wide open" ready to take
possession of their lands by any means whatever, they had determined to
join with their fellows in opposition.[510]
[Footnote 510: _Michigan Pioneer Collections_, XXIII, 39-42.]
A year later, in June, 1806, a French trader informed Captain Wells
at Fort Wayne that a plot had been formed by the Chippewas, Ottawas,
and Pottawatomies to surprise Detroit, Mackinac, Fort Wayne, and
Chicago.[511] In 1808 Jouett, the agent at Chicago, reported that the
neighboring Indians were planning a visit to the Prophet.[512] He
feared that the meeting would be attended with serious consequences,
and advised that it be forestalled by the apprehension of the Prophet.
About this same time the followers of Main Poc made threatening
demonstrations at Fort Dearborn, stirred up, as Doctor Cooper was
told, by some act of alleged injustice on the part of the government
contractor.[513]
[Footnote 511: Dawson, _Harrison_, 85.]
[Footnote 512: _Ibid._, 105.]
[Footnote 513: Wilson, _Chicago from 1803 to 1812_.]
From threatened hostilities to the commission of acts of violence
was a step easily taken. In 1810 the Indians of Illinois committed a
series of depredations and murders along the Mississippi border.[514]
In July four white men were killed near Portage des Sioux by a band
of marauding Indians engaged in a horse-stealing expedition. Two of
the murderers shortly took refuge with the Prophet.[515] Both Governor
Edwards and Governor Harrison endeavored to secure the surrender
of the offenders, but without success.[516] One of the culprits
was Nuscotnemeg, who later bore a prominent part in the Chicago
massacre.[517] Main Poc, who had made the demonstration against Fort
Dearborn in 1808, seems to have been the most active marauder during
the next few years. In May, 1811, La Lime, the interpreter at Fort
Dearborn, reported that two of Main Poc's brothers had been engaged
in stealing horses from the settlements of southern Illinois.[518] In
August Gomo informed Governor Edwards' representative that Main Poc
had gone to Detroit where he would remain until fall.[519] The nature
of his mission is revealed by a letter of Captain Wells the following
February.[520] He had been stationed near Maiden since August, visiting
the British headquarters there every few days. He had with him one
hundred and twenty warriors, disposed in bands of ten or fifteen each
to allay the suspicion of the Americans, ready to take the warpath the
moment hostilities between the British and Americans should begin.
Thus alarming reports poured in upon the government from every part
of the frontier.[521] British agents in Canada co-operated with those
in the West to secure the allegiance of the Indians, and early in
the year 1812 attacks were proposed upon the border settlements of
Louisiana and Illinois.[522] It was due mainly to Robert Dickson, one
of the most astute and influential British traders in the Northwest,
that these plans were not fully carried out, and that the hostile
bands were transferred to the territory about Detroit and the Canadian
frontier.[523] The Americans urged upon the Indians a policy of
neutrality in the impending war between the whites,[524] while the
British, with greater success, sought to enlist them actively in their
support. The opening of the year 1812 found the Indians only awaiting
the co-operation of the British to devastate the frontier with blood
and slaughter.
[Footnote 514: Edwards, _Life of Ninian Edwards_, 37.]
[Footnote 515: _Edwards Papers_, 56-57; Edwards, _Life of Ninian
Edwards_, 37.]
[Footnote 516: Dawson, _Harrison_, 182-84; Edwards, _Life of Ninian
Edwards_, chap. iii.]
[Footnote 517: _Edwards Papers_, 57; _Wisconsin Historical
Collections_, XI, 320.]
[Footnote 518: Kirkland, _Chicago Massacre_, 187; Edwards, _Life of
Ninian Edwards_, 286-87.]
[Footnote 519: Edwards, _Life of Ninian Edwards_, 39.]
[Footnote 520: _American State Papers, Indian Affairs_, I, 805.]
[Footnote 521: For further examples see _ibid._, 797-811.]
[Footnote 522: _Edwards Papers_; Edwards, _Life of Ninian Edwards_,
_passim_.]
[Footnote 523: _Michigan Pioneer Collections_, Vol. XV, _passim_; Black
Hawk, _Life_, 30-35.]
[Footnote 524: Black Hawk, _Life_, 34 ff.; _Michigan Pioneer
Collections_, XV, 196-98; Edwards, _Life of Ninian Edwards_, 57.]