Books: The Old Northwest, A Chronicle of the Ohio Valley and Beyond

F >> Frederic Austin Ogg >> The Old Northwest, A Chronicle of the Ohio Valley and Beyond

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Instruction rarely extended beyond the three R's; but
occasionally a newcomer who had somewhere picked up a smattering
of algebra, Latin, or astronomy stirred the wonder, if not also
the suspicion, of the neighborhood. Schoolbooks were few and
costly; crude slates were made from pieces of shale; pencils were
fashioned from varicolored soapstone found in the beds of small
streams. No frontier picture is more familiar or more pleasing
than that of the farmer's boy sitting or lying on the floor
during the long winter evening industriously tracing by firelight
or by candlelight the proverb or quotation assigned him as an
exercise in penmanship, or wrestling with the intricacies of
least common denominators and highest common divisors. It is in
such a setting that we get our first glimpse of the greatest of
western Americans, Abraham Lincoln.

Chapter VIII. Tecumseh

Wayne's victory in 1795, followed by the Treaty of Fort
Greenville, gave the Northwest welcome relief from Indian
warfare, and within four years the Territory was ready to be
advanced to the second of the three grades of government provided
for it in the Ordinance of 1787. A Legislature was set up at
Cincinnati, and in due time it proceeded to the election of a
delegate to Congress. Choice fell on a young man whose name was
destined to a permanent place in the country's history. William
Henry Harrison was the son of a signer of the Declaration of
Independence, the scion of one of Virginia's most honored
families. Entering the army in 1791, he had served as an
aide-de-camp to Wayne in the campaign which ended at Fallen
Timbers, and at the time of his election was acting as Secretary
of the Territory and ex-officio Lieutenant-Governor.

Although but twenty-six years of age, and without a vote in the
House of Representatives, Harrison succeeded in procuring from
Congress in 1800 an act dividing the Territory into two distinct
"governments," separated by the old Greenville treaty line as far
as Fort Recovery and then by a line running due north to the
Canadian boundary. The division to the east was named Ohio, that
to the west Indiana; and Harrison was made Governor of the
latter, with his residence at Vincennes. In 1802 the development
of the back country was freshly emphasized by the admission of
Ohio as a State.

Meanwhile the equilibrium between the white man and the red again
became unstable. In the Treaty of 1795 the natives had ceded only
southern Ohio, southeastern Indiana, and a few other small and
scattered areas. Northward and westward, their country stretched
to the Lakes and the Mississippi, unbroken except by military
posts and widely scattered settlements; and title to all of this
territory had been solemnly guaranteed. As late as 1800 the white
population of what is now Indiana was practically confined to
Clark's Grant, near the falls of the Ohio, and a small region
around Vincennes. It numbered not more than twenty-five hundred
persons. But thereafter immigration from the seaboard States, and
from the nearer lands of Kentucky and Tennessee, set in on a new
scale. By 1810 Indiana had a white population of twenty-five
thousand, and the cabins of the energetic settlers dotted river
valleys and hillsides never before trodden by white man.

In this new rush of pioneers the rights of the Indians received
scant consideration. Hardy and well-armed Virginians and
Kentuckians broke across treaty boundaries and possessed
themselves of fertile lands to which they had no valid claim.
White hunters trespassed far and wide on Indian territory, until
by 1810 great regions, which a quarter of a century earlier
abounded in deer, bear, and buffalo, were made as useless for
Indian purposes as barren wastes. Although entitled to the
protection of law in his person and property, the native was
cheated and overawed at every turn; he might even be murdered
with impunity. Abraham Lincoln's uncle thought it a virtuous act
to shoot an Indian on sight, and the majority of pioneers agreed
with him.

"I can tell at once," wrote Harrison in 1801, "upon looking at an
Indian whom I may chance to meet whether he belongs to a
neighboring or a more distant tribe. The latter is generally
well-clothed, healthy, and vigorous; the former half-naked,
filthy, and enfeebled by intoxication, and many of them without
arms excepting a knife, which they carry for the most villainous
purposes." The stronger tribes perceived quite as clearly as did
the Governor the ruinous effects of contact between the two
peoples, and the steady destruction of the border warriors became
a leading cause of discontent. Congress had passed laws intended
to prevent the sale of spiritucus liquors to the natives, but the
courts had construed these measures to be operative only outside
the bounds of States and organized Territories, and in the great
unorganized Northwest the laws were not heeded, and the ruinous
traffic went on uninterrupted. Harrison reported that when there
were only six hundred warriors on the Wabash the annual
consumption of whiskey there was six thousand gallons, and that
killing each other in drunken brawls had "become so customary
that it was no longer thought criminal."

Most exasperating, however, from the red man's point of view was
the insatiable demand of the newcomers for land. In the years
1803, 1804, and 1805 Harrison made treaties with the remnants of
the Miami, Eel River, Piankeshaw, and Delaware tribes--
characterized by him as "a body of the most depraved wretches on
earth"--which gained for the settlers a strip of territory fifty
miles wide south of White River; and in 1809 he similarly
acquired, by the Treaty of Fort Wayne, three million acres, in
tracts which cut into the heart of the Indian country for almost
a hundred miles up both banks of the Wabash. The Wabash valley
was richer in game than any other region south of Lake Michigan,
and its loss was keenly felt by the Indians. Indeed, it was
mainly the cession of 1809 that brought once more to a crisis the
long-brewing difficulties with the Indians.

About the year 1768 the Creek squaw of a Shawnee warrior gave
birth at one time to three boys, in the vicinity of the present
city of Springfield, Ohio.* One of the three barely left his name
in aboriginal annals. A second, known as Laulewasikaw, "the man
with the loud voice," poses in the pages of history as "the
prophet." The third brother was Tecumseh, "the wild-cat that
leaps upon its prey," or "the shooting star," as the name has
been translated. He is described as a tall, handsome warrior--
daring and energetic, of fluent and persuasive speech, given to
deep reflection, an implacable hater of the white man. Other
qualities he possessed which were not so common among his people.
He had perfect self-command, a keen insight into human motives
and purposes, and an exceptional capacity to frame plans and
organize men to carry them out. His crowning scheme for bringing
together the tribes of the Middle West into a grand democratic
confederacy to regulate land cessions and other dealings with the
whites stamps him as perhaps the most statesmanlike member of his
race.

* Authorities differ as to the facts of Tecumseh's birth. His
earliest biographer, Benjamin Drake, holds that he was "wholly a
Shawanoe" and that he was a fourth child, the Prophet and another
son being twins. William Henry Harrison spoke of Tecumseh's
mother as a Creek.

While yet hardly more than a boy, Tecumseh seems to have been
stirred to deep indignation by the persistent encroachment of the
whites upon the hunting-grounds of his fathers. The cessions of
1804 and 1805 he specially resented, and it is not unlikely that
they clinched the decision of the young warrior to take up the
task which Pontiac had left unfinished. At all events, the plan
was soon well in hand. A less far-seeing leader would have been
content to call the scattered tribes to a momentary alliance with
a view to a general uprising against the invaders. But Tecumseh's
purposes ran far deeper. All of the Indian peoples, of whatever
name or relationships, from the Lakes to the Gulf and from the
Alleghanies to the Rockies, were to be organized in a single,
permanent confederacy. This union, furthermore, was to consist,
not of chieftains, but of the warriors; and its governing body
was to be a warriors' congress, an organ of genuine popular rule.
Joint ownership of all Indian lands was to be assumed by the
confederacy, and the piecemeal cession of territory by petty
tribal chiefs, under pressure of government agents, was to be
made impossible. Only thus, Tecumseh argued, could the red man
hope to hold his own in the uneven contest that was going on.

The plan was brilliant, even though impracticable. Naturally, it
did not appeal instantly to the chieftains, for it took away--
tribal independence and undermined the chieftain's authority.
Besides, its author was not a chief, and had no sanction of birth
or office. Its success was dependent on the building of an
intertribal association such as Indian history had never known.
And while there was nothing in it which contravened the professed
policy of the United States, it ran counter to the irrepressible
tendency of the advancing white population to spread at will over
the great western domain.

By these obstacles Tecumseh was not deterred. With indefatigable
zeal he traveled from one end of the country to the other,
arguing with chiefs, making fervid speeches to assembled
warriors, and in every possible manner impressing his people with
his great idea. The Prophet went with him; and when the orator's
logic failed to carry, conviction, the medicine-man's
imprecations were relied upon to save the day. Events, too,
played into their hands. The Leopard-Chesapeake affair,* in 1807,
roused strong feeling in the West and prompted the
Governor-General of Canada to begin intrigues looking to an
alliance with the redskins in the event of war. And when, late in
the same year, Governor Hull of Michigan Territory indiscreetly
negotiated a new land cession at Detroit, the northern tribes at
once joined Tecumseh's league, muttering threats to slay the
chiefs by whom the cession had been sanctioned.

* See "Jefferson and his Colleagues," by Allen Johnson (in "The
Chronicles of America").

In the spring of 1808 Tecumseh and his brother carried their
plans forward another step by taking up their residence at a
point in central Indiana where Tippecanoe Creek flows into the
Wabash River. The place--which soon got the name of the Prophet's
Town--was almost equidistant from Vincennes, Fort Wayne, and Fort
Dearborn; from it the warriors could paddle their canoes to any
part of the Ohio or the Mississippi, and with only a short
portage, to the waters of the Maumee and the Great Lakes. The
situation was, therefore, strategic. A village was laid out, and
the population was soon numbered by the hundred. Livestock was
acquired, agriculture was begun, the use of whiskey was
prohibited, and every indication was afforded of peaceful intent.

Seasoned frontiersmen, however, were suspicious. Reports came in
that the Tippecanoe villagers engaged daily in warlike exercises;
rumor had it that emissaries of the Prophet were busily stirring
the tribes, far and near, to rebellion. Governor Harrison was not
a man to be easily frightened, but he became apprehensive, and
proposed to satisfy himself by calling Tecumseh into conference.

The interview took place at Vincennes, and was extended over a
period of two weeks. There was a show of firmness, yet of good
will, on both sides. The Governor counseled peace, orderliness,
and industry; the warrior guest professed a desire to be a friend
to the United States, but said frankly that if the country
continued to deal with the tribes singly in the purchase of land
he would be obliged to ally himself with Great Britain. To
Harrison's admonition that the redskins should leave off drinking
whiskey--"that it was not made for them, but for the white
people, who alone knew how to use it"--the visitor replied
pointedly by asking that the sale of liquor be stopped.

Notwithstanding the tenseness of the situation, Harrison
negotiated the land cessions of 1809, which cost the Indians
their last valuable hunting-grounds in Indiana. The powerful
Wyandots promptly joined Tecumseh's league, and war was made
inevitable. Delay followed only because the Government at
Washington postponed the military occupation of the new purchase,
and because the British authorities in Canada, desiring
Tecumseh's confederacy to attain its maximum strength before the
test came, urged the redskins to wait.

For two more years--while Great Britain and the United States
hovered on the brink of war--preparations continued. Tribe after
tribe in Indiana and Illinois elected Tecumseh as their chief,
alliances reached to regions as remote as Florida. In 1810
another conference took place at Vincennes; and this time,
notwithstanding Harrison's request that not more than thirty
redskins should attend, four hundred came in Tecumseh's train,
fully armed.

"A large portico in front of the Governor's house [says a
contemporary account] had been prepared for the purpose with
seats, as well for the Indians as for the citizens who were
expected to attend. When Tecumseh came from his camp, with about
forty of his warriors, he stood off, and on being invited by the
Governor, through an interpreter, to take his seat, refused,
observing that he wished the council to be held under the shade
of some trees in front of the house. When it was objected that it
would be troublesome to remove the seats, he replied that 'it
would only be necessary to remove those intended for the whites--
that the red men were accustomed to sit upon the earth, which was
their mother, and that they were always happy to recline upon her
bosom.'"*

* James Hall, "Memoir of William Henry Harrison," pp. 113-114.

The chieftain's equivocal conduct aroused fresh suspicion, but he
was allowed to proceed with the oration which he had come to
deliver. Freely rendered, the speech ran, in part, as follows:

"I have made myself what I am; and I would that I could make the
red people as great as the conceptions of my mind, when I think
of the Great Spirit that rules over all. I would not then come to
Governor Harrison to ask him to tear the treaty [of 1809]; but I
would say to him, Brother, you have liberty to return to your own
country. Once there was no white man in all this country: then it
belonged to red men, children of the same parents, placed on it
by the Great Spirit to keep it, to travel over it, to eat its
fruits, and fill it with the same race--once a happy race, but
now made miserable by the white people, who are never contented,
but always encroaching. They have driven us from the great salt
water, forced us over the mountains, and would shortly push us
into the lakes--but we are determined to go no further. The only
way to stop this evil is for all red men to unite in claiming a
common and equal right in the land, as it was at first, and
should be now--for it never was divided, but belongs to all....
Any sale not made by all is not good."

In his reply Harrison declared that the Indians were not one
nation, since the Great Spirit had "put six different tongues
in their heads," and argued that the Indiana lands had been in
all respects properly bought from their rightful owners.
Tecumseh's blood boiled under this denial of his main contention,
and with the cry, "It is false," he gave a signal to his
warriors, who sprang to their feet and seized their war-clubs.
For a moment an armed clash was imminent. But Harrison's cool
manner enabled him to remain master of the situation, and a
well-directed rebuke sent the chieftain and his followers to
their quarters.

On the following morning Tecumseh apologized for his impetuosity
and asked that the conference be renewed. The request was
granted, and again the forest leader pressed for an abandonment
of the policy of purchasing land from the separate tribes.
Harrison told him that the question was for the President, rather
than for, him, to decide. "As the great chief is to determine the
matter," responded the visitor grimly, "I hope the Great Spirit
will put sense enough into his head to induce him to direct you
to give up this land. It is true he is so far off he will not be
injured by the war. He may sit still in his town, and drink his
wine, while you and I will have to fight it out."

Still the clash was averted. Once more, in the summer of 1811,
Tecumseh appeared at Vincennes, and again the deep issue between
the two peoples was threshed out as fruitlessly as before.
Announcing his purpose to visit the southern tribes to unite them
with those of the North in a peaceful confederacy, the chieftain
asked that during his absence all matters be left as they were,
and promised that upon his return he would go to see President
Madison and "settle everything with him."

Naturally, no pledge of the kind was given, and no sooner had
Tecumseh and twenty of his warriors started southward on their
mission to the Creeks than Harrison began preparations to end the
menace that had been so long hanging over the western country.
Troops were sent to Harrison; and volunteers were called for. As
fast as volunteers came in they were sent up to the Wabash to
take possession of the new purchase. Reinforcements arrived from
Pittsburgh and from Kentucky, and in a short while the Governor
was able to bring together at Fort Harrison, near the site of the
present city of Terre Haute, twenty-four companies of regulars,
militia, and Indians, aggregating about nine hundred well-armed
men.

Late in October this army, commanded by Harrison in person, set
forth for the destruction of the Tippecanoe rendezvous. On the
way stray redskins were encountered, but the advance was not
resisted, and to his surprise Harrison was enabled to lead his
forces unmolested to within a few hundred yards of the Prophet's
headquarters. Emissaries now came saying that the invasion was
wholly unexpected, professing peaceful intentions, and asking for
a parley. Harrison had no idea that anything could be settled by
negotiation, but he preferred to wait until the next day to make
an attack; accordingly he agreed to a council, and the army went
into camp for the night on an oak-covered knoll about a mile
northwest of the village. No entrenchments were thrown up, but
the troops were arranged in a triangle to conform to the contour
of the hill, and a hundred sentinels under experienced officers
were stationed around the camp-fires. The night was cold, and
rain fell at intervals, although at times the moon shone brightly
through the flying clouds.

The Governor was well aware of the proneness of the Indians to
early morning attacks, so that about four o'clock on the 7th of
November he rose to call the men to parade. He had barely pulled
on his boots when the forest stillness was broken by the crack of
a rifle at the farthest angle of the camp, and instantly the
Indian yell, followed by a fusillade, told that a general attack
had begun. Before the militiamen could emerge in force from their
tents, the sentinel line was broken and the red warriors were
pouring into the enclosure. Desperate fighting ensued, and when
time for reloading failed, it was rifle butt and bayonet against
tomahawk and scalping knife in hand-to-hand combat. For two hours
the battle raged in the darkness, and only when daylight came
were the troops able to charge the redskins, dislodge them from
behind the trees, and drive them to a safe distance in the
neighboring swamp. Sixty-one of Harrison's officers and men were
killed or mortally wounded; one hundred and twenty-seven others
suffered serious injury. The Governor himself probably owed his
life to the circumstance that in the confusion he mounted a bay
horse instead of his own white stallion, whose rider was shot
early in the contest.

The Indian losses were small, and for twenty-four hours
Harrison's forces kept their places, hourly expecting another
assault. "Night," wrote one of the men subsequently, "found every
man mounting guard, without food, fire, or light and in a
drizzling rain. The Indian dogs, during the dark hours, produced
frequent alarms by prowling in search of carrion about the
sentinels." There being no further sign of hostilities, early on
the 8th of November a body of mounted riflemen set out for the
Prophet's village, which they found deserted. The place had
evidently been abandoned in haste, for nothing--not even a fresh
stock of English guns and powder--had been destroyed or carried
off. After confiscating much-needed provisions and other
valuables, Harrison ordered the village to be burned. Then,
abandoning camp furniture and private baggage to make room in the
wagons for the wounded, he set out on the return trip to
Vincennes. A company was left at Fort Harrison, and the main
force reached the capital on the 18th of November.

Throughout the western country the news of the battle was
received with delight, and it was fondly believed that the
backbone of Tecumseh's conspiracy was broken. It was even
supposed that the indomitable chieftain and his brother would be
forthwith surrendered by the Indians to the authorities of the
United States. Harrison was acclaimed as a deliverer. The
legislatures of Kentucky, Indiana, and Illinois formally thanked
him for his services; and if, as his Federalist enemies charged,
he had planned the whole undertaking with a view to promoting his
personal fortunes, he ought to have been satisfied with the
result. It was the glamour of Tippecanoe that three decades
afterwards carried him into the President's chair.

In precipitating a clash while Tecumseh, the master-mind of the
fast-growing confederacy, was absent, the Prophet committed a
capital blunder. When reproached by his warriors, he declared
that all would have gone well but for the fact that on the night
before the battle his squaw had profanely touched the pot in
which his magic charms were brewed, so that the spell had been
broken! The explanation was not very convincing, and ominous
murmurings were heard. Before the end of the year, however, word
came to Vincennes that the crafty magician was back at
Tippecanoe, that the village had been rebuilt, and that the lives
of the white settlers who were pouring into the new purchase were
again endangered.

Still more alarming was the news of Tecumseh's return in January,
1812, from a very successful visit to the Creeks, Choctaws, and
Cherokees. He began by asking leave to make his long-projected
visit to Washington to obtain peace from the President, and he
professed deep regret for "the unfortunate transaction that took
place between the white people and a few of our young men at our
village." To the British agent at Amherstburg he declared that
had he been on the spot there would have been no fighting at
Tippecanoe. It is reasonable to suppose that in this case there
would have been, at all events, no Indian attack; for Tecumseh
was thoroughly in sympathy with the British plan, which was to
unite and arm the natives, but to prevent a premature outbreak.
The chieftain's presence, however, would hardly have deterred
Harrison from carrying out his decision to break up the
Tippecanoe stronghold.

The spring of 1812 brought an ominous renewal of depredations.
Two settlers were murdered within three miles of Fort Dearborn;
an entire family was massacred but five miles from Vincennes;
from all directions came reports of other bloody deeds. The
frontier was thrown into panic. A general uprising was felt to be
impending; even Vincennes was thought to be in danger. "Most of
the citizens of this country," reported Harrison, on the 6th of
May, "have abandoned their farms, and taken refuge in such
temporary forts as they have been able to construct. Scores fled
to Kentucky and to even more distant regions.

Tecumseh continued to assert his friendship for his "white
brothers" and to treat the battle at Tippecanoe as a matter of no
moment. The murders on the frontier he declared to be the work of
the Potawatomi, who were not under his control, and for whose
conduct he had no excuse. But it was noted that he made no move
to follow up his professed purpose to visit Washington in quest
of peace, and that he put forth no effort to restrain his
over-zealous allies. It was plain enough that he was simply
awaiting a signal from Canada, and that, as the commandant at
Fort Wayne tersely reported, if the country should have a war
with Great Britain, it must be prepared for an Indian war as
well.

Chapter IX. The War Of 1812 And The New West

The spring of 1812 thus found the back country in a turmoil, and
it was with a real sense of relief that the settlers became aware
of the American declaration of war against Great Britain on the
18th of June. More than once Governor Harrison had asked for
authority to raise an army with which to "scour" the Wabash
territory. In the fear that such a step would drive the redskins
into the arms of the British, the War Department had withheld its
consent. Now that the ban was lifted, the people could expect the
necessary measures to be taken for their defense. In no part of
the country was the war more popular; nowhere did the mass of the
able-bodied population show greater eagerness to take the field.

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