AN INDIAN POW-WOW.
It was a picturesque council of white men and Indians that was held at
dawn in an open glade of the forest. The fragrant odours of the bush
mingled with the pungent smoke of the red willow-bark, puffed from a
hundred pipes. Conspicuous at this pow-wow was Tecumseh, who across his
close-fitting buckskin hunting jacket, which descended to his knees and
was trimmed with split leather fringe, wore a belt of wampum, made of
the purple enamel of mussel shells--cut into lengths like sections of a
small pipe-stem, perforated and strung on sinew. On his head he wore a
toque of eagle plumes.
"My object," said Brock, addressing the Indians, "is to assist you to
drive the 'Long-knives' [Americans] from the frontier, and repel
invasion of the King's country." Tecumseh, speaking for his tribesmen,
remarked, not without sarcasm, that "their great father, King George,
having awakened out of a long sleep, they were now ready to shed their
last drop of blood in that father's service."
"The pale faces," he continued, after an impressive pause--and the fire
of his eloquence and his gestures swayed his hearers like the reeds on
the river bank--"the Americans who want to fight the British are our
enemies.... They came to us hungry and they cut off the hands of our
brothers who gave them corn.... We gave them rivers of fish and they
poisoned our fountains.... We gave them forest-clad mountains and
valleys full of game, and in return what did they give our warriors and
our women? Rum and trinkets and--a grave!... The shades of our fathers
slaughtered on the banks of the Tippecanoe can find no rest.... Their
eyes can see no herds on the hills of light in the hunting grounds of
the dead!... Until our enemies are no more we must be as one man, under
one chief, whose name is--Death!... I have spoken."
Tecumseh, it should be known, bore a personal grudge against the
Americans, especially against the 4th Regiment, then in garrison at
Detroit, the "heroes of Tippecanoe." This was a terrible misnomer, for
under General Harrison, with 1,000 soldiers, less than a year before,
they had taken part in the slaughter of Tecumseh's half-armed band of
600 men and women on the banks of the Tippecanoe River, during that
chief's absence with many of his warriors, and had laid waste his
village. With a perhaps pardonable spirit of vindictiveness, such as is
shared by both redskin and white man, the human-being in him thirsted
for revenge.
Brock, perceiving Tecumseh's sagacity and influence over the savages,
invited the Shawanese and Wawanosh, Ojebekun and the other sachems, to a
private council. Here he unfolded his plans. Before doing this he made
it a condition that no barbarities were to be committed. "The
scalping-knife," said he, "must be discarded, and forbearance,
compassion and clemency shown to the vanquished." He told them he wanted
to restrict their military operations to the known rules of war, as far
as was possible under the singular conditions in which they fought, and
exacted a promise from the lofty-minded Tecumseh that his warriors
"should not taste pernicious liquor until they had humbled the
Big-knives." "If this resolution," remarked Brock, "is persevered in,
you must surely conquer."
Brock's rapid ascendency over the Indians was astonishing; they already
revered him as a common father.
That same afternoon our hero, moving up with his entire command to
Sandwich, occupied the mansion of Colonel Baby, the great fur-trader,
just evacuated by Hull. In the spacious hall hooks were nailed to the
rafters, from which were suspended great steel-yards, by which the
beaver packs were weighed. Scattered on the hewn floor in much profusion
were soldiers' accoutrements, service and pack-saddles, iron-bound
chests mixed up with bear-traps and paddles, rolls of birch-bark,
leather hunting shirts, and the greasy blankets of voyageur and redskin.
The room on the right became Brock's headquarters, and in this room he
penned his first demand upon General Hull.
"My force," so he wrote, "warrants my demanding the immediate surrender
of Fort Detroit." Anxious to prevent bloodshed, and knowing Hull's dread
of the Indians, he also played upon his fears. "The Indians," he added,
"might get beyond my control." This summons was carried by Colonel
Macdonell and Major Glegg, under a flag of truce, across the river.
The batteries at Sandwich consisted of one eighteen-pounder, two
twelve-pounders, and two 51/2-inch howitzers. Back of these artificial
breastworks extended both a wilderness and the garden of Canada. Beyond
the meadows, aflame with autumn wild-flowers, beyond the cultivated
clearings, rose a forest of walnut, oak, basswood, birch and poplar
trees, seared with age, of immense height and girth, festooned with wild
honeysuckle and other creepers. In the open were broad orchards bending
under their harvest of red and yellow fruit--apples and plums, peaches,
nectarines and cherries--and extensive vineyards. Huge sugar maples
challenged giant pear trees, whose gnarled trunks had resisted the
storms of a century. To the north the floor of the forest was interlaced
with trails, which, with the intention of deceiving Hull's spies as to
the strength of Brock's forces, had been crossed and recrossed, and
countermarched and doubled over, by the soldiers and Tecumseh's
half-naked braves.
The air was filled with the fragrance of orchard and forest. Facing our
hero, flowed the river, broad, swift and deep; tufted wolf-willow,
waving rushes and gray hazel fringing the banks. Across and beyond this
almost mile-wide ribbon of water, the imposing walls of Fort Detroit
confronted him. Approaching him at a rapid gait he at last espied his
two despatch bearers, their scarlet tunics vivid against the green
background. They reported that, after waiting upon Hull for two hours
without being granted an interview, they were handed the following
reply:
"General Hull is prepared to meet any force brought against him, and
accept any consequences."
Brock instructed his gunners to acknowledge the receipt of this
challenge with the thunder of their batteries, and from then, far into
the night, shells and round-shot shrieked their way across the river,
the answering missiles from Hull's seven twenty-four-pounders breaking
in a sheet of flame from the very dust created by the British
cannon-balls that exploded on the enemy's breastworks. Through the irony
of fate, the first shot fired under Brock's personal orders in the cause
of Canadian freedom killed a United States officer, an intimate friend
of the British artilleryman who had trained the gun. Such are the
arguments of war.
The cannonade proving ineffective, as judged by visible results, Brock
issued orders to cross the river at dawn, when he would make the attempt
to take the fort by storm--and soldier and militiaman bivouacked on
their arms.
* * * * *
Camp fires were extinguished, but the tireless fireflies danced in the
blackness of the wood. The river gurgled faintly in the wind-stirred
reeds. From out the gloom of the thicket came the weird _coco-coco_ of
the horned owl. From the starlit sky above fell the shrill cry of the
mosquito hawk, "_peepeegeeceese, peepeegeeceese_!" From an isolated bark
tepee came the subdued incantation of the Indian medicine-man, while
above the singing of the tree-tops and over all, clear and with
clock-like regularity, floated the challenge of the sentry and answering
picket:
"Who goes there?"
"A friend."
"All's well."