Part 5

Early in the following summer Harrison sent word to Tecumseh that he would like to see him, and on August 12, 1810, the Indian chief with four hundred armed warriors arrived at the governor’s headquarters at Vincennes. The meeting between the white man who stood for civilization and the red man who stood for savagery took place in a field outside the stockaded town. The youthful governor, short of stature, lean of body, and stern of face, sat in a chair under a spreading tree, surrounded by a group of his officials: army officers, Territorial judges, scouts, interpreters, and agents. Opposite him, ranged in a semicircle on the ground, were Tecumseh, his brother, the prophet, and a score or more of chiefs, while back of them, row after row of blanketed forms and grim, bepainted faces, sat his four hundred fighting men. Tecumseh had been warned that his braves must come to the conference unarmed, and to all appearances they were weaponless, but no one knew better than Harrison that concealed beneath the folds of each warrior’s blanket was a tomahawk and a scalping-knife. Nor, aware as he was of the danger of Indian treachery, had he neglected to take precautions, for the garrison of the town was under arms, the muzzles of field-guns peered through apertures in the log stockade, and a few paces away from the council, ready to open fire at the first sign of danger, were a score of soldiers with loaded rifles.

In reply to Harrison’s formal greeting, Tecumseh rose to his feet, presenting a most striking and impressive figure as he stood, drawn to his full height, with folded arms and granite features, the sunlight playing on his copper-colored skin, on his belt and moccasins of beaded buckskin, and on the single eagle’s feather which slanted in his hair. The address of the famous warrior statesman consisted of a recital of the wrongs which the Indian had suffered at the hands of the white man. It was a story of chicanery and spoliation and oppression which Tecumseh told, and those who listened to it, white men and red alike, knew that it was very largely true. He told how the Indians, the real owners of the land, had been steadily driven westward and ever westward, first beyond the Alleghanies, and then beyond the Ohio, and now beyond the Missouri. He told how the white men had attempted to create dissension among the Indians to prevent their uniting, how they had bribed the stronger tribes and coerced the weaker, how again and again they had tried to goad the Indians into committing some overt act that they might use it as an excuse for seizing more of their land. He told how the whites, jeering at the sacredness of treaty obligations, systematically debauched the Indians by selling them whiskey; how they trespassed on the Indians’ lands and slaughtered the game on which the Indians depended for support; of how, when the Indians protested, they were often slaughtered, too; and of how the white men’s courts, instead of condemning the criminal, usually ended by congratulating him. He declared that things had come to a pass where the Indians must fight or perish, that the Indians were one people and that the lands belonging to them as a race could not be disposed of by individual tribes, that an Indian confederacy had been formed which both could and would fight every step of the white man’s further advance. As Tecumseh continued, his pronunciation became more guttural, his terms harsher, his gestures more excited, his argument changed into a warlike harangue. He played upon the Indian portion of his audience as a maestro plays upon a violin, until, their passions mastering their discretion, they sprang to their feet with a whoop, brandishing their tomahawks and knives. In the flutter of an eyelash everything was in confusion. The waiting soldiers dashed forward like sprinters, cocking their rifles as they ran. The officers jerked loose their swords, and the frontiersmen snatched up their long-barrelled weapons. But Harrison was quickest of all, for, drawing and cocking a pistol with a single motion, he thrust its muzzle squarely into Tecumseh’s face. “Call off your men,” he thundered, “or you’re a dead Indian!” Tecumseh, realizing that he had overplayed his part and appreciating that this was an occasion when discretion was of more avail than valor, motioned to his warriors, and they silently and sullenly withdrew.

But it was no part of Tecumseh’s plan or of the British who were behind him to bring on a war at this time, when their preparations were as yet incomplete; so the following morning Tecumseh, who had little to learn about the game of diplomacy, called on Harrison, expressed with apparent sincerity his regret for the violence into which his young men had been led by his words, and asked to have the council resumed. Harrison well knew the great ability and influence of Tecumseh and was anxious to conciliate him, for, truth to tell, the Americans were no more prepared for war at this time than were the Indians. When asked whether he intended to persist in his opposition to the cessions of territory in the valley of the Wabash, Tecumseh firmly asserted his intention to adhere to the old boundary, though he made it clear that, if the governor would prevail upon the President to give up the lands in question and would agree never to make another treaty without the consent of all the tribes, he would pledge himself to be a faithful ally of the United States. Otherwise he would be obliged to enter into an alliance with the English. Harrison told him that the American Government would never agree to his suggestions. “Well,” rejoined Tecumseh, as though he had expected the answer he received, “as the Great Chief is to decide the matter, I hope the Great Spirit will put sense enough into his head to induce him to direct you to give up the land. True, he is so far off that he will not be injured by the war. It is you and I who will have to fight it out while he sits in his town and drinks his wine.”

It only needed this open declaration of his hostile intentions by Tecumseh to convince Harrison that the time had come to strike, and strike hard. If the peril of the great Indian league of which Tecumseh had boasted was to be averted, it must be done before that confederation became too strongly organized to shatter. There was no time to be lost. Harrison promptly issued a call for volunteers to take part in a campaign against the Indians, at the same time despatching a messenger to Washington requesting the loan of a regiment of regulars to stiffen the raw levies who would compose the major part of the expedition. News of Harrison’s call for men spread over the frontier States as though disseminated by wireless, and soon the volunteers came pouring in: frontiersmen from Kentucky and Tennessee in fur caps and hunting-shirts of buckskin; woodsmen from the forests of Michigan and Wisconsin, long-barrelled rifles on their shoulders and powder-horns slung from their necks; militiamen from Indiana and Illinois, and grizzled Indian-fighters from the towns along the river and the backwoods settlements, who volunteered as much from love of fighting as from hatred of the Indians. Then, one day, almost before Harrison realized that they had started, a column of dusty, footsore soldiery came tramping into Vincennes with the unmistakable swing of veterans. It was the 4th Regiment of United States Infantry, commanded by Colonel John Parker Boyd, who, upon receiving orders from Washington to hurry to Harrison’s assistance, had put his men on flatboats at Pittsburg, where the regiment was stationed, floated them down to the falls of the Ohio, and marched them overland to Harrison’s headquarters at Vincennes, accomplishing the four-hundred-mile journey in a time which made that veteran frontiersman open his eyes with astonishment when he heard it.

Boyd[C] was one of the most picturesque figures which our country has ever produced. Born in Newburyport in 1764, the last British soldier had left our shores before he was old enough to realize the ambition of his life by obtaining a commission in the American army. But his was not the disposition which could content itself with the tedium of garrison life in time of peace; so, before he had passed his four-and-twentieth birthday he had handed in his papers and taken passage for India. The closing years of the eighteenth century saw fighting going on from one end of Hindustan to the other. The British were fighting the French, and the Hindus were fighting the Mohammedans, so that men with military training found there a profitable market for their services and their swords.

After serving for a time as cavalry instructor in the armies of the Peishwa, as the ruler of the Mahratta tribes was called, Boyd obtained a commission as colonel in the service of the Nizam of Hyderabad, distinguished himself in a series of whirlwind raids which he led into the territory of the Sultan of Mysore during the campaign which ended with the death of that tyrant in a last desperate stand at the gates of his capital of Seringapatam, and was rewarded by the Nizam giving him the command of a brigade of ten thousand turbaned troopers. Having by this time accumulated a modest fortune as a result of the lavish pay he had received from his princely employers, he resigned from the Nizam’s service and organized an army of his own. The horses, elephants, and guns were his personal property, and he rented his army to those native princes who stood in need of its services and were able to pay for them, very much as a garage rents an automobile.

Foreseeing the eventual conquest of India by the British and realizing that it would mean the end of independent soldiering in that country, he sold his army, elephants and all, to an Italian soldier of fortune and turned his face toward his native land once more. At that time soldiering was neither a very popular nor a very profitable profession in the United States, so that Boyd, whose reputation as a daring leader and a rigid disciplinarian had preceded him, had no difficulty in again obtaining a commission under his own flag and in the service of his own country, being offered by the government and promptly accepting the colonelcy of the 4th Regiment of foot. An October evening in 1811, then, saw him riding into Vincennes at the head of his travel-weary regulars, in response to Governor Harrison’s request for reinforcements.

The news brought in by the scouts that war-dances were going on in the Indian villages and that the threatened storm was about to break served to hasten Harrison’s preparations. The small, but exceedingly businesslike, expedition which marched out of Vincennes on the 1st day of November under the leadership of Governor Harrison, with Colonel Boyd in direct command of the troops, consisted of the nine companies of regulars which Boyd had brought from Pittsburg, six companies of infantry of the Indiana militia, two companies of Indiana dragoons, two companies of Kentucky mounted rifles, a company of Indiana mounted rifles, and a company of scouts--about eleven hundred men in all. Their uniforms would have looked strange and outlandish indeed to one accustomed to the serviceable, dust-colored garb of the present-day soldier, for the infantry wore high felt hats of the “stovepipe” pattern, adorned with red-white-and-blue cockades, tight-waisted, long-tailed coats of blue cloth with brass buttons, and pantaloons as nearly skin-tight as the tailor could make them. The dragoons were gorgeous in white buckskin breeches, high, varnished boots, “shell” jackets which reached barely to the hips, and brass helmets with streaming plumes of horsehair. Because the mounted riflemen who were under the command of Captain Spencer wore gray uniforms lavishly trimmed with yellow, they bore the nickname among the troops of “Spencer’s Yellow-Jackets.” The only men of the force, indeed, who were suitably clad for Indian warfare were the scouts, who wore the hunting-shirts, leggings, and moccasins of soft-tanned buckskin, which were the orthodox dress of the frontier.

Commanded by men of such wide experience in savage warfare as Harrison and Boyd, it is needless to say that every precaution was taken against surprise, the column moving in a formation which prepared it for instant battle. The cavalry formed advance and rear guards, and small detachments rode on either flank; the infantry marched in two columns, one on either side of the trail, with the baggage wagons, pack-animals, and beeves between them, while the scouts, thrown far out into the forest, formed a moving cordon of skirmishers. After crossing the Vermilion River the troops found themselves upon an immense prairie, which stretched away, level as a floor, as far as the eye could see--as far as the Illinois at Chicago, the guides asserted. It filled the soldiers, who came from a rugged and heavily forested country, with the greatest astonishment, for few of them had ever seen so vast an expanse of level ground before. Shortly afterward, however, they left the prairie and marched through open woods, over ground gashed and furrowed by deep ravines. Here the greatest precautions had to be observed, for clouds of Indian scouts hung upon the flanks of the column, and the broken nature of the country fitted it admirably for ambushes.

Late in the afternoon of November 6, 1811, in a cold and drizzling rain, Harrison gave orders to bivouac for the night on a piece of high but swamp-surrounded ground on the banks of the Tippecanoe River, near its junction with the Wabash, and barely five miles from the Prophet’s Town. It was a triangular-shaped knoll, dotted with oaks, one side of which dropped down in a sharp declivity to a little stream edged with willows and heavy underbrush, while the other two sides sloped down more gradually to a marshy prairie. The camp was arranged in the form of an irregular parallelogram, with the regulars--who were the only seasoned troops in the expedition--forming the front and rear, the flanks being composed of mounted riflemen supported by militia, while two troops of dragoons were held in reserve. In the centre of this armed enclosure were parked the pack-animals and the baggage-train. Though late in the night the moon rose from behind a bank of clouds; the night was very dark, with occasional flurries of rain. The troops lay on the rain-soaked ground with rifles loaded and bayonets fixed, but they slept but little, I fancy, for they had brought no tents, few of them were provided with blankets, and top-hats and tail-coats are not exactly adapted to camping in the forest in November.

From his experience in previous campaigns, Harrison had learned that, while in the vicinity of any considerable body of Indians, it was the part of precaution to arouse his men quietly an hour or so before daybreak, for it was a characteristic of the Indians to deliver their attacks shortly before the dawn, which is the hour when tired men sleep the soundest. Meanwhile, in the Indian camp preparations were being stealthily made for the surprise and extermination of the white invaders. Tecumseh was not present, being absent on one of his proselyting tours among the southern tribes, but the prophet brought out the sacred torch and the magic beans, which his followers had only to touch, so he assured them, to become invulnerable to the enemy’s bullets. This ceremony was followed by a series of incantations, war songs and dances, until the Indians, now wrought up to a frenzy, were ready for any deed of madness. Slipping like horrid phantoms through the waist-high prairie grass in the blackness of the night, they crept nearer and nearer to the sleeping camp, intending to surround the position, stab the sentries, rush the camp, and slaughter every man in it whom they could not take alive for the torture stake.

In pursuance of his custom of early rising, Harrison was just pulling on his boots before the embers of a dying camp-fire, at four o’clock in the morning, preparatory to rousing his men, when the silence of the forest was suddenly broken by the crack of a sentry’s rifle. The echoes had not time to die away before, from three sides of the camp, rose the shrill, hair-raising war-whoop of the Indians. As familiar with the lay of the land as a housewife is with the arrangements of her kitchen, they had effected their plan of surrounding the camp, confident of taking the suddenly awakened soldiers so completely by surprise that they would be unable to offer an effectual resistance. Not a warrior of them but did not look forward to returning to the Prophet’s Town with a string of dripping scalp-locks at his waist.

The Indians, quite unlike their usual custom of keeping to cover, fought as white men fight, for, made reckless by the prophet’s assurances that his spells had made them invulnerable and that bullets could not harm them, they advanced at a run across the open. At sight of the oncoming wave of bedaubed and befeathered figures the raw levies from Indiana and Kentucky visibly wavered and threatened to give way, but Boyd’s regulars, though taken by surprise, showed the result of their training by standing like a stone wall against the onset of the whooping redskins. The engagement quickly became general. The chorus of cheers and yells and groans and war-whoops was punctuated by the continuous crackle of the frontiersmen’s rifles and the crashing volleys of the infantry. Harrison, a conspicuous figure on a white horse and wearing a white blanket coat, rode up and down the lines, encouraging here, cautioning there, as cool and as quiet-voiced as though back on the parade-ground at Vincennes.

The pressure was greatest at the angle of the camp where the first attack was made, the troops stationed at this point having the greatest difficulty in holding their position. Seeing this, Major Joseph H. Daviess, a brilliant but hot-headed young Kentuckian who had achieved fame by his relentless attacks on Aaron Burr, twice asked permission to charge with his dragoons, and twice the governor sent back the answer: “Tell Major Daviess to be patient; he shall have his chance before the battle is over.” When Daviess for a third time urged his importunate request, Harrison answered the messenger sharply: “Tell Major Daviess he has twice heard my opinion; he may now use his own discretion.” Discretion, however, was evidently not included in the Kentuckian’s make-up, for no sooner had he received Harrison’s message than, with barely a score of dismounted troopers, he charged the Indian line. So foolhardy a performance could only be expected to end in disaster. Daviess fell, mortally wounded, and his men, such of them as were not dead, turned and fled for their lives.

[Illustration: The Indians, panic-stricken at the sight of the oncoming troopers, broke and ran.]

The prophet, who had been chanting appeals to the Great Spirit from the top of a rock within view of his warriors but safely out of range of the American rifles (he evidently had some doubts as to the efficacy of his charms), realized that, as a result of the unforeseen obstinacy of the Americans’ resistance, victory was fast slipping from his grasp and that his only hope of success lay in an overwhelming charge. Roused to renewed fanaticism by his fervid exhortations, the Indians once again swept forward, whooping like madmen. But the Americans were ready for them, and as the yelling redskins came within range they met them with a volley of buckshot which left them wavering, undecided whether to come on or to retreat. Harrison, whose plan was to maintain his lines unbroken until daylight and then make a general advance, and who had been constantly riding from point to point within the camp to keep the assailed positions reinforced, realized that the crucial moment had arrived. Now was his chance to drive home the deciding blow. Boyd, recognizing as quickly as Harrison the opportunity thus presented, ordered a bugler to sound the charge, and his infantry roared down upon the Indian line in a human avalanche tipped with steel. At the same moment he ordered up the two squadrons of dragoons which he had been holding in reserve. “Right into line!” he roared, in the voice which had resounded over so many fields in far-off Hindustan. “Trot! Gallop! _Charge!_ Hip, hip, here we go!” It was this charge, delivered with the smashing suddenness with which a boxer gets in a solar-plexus blow, which did the business. The Indians, panic-stricken at the sight of the oncoming troopers in their brass helmets and streaming plumes of horsehair, broke and ran. Tippecanoe was won, though at a cost to the Americans of nearly two hundred killed and wounded, including two lieutenant-colonels, two majors, five captains, and several lieutenants. The discredited prophet, now become an object of hatred and derision among his own people, fled for his life while the victorious Americans burned his town behind him. Tecumseh, returning from the south to be greeted by the news of the disaster to his plans resulting from his brother’s folly, threw in his lot with the British, commanded England’s Indian allies in the War of 1812, and died two years later at the battle of the Thames, when his old adversary, Harrison, once again led the Americans to victory. For his share in the Tippecanoe triumph, Boyd received a brigadier-general’s commission. Harrison was started on the road which was to end at the White House. The peril of the great Indian confederation was ended forever, and the civilization of the West was advanced a quarter of a century.

THE WAR THAT WASN’T A WAR

THE WAR THAT WASN’T A WAR