Panther in the Sky

by JAMES ALEXANDER Thom

  Oh, it was strange to Harrison, this succession of feelings he had had last night; he had tried to think of some parallel in his readings of ancient history. He had thought of Vercingetorix the Gaul, that nearly unconquerable foe of the Roman conquerors. Thus, full of admiration for his adversary, troubled by the early failure of the council, afraid that it might drive the Shawnees into an even tighter partnership with the British, Harrison had been delighted this morning when Barron had come to the mansion bearing Tecumseh’s apology and invitation, and he had spent little time wondering about the safety or advisability of it but quickly made arrangements to come. And now he was glad he was here. This Tecumseh in a friendly mood was as warm and charming a fellow as Harrison had ever met.

  As they sat side by side on the log talking, Tecumseh told Harrison in general terms about the anxieties created by the land-buying policies of the American government. “It is like a mighty river coming toward us,” he said, and as he spoke he edged closer to Harrison until their shoulders were touching. Harrison moved away slightly. “It threatens my people like a high flood of that river,” Tecumseh went on, once again scooting close enough to Harrison that their shoulders were touching, and once again Harrison moved a little away. “It is like a flood of that river pouring over the banks and making the people move to higher ground,” Tecumseh went on, once again pressing against Harrison, who again moved. “I,” said Tecumseh, scooting toward him again, “am trying to build a dam, to stop this flood before it rises to cover and drown all my people, all the red people.”

  By now Harrison was sitting on the very end of the log, and Tecumseh was pressing more firmly against him.

  “See here, Chief,” Harrison interrupted him, “if you keep crowding me over, I’ll fall off.”

  Now a great smile spread over Tecumseh’s face, and in his eyes there was both delight and mockery.

  “Aha!” he laughed. “Now you feel how it is to be pushed off!”

  THEY AGREED TO RESUME THE COUNCIL THE NEXT DAY, IN the grove as before. This time all the soldiers had rifles, but now Tecumseh had no anxieties about treachery. Tecumseh and Harrison shook hands. “Remember the end of the log,” Tecumseh whispered to him, and the two actually smiled at each other. While everybody was getting settled in for the resumption of the council, Tecumseh became aware of being watched very intently from somewhere off to his left and glanced over to find the dark eyes of one of the townsmen upon him. This young man held a writing board with some paper on it and was alternately staring at Tecumseh and then making marks on his paper. There had been a few men writing at the first part of the council, writing down the things that were being said, but now this young man seemed to be writing even though nothing was being said. This made no sense. But then the young man let his writing board tip forward for a moment, and Tecumseh saw that he was not writing but drawing a picture. So that was what he had felt: the young man was taking some of Tecumseh’s image off of him. Tecumseh did not like it; the youth had not even asked if he could take some.

  But that was the way of the white men, it seemed, and as the council was about to reopen, he decided not to make any protest about it.

  When Tecumseh stood and resumed his argument about the Fort Wayne Treaty, he took a new tack, which surprised Harrison.

  “Two years from now, brother, you will no longer be in the office of governor. You will be replaced, I expect, by someone who is a good man and a true friend of the Indians.”

  Where the devil, Harrison wondered, did he learn anything about our politics? Tecumseh continued: “I have learned that many white people do not agree with you that it was necessary to make that treaty and get more land. Just to see for myself, I sent some of my own men toward the O-hi-o-se-pe not long ago to look at the land between here and there, the land you got from us in earlier treaties, and, ha! They reported to me that those lands are still quite empty, not filled with settlements at all, and so your white people do not need the lands you bought with the Fort Wayne Treaty, as you are not using what you already have. So, brother, not all your white people agree that you should have made that treaty, which was an illegal treaty, as I have proven already. Further, the chiefs of all tribes agree with me that it was an illegal treaty, and that you had better not step onto those lands.” He sat down and Harrison rose, saying:

  “Brother, you tell me that chiefs of all the tribes support you in this question. This I do not believe. Can you prove it to me?”

  Tecumseh held up his hand, smiling. He said something. One by one, the warriors behind Tecumseh stood up, and each in turn—Wyandot, Potawatomi, Winnebago, Ottawa, Kickapoo—made a speech, stating that he was the representative of his own people, and that they had united as red men with Tecumseh as their chief and Tenskwatawa the great Prophet as their shaman, and that they agreed with Tecumseh and would follow him in all these matters. Secretary Gibson compressed his lips and shook his head, but Harrison only nodded as the last warrior finished his testimonial and sat down. Harrison said to Tecumseh:

  “Then tell me this, as I need to know what your true intentions are: If I send surveyors into the land obtained by the last treaty, will the Indians interfere with them?”

  Tecumseh nodded and replied solemnly: “I am determined that the old boundary will continue.”

  Harrison, his lips firmly closed, took a long breath through his nose. “I also want to know whether the Kickapoos will accept their annuities due them by the treaty they made.”

  Rising to stand before Harrison, Tecumseh replied, “Brother, when you speak to me of annuities, I look at the land and pity the women and children. I am empowered by my Kickapoos to say for them that they do not want the annuities, and will not receive them, for you would then say they accept the treaty. Brother, we want to save that land. We do not want you to take it. It is small enough for our purpose. If you do take it, you must blame yourself as the cause of the trouble between us and the chiefs who sold it to you. I want the present boundary line to last. Should you cross it, I assure you the consequences will be bad. I would not want to make war upon the United States. I would not want to go with the British. The red people no longer wish to be set down between the white nations as you set dogs to fight in a pit. We would rather be at peace with the Seventeen Fires. However, if your president does not agree with what I have asked here, this would oblige me to take the side against him.”

  Harrison stood for a long time looking into those amazing hazel eyes, at that resolute copper face. Then he sighed. “I will tell the president what you propose. But I am sure I can say there is not the slightest probability that he will accede to your demands.”

  Tecumseh nodded once. “So, then. As your great chief is to decide this matter, I pray that his God will put enough wisdom in his head that he will direct you to give up that land. It is true, he is so far away that he will not be injured by the war. He may sit in his town and drink his wine, but it will be you and I who will have to fight it out!”

  31

  VINCENNES, INDIANA TERRITORY

  November 12, 1810

  GOVERNOR WILLIAM HENRY HARRISON STOOD BEFORE THE legislature of the Indiana Territory and spoke of what needed to be done toward gaining statehood. Though the territory now had nearly twenty-five thousand free white residents, three gunpowder manufactories, thirty gristmills, and about an equal number of distilleries, it still had one big obstacle to its statehood: Indians still owned the central portion of the land. Harrison, his voice echoing in the high-ceilinged room, felt akin to a Caesar in the Senate of Rome as he informed the assemblymen:

  “Although much has been done toward extinguishment of Indian titles in the territory, much still remains to be done. We have not yet a sufficient space to form a tolerable state. The eastern settlements are separated from the western by a considerable extent of Indian lands; and the most fertile tracts that are within our territorial bounds are still their property. Almost entirely divested of the game from which they have drawn their subsistence, it has becom
e of little use to them; and it is the intention of the government to substitute, for the pernicious and scanty supplies which the chase affords, the more certain support which is derived from agriculture and the rearing of domestic animals.”

  Most of the legislators listened with proper respect. Harrison had acquired the stature of a hero in the eyes of many, for having held off at the point of his dress sword the murderous intentions of more than a score of painted savages. The hero continued:

  “Are then those extinguishments of native title, which are at once so beneficial to the Indian, the territory, and the United States, to be suspended on account of the intrigues of a few individuals?” And now he concluded his argument by paraphrasing the reasoning of President Madison: “Is one of the fairest portions of the globe to remain in a state of nature, the haunt of a few wretched savages, when it seems destined, by the Creator, to give support to a large population, and to the seat of civilization, of science, and of true religion?”

  AT THE SAME TIME, THREE HUNDRED MILES TO THE NORTHEAST, Tecumseh was standing on the parade ground of Fort Malden in Canada, presenting to British officers a beautiful old wampum belt that had been given to the Shawnee as a token of neutrality at the end of the Seven Years’ War. Standing with the British officers were Matthew Elliott and James Girty of the Canadian Indian Department. Girty was writing with a pencil. Behind Tecumseh sat more than 150 proud, tense warriors of the Potawatomi, Winnebago, Sauk, Fox, and Ottawa nations. The parade ground overlooked the sparkling, broad waters and wooded islands of the mouth of the Detroit River. Nearby towered the masts of huge ships being built or outfitted at the shipyard of Amherstburg. Off Lake Erie came a steady, fresh, chilly wind that was stripping the last red-and-yellow leaves off the great maples and poplars and sending them tumbling along the ground to drift up in moats and at the foot of bastions and barrack walls. Around the edge of the parade ground were several hundred ragged, spiritless Indians, looking on. On the islands and around the fort and the town there loitered a thousand or more Indians of other tribes, living in any conceivable kind of shelter—scrawny, hollow-eyed Indians with pinched faces, their threadbare blankets and tattered hide robes clutched around them against the winter-hinting wind. There were always at least a thousand, it seemed to Elliott, and each autumn their numbers swelled, as they gave up hopes of supporting themselves through the cold moons in their distant towns and came crowding in for food, for blankets. Fort Malden was like a great kitchen, a great commissary, funneling thousands of rations a day into the mouths of desperate red people from around the Great Lakes. Last winter Fort Malden had supported five thousand destitute Indians. It was a dismal, perennial task, and Elliott was growing old and tired under the responsibility of it. His heart was huge with its capacity for pity for the Indians. He had lived most of his life among them; his own handsome, solid wife was a Shawnee woman of great character. He, like the Girty brothers, had deserted the colonial cause long ago and allied himself with the British because of the American policy toward Indians.

  These Great Lakes tribes, who had for generations been assimilated into the white man’s fur trade economy, now were helpless and impoverished because of changing circumstances they could scarcely understand. First, the Napoleonic Wars had depressed the European market for furs; then an embargo placed by President Jefferson’s government in 1808 had all but finished off the fur trade in this region. Having been made almost fully dependent upon it, the Indians had been thrown rudely back upon their own resources—only to find their resources gone. The winters in Amherstburg were terrible times. In the squalid huts and lean-tos, Indians died daily from cold, hunger, and disease. When Erie froze solid and the supply ships could not come from Niagara, Elliott and the other Indian agents often had to clean out their own pantries to provide even a mouthful for some of the wretches who came trekking through snow to the door. From two to four thousand new blankets were issued every winter, and even then some Indians froze to death because they could not obtain any.

  So here now was another winter coming on with its imminent drain on the resources of the Crown, and to add to the trouble, here was Tecumseh of the independent Shawnee band, up from Prophet’s Town on the Wabash, not only seeking more food and munitions for his distant following, but seething with such hostility toward the United States that it would be a wonder if he did not precipitate a war.

  Elliott was on a delicate line. He personally was inclined to give the Shawnee everything he wanted. But Elliott knew full well that Governor-General Craig, and England herself, did not want to be drawn into a costly, hopeless border war with the United States by supporting the Indians too openly. It was already known that American governors, William Henry Harrison foremost among them, were obsessed with the notion that British Canada was fomenting a war against the States. A coterie of young congressmen, known as “war hawks,” constantly chanted for the invasion of Canada. Governor Harrison apparently did his best to keep the American Secretary of War in a high state of excitement about “the British threat.” In fact, as Matthew Elliott well knew, Canada was ill prepared for a war with the States, and the Crown itself wanted no conflict on this continent.

  But on the other hand, the British officials knew that if the States did precipitate a war, only the ready assistance of the tribes could protect Canada’s undermanned posts against a swift invasion by the American hordes, and therefore it was necessary to feed and arm the Indians. But of course this in turn convinced the Americans even more firmly that Britain was inciting the Indians.

  And now Tecumseh was here, presenting this wampum belt and asking for British backing, because he was convinced that the council in Vincennes had not altered Harrison’s thinking in the slightest degree. Tecumseh was trying, in the brief time left before the closing in of winter, to obtain promises of British provision for the confederation of tribes and of weapons and ammunition with which to hunt for meat for the many people of Prophet’s Town. Indians were hard on guns and had no facilities to repair them, and thus were always short of workable firearms.

  The British officers were fascinated with Tecumseh. Here was one red man they did not treat with condescension. Not only was he an appealing specimen at first glance, he was good-humored, amiable, and charming. He could speak clear English and was one of those rare natives who had some concept of European culture and military strategy. So the officers were attentive as he presented the wampum belt, and they heeded his words respectfully.

  “Father, we have a belt to show you, which was given to our chiefs when you laid the French on the ground. Here it is, Father. On one end is your hand, see; on the other, that of the red people. Both hands are in white wampum, but the Indian end of the belt is darker than the other, and in the middle you see the hearts of both. Father, our old chiefs have been sitting on this belt ever since, keeping it concealed and running our country. But now the warriors have become the chiefs, and have turned their faces toward you, never again to look toward the Americans. We the warriors now manage the affairs of our nations. We sit at the border, where the contest will begin. Father, I discovered this belt and took it out from under our chiefs. Take it and look.” He handed the belt to the senior British officer, who passed it on for all to see and touch. Tecumseh went on:

  “Your father has nourished us, and raised us up from childhood. We are now men arid think ourselves able to defend our country. In our cause you have always given us active help and advice.” Tecumseh restrained himself from mentioning the British officers’ cowardice at Fallen Timbers; this was a diplomatic mission. “Now we are determined to defend our country ourselves; we expect that you will forward to us what may be necessary to supply our wants.

  “Father, I intend to go toward the midday to summon the southern nations into our confederation, and expect before I see you again next autumn, that that will be done. I ask you to be charitable to our women and children. The young men can more easily provide for themselves than they.