Panther in the Sky

by JAMES ALEXANDER Thom

  The alliance! Yes, the alliance itself was one matter that whispered always over Open Door’s shoulder. Of course the alliance was a good and necessary thing. He understood perfectly well how important the alliance was, and he supported it in every way. Tecumseh had explained over and over to him that the alliance of all tribes into a red nation was Weshemoneto’s larger plan, and that the Prophet’s religious movement was just one part of it.

  But Tecumseh was the maker of the alliance, and that part of the miracle was growing more and more important.

  Open Door was aware that his city was becoming as much an armed war camp as a holy place. He knew that hundreds of the warriors and dozens of the chiefs were here because of their dedication to Tecumseh rather than to his own spiritual power. Withered Hand was an example. He was here not because he wanted to stop drinking and become a good man, but because he wanted to be a great victor when the war against the Long Knives came. Withered Hand believed his own medicine was as great as the Prophet’s; in fact, it probably was as great, if not greater, Open Door would have to admit, though with awful chagrin and only to himself. Withered Hand looked across to Open Door as an equal shaman, but he looked up to Tecumseh as a superior war chief. In fact, almost all the chiefs, when it came to such matters as dealing with the British, talking back to Harrison, or planning hunting trips and diplomatic journeys and the ultimate tactics of the whole red nation, looked to Tecumseh for guidance and judgment, not to Open Door. Why, even the Prophet himself had fallen into the habit of letting Tecumseh decide things. And not just big things. Like that matter of the Kickapoos’ annuity salt. Open Door could well have made a decision about that at once; it was, after all, his town. But he had been preoccupied with spiritual things, with rituals, with dances, with morals, so he had let Tecumseh handle that of the salt. And then he had envied Tecumseh the pleasure of shaking that American dog of a Frenchman by the hair. How the people had liked that—how they had laughed and cheered Tecumseh for it—when it could have been Open Door himself receiving that applause.

  He sighed. Then he scowled across at the silent effigy.

  I am the holy man! I am the Open Door for the red people, Tenskwatawa suddenly and silently cried within himself. Weshemoneto, why do you not reveal yourself to me anymore? Why is it Tecumseh who has the dreams and the signs of the shaking earth and the moon-eyed wolves and the bundles of sticks? Why did you show me a glimpse of Heaven so long ago and come to give me all these things to do, and then retreat into silence and invisibility again? Why do you not visit me with guidance anymore? Why have you put all this upon my shoulders and then gone away?

  A great, bitter, swollen ache gripped his heart; he was afraid, as he had always been as a child, afraid that somehow, sometime, he would be ridiculed again, that no one would respect him, that no one would believe him, that no one would need him, and that he would be scorned. His heart hurt, an exquisite pain.

  Oh, how glorious it was to be needed! What a power it created in one’s being! How terrible it would be to lose that! He shut his eye tight and moved his head slowly from side to side.

  And then, just as he thought Weshemoneto was about to respond to the cry of his yearning heart, someone outside the lodge called for him. Somebody needed something again. With a groan he rose to his feet, hung the necklace of beans around the neck of the reed doll, and went to open the door flap.

  A messenger, they said. Another Frenchman from Harrison. Probably another American dog of a spy, Open Door thought. It sometimes seemed to him that Harrison sent messengers only in order to look around Prophet’s Town. The governor could not bear not knowing what was happening here.

  Open Door composed his morose visage and went out. This Frenchman had a round face and wore the little eye things they called spectacles. Around his head was a blue bandanna covered with silver brooches.

  This man’s name was Toussaint Dubois. He had a message from Harrison that he wished to read in council. Open Door sighed with impatience. Did the white governor think the people here had nothing better to do than sit in councils listening to his arrogant letters? But of course he acquiesced. It was always good to hear what the enemy was thinking, what he was worried about. Open Door wished Tecumseh were here. The letter would require an answer.

  The message from Harrison was first an inquiry and then a warning. The governor wanted to know about the Shawnee prophet’s “hostile preparations and enmity.” There had been incidents. Horses had been stolen from settlements near Vincennes. Cattle had been killed. The white people on the frontier were alarmed, they had heard that the Prophet was planning to attack Vincennes, and they were calling on the governor for protection. Open Door smirked as he listened to all this.

  But the smirk faded away as Dubois read the warning part of the letter. Harrison said that militia soldiers both in Indiana and Kentucky were preparing for service. He said he had called for more Blue-Coat soldiers to come from the east to help defend Vincennes. These soldiers were not coming to attack Prophet’s Town, Harrison said, but they would have to do so if it became clear that the Prophet was hostile.

  Open Door saw the alarm in the faces of the people. This had frightened them. They had come here to be happy and peaceful. But if the white governor made up his mind that they were hostile, or even just pretended to believe they were, he would come up the river with his Blue-Coats and attack, even though he had no right to march into the Indian land. Vincennes was not very far away.

  And so, though Harrison’s message outraged him, Open Door gave a polite answer. He repeated that he had built this town on the instructions of the Master of Life, and that the many people who were here had come for the good of their spirit. He said that he was angry about the treaty of last year, that it had cheated the red men and was not valid, but that even this treaty was not provoking him to hostilities. Open Door made a long issue of the illegality of the treaty, because it was one of the things the people could not hear too often. But, he insisted, he had no idea where Harrison had got the notion that he was planning to attack Vincennes.

  Finally, when he had finished, Dubois suggested that the Prophet might visit the governor at Vincennes and discuss his grievances with him.

  Open Door gave Dubois a haughty look and replied:

  “Tell Harrison I will not go to visit him, because when I went to see him last time, he treated me ill.”

  IT HAD BEEN A HOT, STILL MORNING IN THE BLACKBERRY Moon. But suddenly people were running and crying in the village.

  “The Blue-Coats! The Blue-Coats are here!”

  The panic spread through the town. It had been one moon since the man called Dubois had come with the warning about Blue-Coat soldiers, and the people had been buzzing with anxiety and anger all that time. Some had wanted to leave Prophet’s Town to keep their women and children out of the way of harm. Many of the warriors, on the other hand, had begged for a chance to go down and destroy Vincennes and the arrogant governor. Open Door’s own wife, surprisingly, was one of the most angry. She had wanted her husband to kill Dubois for coming here with a threat. She thought her husband should let the war chiefs go down and burn Vincennes before the rest of the Blue-Coats got there.

  But Tecumseh had returned in time to put a stop to that kind of agitation. He had reminded the warriors that there must be no conflict with the Long Knives until the alliance was complete and all the red nations were one and the great sign came.

  But now a white man had been seen riding toward Prophet’s Town on the road from Vincennes, and the people, fearing that he was an advance scout for the Blue-Coats, were running and screaming, and the warriors were grabbing up their weapons to defend the town.

  Then a lookout came in and said that the white man was alone. There was no army anywhere behind him. Tecumseh and Open Door sent the chiefs through the town to settle the clamor and calm the people, and a party of warriors was sent out to escort the white man in.

  It was not Dubois. But it was another messenger from Harrison, wanti
ng to see the Prophet again. “Bring him before me,” Open Door commanded, and he climbed onto a platform he used to preach to the multitudes. Upon it was a kind of thronelike chair, and Open Door seated himself upon it. He was furious about the disturbance this man’s approach had created. He was sick of this constant parade of intruders from Vincennes, and his anger was like a black cloud on his face. Tecumseh stepped inside the door of the medicine lodge, to observe.

  The white man was brought ungently into the clearing and made to stand in front of the Prophet, who scowled at him for a long time. He knew this man; his name was Barron, and he had come to the Prophet’s town before, with Conner. Finally Open Door spoke:

  “Barron, for what do you come here? All the white men who came here have been spies of Harrison. Now you have come. You, too, are a spy.” He thrust out an arm gleaming with silver bracelets and pointed to the ground at Barron’s feet and screamed suddenly:

  “There is your grave! Look on it!”

  The people around Barron yelled at him and edged closer to him, ready to kill this white man who had frightened them and made their children tremble. Barron stood trying to look unafraid, but his tanned face was paling.

  Now Tecumseh came out from the medicine lodge, naked except for breechcloth and moccasins, his sinewy body gleaming like burnished copper. When he walked into the center of the clearing and placed himself in front of Barron, the hubbub died and the crowd stood quiet. With no warmth in his expression, Tecumseh said, “Your life is not in danger. Why are you here, Barron? Answer.”

  Barron swallowed, licked the inside of his dry mouth, and gave the expected reply: “Governor Harrison sent me, with a letter to read to you and the Prophet.”

  Tecumseh glared at him for a moment, then stepped back. “Read, then.”

  From his kit bag Barron drew out a sheaf of papers. “It’s from William Henry Harrison, governor and commander-in-chief of the territory of Indiana, to the Shawnee chief and the Indians assembled at Tippecanoe. It says:

  “ ‘Notwithstanding the improper language which you have used towards me, I will endeavor to open your eyes to your true interests. Notwithstanding what white men have told you, I am not your personal enemy. Although I must say that you are an enemy to the Seventeen Fires, and that you have used the greatest exertion to lead the Indians astray. As I am told, they are ready to raise the tomahawk against their father. Yet their father, notwithstanding his anger at their folly, is full of goodness, and is always ready to receive into his arms those of his children who are willing to repent, acknowledge their fault, and ask his forgiveness.…’ ”

  Tecumseh raised his eyes toward the sky and took deep breaths to control the rising storm of fury in his breast. How sick he was of these white leaders, men of an inferior, clumsy, greedy race, always talking as if they were gods and the Indians were their poor, senseless, foolish sinners! And this Harrison was the worst of them for sounding like a god. Tecumseh yearned for a chance to grab this Harrison by the neck and stuff his mouth with the dirt from a bear wallow. But he kept still and glanced aside at Open Door, whose eye was glittering with a similar scorn. Barron read on:

  “ ‘The little harm done may be easily repaired. The chain of friendship which united the whites with the Indians may be renewed … the destiny of those who are under your direction depends on the choice you make of the two roads that are before you. The one is large, open, and pleasant and leads to peace, security, and happiness; the other, on the contrary, is narrow and crooked and leads to misery and ruin. Don’t deceive yourselves. Do not believe that all the nations of Indians united are able to resist the force of the Seventeen Fires. I know your warriors are brave, but ours are not less so. What can a few brave warriors do against the innumerable warriors of the Seventeen Fires? Our Blue-Coats are more numerous than you can count; our hunting-shirts are like the leaves of the forest or the grains of sand on the Wabash. Do not think that the Redcoats can protect you; they are not able to protect themselves. They do not think of going to war with us. If they did, you would in a few moons see our flag wave over all the forts of Canada.’ ”

  Barron paused to let the red men think of these words and become properly intimidated. They well knew the destruction the Long Knife army could bring; the Shawnees in particular had suffered their storms of fire time and again, in the long and violent years before the Greenville Treaty.

  But there were many of the older warriors here, too, who had chased Harmar out and slaughtered St. Clair’s army, and they were not likely to be as cowed by Harrison’s mighty talk as he expected them to be. The tribes had been at peace for more than fifteen years since Wayne’s victory, but that time of peace had not been a time of security and happiness like that implied in Harrison’s letter. No. They had been years of drunkenness and restriction and shame and frustration and dwindling boundaries.

  The next words Barron read from the letter were so outrageous that Tecumseh wondered whether Harrison was simply blind or so practiced a liar that he did not know how to tell the truth anymore.

  “ ‘What reason have you to complain of the Seventeen Fires? Have they taken anything from you? Have they ever violated the treaties made with the red men?’ ”

  Tecumseh’s jaw dropped when he heard those questions. What! his mind screamed within him. They have taken everything from us! They have violated every treaty!

  The people saw the incredulity on Tecumseh’s face, and they murmured ominously. Barron looked around but read on:

  “ ‘You say they have purchased lands from those who had no right to sell them. Show that this is true, and the land will be instantly restored. Show us the rightful owners. I have full power to arrange this business; but if you would rather carry your complaints before your great father, the president, you shall be indulged. I will immediately take measures to send you, with those chiefs you may choose, to the city where your father lives. Everything necessary shall be prepared for your journey, and means taken for your safe return.’ ”

  The Prophet’s eye had opened wide at this last. It was a flattering thing to be asked to go see the president of the Seventeen Fires in the city of Washington. Any red man who was invited was obviously esteemed as a very important man by the white men, as Open Door well believed he should be. And any chief who went there was considered by his own people to be a very awesome and interesting man. Withered Hand was an example. He had gone once. Another example was Black Hoof, whose long-ago visits to the president named Jefferson, to beg for plows, had given him a stature that even his abject attachment to the white man’s way had not diminished very much. Open Door began to see himself traveling on a big boat to the great capital city of the Americans and sitting in council with the president, talking as an equal with him: the most important chief of all the white men and the most important shaman of all the red men, sitting on thrones, wrapped in their finest robes, smoking together, facing each other in an unimaginably big house, discussing the fate of the red men. Open Door could envision himself spurning the offer of a drink of whiskey and the president’s surprised but respectful expression. Surely this president must be a more reasonable man than the outrageous liar Harrison; surely his eyes could be cleared! This was what was whirling in Open Door’s head, and he was thinking that he might accept.

  But in Tecumseh’s mind something else was uppermost. It was what Harrison had said about returning the lands if the red men could prove that the chiefs had had no right to sell them. Tecumseh wondered about that proof. He did not have much faith left in Harrison’s word, but if the governor hinted at such a thing, it must mean he was sincere. Did this mean there was some chance that Harrison could be persuaded to back down from the Fort Wayne Treaty and not settle those lands between the Wabash and the White rivers? If there was any chance of this, Tecumseh should seize it. And, suppressing the fury he had felt earlier, he said politely to the messenger:

  “Barron. I do not intend to make war, as this letter accuses. But I cannot be a friend of your country u
nless you give up making settlements closer to us than they were before that treaty. I cannot be friendly with your seventeen united states unless they will say to me, ‘You are right, the country is the land of all the tribes in common.’

  “Listen to me,” he said, his voice becoming deeper, louder. “The Great Good Spirit gave this island to his red children. He put 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.

  “They have put it in their minds to say that this piece of land belongs to the Miamis, that one to the Delawares, and so on. But it is not so! The Master of Life meant it to be all the land for all the red men. Our father Harrison tells us that we should not be upon the Wabash, that this place belongs to other tribes. He does not understand! The Great Good Spirit ordered us to come here, and here we will stay!”

  Suddenly he dropped his voice to a less impassioned tone. “The governor’s letter makes me believe that he might listen if I went to him and explained. Maybe I will decide to do that. Now, Barron, you have come a long way. Eat with us, and stay with us, and we will talk about this, and tell you what we will do. You will leave the council now and let us decide.”

  A SURPRISING THING CAME UP IN THE COUNCIL. USUALLY IT was women who called for peace and kindness when the men were hot for war. But this time the women wanted killing. It was not war they wanted, but many of them wanted Barron to be executed for the panic he had caused by riding in, for the terror he had caused the children. Open Door’s wife, as the village women’s chief, was most ardently for it. And even when Tecumseh reminded them that by Shawnee law a guest is safe, and the council voted not to let Barron be hurt, the women then held a secret council of their own and plotted to kill Barron while he slept in the House of the Stranger. It was Star Watcher who came to Tecumseh in the evening and revealed the plot. Tecumseh squeezed her hand. Then he invited Barron to stay in his own lodge, and he prepared a pallet beside his own fire for him.