Now it was the middle of the night, and Tecumseh and these five chieftains sat in a circle of friendship that was so old and deep that he could not hide his doubts from them. He had talked to them tonight and tried to raise their hopes for a great victory tomorrow, speaking eagerly of the long-awaited confrontation, but inside himself he could feel the cause growing hopeless, falling like an autumn leaf whose season is over, and they could see this in his face. These five knew him so well that his face was like another language to them. They had gone to the Four Winds with him and helped him carry his great message. They had danced with him to bestir the nations. They had been with him when he had made his prophecies and when they had come true. They had seen him fight with the swift force of the panther, but they had also seen the uncommon mercy of his heart and the long vision of peace in his head. They had flown on the wings of his words and had crawled in mud and blood with him. They had helped him triumph over whole brigades and armies of the Long Knives, but they had also seen him howl amid the ashes of his home. Following Tecumseh had consumed their lives and for many seasons had kept them from the embraces of their families, and yet they felt that they were the most privileged of all men, to have been with him along this hard road.
Now they sat together late, after a long, long day of retreat and battle, more retreat, burying, and council. They smoked together from Tecumseh’s tomahawk pipe, the same one they had seen him raise over Harrison’s head, the one they had seen him smoke with Harrison in council, the one he had smoked with the old chiefs in the red nations all over this land. They breathed the fragrant smoke of the kinnick-kinnick, their bodies weary and bruised, their heads buzzing with fatigue and turbid with last thoughts. Tecumseh’s wounded arm had been re-dressed with a poultice of healing herbs, and it throbbed with a dull ache as his heart beat. The campfire in their midst had almost burned down to shimmering coals, but they made no move to put on more wood, as they would have to sleep soon.
Stands Firm looked up to Tecumseh’s firelit profile. Just then Tecumseh’s somber gaze turned to meet his. Tecumseh handed the pipe off to Charcoal Burner at his right and said to Stands Firm:
“I have been thinking, brother, you should go up the road at the earliest light tomorrow, and help Star Watcher with the families, help her move them along faster. Help Open Door get food for them. The children and old ones are suffering very much.”
Stands Firm drew back and regarded him for a moment, then replied, “I, I do not think I should do that.” They stared at each other for a while as if they might argue. Then Stands Firm said politely, “As you know, my brother, I am always pleased to do what you ask me. But until now you have never asked me to leave you before the start of a battle and go join the old men and women. And so I say, I do not think I shall do that.”
After another time of silence, Tecumseh said, “I would like you to do it.” And Stands Firm replied:
“My brother, today in the fight at the Forks, you sent Thick Water away with that message to Walk-in-Water. It was a message that Walk-in-Water will not listen to, as I know and you know. And so it seemed to me that you were really just sending Thick Water out of the way of danger, because of your love for him. Is that perhaps true?”
For a moment Tecumseh looked very annoyed. But then he compressed his lips to keep from smiling and finally could not keep from it, and he breathed a small laugh out from his nose.
It was true. Tecumseh today had sent the bodyguard after the Wyandots expecting that when his mission failed, Thick Water would be closer to his wife’s village and would simply go there, to that beautiful wife, to those beautiful children who were always on the verge of becoming fatherless because of Thick Water’s rash bravery.
“I know you care for me as for Thick Water,” said Stands Firm, “and that you do not want your sister to be a widow. And that you care for the rest of us here as well.…” He swept his hand around to indicate the other chieftains at the fireside. “But if you send your best chieftains to a safe place, how will it go in battle tomorrow? I, for one, mean to be at your side when we face Harrison.”
And the others, at once, grunted their agreement. So Tecumseh, with a sigh, let his gaze drop to the burning oak branches in the fire-ring, a look of acceptance and resignation. It was plain that none of these intended to choose safety. These were not like Withered Hand and Walk-in-Water. These were the true ones.
Billy Caldwell said, “Do you believe, Father, that Procter will stand with us and fight tomorrow, instead of running again?”
“Yes. At last he has no choice. By doing everything so badly, Procter has made himself unable to run any longer. Now he must turn and fight. He knows that if he does not help us fight tomorrow, we will all go and leave him to face the Long Knife army by himself. That he fears more than anything. Yes. Tomorrow we will be in the smoke of their guns again, and the Redcoats will be at our side. On the field there we will beat Harrison, or there we will leave our bones. Harrison is very far out of his own country now, far from his supplies. He can be stopped, and cut off, as we cut off Hull in Detroit. All this we can do, I believe, if the British fight bravely beside us as they have promised to do.”
The Winnebago, Chief Wood, passed the pipe to his fellow chief, Four Legs, murmuring in approval of Tecumseh’s words. Four Legs drew from the pipe and let the fragrant smoke flow up from his lips into his nostrils, gazing into the dying fire. A last tongue of flame trembled on the end of a charred chunk of oak, playing its light on the gray ashes and the six faces, then winked out, and the faces at once faded back into the night’s gloom; now the six were dark shapes silhouetted against the diffused glow of the many other campfires around them in Arnold’s Woods. Still the six faced inward over the shimmering orange embers of their own fire. They were all exhausted, but reluctant to leave each other.
Tecumseh could feel their presence around him like a warm cloak. He felt the dank autumn fog on his face and hands, smelled the sharp smell of smoke from maple and birch and oak, heard the soft voices of the warriors all around who had not yet bedded down beside their own fires; he could feel their presence around him, too. He felt that his soul extended to the outer circle of his camp, that these hundreds of souls were parts of his own soul. He had felt this often: he was his People. Tecumseh picked from his cloak the red leaf that had fallen on him from the treetop and leaned forward to drop it on the embers. The leaf curled, smoked, blackened, then flared up and went out, brief as a shooting star.
This night, here among his chieftains, Tecumseh had been feeling a coldness growing in his center. His heartbeat throbbed in his wounded arm.
The fire inside him had never cooled before. Ever since Chiksika had taught him how to keep the inner fire, it had always been in him, and though his feet and hands and face might have been numbed by winter winds, he had never quaked with chill or been dominated by cold. But now, even though the autumn night was not severely cold, and though he was warmly dressed and warmed by the presence of his comrades near a bed of embers, his inner fire was lessening and a coldness was spreading in him.
And now as he sat here, the murmur of voices in the camp became in his head the murmur of all the voices of his People, those present and those absent, those alive and those departed, and the faces came with the voices; they came along as if passing him in a long file on a trail in the dark of the night, each face in turn lighted dimly for a moment as it passed near and murmured to him in its own voice and then faded into the darkness ahead: Turtle Mother, happy in youth, bitter in age. Pucsinwah, the Hard Striker, his father, the Shawnee nation’s main war chief but a man who had laughed and had been tender. Chiksika, great warrior and teacher, the brother he had buried in the south. Cat Follower, killed robbing a honey tree. Stands-Between, his brother whom he had buried by the Maumee-se-pe. Open Door, who had nurtured the red man’s hope and then nearly ruined it. Star Watcher, who was like the other half of himself. Change-of-Feathers, the shaman … Eagle Speaker, the first to see the great events … Bl
ack Fish, his foster father … Black Snake, Blue Jacket, Cornstalk, the chief Tall Soldier Woman, Black Hoof, She-Is-Favored … all passed.…
Then Tecumseh saw his father and mother sitting outside their lodge in old Kispoko Town, a town that was no more, saw himself as a boy standing before them, saw his father’s mouth moving as he said something that he could not hear because of the murmur of all the other voices.…
The coals of the fire for a moment reappeared before Tecumseh’s eyes, filling the place where the scene of his childhood had been, and the murmur of the camp was there for a moment where the passing voices had been.
But then a thundering began, a thundering not in his ears but inside his head. And shouts sounded amid the thunder. The din of it increased, like a coming storm, roaring, pounding, the voices howling, and a pressure built behind his eyes, a powerful, swelling, reddening pressure.
And suddenly, as if the pressure had cracked open his head, light flooded in, yellow as the sun is on one’s closed eyelids, and shapes were coming in the brilliance, shapes vague, blurred by the yellow but growing more distinct as they came running toward him. He could feel the presence of Stands Firm beside him in this storm of noise and yellowness, and now he could see that the shapes coming toward him were large-headed men on horseback, white men on horses, white men with huge hats. He had seen them coming like this in other dreams. They rushed upon him, and one of them loomed to fill up all the brightness, and then the noise crashed and all was darkness at once. He felt Stands Firm tapping him with something, then the light came again, and then all the vision faded, the men and horses dissolving in yellow mist, the noise falling to a rumble, a whisper, then a silence, and he was looking into the coals, hearing only the tired voices of the warriors in his camp.
Stands Firm had been tapping him with the pipe stem, offering the pipe back to him in the darkness, when the five chieftains had heard something pass among them like a bullet, and had heard Tecumseh gasp, and seen his body stiffen in the dim light, as if he had been shot. They started, leaning toward him in alarm. For a while no other sound came from him.
Then his voice came from his silhouette, his voice deep and resonant like a voice in a cave, saying the words they would always remember. And although they had learned long ago that he spoke only truth to them, they could not believe what he now said.
“Listen, my brothers. I have just seen tomorrow. In the battle, I will fall.”
It was as if they had all stopped breathing. None spoke. Their hearts seemed to them louder than drums of a Stomp Ground.
Tecumseh rose and stood over the glow of the embers, a dark, cloaked shape.
“I saw,” he told them. “My body will lie on the field. Listen, for I must tell you what to do when you see me fall.”
He began opening the collar button of his British cloak with his right hand. He looked from one to another of the shapes around the fire as he turned the button out and pondered on the meanings of what he had seen and felt. He could see that Charcoal Burner was beginning to move his large head from side to side. Billy Caldwell and the Winnebagoes were holding their hands out toward him from beyond the fire, as if entreating him to unsay the words. Tecumseh shrugged off the cloak and let it slide to the ground behind him. Softly, so that his words would not be heard beyond this circle, he said:
“Tomorrow when the Long Knives attack us, we will not run, not as long as I live. Brothers, we will not be long in their smoke before I fall.” Now he put a hand on Stands Firm’s shoulder and said to him, “Brother, since you will not go to a safe place, I ask you to stay near me if you can. When I fall you must come to me at once, and strike me four times with your ramrod. If you can do this, I shall be able to rise, and we will defeat the Americans. But if you cannot touch me, I am dead, and we have lost, and it will be the end of what we have tried to do. Then our warriors should leave the field and not waste their lives for the British. Perhaps if we fight very well from the beginning, we can rout them before I fall. I did not see how the day is to end.”
Stands Firm reached up and put his hand on Tecumseh’s wrist and said, “No, brother.…”
“Yes, brother. I know you do not wish to believe. But you know that I am always to be believed. Listen …”
They were shaken. They had never felt such a fear, such a grief. He went on now in a harsh whisper:
“Have you not learned that what I say is always so? Did I not tell you that the earth would shake and houses fall, and the rivers change their courses? And did this not happen as I foretold?”
They remembered all that, that wondrous and terrible thing that had happened the winter before last, just as he and only he had somehow known it would. He went on:
“You know that on the night before the battle at the Kanawha-se-pe, my father saw that he would die in the battle, and he told my brother Chiksika that he would, and it was true.
“You know that my brother Chiksika told me he was going to be killed in the battle at Buchanan’s Fort, and he died in my arms there, just as he had said. This is true sight among the warriors of my family, and is not to be denied.”
They remembered all this, and now they could not deny that he had seen tomorrow. And knowing that it would come true was crushing their hearts in their breasts.
He held his hand still on the shoulder of Stands Firm, Star Watcher’s husband, and said in a voice now almost cheerful, “Don’t you see that you must believe me and do as I ask you, my good brother? Do you not remember that the Panther Star crossed the sky when I was born from the womb?
“So you must believe me, and we must all have our hearts ready for tomorrow. Let us sleep now. It is so late.”
39
MORAVIANTOWN, ONTARIO
October 5, 1813
HE WAS READY TO DIE NOW, SO HE HAD PAINTED THE BLACK of death on the left side of his face. But if he died, he would die fighting his enemy, so he had painted the red of war on the right side of his face.
His father Hard Striker had fought long and well knowing he was going over the edge of death. His brother Chiksika had done the same. Now Tecumseh could feel how they had been able to do so.
The great question of what to do no longer wrestled in him. Weshemoneto had taken back into his own hands all the choices. Tecumseh’s hands were free to do the one thing: to slay his enemy. He felt as ready and strong and vibrant as a drawn bow. Though he would fall, he might kill Harrison first, and he no longer needed to guard his own life while doing it. Perhaps he might last long enough in the battle to take victory in his hand and give it to his warriors to finish.
That would be the best thing!
He was ready to die now. He had ridden up that morning and said farewell to his sister and brother. He had not told them he was going to die, but Star Watcher surely knew. Anything that was ever in his heart was also in hers.
He thought, as he rode with his chieftains toward the battleground, about how things go on after a man dies. For the man it ends there, and there is no more breathing for him on this side of the Circle of Time, and he has to lay down what he has been carrying on the earth. But what has been happening keeps on happening because those who still live carry it on with them. When his father Hard Striker had died and when Black Fish had died and when Chiksika had died, and when his white brother Brock had died, it had gone on, because he had picked up what they had been carrying and brought it forward to this day, when he himself would have to lay it down. He did not know who would pick it up when he died today. It might be his son, who had run across a broken bridge with a smile on his face yesterday. It might be Charcoal Burner, or it might be Black Hawk, or it might be Stands Firm or Seekabo or Wood, or it might be Thick Water or some Choctaw or Muskogee he had aroused in the south, or it might be all of them or some of them carrying it together. It might be Thick Water or one of Thick Water’s sons or grandsons; yes, it might be someone who was not even born yet. Always things had kept going on around the circle even after the people who had started them had died and
laid them down.
And whoever picked up what Tecumseh was going to lay down today would not have to carry it the same way he had carried it. Every right man was his own chief and would carry the thing in his own way. The messengers from the Great Good Spirit would come down and remind him to keep carrying it and give him signs and hints, but how he carried it would depend upon what kind of a man he was.
Or woman, he thought. Maybe it will be a woman who picks it up and carries it. It is woman who connects the man of yesterday with the man of tomorrow, who closes the gaps in the Circle of Time; it is woman who carries most of the burden of the People; she carries the carrier, in her heart, in her womb, in the cradleboard on her back, in the slain body of her son across her lap. It is woman who carries most of it. He thought of his mother, whom he had last seen four and twenty summers ago, and of Star Watcher, whom he had last seen no more than four and twenty minutes ago. Star Watcher was already carrying it as she bore the lives of the families on toward safety. He thought of Kokomthena, Our Grandmother the Creator, who had carried it since the Beginning. Yes, the women really carried it and now and then gave some of it to the warriors or the chiefs and shamans to carry. Yes, the shamans. His brother Open Door had carried it until he forgot what he was doing.
Then Tecumseh found the place where he would die today. He drew back on the reins. His chieftains reined in beside him. He knew it was the place. In a hundred dreams he had seen a place that felt like this.
It was not the Moraviantown high ground where General Procter had said he would stand his army; the general had apparently changed his mind again. The town of the Jesus Indians was a league farther up the road. In a part of the woods near the river and the road, hundreds of British soldiers were standing or moving about, a mass of red coats, black hats, white shoulder belts. A team of steam-snorting horses was turning in the road, pulling a cannon into place. Nearby stood another team of horses, hitched to Procter’s muddy carriage. A driver in a red coat sat on the front seat, hugging himself, his hands under his arms. The general was not in the carriage, but Tecumseh saw him standing with some of his officers down near the cannon.
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