“I do not know how it is in Black Hoof’s town; maybe they do not pray for peace.” As the old chief’s eyes flashed, Tecumseh added: “But Black Hoof’s people are under a treaty not to fight white men, and red men do not violate treaties.” Black Hoof’s momentary look of anger passed, and he nodded in agreement. It was plain that Tecumseh’s line of talk now was pleasing all the red men present. And the red men were, after all, the audience he cared about. In fact, his voice had such clarity and carrying power that even the three hundred warriors waiting in the distance off the council ground could hear him. That included Black Hoof’s followers and the Crane’s Wyandots, any of whom Tecumseh knew might be swayed to his cause.
Now Ruddell had translated the statement about treaties, and Tecumseh moved ahead in that vein:
“My mind is confused about what a white man means by the word ‘treaty.’ When the white man makes a treaty with us, we think he is giving us his word. Maybe our trouble is that we do not understand what whites mean by ‘treaty.’ Perhaps some white man here is a great explainer, and could tell us what a white man thinks a treaty is for. The long and sad story of treaties on this land, from the first when your ships came to the shore of the sunrise, make me think that a treaty is not what the red man believed it to be. Maybe the red man has a mist of trust before his eyes, and cannot see what is really there. From what I have seen and studied of all the treaties from that day, I come to believe that a white man with a treaty is like a dog who wants permission to put his nose in the doorway and smell the meat cooking inside. ‘Only my nose,’ this dog promises, and he waves his tail to show he is sincere.” The Indians in the council, even a few of the white men, were getting the drift of this and smiling, already thinking ahead to the dog’s next move, and then the next and the next. Tecumseh said:
“I will begin with the first treaty made with the English white men, by Chief Powhatan in Virginia, who did not think any harm would come from a dog’s nose in his doorway. And then I will tell how with each treaty the dog got farther inside the doorway and closer to the meat, until all the meat was inside the dog.”
The Indians laughed aloud. Even those old chiefs who had signed treaties with the white men nodded and smiled grimly because they had seen the terms of their treaties diminished little by little, either by the individual white settlers who simply ignored them or by the government officials who regularly brought forth new treaties that overreached the old ones. It was evident in the faces of the chiefs that they were eager to sit here and hear a long story full of righteous grievances.
Tecumseh set forth on his narrative of treaties and deceits. He spoke of old names like Samoset and Massasoit and of tribes and treaties the educated white men could only vaguely recall and the uneducated ones had never even heard of. The terms of each treaty he described in detail, and then he related all the specific violations by which each had been destroyed or nullified. He related how whiskey and rum had been used to confuse the red men at treaty councils and how it was brought into towns and sold to make the people more weak and confused so that they would go blind into new treaties. On and on he went, his voice rolling forth, pausing only to let his words be translated. Stephen Ruddell was sweating with the effort of remembering so many names and details long enough to translate them into English. Another interpreter, who was translating from Shawnee to Wyandot, was having even worse trouble and sometimes simply stood gaping, his mind unable to correlate so many unfamiliar things. The white people were astounded that so much information existed, and more so that it had been compiled and arranged in one aboriginal mind; they were appalled that he was standing here in a council to which they themselves had invited him and serving up this long, compelling indictment of the perfidies of their race. The red men in the council were like an empty cup that he was filling up with vitriol.
Nearly two hours later, as Tecumseh was reaching the present day in his history of broken trust, condemning Governor Harrison’s awesome series of land treaties and the corrupt chiefs who had signed them in return for promises of more annuity money, the commissioners were almost numb with the weight of their mistake and had whispered an agreement among themselves that perhaps the case of Myers’s death should just be dropped, not even mentioned again in this council. Its importance seemed to have shrunk down very small. And one other thing was being whispered guardedly among the old implacable Indian fighters who made up the commission:
That this Tecumseh was a dangerous man, perhaps as dangerous as his brother the fantastic shaman, and that it might not be a bad idea, at some propitious time, to kidnap or kill them both.
By now all the red men were leaning toward the speaker as leaves stretch toward the sun, and their eyes glittered and their faces were intense with indignation. The commissioners were not sure whether the whole body of them would rise up and leave in defiance or even rush for their weapons. The interpreters were now merely stumbling along, translating a phrase here, a sentence there, left behind by the arrow of his narrative.
Suddenly he paused and looked over his shoulder at the commissioners and said:
“This is why I expect neither truth nor justice in your councils, and this is why I will never mark your treaties, and this is why I discourage all my red brothers from putting their mark on them.
“But we in our town by Greenville do not talk for war against the whites. We only say, Here is what the white men did when they got close to us; let us forever keep at a little distance from them. This is what you white men want, too. Your treaties always tell us, move off a little farther.
“Brothers, we cannot move any farther. You are all around us and tightening in. But in our hearts we can be pure and peaceful and sober, and depend upon ourselves and each other, and leave the white men alone. We would only do ourselves more harm if we attacked white people, or likewise if we listened to any more of their promises.
“And therefore I, Tecumseh, who value my people’s freedom more than my own life, I assure the commissioners here that in my camp we do not incite our people to war with the whites; on the contrary, we teach and plead for patience, and truth, and wisdom, and each morning and night we pray for these. This is the word of my heart, and I tell it to you, because you have been so busy trying to find out what we do there. I will assure your highest chiefs of it: ours is not a war camp, and we do not go about murdering white men.”
Then he walked to his place and sat down, and it was plain that all the red men thought that everything worth saying had been said.
With few more words, none about Myers, the commissioners closed the council, and it dissolved in apparent good spirit. The three hundred warriors and chieftains elected to remain at Springfield for three more days, to engage in sports and competitions of skill. Stephen Ruddell and Tecumseh had a warm reunion, but a certain distance separated them because of Ruddell’s attachment to the faction of Black Hoof, who was his adoptive father, and because of his obvious antipathy toward Open Door’s religion.
The white men who observed the ensuing games noticed that Tecumseh, though nearly twice the age of many of the competitors, won nearly every contest.
What the white men did not notice was that while he was winning athletic victories on the sunny field, he was also winning hearts and minds at the little fireside councils at night. By the time the red men left Springfield, many young men of Black Hoof’s Shawnees and the Crane’s Wyandots had come to believe that his way was better than the way of their old tame chiefs and had pledged to come and join him at the village in Greenville.
THE PROPER PLACE FOR OPEN DOOR’S SOUL WAS ON THE Road of Stars between earth and heaven, he felt, either going there alone to receive more divine instruction or leading the red people there by his words. Therefore he did not like having to deal with the earthly problems of running a crowded town or making the kinds of decisions the white men required. Those matters he liked to leave to Tecumseh or, if Tecumseh were absent, to his own wife, who was becoming an able women’s chief, or to Sta
r Watcher, who seemed to know how Tecumseh would have handled something.
Now Tecumseh was gone, and a white man had come with an important message. This was a big, shrewd-eyed man in fine clothes. Open Door peeked out the door of his lodge and recognized the man. He was John Conner, who with his brother William ran a trading post in the Indiana Territory. Open Door had known him in the days of Tecumseh’s village near the Delawares.
Open Door guessed that Conner had come with a message from Harrison. He came out to meet him. Conner looked at him indirectly and asked to be taken to the chief and head man of the Shawnees here. He said he had a letter for them from the governor of the Indiana Territory. Open Door said, “I am here before you. You may read the letter to me.”
Conner looked confused. He had not expected this well-known drunkard and fool to be the head man. When the warriors and chieftains assured him that Open Door was indeed the principal man, Conner had no choice but to begin reading the letter, and it was at once apparent why he had not wanted to.
The Prophet’s expressions went from anger to exaggerated imitations of hurt feelings as he listened.
The letter scolded the Shawnees for listening to a fool whose words were not truly the words of the Great Spirit, but of the Devil and of British agents. The letter ridiculed and abused Open Door openly. It accused him of summoning tribes from far away in order to mislead them, and it told the Shawnees they should send him to the lands beyond the Great Lakes, where he could hear the British more distinctly. Sheepishly, Conner finished the letter and waited for the worst.
Open Door stalked about for a while, swelling up and looking furious, then shaking his head and looking pitiful. It was plain to him: Harrison simply could not believe that this movement had grown among the Shawnees themselves, out of their own needs, that this was purely an Indian refuge from the troubles the Long Knives had brought. Harrison, like all the Americans, had to blame it on the Americans’ old enemies, the British.
Open Door did not reply the way he would have wanted to. He wanted to call Harrison the real fool and taunt him about how he had answered his stupid challenge to make the sun stand still. He wanted to curse him as a thief of the red men’s lands.
But Tecumseh had warned time after time: “Do not provoke this Harrison. He is dangerous, and we are not yet ready to defy him. We must play with him and confuse him so that he knows not which way to move.”
So Open Door, cooled from angry to crafty, directed Conner to write a reply:
Father,
I am very sorry that you listen to the advice of bad birds. You have impeached me with having correspondence with the British, and with calling and sending for the Indians from the most distant parts of the country, “to listen to a fool that speaks not the words of the Great Spirit, but the words of the Devil.” Father, these impeachments I deny, and say they are not true. I never had a word with the British, and I never sent for the Indians. They came here themselves to listen and hear the words of the Great Spirit. Father, I wish you would not listen any more to the voices of bad birds; you may rest assured it is the least of our idea to make disturbances, and we will rather try to stop them.
When John Conner rode out of the Prophet’s town with this surprisingly mild reply, he was almost singing, he was so surprised to find himself alive.
“THIS HARRISON HEARS HIS OWN CONSCIENCE AND THINKS it is the voices of the British!” Tecumseh cried when he returned and heard about the letter. “He never admits the great crimes his treaties are, but blames the British for troubling us! Though we are not even in his territory, he cannot leave us alone!” Then he put his hand on Open Door’s shoulder. “It is good how you answered his insults, without anger. Listen. The matter of the dead man called Myers is settled. The governor in O-hi-o is going to send his farmer-soldiers home.
“But the settlers who live close to us will not lie easy. If a horse wanders or a hog is killed, it will be blamed on us. Black Hoof will never stop complaining to his white fathers about us. He learned how Blue Jacket got annuity money for us from Hull at Detroit, and screams that we do not deserve it because we are not treaty markers. Ha!”
Now Tecumseh made a statement that astonished Open Door. “It would be better for us if we did move from this place.”
“But … my brother! This is the place the Great Good Spirit sent me to! This is the place my poor People know! Look at them, how happy they are here!”
“Yes. This has been a good place for its time. But I feel that the Great Good Spirit may soon send you a sign to move elsewhere. Surely he does not want us in conflict with the white people now as you create peace among the tribes. But we are on land within the treaty boundaries, and they will not let us rest here long.”
“Boundaries? Is this my brother Tecumseh who speaks now of boundaries? You said you know no such thing as boundaries!”
Tecumseh put a calming hand on his arm. “I still do not believe in boundaries. But I do see that those lines do exist in the white men’s minds, and on their sheets of paper, and they feel these lines give them a cause to molest us. That is why I say we should move into land they do not yet even claim. From there we will be free to watch the boundaries, and if a white man puts his foot over, we can put him back. There, we can build our nation of all red men, without so many spies and soldiers and nervous whitefaces coming to the edge of our camp. And there we can better avoid more treaties.”
Open Door frowned, thinking hard. “West would be closer to Harrison. Besides west, there is nothing but Canada.”
“The closer to Harrison, the better we can watch and confuse him.”
Open Door cocked his head. “If we were west, true, my followers from the northwest would not have to come so many hard days.”
“And thus would not be so hungry when they arrived.” “Where would this new town be?”
“Will not the Great Good Spirit tell you?” Tecumseh replied. “Some sign will come, pointing to the place.”
IN THE AUTUMN THERE CAME TO THE GOOD TOWN A MAN whose glory was in being bad.
Main Poc, Withered Hand, of the Potawatomi rode in from the northwest with a large bodyguard of warriors, his arrival creating a great stir among the Ojibways and Sauks and Menominees in the holy town. Open Door had never met Withered Hand before, but Tecumseh had visited him often in his own travels.
Withered Hand was a brawny, ugly giant in his middle years, respected and feared throughout northern Illinois and west of Lake Mis-e-ken. His influence extended beyond his own tribe and into the Winnebagoes and Sauks and Ojibways. His favorite pastimes were drinking liquor until he was full of thunder and striking like lightning across the Missi-se-pe against the Osages. Main Poc’s name referred to his left hand. He had been born without fingers or thumb on that hand, and he boasted that this was his special sign. Though he could not shoot with a bow, he could use a musket with his right hand alone and was said to have killed Osages with the stump of his left, as with a war club. Withered Hand was both a chief and a shaman, which was permitted in his nation but not in the Shawnee. He was a member of the Wabeno, or Fire Handler Society, and possessed such medicine that bullets and arrows could not hit him. That he had come this great distance to see the Shawnee prophet increased Open Door’s prestige even more.
But Withered Hand was not the kind of man who comes to look up at another man. He had come as an equal, to meet another great shaman and orator like himself, a prophet of whom he had heard much from the Ojibways passing through.
When the two came face to face, the people looking on saw their strong medicine passing both ways between them. They not only respected each other, but liked each other at first sight. Each recognized the other’s disfigurement as a special gift of the Creator. Withered Hand said he had come to stay for a long while. From what he had heard, he had come to believe that Open Door was a great man who had been delivered to the red men because one was needed. Withered Hand, without any humility, said he was here to learn the Prophet’s doctrines with his own e
yes and ears and to go home and spread them deeper into the north and west. Some of the warriors he had brought with him, he said, he had selected because they too showed promise of being effective disciples.
Tecumseh had long foreseen that Withered Hand’s wide influence and his bravery could be important in the confederation of red nations. That was why he himself had gone so often to talk to Withered Hand. The Potawatomi chief had welcomed Tecumseh and had accorded him much respect but had not shown any enthusiasm for the unification of tribes. To Withered Hand, intertribal warfare was natural and traditional. It was the way a warrior and chief found glory and proved his tribe’s superiority. Tecumseh had tried to convince him that there was greater glory to be found in fighting the red man’s common enemy, the Americans, than each other. But until lately Withered Hand had been remote from the white man’s evil and had never engaged in such great struggles as the war with Clark or St. Clair’s defeat, so his mind had not yet been turned in that way. Lately, though, the Americans were becoming more of a bother up and down the Missi-se-pe valley and near Lake Mis-e-ken, and he was starting to think more about them.
Now, as the two ugly shamans conferred with each other day after day, Open Door began to realize that Withered Hand would probably never give up liquor. He loved liquor and stated over and over: “If I quit making war and quit drinking whiskey, I would become a common man. This the Great Spirit has told me. He has spoken to me, as well as to you.” Most of the other tenets of the Prophet’s teaching, however, he found good, so their bond of friendship grew stronger as his visit extended over the next two moons.
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