by Ron Carter
Busy directing the loading process, Adam was not immediately aware of him. When he finally turned his head in Billy’s direction, he froze in disbelief and then exclaimed, “Billy! Billy! What are you . . .”
Billy was grinning broadly, and he thrust out his hand, and Adam grasped it and shook it, and then they seized each other in a strong embrace. Adam released him and took one step back, eyes still wide in disbelief.
“What are you doing here?”
Billy could not resist. He shrugged. “Your mother was worried. She sent me.”
Adam grinned as he asked, “How are you? Are you all right?”
“Fine. You?”
“Good.” He grasped Billy by one shoulder. “Come down to my quarters where we can talk.”
Adam ordered his first mate to carry on, and they walked quickly down the stairs to the main deck, turned and passed down the few steps and through the low door into Adam’s small quarters in the stern of the ship, and both sat down on chairs by Adam’s desk.
“Truly, what brings you here?” Adam asked.
Billy sobered. “President Madison asked me to find Eli Stroud. I have a message for him.”
Adam’s eyes narrowed. “Eli? You’re looking for Eli?”
“Yes. Know anything of his whereabouts?”
Adam shook his head. “No. I’ve thought he might come here when he heard of what’s happening, but I haven’t seen him. Or heard anything.”
Billy went on. “I understand Tecumseh is over at Sandwich right now.”
“That’s the last we heard. General Procter’s preparing to retreat. The Indians are apparently going with him.”
“How many men does General Harrison have here at this camp?”
“We were told about five thousand. We’re under orders to move them to East Sister Island, not far from the north shore, and wait for further orders to make a landing at Bar Point, three miles south of Amherstburg.”
Billy’s eyes narrowed in amazement. “Five thousand? With horses?”
“Only the Kentuckians have horses.”
“Once you unload at Bar Point, what are your orders?”
“Nothing, yet. We wait.”
Billy remained in thoughtful silence for a moment, and Adam went on.
“How is Laura? And the family?”
Billy saw the need in his eyes. “Fine. They’re all anxious for you to come home. Laura has all the newspaper articles about the battle you had with Barclay’s squadron.”
Adam shook his head. “The war isn’t over. We did what we had to. It took all of us. Perry—just twenty-seven years old. Remarkable man.”
Billy said, “If we heard it right, he’d have been lost if you hadn’t broken from the battle line to save him.”
Adam stared at his hands for a moment. “I was fortunate.”
Billy stood. “No, you were Adam Dunson.” He reached for the door. “I better get back up there. I have to go back on that bateau. If you hear anything of Eli, tell him I’m looking for him. President Madison needs him.”
“I will.”
The two made their way back to the main deck and watched as the last of the horses was hoisted over the side of the ship, dangling in the belly sling, to settle on the deck where skilled hands released the hooks and the huge booms raised the hawsers clear. Adam and Billy shook hands and said their goodbye before Billy went over the side and climbed down the netting into the pitching bateau below.
The vessel had to tack almost directly into the south wind, back and forth, to reach the south bank of Lake Erie close to the mouth of the Portage River, where Billy thanked the young lieutenant and waded ashore. He paused for only a moment before he started east, toward the tent being used by the officers in command of the massive operation of moving thousands of men and hundreds of horses from shore to ships. He had not covered twenty feet when the familiar voice came from behind.
“Billy. Billy Weems.”
Billy turned on his heel, and Eli was there, smiling, a light in his eyes, walking rapidly toward him.
Billy said nothing as he reached to grasp the hand and shook it warmly. For a moment the two men stood in silence, feeling the surge within their breasts of old comrades who had stood shoulder-to-shoulder in battle, and in life, and shared it all, and won. In that instant, the war and the soldiers and the ships were gone. They stood alone, conscious only of the bond between them.
The moment passed, and Billy said, “I’ve been looking for you.”
“I know.” Eli hooked a thumb over his shoulder. “An officer back there—a captain—told me.”
“Did he tell you why?”
“Something about President Madison.”
Billy pointed. “Come with me to my camp. We need to talk.”
They walked to the shelter of a great pine, away from the mass of soldiers and militia moving down to the ships, and sat cross-legged on the ground. Billy drew President Madison’s letter from his pack and handed it to Eli. For a time Eli studied it, then handed it back.
“I’ve been across the lake near Fort Detroit for four days, among the Indians. They’ve agreed to support the British. I doubt it will do any good to talk with Tecumseh now.”
“What’s the mood of the Indians?”
“Bad. Three days ago there was talk of them turning on the British.”
“Our patrols say Procter is going to abandon the lake. Go east up the Thames, on to Niagara.”
“That’s what the Indians said. They also said he’s promised to stop and fight if the Indians follow them.”
“Will they fight?”
“They will.”
“Do you intend going to talk with Tecumseh for President Madison?”
For a time Eli bowed his head in deep thought. “Yes. But I’ll need that letter to show him.”
Billy handed the letter back to him, and Eli folded it and slipped it inside his shirt as he spoke.
“How is Laura? And your family?”
Billy smiled. “Fine. Laura’s as beautiful as ever. The children are all well. Laura made me promise to tell you the children are anxious to see their grandfather.”
Eli smiled at the thought, then pointed out onto the lake. “Is Adam on one of those ships? I heard he might be.”
“The Margaret. Our company owns it. We converted it to a gunboat. Adam was in the fight on the lake two weeks ago.”
Eli straightened. “Is he the one?”
Billy grinned. “Broke the battle line to save Perry. Turned the battle. Might have turned the war.”
Billy saw the light come into Eli’s eyes as Eli nodded. “Fine man. Fine.”
Billy remained quiet for a time before he continued. “When do you think you’ll leave to find Tecumseh?”
“As soon as the wind will let me. I’ll go by canoe.”
Billy nodded. “I’ll be waiting when you come back.”
Notes
The loss of the British ships in the Lake Erie naval battle on September 10, 1813, left British general Henry Procter Sr. landlocked and isolated at Fort Amherstburg on the west end of the lake with a small command of regular soldiers and several thousand Indians. For more than a year the British had promised the Indians they would feed and arm them, provide for them, and drive the Americans from their ancestral lands, if the Indians would support the British in the war. By September 12, with winter coming on, the Indians were starving, without arms, and for the first time understood that Procter intended to abandon the lake to the Americans.
September 13, Procter declared martial law so he could commandeer provisions wherever he could find them. When the Indians threatened revolt, Procter arranged a council with them for September 15 and in the day preceding informed his own staff of his plan to retreat west on the Thames River. The council took place as described herein. Most of the speech made by Tecumseh, in which he cursed the British, called them liars, and called General Procter a pig, are taken verbatim from the best reports available. At the conclusion of the speech, every Indian
in the council room leaped to his feet and conducted a demonstration with his tomahawk and scalping knife and war whoops, terrifying the British officers. Procter was able to get the Indians to leave without bloodshed and persuaded Tecumseh to promise to return soon for a second council meeting while Procter was working out the details of the planned retreat.
Procter visited Sandwich, a British outpost six miles north of the fort, told them of the plan, and returned on September 18 to find William Elliott, the eighty-year-old head of the British Indian Department, terrified, reporting that Procter could expect a massacre like none other in British history. William (Billy) Caldwell, a lifelong friend to the Indians, packed his family and sent them south, fearing a massacre. Procter called Tecumseh and his main chiefs into a private council with Elliott and his agents Warburton and Evans in an effort to persuade the Indians that the retreat was absolutely necessary. They partially agreed. Thereafter a second major council was arranged among all British staff and officers and all Indian chiefs. The Indians agreed to continue to support the British, and to join the retreat, on the promise of Procter that he would pick the first appropriate place and set up defenses to stop the Americans if they followed.
By September 22, the Americans had their ships and bateaux at the mouth of the Portage River on the south side of Lake Erie and were loading the largest army ever seen in that sector onto the vessels to cross the lake and attack. Again Elliott warned Procter that if he ordered a retreat and abandoned the Indians, Tecumseh would produce the wampum belt that had served as the peace treaty between the Indians and the British for more than forty years, and he would cut it in two and throw it away. With the wampum belt destroyed, all ties between the British and the Indians would be severed, and the Indians would consider themselves free to turn their tomahawks and scalping knives on the British.
See Antal, A Wampum Denied, pp. 297–310, 331; Stagg, Mr. Madison’s War, p. 329; Wills, James Madison, p. 125; Hickey, The War of 1812, pp. 136–37.
The reader is advised that in the time period presented herein, there were more battles fought at different locations than reported here; however, it would be impossible to include in the confines of this book all the battles and all the events. For that reason, only the pivotal battles and events are presented.
Billy Weems, Eli Stroud, and Adam Dunson and the parts they played in these events are fictional.
Sandwich, Canada
September 26, 1813
CHAPTER XXII
* * *
A chill wind was moaning in the pines and the forest beneath rolling clouds that covered the moon and stars and left the Indians camped at Sandwich in a world of thick blackness. Their supper fires had long since turned to glowing embers and then to black ashes. A few lodges and tepees glowed dully from tiny fires within; only those with great need were outside their crude dwellings in the cold of a late-September night.
Alone inside his lodge, Tecumseh sat cross-legged on the great, gray pelt of a silvertip grizzly bear, staring at the dwindling flames of his tiny fire. A crimson blanket given him long ago by a British general was wrapped about his shoulders, and he clutched it at his breast to hold in the warmth. In his face was an immense, hopeless sadness as he pondered again and again the sixty years his people had given their lifeblood in their struggle to save their ancestral lands and their homes and their way of life with honor, and they had lost. Always, always, the answer was the same. White men had come, and they had taken the land, and they had held it. It made no difference whether they were British or American. They were white, and there had been no way to stop them. The Shawnee, Ojibwa, Iroquois, Potawatomi, Ottawa, Miami, Sac, Fox, Mohawk, Huron, Seneca, and the other tribes—all doomed. Their chiefs—Main Rock, Five Medals, Walks-in-the-Water, and others—abandoning all hope—returning to their lands as beaten subjects of whoever won the war, willing to accept whatever pittance the greedy white men offered, watching the white men violate that which they held most sacred—the valleys and forests and rivers that had been theirs from beyond memory.
Soon he would leave this place and he would follow where Procter led, east on the Thames River, doing once again the bidding of the white men, leaving behind the graves and the land of his ancestors to go to a strange, new country to live where he and the Shawnee would be told where to live, eat what they were given, and live without honor.
He started when the low, narrow door to his lodge opened, and in the next instant he was staring at Eli Stroud who stood before him, rifle in his hand, tall in the dim light, face shadowed, eyes peering at him steadily.
Tecumseh did not move.
Eli spoke. “I have come to counsel with Tecumseh. I regret that I was forced to come in secret, in the night. I ask your forgiveness.”
For a time Tecumseh stared, and then he gestured, and Eli sat down opposite him, rifle across his knees. Eli went on.
“I am sent by the American Father, Madison. He has great desire for your safety and that of the Shawnee. I have a writing. I hand it to you.”
Eli held out the letter, and Tecumseh reached to accept it. Slowly he unfolded it and turned it to the dim light of the remains of the fire to read the words he knew. Minutes passed while he studied the document, and then he handed it back.
“The letter is not to you. It is to a man named Weems.”
“That is true. Weems traveled from Boston to deliver it to me. The letter requests that I come here. I am here.”
“What is the message from the American Father?”
“He wishes me to make peace with you and your people on terms that are acceptable to you. He does not wish to fight you when the Americans come to drive the British out of the lands owned by America.”
Tecumseh raised a hand. “It is a lie. The Americans do not own the lands. They stole them from us. They are our lands.”
Eli took a deep breath. “Tecumseh speaks the truth. I regret that it is not possible to undo what has been done. A change must be made. The white men and the Indians must learn to live together. It is not necessary that one must die that the other might live. Tecumseh knows I was born white. I was raised Iroquois. I have now lived white for forty years. It is possible. The Indians can learn to live with the whites. The Father in Washington has given me authority to settle this with Tecumseh.”
Tecumseh slowly shook his head. “Live without honor? Accepting the charity of the whites to stay alive? Our lands gone? Our customs gone? Our religion gone? Our pride gone? Stroud knows that it is better to be dead than to live in such a way.”
Eli saw the terrible sadness in the man, and his heart ached for him as he continued.
“The Great Spirit has seen all that has happened. The Great Spirit will not abandon his Shawnee children. He will protect you and provide a way for you to live with honor and dignity. It is on your shoulders to do all you can. He will do for you what you cannot do for yourselves.”
Tecumseh’s black eyes were points of light. “The Great Spirit has turned his back on us. I have fasted for days many times and sought him, and he does not answer. I believe he is punishing us because we did not drive the white men out when they came in the time of our fathers. We extended our hand to them and we taught them to live in the forest. They came in numbers—ever greater numbers—and they took our forests from us. We did not drive them out, and now the Great Spirit is silent. He will not help us.”
Eli cut him off. “Will Tecumseh fast with me? For five days? And then two days in a sweat lodge? The Great Spirit will answer us if we fast and sweat and seek him.”
Tecumseh lowered his eyes to stare into the glowing embers for a time before he answered.
“It is no use. We offended the Great Spirit when we did not protect our lands. He will not hear us because he has turned his back to us and will not listen.”
Eli knew in his heart that there was no power on earth that could reach deep enough into Tecumseh’s soul to lift him, inspire him to save himself and his people. He went on.
“Wh
at message do you wish me to carry back to the American Father, Madison?”
“We will fight with the red-coated soldiers against the Americans. That is all.”
“You refuse to counsel?”
“Yes. He cannot give us back our lands. Our honor. Of what use would it be to counsel?”
Eli bowed his head and sighed. When he looked up, he said, “I will carry your message. I thank you for your courtesy. With your permission I will leave.”
Tecumseh raised a hand. “You do not have my protection.”
“I came without your protection. I can leave without it.”
Eli stood and looked down at Tecumseh as if to memorize the long, narrow face and the pointed nose and the eyes, and he turned to go.
Again Tecumseh raised a hand, and Eli stopped, waiting.
“If I meet you on the field of battle, I will have to kill you.”
Eli nodded. “I know.”
He walked through the door into the wind and the blackness, and he left the Indian camp as silently as he had come, to make his way through the forest the short distance to the Detroit River, to his waiting canoe. He paddled west across the river, then turned south with the current to follow the shoreline to Lake Erie. The wind died, and the clouds opened to show the stars and a half moon overhead. With dawn approaching, he passed the mouth of the Raisin River and continued, following the bank where it turned east, past the mouth of the Maumee River. It was midmorning when he beached the light birchbark craft at the mouth of the Portage River. He studied the vast emptiness of the lake for a moment, then the litter and refuse of the huge, nearly deserted campground, and walked steadily toward the place in the trees where Billy had made his camp. Billy was waiting with a small fire, roasting a trout on a spit. He gestured, and Eli sat down, tired, weary, hungry, and reached for the fish. He held the spit away from the fire, waiting for it to cool.