by Shane Phipps
Cody was also thinking about what Sitting Fox had said about his pa-waw-ka. The more he thought about it, the more it intrigued him. What had, at first blush, seemed a silly and pointless ritual now seemed to make ultimate sense to him. Cody lay there in his bed wishing there was something that he could put himself through to prove that he was worthy of being a man—a warrior! The more he thought about it, the more the idea appealed to him—putting yourself through a test of mental and physical endurance, after which you have something to keep with you forever. Cody wondered if he would ever have anything like that. He longed to discover and know his inner fire.
After what seemed like hours, Cody finally drifted off to sleep. He awoke at eight o’clock, feeling less than refreshed. He decided to grab a quick breakfast and get right back into the Martin Carter journal. After scarfing down a couple of toaster pastries and a glass of milk, he headed back to his room and sat down to read….
November 8, 1811—The report from my father is very worrisome. Upon hearing the news that Tenskwatawa (the Prophet) has been mobilizing warriors along the Tippecanoe River, Governor Harrison was called back from Kentucky, where he had been on business. Tecumseh is currently away in the lands far to the south trying to organize a coalition of tribes to support his cause. He shows all signs of preparing for war. Even after meeting at Grouseland with Governor Harrison earlier this year and vowing his peaceful intentions, he has gone again to rally more warriors from faraway tribes to his cause. Tecumseh has shown that he does not respect any of the treaties that Governor Harrison has developed with the Indians of the territory. His hatred of the treaties goes all the way back to when I was just a baby—when the treaty of Fort Wayne gave Harrison over three million acres for the Indiana Territory. Tecumseh even threatens to seek an alliance with the British if such treaties are allowed to continue. He takes great pride in saying that no treaty will ever bear his name. He claims that Harrison has no right to make treaties with one tribe of Indians when the lands belong to all tribes. A few weeks ago, Governor Harrison took armed troops toward Prophetstown. Along the way, supplies ran low and they built a small fort and awaited the arrival of replenishments. Once they received their provisions, they continued their march, and I was sent to join my father here at the fort. As Governor Harrison marches toward Prophetstown, the hope is that this show of force will convince the Prophet and his followers that peace is their only option. I wonder if a show of force is really the way to bring lasting peace. I worry about my friend, Sitting Fox.
Reading these words, Cody felt himself once again being drawn into the journal. The next thing he knew, he was sitting inside the walls of a small fort, watching a rider on horseback gallop in through the open gates. As the rider grew closer, Cody realized he was Martin’s father, Samuel.
Samuel pulled back on the reigns to stop his horse and dismounted. “Martin, I have news from Prophetstown,” he said.
“Has there been a battle?” Cody asked impatiently, feeling concerned for Sitting Fox.
“Here is what I know,” replied Samuel. “Two days ago, as our forces got nearer to Prophetstown, they were approached by an Indian rider waving a white flag. He carried a message from the Prophet requesting a cease-fire until a peace council could be arranged. Harrison didn’t trust the Prophet’s motives, but he agreed to meet the next day.”
Cody felt a flood of relief at the possibility this may have ended with no bloodshed. He let out a deep breath.
Samuel continued. “Harrison moved his troops to high ground near where the Tippecanoe empties into the Wabash. He had his men on full alert and battle ready. Yesterday morning, well before first light, the camp was awakened by gunshots.”
This etching of the Battle of Tippecanoe depicts Governor William Henry Harrison saddled on his horse with his arm outstretched, sword in hand, while leading his men to victory over Tenskwatawa, the Prophet. (W. H. Bass Photo Company Collection, P 0130, Indiana Historical Society)
Cody felt his heart sink as he began to realize that this standoff was probably not going to have a peaceful conclusion.
“Apparently, during the night, the Prophet had sent warriors to sneak in and kill Governor Harrison,” Samuel went on. “They had encircled some of the sentries outside the camp. Just as shots were fired on that end of the camp, fierce fighting began to break out on the other end. Governor Harrison’s mistrust of the Prophet’s peace request was well founded. For the next few hours, the fighting raged on. We are still trying to get accurate casualty counts, but it is clear that we lost a good many men. About the time the sun rose, the Indians seemed to be running low on ammunition, as their shots became fewer. With the light of day, it must have become obvious to them that they were severely outnumbered. Our troops organized one last push and drove the Indians away. At last count, we had nearly forty confirmed dead from this attack and more than twenty others that are certain to be mortally wounded.”
“What are the Indian casualties?” Cody asked nervously.
“We don’t know. There were a good many of them, too—maybe not as many as we suffered, but our preliminary count estimates a few dozen Indian dead and a few more than that wounded,” Samuel said.
With those words, Cody felt a surge of fear and adrenaline race through his veins. Had Sitting Fox been among those casualties? He ran toward a horse that was hitched to a post nearby. He leapt up and straddled the animal, freed the reigns from the post, wheeled around, and started through the gates at full gallop. He could hear Samuel shouting something to him in the background, but he ignored the words and sped on.
Cody had never ridden a horse at such speeds before. He tore across the countryside headed in the direction from which Samuel had come. He could feel the wind in his face, and he encouraged the horse to keep running and to run even faster. He felt the stinging whips of low-hanging twigs and branches as he rode through the woods. He felt the cold splash of water on his legs and chest as he plunged through creeks. He had no way of knowing for sure if he was going in the right direction.
Time meant nothing on Cody’s blinding ride. Before he knew it, he could see some soldiers up ahead, and he slowed the horse. The soldiers seemed to be walking around searching for something. Some were squatting down examining things on the ground. Others were holding rifles, sitting atop horses and scanning the surrounding horizons. As he rode closer, Cody began to make out more details. He could see that the men were taking inventory of the fallen men from the battle that had raged here the day before.
Cody felt nauseous as he looked on the macabre scene before him. To his left was a flatbed wagon being loaded with the uniformed bodies of dead soldiers who had served under General Harrison. There looked to be more than a dozen bodies on this one wagon. An identical wagon was much farther away, and it appeared to have a similar cargo. The men who were investigating the scene now were making notes about the fallen Indians still laying all around the area.
As the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Battle of Tippecanoe neared in 1836, the Indiana Journal reprinted the poem, “The Battle of Tippecanoe.” The poem celebrates Governor William Henry Harrison’s victory over the Native Americans. Note how the last lines of the poem cheer Harrison’s accomplishment. Even today, the battlefield is preserved, so visitors can walk the grounds where Harrison and the Prophet fought. (“The Battle of Tippecanoe,” Indiana Journal, August 6, 1836.)
Unable to stop himself, Cody climbed down from the horse. He began to slowly walk around. He glanced up and noticed another grisly sight in the sky. Dozens of buzzards had begun circling. Cody felt sick to his stomach, but he continued walking toward one of the men.
“Son, what are you doin’ here?” said the soldier. “This is no place fer a boy yer age.”
“I am looking for someone,” Cody replied coldly. He took a long look at the fallen warrior in front of him. The man had been shot through the chest, and his entire torso was stained with blackish-red dried blood. His face was painted half red and half black. His lifeless
eyes were still wide open. The soldiers had taken the weapons from his body, and Cody guessed that was what they were writing down in their notebooks. He noticed there was a little bag hanging on a necklace around the man’s neck. His pa-waw-ka had remained with him until the day he died.
“What will become of the bodies of the fallen men?” asked Cody.
“I don’t rightly know,” answered the soldier. “I reckon their kin will return for the bodies once we leave—or the buzzards and coyotes’ll get ’em. It don’t make no difference to me one way ’r ’nother. We’re just here to count ’em and salvage any weapons we can.”
Cody felt a churning heat rising in his belly and turned away from the scene. He trotted quickly toward a little grove of trees as his throat grew tight and he broke into a cold sweat. When he reached the tree line, he dropped to all fours and began to heave and wretch violently. It was as if all the fear and sorrow he had ever felt was erupting from his guts in one putrid gush. Finally, when he could heave no more, Cody slowly returned to his feet to continue his search.
As he walked around the area, Cody came upon several other scenes very similar to the one that had made him sick, yet he seemed numb now. He still felt profound sadness, but it was as if he was outside his body, watching himself go through the motions of this search.
Then Cody saw something that brought him fully back into the moment. About twenty yards in front of him was a familiar form. He felt his heart sink with a terrible suspicion. The lifeless figure lying in the bloodstained weeds before him looked like Sitting Fox.
Cody felt like running away and hiding, but instead he ran toward the fallen young warrior. He knelt down and examined the corpse’s face. It certainly looked like Sitting Fox, but severe damage from a head wound and war paint made it hard to be certain. Then Cody noticed the little beaded bag hanging around the young man’s neck. It looked very much like that which Sitting Fox wore. Slowly, Cody reached for the bag and opened it. He emptied its contents into the palm of his hand and saw the shiny black stone—Sitting Fox’s pa-waw-ka.
Cody’s heart was filled with grief and despair. He squeezed the little rock tightly in his hand. He closed his eyes and felt a hot tear beginning to roll down his face. Just as he began to feel himself sob uncontrollably, he felt the swimming sensation returning in his head. When he opened his eyes, he was back in his bedroom. He should have felt relief, but he felt nothing but utter sorrow.
Cody ran to his bed and buried his face in his pillow. He had not cried like this for as long as he could remember, but he could not stop the tears from coming. He had never seen a dead body except for those in coffins at funeral homes. Somehow, death had never seemed so real to him. He knew that he would never forget the looks on the faces of those fallen Shawnee warriors. He would never forget the blood. He would never forget the contorted bodies frozen in their final pose of pain, or the buzzards circling in the sky. He would surely never forget the horrifying sight of his friend, Sitting Fox, lying there in the bloodstained weeds.
Then Cody was struck with a realization so real and strong that he thought it had been placed directly into his heart by some power he couldn’t fully comprehend. Cody suddenly knew that he had just received his inner fire. He had earned his own pa-waw-ka.
Part Six
The Journal of David Carter
Metamora, Indiana, 1846
Chapter 14
Once again, Cody had emerged from a journal emotionally spent. This time, however, he felt like a different person. His pa-waw-ka experience had changed him. He had gone into Martin Carter’s journal as a boy and come back as a young man—a warrior. This journey had left Cody with a much deeper understanding of the tenuous relationship between European Americans and Native Americans. He had known that they had come into conflict throughout the early history of America, but the textbooks mentioned major incidents that occurred here and there—and not in great detail. Cody had never experienced the strong sense of nearly constant tension and fear that existed on the frontier over the many years of westward expansion. He had never felt so emotionally invested in this part of history before now.
As Cody sat in his room, still choking back sobs when he thought of Sitting Fox’s death, his mind wandered back to the horrible tale of the slaughter of Edward Carter’s grandparents during the Tuscarora Wars in North Carolina. He remembered the attacks on Fort Watauga in the journals of Landon and Annabelle Carter. Even though some of his own family members had suffered through horrible times at the hands of Native Americans, he had a great deal of trouble sorting the whole story out. It would be easy for someone to react emotionally to the loss of family members in brutal attacks and feel resentment toward the attackers. Yet, Cody didn’t sense any real animosity toward the Native Americans. It would also be easy for someone to look at the encroachment of white settlers into native lands and feel that the settlers got what was coming to them, but Cody didn’t exactly feel that way either. The whole situation was too complex to comprehend completely.
Cody decided that the tragedy of the situation was that both sides were, in the end, just trying to make a life for themselves. The problem centered on the different cultures’ concept of land ownership. To the Native Americans, the tradition of drawing imaginary lines and dividing lands by boundaries was completely foreign. To the Americans, the natives’ idea that the land belonged to no one man or group and was for the use of everyone was childish and idealistic. The idea of private property was so deeply woven into the cultures of Europeans and Americans that it seemed to flow through the settlers’ veins as a part of their life force. No treaty could have ever adequately bridged that gap.
It took a few days for Cody to feel ready to return to the journals. He was glad that he had decided to go through the journals chronologically. He wondered how he would have reacted if he had randomly started with Martin Carter’s journal, like his father had done. Going through the experiences of the earlier journals first had slowly prepared Cody for the devastating tragedy of Sitting Fox. It didn’t make it easy—it just prepared him for it. Although he certainly wouldn’t want to go through an experience like that again, he felt it had been a valuable thing to take with him.
Meanwhile, it was Cody’s last week of school. There were lots of final exams, but there were also lots of fun year-end activities. In history class, the final exam was to write a paper that told the story of America from the colonies to the Civil War. Thanks in part to his journal experiences, Cody wrote an excellent paper and received an A and a glowing note from his teacher.
By Friday night Cody was ready for his summer break and to start reading a new journal. He reached for the next journal in line and noticed that there were only two left. This one was labeled The Journal of David Carter—Metamora, Indiana—1846. He opened the journal and began to read.…
My name is David Carter. I am sixteen years old. I live in the town of Metamora in Franklin County, Indiana. My parents are Oliver and Mary. We moved here from Kentucky in 1836, when my pa got hired as a canal worker. Now he is a lock tender on the Whitewater Canal. We live next to the lock in a little house that was furnished for us by the canal company. My mother sells baked goods to boat passengers. I have recently begun to help my father with the lock tending. We have to be on duty whenever boats come by on the canal, so Pa needs some breaks now and then.…
As Cody read these words, he felt the familiar sensations that always accompanied his trips into the journals. When he opened his eyes this time, he found himself standing alongside a strange-looking stream of water. It would have looked like a creek, but it was too straight—too perfectly straight. This looked like a man-made creek. Cody realized it must be the Whitewater Canal. The canal looked to be about forty to fifty feet wide. Along the sides were well-worn paths. Cody glanced around at his surroundings. He was in a little valley. It was a lovely spot. Tree-covered ridges towered above the valley floor, and a beautiful river flowed about three hundred feet behind him. Between the canal and the r
iver was fairly level bottomland that had been plowed into farm fields. Just a few yards to his right sat a small house. Off in the distance, Cody could see a few houses and buildings.
Right in front of Cody was a complex structure built into the canal. He took a moment to study the situation. It looked like a stairway in the canal. There was a drop-off here of several feet in elevation. The stone and wood structure seemed to be framing a waterfall. There was a set of large gates at the top of the waterfall and another set down below it. Between the two gates was a large gap, and the walls in the gap were lined with stone. It created a long and deep chamber. Little side channels of water bypassed the main canal, and small gates stopped the water in the channels from flowing into the chamber between the larger gates.
This etching of a canal and lock system on the Erie Canal shows a boat entering the lower gate. The boat will then be raised to the water level behind the upper gate. (Jacob Abbott, Marco Paul’s Voyages and Travels on the Erie Canal [New York: Harper and Brothers, 1852], 88.)
As he was studying his surroundings, Cody was startled by a female voice. He turned to see a woman coming toward him. “David, darlin’, your pa’s gone to Metamora to the post office and wants you to tend the lock. He said there might be a boat comin’ with a load of produce and a few passengers on their way to Brookville,” she said.
So whatever this wooden contraption is, it must be called a “lock,” thought Cody, and apparently, I am supposed to tend it…whatever that means.
“Here they come now,” said the woman. Cody realized she must be Mary Carter, David’s mother. “David, you’ve never operated the lock by yourself. Are you sure you can do it?”