Prelude to Glory, Vol. 9

by Ron Carter

  Billy sat down facing him. “Did you find Tecumseh?”

  “Yes. He refused to talk. He will remain with the British.” He shook his head, and Billy saw the deep sadness in his face as he went on. “Tecumseh, Main Rock, Five Medals, other chiefs, have accepted the fact they are doomed. All of them. They blame the white men—British, American, it makes no difference—for taking their lands and their way of life. They will not try to learn to live with the whites. They accuse all whites of being liars—without honor.”

  He stopped and broke a piece from the fish and put it in his mouth while Billy waited. Eli went on.

  “He sent a message back to President Madison. They will fight us. Tecumseh knows there is no hope, but they will fight anyway. He said it is better to die with honor than to live without it. Their struggle is over. It now remains only to watch them be destroyed.”

  They sat in silence while Eli continued to eat the fish. Finally, he wiped his hands in the dried grass and pointed out to the lake where the great armada had been anchored.

  “When did they leave?”

  “Over the past three days. They had to wait until the wind died. They’re too heavy. Might have capsized.”

  “How many were there?”

  “Sixteen heavy ships and well over one hundred bateaux and small boats.”

  “How many men? Horses?”

  “About five thousand men and twelve hundred horses. They were going to stop at East Sister Island to scout the shoreline. If they’re on Harrison’s schedule, right about now they ought to be landing at Bar Point, just south of Fort Amherstburg.”

  Eli peered out over the lake and reflected for a moment. “I think we better go on over there.”

  Billy nodded. “I agree. In the canoe, when the wind dies.”

  * * * * *

  Across the lake, the largest American armada ever assembled on the North American continent was dropping anchor at Bar Point on the Detroit River, three miles south of Amherstburg. Hungry soldiers hitched their forty-pound backpacks higher, lowered themselves over the sides of the smaller craft into water up to their waists, and waded ashore with their muskets held high above their heads. Others jumped snorting horses over the sides of the boats into the water and led them bucking and fighting ashore. Still others began the back-breaking process of unloading barrels of flour and dried fish, dried beef, and salted sowbelly.

  On shore, Major General William H. Harrison sat his horse, watching the bateaux come to shore, riding low in the water and returning to the ships riding high. Satisfied, he signaled to his aides, and they followed him on their saddle mounts to the tiny village of Bar Point and reined them to a halt to sit staring. The large blockhouse was a heap of smoldering timbers. Half the houses were burned-out shells. Cast-off litter was blowing in the dirt streets. There were no human beings or horses in sight.

  Harrison’s eyes narrowed as he judged what had happened, and he turned to his aides. “Procter’s gone, and his army with him. They burned everything here. Keep our men moving on into Amherstburg. I’m going to ride ahead to see what’s left there. Find our scouting patrols if they’ve returned, and gather the war council. Bring them to the big council room at the fort. I’ll be waiting.”

  With one aide at his side, Harrison raised his horse to a ground-eating lope and held it on the winding, rutted road until the high walls of the fort came into view, and with them, the haze of smoke that hung low in the dead air. Most of the public buildings outside the fort were charred ruins, along with a great pile of lumber. A few Canadian citizens stood away from the road, silently watching him pass. He rode through the fort gates into the abandoned parade ground, where he brought his horse to a stop. For a moment he sat in the late afternoon sun while an odd feeling of disquiet washed over him at being in a place that should be filled with people and sound and action but was not. It was as though a great hand had stripped the fort of everything and left it as in a dream. There was not a sound, not a movement.

  He led his aide to the great council building and walked in. Desk drawers were open and discarded papers were scattered on the floor. Everything that had been attached to the walls was gone. He briefly looked at the papers, knowing he would find nothing of value, and dropped them on a desktop to climb the stairs. His steps echoed hollow, and he stopped at the head of the stairs and studied the huge council room. Only the great table remained. He descended back to the main floor and walked out into the parade ground, across to the officers’ quarters. Nothing remained—no uniforms, no boots, nothing. He strode to the commissary, and it was stripped to the walls. There was no food, nothing of value to be used by his men.

  At that moment he paused, head cocked, listening, and the sound came faint at first, then stronger. The regimental fife and drum corps was playing “Yankee Doodle” as they led the army to Amherstburg. Harrison and his aide remounted their horses and rode out to bring them on in.

  With the soldiers building their cookfires and setting up their camp, Harrison assembled his scouts and war council in the big council room. Lacking any chairs, they stood around the table. He wasted no time.

  “General Procter has gone, and he has burned everything we might have used. I expect him to burn the bridges he crosses, and I expect him to be traveling fast. I judge he has over one thousand horses, and with the lead he has on us right now I doubt we have a chance to catch him.”

  “Beggin’ your pardon, sir,” exclaimed a bearded, disheveled sergeant. “I just come back from scout. He don’t have a thousand horses. He don’t have a hundred horses. The Injuns took most of ’em. He’s walkin’. His men got sixty-pound backpacks, and right now they haven’t ate in two days and they’re about finished. It won’t take no week to catch ’em.”

  Harrison saw a glimmer of daylight. “The bridges?”

  “He don’t dare burn ’em. The Injuns—more’n a thousand of ’em—are moving with him, most of ’em behind, and they’re movin’ slow, way behind Procter. They got two boats with equipment way up the Thames River, not far from Moraviantown, but they won’t catch up to those boats for maybe a week. They didn’t make a full five miles today. Procter don’t dare burn the bridges because the Injuns need ’em, and if he burns ’em that’s about all it would take to turn the whole lot of ’em on the British. Right now the Injuns don’t much care who they massacre, us or the British.”

  “You’re certain?”

  “Yes, sir. Certain.”

  “You said more than a thousand Indians. My report says close to five thousand of them.”

  The sergeant turned to his corporal. “Dobbins, you made the count. You tell the general.”

  Dobbins, short, lean, young, bobbed his head. “Sir, there were over five thousand, but that was a week ago. Most of the Potawatomi, and the Ottawa, Ojibwa, Wyandot, Miami, Kickapoo, Delaware—most of ’em has deserted already. I doubt Procter’s got more’n twelve hundred left, and they’re mostly Shawnee. I counted ’em.”

  Procter looked at his officers. “If all that is true, can we catch them?”

  The response was instant and raucous. They could catch them.

  Harrison turned back to Dobbins. “Did you get a count of the British soldiers?”

  “Yes, sir, I did, sir. Including all of ’em—officers, sick, wounded, cavalry, seamen—all of ’em, it counted out just about seven hundred ninety. Short of eight hundred.”

  Harrison turned to his aide. “What’s our count of effectives right now?”

  “Sir, deducting those we left behind to control Sandwich and Bar Point, we have over three thousand effectives. Among them are the mounted Kentucky infantry led by Colonel Richard Johnson and James Johnson and Elisha Whittlesey and Governor Shelby. We also have about two hundred Shawnee and Ojibwa Indians with us.”

  Harrison reflected for a moment. “Nearly four to one in our favor.” He bowed his head and closed his eyes in deep thought, then spoke with finality.

  “Gentlemen, we’re going after the British. If those bridges ar
e still up, and they don’t have horses to pull wagons, we can catch them in about four days. Are there any questions?”

  For the next hour the council pored over the map with the officers ignoring rank as they asked the scouts the questions that had to be answered: how are the roads?—if the weather goes bad are they passable?—does Dolsen’s farm have good defensive ground?—is there natural cover at the Forks, where McGregor’s Creek joins the Thames?—can they make a stand at Bowles’ farm?—at Arnold’s Mill?—Dover?—Chatham?—at Cornwall’s Mill?—is there good ground for a defense at Moraviantown?

  Full darkness was upon them long before Harrison issued his orders for the following morning, and they filed out of the big building to take their places with their men.

  In the night a cold wind arose once more, and by dawn, dull gray clouds came rolling in. The reveille drum pounded, and anxious soldiers had finished their morning mess and were packed to travel light well before eight o’clock. With Harrison mounted and leading, they marched north on the road that bordered the Detroit River, then angled east to the place where the Thames River emptied into Lake St. Clair. They made their evening camp in the chill wind and glanced at the billowing purple clouds overhead before they sat down with wooden bowls of steaming stew to eat while they bragged on the twenty-five miles they had made the first day and vowed they’d catch the British within five more days.

  A steady rain came in the night, and morning found them up and marching on muddy ruts, soaked, shivering, shoulders hunched against the cold, determined to make another twenty-five miles before evening mess. They raised their heads from time to time to peer ahead, searching for the first sign of the British, and by midafternoon they were passing discarded canteens and worn-out clothing thrown from the backpacks of the red-coated regulars.

  * * * * *

  Sixteen miles ahead of the Americans, in the early evening, with the rain still steadily falling, Procter called his scouts and his war council into his tent for the evening reports. They were all too simple. The Americans are coming. They will catch us if we do not burn the bridges and leave the Indians behind.

  Procter shook his head. “We cannot burn the bridges, and we cannot abandon the Indians. We must continue. We will scout the American progress daily, and when it is clear they will overtake us, we will pick a place and make our stand.” He spread his map on the table and pointed. “Where are the best places for us to establish ourselves, should it become necessary?”

  The nearest place with good defensive ground was Moraviantown. Short of that, there was no place where Procter’s one thousand men could stop more than three thousand American infantry and Kentucky cavalry. Procter gave his orders. They would continue to move east on the Thames as fast as the Indians could keep pace and hope to reach the town before the Americans caught them.

  * * * * *

  For two days the rains held while the exhausted British slogged on. In the forenoon of the second day a mud-splattered, dripping, white-faced sergeant came splashing through the black muck to catch Procter, mounted, at the head of the column.

  “Sir, I was sent to tell you. More than half the Indians are gone. Left sometime in the night. There are only about six hundred remaining with us.”

  Procter’s shoulders slumped for a moment. “Tecumseh?” he asked.

  “He’s still with us. With maybe four hundred of his Shawnee.”

  “Thank you, Sergeant. Return to your regiment.”

  He turned to his aide who was sitting in a soaked uniform, on a wet saddle, on a wet horse. “Find Warburton and bring him to me. I’ve got to know how close the Americans are.”

  Forty minutes later the aide reined his horse in beside Procter with Warburton beside him. Procter looked him full in the face and asked, “Mister Warburton, when did you receive your last report on the position of the Americans, and how far behind us are they?”

  Warburton’s words were spaced, firm. “Half an hour ago they were twelve miles behind us, still on the road, and gaining. You know about the Indians? The ones that left?”

  “I know about that. How are the Americans traveling?”

  “Light. Fast. No artillery, no wagons. Light backpacks.”

  “Cavalry?”

  “Right with them. About one thousand Kentuckians. The best they have.”

  For a time the three men continued at the head of the column, with the steady rain falling, listening to the suck of the hooves of their horses in the black morass of the rutted road. Warburton and the aide waited in respectful silence until Procter spoke once again.

  “We must send an advance force to prepare defenses at Moraviantown. Mister Warburton, take your regiment to the river near Bowles’s farm and get the picks and shovels from the Ellen and the Mary. Put them in flatboats and move them up the river to Moraviantown. Then burn the two ships and all the stores and ammunition that are with them. Leave nothing the Americans can use. Proceed to Moraviantown and pick the best place to build breastworks and trenches. In this rain, be certain it is on high ground. We can’t fight in mud.”

  Warburton reined his horse around and spurred it to a lope, muddy water splashing with every step.

  Procter twisted in his saddle to watch him go, then peered long into the wind and freezing rain, probing for the first sign of an advance American scouting party. He saw nothing but his own soldiers shaking in the freezing rain, some barefoot, all silent, sullen, and he straightened in his saddle with the single question burning in his mind.

  Sixteen miles behind us yesterday—twelve miles behind us half an hour ago. Will they catch us before we reach Moraviantown? Will they?

  * * * * *

  Eleven miles behind the British column, General Harrison held his mud-splattered horse to a walk at the head of his column. Rain was dripping from his hat and his clothes, and he was shaking with cold, but there was a light in his eyes as he passed the burning hulks of the two ships, Mary and Ellen in the Thames River, between Dolsen’s farm and the Forks, where McGregor’s Creek entered the river. Far to his right, across the Thames, he could dimly see Indians—hundreds of men, women, children—standing still, staring at him through the rain.

  They’ve deserted the British—they’re beaten—out of the fight.

  He set his jaw to stop the shivering and moved on.

  The raw wind held, and the freezing rain came and went for the next two days, tension mounting each hour with the British constantly peering over their shoulders, cursing the black clay muck that sucked at their boots, the Indians that could not hold the pace, the lack of food, their wet backpacks that were breaking them down, and their commanding officers whose orders were draining them of strength and the will to fight.

  Behind them, the Americans were coming strong, grinning as they passed discarded packs and burned carts. They passed the charred hulk of the ship Miamis in the river. They crossed the river at the Forks to reach McGregor’s Mill on the south side in time to put out the fires that were burning in two buildings and recover one thousand British muskets, together with more than fifteen hundred bushels of wheat. They hesitated only long enough to stuff their mouths full of the wheat and scoop what they could into their backpacks as they moved on to make their evening camp.

  The rain stopped in the night, and a hard frost firmed the mud in the road. By midday the British were on King’s Road, six miles ahead of the Americans as the exhausted redcoats passed Arnold’s Mill, and only four miles ahead when the British made the turn at Cornwall’s Mill, where the road turned south for two miles before it turned to run east again to Moraviantown, just four miles distant. Procter reined his horse from the road to watch the leading regiment pass in uniforms that were disheveled, muddy, ragged, and his heart sank.

  They won’t make it in time. Four more miles, and they won’t make it in time. We’ll have to make our stand this side of Moraviantown.

  In the late afternoon, behind the lagging British, General Harrison crossed the Thames back to the north side at Arnold’s M
ill and had just passed Cornwall’s Mill and was making the turn to the south when two men stepped into the frozen road twenty feet ahead of him and stopped, rifles held high above their heads. The shorter one, thick shouldered, built strong, was dressed in colonial homespun. The taller one with the hawk nose was in beaded Indian buckskins and moccasins.

  Harrison had his hand on his sword as he called, “Identify yourselves.”

  “Friends. Billy Weems and Eli Stroud. Americans.”

  Harrison’s aide murmured, “Watch out, sir. Most likely British agents. Might even be assassins.”

  Harrison’s hand did not leave his sword. “Lay your rifles on the ground and don’t move.”

  He dismounted and led his horse to the two men. “What are you doing here? Can you prove you’re Americans? Friendly?”

  Billy drew Madison’s letter from his coat. “A letter from President Madison.”

  A dumbstruck Harrison seized the letter. “President Madison?”

  He opened and read it, then reread it, then handed it to his aide. “I know Madison’s signature. The letter looks authentic to me. You can pick up your rifles.” He looked up at Eli. “You’re Stroud?”

  “I am.”

  “Did you talk with Tecumseh?”

  “I did.”

  “What result?”

  “He’ll fight. Most of the others have deserted, but he’s there with about five hundred of his Shawnee and a few Ojibwa, and they’ll fight.”

  “You want to join us?”

  Eli went on. “There’s something you need to know. We’ve been out ahead of you. The British are about three miles away, and they know you’re going to catch them before they reach Moraviantown. Right now they’re deploying their troops at a place just over one mile this side of the town.”

  Instantly Harrison came to an intense focus. “You’ve been there?”

  “Yes.”

  Harrison turned to his aide. “Stop the column! Get the war council up here with my maps.”