Panther in the Sky

by JAMES ALEXANDER Thom

  For a few moments then the close wet air was a din of blows, screams, curses, crackling twigs, commands, groans, a few pistol shots. The warriors fought in a way that surely would have stopped any other army that had ever come against them. Even Loud Noise in his desperation was standing his ground and hacking away with his great strength, drunkenly brawling to defend his life.

  But these soldiers were not scared. They did not stop pushing their way into the woods. It does not take long to determine whether an enemy is just obeying orders or is truly strong-hearted, and these men had the spirit that Clark’s soldiers had had. They ducked under and clambered over trunks and branches to get into the combat, crunching ever forward with their deadly steel spikes probing the way, as eager as hungry bear hunters closing in. Tecumseh saw his warriors being impaled and twisted to the ground. He saw them being slammed back against the dead trees and clubbed to death with rifle stocks. The long bayonets on the long guns outreached tomahawks and clubs and knives. And when a Blue-Coat soldier fired one shot into the massed warriors, several could be hit by the mixed load of ball and shot.

  Tecumseh had a glimpse of Stands-Between fighting beside him, and when the youth glanced toward him, Tecumseh saw that his eyes were filled with the most terrible desperation Tecumseh had ever seen in a life of conflicts. There had never been soldiers like these. Tecumseh was sore with bruises, and though the leather of his war club was soaked with soldiers’ blood, his own blood seeped over his skin from many places where the probing steel or buckshot had gouged him. It was impossible to go forward against them; it was impossible to stand still in front of them. The woods were full of the blue coats and white belts now. If the warriors had been here who had gone back to get food, there might have been enough to stop the army. But there were not. And the mass of fallen timber that was to have been the warriors’ defense was proving to be their death trap. As they fell back they were blocked by it and pinned against it. And in their hunger these frantic exertions were weakening them quickly. Tecumseh found it hard now even to swing his club. He was gasping for air and squirming and dodging and twisting for his life. Loud Noise was out of Tecumseh’s sight now. Stands-Between was still at Tecumseh’s right hand and was fighting without flinching, his arms covered with blood. He struck a soldier in the face with his tomahawk. When the soldier fell, the bloody-slick tomahawk handle was wrenched out of his bloody hand. Another soldier thrust at Stands-Between, who grabbed the long bayonet with both hands and strained to tear the gun from the soldier’s grasp. As they struggled, Tecumseh lashed out with his club and knocked the soldier into the other world.

  “Back, brother,” Tecumseh cried. Stands-Between, holding the gun by its bayonet and barrel, cocked it back to swing at an officer who was coming forward with a pistol in one hand and a sword in the other. The officer fired his pistol point-blank in Stands-Between’s face. Tecumseh glanced at his brother in that moment and saw part of his head pop open, felt flying bits of his flesh and drops of his blood. As Stands-Between swayed on his feet, Tecumseh screamed in outrage, leaped at the officer, yanked the smoking pistol from the officer’s hand, and cracked his skull with the butt of it. When he turned to his young brother, Stands-Between was already on the ground. His body was still twitching, but his face had a hole of torn meat and gristle where his nose had been, with grains of gunpowder still smoking in it.

  Crazed with grief, Tecumseh knelt and grasped Stands-Between under the arms and raised him up. Sobbing, straining, his throat burning from thirst and smoke, he cradled him in his arms and stood up. Then he turned his back on the Blue-Coats and began staggering deeper into the fallen woods. To his left and right, warriors were fleeing into the thickets, many of them bleeding and limping. The soldiers could be heard close behind, still yelling, still crashing and crushing through the deadwood like a herd of heavy-footed animals, still sending ball and buckshot snapping through the foliage. Flying splinters stung Tecumseh’s back. There were still blows and screams of pain back there, as a few warriors fought on. But the battle was lost. The thick, damp woods were blurry with smoke, and among the fallen trunks and split limbs flitted the forms of the retreating red men.

  Tecumseh staggered on with his burden, gasping for breath, stumbling, his heart torn apart by grief, his feet and legs being scratched and gouged by briers and broken branches. Twisting dead limbs reached out like hostile arms trying to wrench Stands-Between’s body away from him. He fell to his knees, and the body slipped from his arms. Panting, hardly able to breathe the close, smoky air, Tecumseh carefully gathered up the youth, lurched to his feet, and staggered on. There was no movement in the body now. Another brother was dead. He could still hear the shouts and uproar of the advancing army a few paces back. He was not afraid of being shot in the back. It did not matter now whether he lived or not. But he could not lay his brother’s body down, he could not leave it where the Blue-Coats would scalp it and skin it and take fingers and ears and genitals as trophies. He must keep going, as the rest of the shattered tribes were going, back through to the far side of the fallen timbers and up the road into the safety of the new British fort.

  Yes! he thought. Yes! When we come out of these woods, our British friends will take us in through the big gate, and then their cannons will boom and blow these Blue-Coat soldiers down. The fort will stop them!

  “My brother,” he gasped to the bloody-faced corpse in his arms, “it is not lost yet!” And he floundered on with the great dead weight in his sweat-slick arms, its bloody head hanging and bobbling with every step, and he tried to hope even as the last strength of his body wore down.

  LOUD NOISE CAME LUMBERING THROUGH THE BRUSH, HIS body fat quivering with every step, exhausted but trying to run to Tecumseh. He was wet with blood from many small wounds. His face was smeared with sweat and blood and war paint, and he was totally sober. When he saw his dead brother in Tecumseh’s arms, he clenched his jaw and groaned.

  Hundreds of warriors were moving around them, going down the river bluff toward the British fort. Many were carrying or supporting wounded ones. Thick Water, whom Tecumseh had given up for dead, came limping. More of Tecumseh’s warriors saw him now and came to gather around him. “Let us help you carry your brother,” Seekabo said, and quickly they grasped his arms and legs, and the four of them carried the corpse. But Stands-Between’s death was no lighter on Tecumseh’s heart, only on his arm. As they moved on toward the British fort, Big Fish joined them, then Stands Firm, face set in bitterness. He kept looking back, watching the warriors emerge from the timber. He looked down at the body, and his face set still harder.

  “Turkey Foot they killed,” he said. “I saw him down. Many chiefs are dead because they rushed out of the woods for the decoys.” Thick Water, hearing this, looked abashed.

  Now they could see the British flag ahead, and soon they emerged onto a clearing at the top of the curving bluff, full of stumps where trees had been cut to make the fort. Tecumseh spoke now of his hope.

  “When the Long Knives come out of the woods, the cannons in the fort will shoot them and turn them around. We have not lost this day! The British soldiers will help us, as they promised, and we will destroy the enemy!”

  They limped on in the hot sun. Then Stands Firm said, “Look below! McKee, in a boat!” Several men in a vessel were rowing fast, downstream, and the Indian agent was among them. They swept down the current of the river, and soon they were close offshore from the landing wharf below the fort. McKee was standing up in the boat, shouting something up to the fort, but his words could not be heard from this distance.

  Now as the warriors thronged up the road toward the gate of the fort, Tecumseh saw that something was going wrong there. Hundreds of Indians were crowded around the outer gate where the road passed through an abatis of sharpened limbs. They were roaring in anger, shaking weapons and fists. Up on the wall of the fort within, the British commander Campbell stood silent with some of his officers, using a telescope to study the distant woods where the Ame
ricans were. The warriors were all shouting up at him, but it seemed as if he did not hear them—even as if he could not see them. The cannons’ black muzzles pointed over the river and toward the woods, and there were many Redcoat soldiers up on the parapets, but both the outer gate and the inner gate were shut, and no one in the fort was moving to open them.

  Some of the warriors began to pound on the abatis gate with their gun butts and hatchets.

  “Father,” a mighty voice bellowed over the clamor. It was Blue Jacket’s voice. He was pointing at Major Campbell. “Father! You have promised to help us! Your children need you now! You see us! We come in great trouble! Many are hurt, many dead!” He swung his arm and pointed up the river toward the fallen woods. “You see the Americans coming. You must shoot your cannons at them! You must let us come in. Father, can you not hear our voices? Can you not remember your promise?” He was calling all this out in Shawnee. The officers on the high wall did not reply. They did not look down. It was as if the Indians were not there. Now Blue Jacket, who had often said he hated the white man’s tongue and would never use it again, began shouting at the British officers in that language, using many words Tecumseh had never used before. He was calling Campbell a traitor and a coward and a son of something.

  And now Tecumseh understood what was happening, and his heart went bleak and cold and hard inside him.

  The British were afraid. They had not expected the Long Knives to get through the fallen timbers. They were too afraid to help the warriors. There was nothing that could be done to persuade them to help. They were so ashamed, they could not even look at the huge crowd of desperate warriors, their allies who had fought to hold the Americans away from the fort. In the last war the Americans had knocked down the English king, and now the British were afraid to be in another war with them, regardless of their many fervent promises to the tribes. Tecumseh looked up at the British in their splendid scarlet coats, and disdain swelled within him. He stood straight, taking a long, deep breath, his arm still holding one arm of his dead brother, his brother who had died trying to keep the Americans from reaching the fort. And then Tecumseh shouted over the uproar:

  “Brothers! Come away! These are not allies! They are whitefaces! They are cowards! They are as bad as the Long Knives! Come away! We must care for ourselves!” And, face drawn in a sneer, shaking his bloody war club toward Major Campbell, he turned off the road, saying to Loud Noise, “Come. We must go down the river and find a place to bury this brave warrior, our brother.”

  AND SO THE BLUE-COATS OF GENERAL ANTHONY WAYNE INFESTED the rich, beautiful valley of the lower Maumee-se-pe. They yelled and whooped and slashed all the crops, and girdled the trees in the orchards, and burned villages, and plundered McKee’s store and burned his house, and destroyed all the crops on the beautiful island at the foot of the rapids—all within view of the British in the fort, who made no effort to stop it. The three sacred sisters, corn, squash, and beans, were cut and smashed and burned, and this sacrilege demoralized the Shawnees even more. The soldiers scalped and skinned or mutilated every body they found. They went into a burial ground and dug up old corpses, and took items from the graves, and drove stakes through the bodies. Soon the beautiful valley lay under a pall of smoke and stench. The British stood in their fort and watched all this and did not move.

  The defeated warriors of the confederation went down the river past the fort to the place where Swan Creek flowed into the river, five miles down, and made a camp there and prepared to defend the women and children if the Long Knives came on down. Tecumseh buried Stands-Between, the second of his brothers to die in his arms. Then he went back up the river to a place from which he could watch the Americans, his heart cold and bitter. He saw that Wayne was building a fortification within view of the British fort. He saw the desolate, smoking valley, all wasted.

  While he was watching, General Wayne and his young aide rode out from their fortification and rode close to the walls of the British fort, within a pistol shot of it, then rode insolently around the fort, looking at it as if it were nothing, defying the Redcoat cowards inside to shoot. Tecumseh looked long at the young officer. This man, he knew, had something important to do with the signs. Tecumseh felt nothing when he looked at the old general, nothing but hatred and regret. But when his eyes went back to the young officer, he could hear the wind whispering something to him, though there was no wind blowing, and he could feel the earth grumbling beneath his feet, though nothing moved.

  In that dark head and slender figure of the distant young officer on a war-horse, Tecumseh saw the evil for which the spirits had always been preparing him. He could not stop looking at him.

  There was no doubt of it. That was the one.

  FOUR WEEKS LATER, IN THE PAPAW MOON, A SHAWNEE woman came down to Swan Creek. She had been caught in the summer by General Wayne’s scouts, and now they had sent her back so that she could carry a message to the tribes from General Wayne. Captain Elliott, the Indian agent, translated it to the red men.

  Brothers:

  The President of the United States, General Washington, the Great Chief of America, once more speaks to you thro’ me, his Principal Warrior Major General and Commander in Chief of the Federal Army, and Commissioner Plenipotentiary for settling a permanent and lasting Peace with all, and every tribe or tribes, nations or Nation of Indians, north of the Ohio.

  Brothers, summon your utmost powers of attention, and listen to the voice of Truth and Peace.…

  The United States love Mercy and Kindness more than War and Destruction.… Be no longer deceived by the false promises and languages of the bad white people, in the fort at the foot of the Rapids.…

  You preferred War; and instead of the Calumet of Peace, you suddenly presented from your secret Coverts the Scalping Knife and Tommahawk; but in return for the few drops of blood we lost upon that occasion we caused Rivers of yours to flow. I told you that the Arm of the United States was strong, you only felt the weight of its little finger.…

  The British had neither the power nor the inclination to protect you, you have severely experienced the truth.… Be, therefore, no longer blind to your own true interests and happiness; but listen to the Voice of Peace.…

  Brothers, appoint a number of your Sachems and Chief Warriors, bring with you some of your most Confidential Interpreters, and I hereby pledge my Sacred honor, for your safe return, & for your kind treatment while with me.

  Open your minds freely to me, and let us try to agree upon such fair and equitable terms of Peace as shall be for the true interest and happiness of both the white & red people; and that you may in future plant your corn & hunt in peace & safety, and that by an interchange of kindness and good offices towards each other we may Cement that Brotherly love and affection as shall endure to the end of time.…

  You shall receive a sincere Welcome from your friend and Brother

  Anty. Wayne

  Matthew Elliott had been issuing three thousand rations a day to the defeated warriors and their families at Swan Creek, and there was a fear that if the tribes remained here, neither fighting nor at peace, supplies would be exhausted early in the winter. So even Captain Elliott did not try very hard to discourage the Indians from going to hear General Wayne.

  The chiefs sent no answer to General Wayne’s letter right away. They had much talking to do among themselves. They were still licking their wounds, and Wayne had built a chain of strong forts clear through their country, from the O-hi-o-se-pe to the western end of Lake Erie. His words sounded kind, the chiefs said, but he was a chieftain of Washington, and he was in control, so it was doubtful that the terms of peace would be good for the tribes.

  “What will we do?” Tecumseh was asked by Big Fish, and by Seekabo, and even by Stands Firm, who once had been like a father to Tecumseh but since had become like a son to him.

  Tecumseh had not smiled since Stands-Between’s death. He finally did smile, a grim, wolfish smile.

  “My brother Chiksika told me, b
efore he died in the south, that even when Black Hoof and Little Turtle put their marks on the white man’s treaties, I would refuse. My brother Chiksika always said the truth.”

  “Would you not even go to listen to the Long Knife chief?” asked Seekabo. “You would not have to put your mark on his treaty.”

  Tecumseh put his hand to his waist, palm down, and swept it over the fire, as if throwing something away. “I prefer to hear truth. All the treaties of the Long Knives have been made of lies. This one will be also. I would rather go away and sit in the woods alone and hear the truth of silence than sit in a square room with white men and hear false promises. No, brother. If I do not go to a treaty, by the law of our People, I am not bound to live by that treaty.

  “And you have heard me. I would never live by a treaty of lies. This Long Knife Wayne has not defeated me. He has not made me afraid to fight on. I do not have to go when he calls.”

  Many young warriors believed as Tecumseh did and chose not to go to the treaty council. They gathered around him and made their own council. The future of their nation was now hanging in doubt. No one knew what sort of boundaries the white general would try to draw now, but these young men chose to stay as near the old Shawnee lands as they could without being bothered by the Long Knife army. And so they agreed to go with Tecumseh to a place where he had often had hunting camps. It was in the valley of a stream called Deer Creek, a tributary of the Mad River, about a day’s journey northeast of the ruins of old Chillicothe Town. To this place many of the younger Shawnees went, and in council they chose Tecumseh as their chief, and here they built a small, orderly town of wigewas set in two rows along the creekside, with a council house on a hillock. Wives and sisters and children of the warriors came, and also some young Wyandot and Delaware warriors who had become attached to Tecumseh during Wayne’s advance. And also among Tecumseh’s followers was Star Watcher, and there was also the Peckuwe maiden, She-Is-Favored.