Panther in the Sky (103 page)

The troops were not as disheartened as might have been expected. Many of them were half-drunk. Borrowing from his studies of past bombardments, Harrison had employed a sporting method used during sieges of the Revolution: he had authorized the issue of a shot of whiskey to each man who turned a reusable British cannonball in to the magazine. A soldier would come in, grinning, covered with dirt, carrying a cannonball he had picked up or dug from the ground, trade it for a shot of whiskey, and go back to the trenches, and soon the ball would be loaded into an American cannon of the same caliber and sent on its way back toward the British guns. One man had staggered in so often that he was joshed by the magazine keeper about catching them in midair.

“Naw, I would catch ’em if I could see ’em,” he drawled. “But I
have
ran down a couple afore they stopped rollin’.”

T
HE BARRAGE STARTED AGAIN AT DAWN OF THE SECOND DAY,
and the British officers kept watching for the truce flag that never went up. The Indians surrounding the fort on the east, south, and west grew still more restless in their coverts, and only Tecumseh’s persuasion could keep some of the small bands from leaving to go back to Canada or to their homes. They were beginning to doubt the power of cannon; though the noise was as impressive
as ever, they were beginning to suspect that most of the damage the cannon could do was to ears.

Some of Tecumseh’s scouts were bold enough, or bored enough, to risk the occasional sprays of grapeshot and climb high into the big sycamores beside the creek and look and snipe at the soldiers inside the fort. When they came down they described the ditches and dirt walls and told Tecumseh that they had seen hardly any soldiers—just shells exploding and dirt flying and rows of tents all in shreds. Tecumseh took that news to Procter. It explained why the soldiers in the fort had not surrendered yet. The news seemed both to annoy and frighten Procter. Tecumseh could almost read his thoughts. Procter had been here for days on American soil, and he was sure that more Americans would be coming from somewhere soon—he had often expressed a worry about reinforcements—and the reduction of the fort was apparently going to take much longer than he had expected.

“My stupid American enemy is smarter than you said,” Tecumseh remarked.

Procter raised his head and sniffed.

W
HEN STILL ANOTHER DAY OF BOMBARDMENT FAILED TO
make the Americans hoist a white flag, Procter decided to send down a demand for surrender. He stopped the cannonade and raised a truce flag, and in the ringing silence after the din, he briefed a trim young Redcoat major on what to say to Harrison.

“I too have a message for Harrison,” Tecumseh said. “Give me one of your writing soldiers to write it on paper.” And he dictated:

When the major came back he reported that Harrison had refused to surrender and had implied a readiness to fight to the end. Procter clenched his jaw and ordered the batteries to resume their fire. He went back to his headquarters at Fort Miami, after cautioning Tecumseh to keep scouts far out to watch for the approach of American reinforcements.

Tecumseh himself took a large band of scouts out around the
countryside the next day, convinced that the monstrous shelling would have no results against the burrowing Americans. His party rode far in a circuit to check the Sandusky road to the south, then swung up toward the Maumee to watch the river and the western road. As they passed through the cleared fields and farms, the roar of the barrage grew fainter behind them, finally sounding like distant thunder. The countryside was peaceful and fresh with spring foliage. New corn was scarcely knee-high in the fields. To ride through these sunny fields with his bands of scouts reminded him of his journeys to the site of old Chillicothe in the years before the war. He thought of the Galloways, who farmed like this in the old Shawnee lands. He thought of their goodness, then of the evils Harrison had wrought, and he wondered at the ways of the white race. Even Harrison seemed to believe that what he was doing was right. Surely Harrison believed himself to be a righteous man.

The warriors had been fasting in battle, and they were very hungry now, but of course there was no game in all this settled land. Then Thick Water rode up beside Tecumseh and pointed toward a plowed field. Near its far edge was a white boy of ten or twelve years, standing as if petrified, holding the handles of a plow hooked to a pair of oxen. He was looking at the Indians. “Beef,” said Thick Water, pulling his tomahawk from his waistband. The other warriors were grinning, looking at the oxen.

Tecumseh held up his hand. He looked at the boy and thought of Gal-lo-weh’s sons, who had been about that age when he had first seen them, working in their fields. “No harm to the boy,” he said, and led his scouts into the field.

The boy was too terrified to move. He stood, face pale, looking at the painted warriors all around him. In the distance the guns were still thundering under a cloud of gray smoke. Nearby a bluebird was singing. Tecumseh dismounted and smiled at the boy.

“I must have those ox,” he said in English. “My young men are most hungry. I must have the beef for them.”

It was a while before the boy could speak. Then he whimpered that if they took the oxen, his family would be ruined. He said his father was very sick, and that without the oxen to plow with, his family would die.

“I could take them, as we are at war with your country,” Tecumseh said. “But I do not make war on a family. I will pay you a hundred dollar for these ox. They are not worth so much. You can buy more ox for your sick father.”

He had Billy Caldwell write an order for one hundred dollars
for the beasts, signed it, and told the boy he could take it to Colonel Elliott, the British Indian agent at Fort Miami, who would give him the dollars. “Show the Redcoats my name on the paper, and they will let you in the fort.” Having no inclination to protest, the boy took the paper and ran.

The warriors butchered the oxen. Tecumseh hung the harness on the plow and left the yoke nearby for the boy to find. The warriors went into a woods to cook and eat the meat. Billy Caldwell joked to Tecumseh, “You should have told that boy, Go back to Europe and buy new oxen.”

They resumed their reconnaissance in good spirits. It had been good to be away from the white armies’ terrible cannons, riding together in a peaceful countryside. They found no sign of American reinforcements and so turned and rode back with the late afternoon sun at their backs toward the thundering of the British guns.

I
T WAS THE FIFTH DAY OF THE BOMBARDMENT
. T
ECUMSEH
had gone down to Fort Miami to draw more ammunition and supplies for his warriors and to prod General Procter into doing something decisive. Tecumseh asked for Redcoats to help him storm the fort. Procter chose rather to keep up the shelling. He saw no reason to do anything drastic. There had been no sign of American reinforcements yet.

When Tecumseh rode out of the fort, his face full of anger, someone ran out into the road in front of him. His horse shied and reared, but Tecumseh brought him down. A white boy was standing barefoot in the road. It was the one from whom he had bought the oxen. His dirty face was tear-streaked.

“What, boy?” Tecumseh said.

“Sir, that Colonel Elliott wouldn’t pay!” The boy’s face crumpled as if he were ready to cry again. “My pa don’t have anything now!”

“Come with me.” Tecumseh turned his horse and rode back into the fort. The Redcoat sentries looked with amusement at the dirty-faced raggedy boy following the warrior chief’s horse.

Tecumseh dismounted at Elliott’s building and strode in, pulling the boy by the hand. Elliott was at a paper-strewn counter and looked up. His face was careworn and tired-looking, and he did not seem happy to see the boy here again. He looked up at Tecumseh warily.

“I bought ox from this boy to feed my scouts. He gave you my paper for a hundred dollars. Give him money.”

Elliott shifted in his chair and licked his lower lip. “Ah, brother, that’s not the way we do things. We don’t buy food from Americans.”

“I made him one hundred dollar promise, Elliott. My promise is good. Pay this boy.”

Elliott shut his lips firmly and shook his head. Suddenly Tecumseh was leaning very close over him. He said in a low voice:

“Before I came with my warriors to fight the battles of king of England, we had enough to eat from our hunting grounds. We had to ask and thank only the Master of Life and the Masters of the Game. We can return to our hunting grounds.” Some soldiers and Redcoat officers were standing near the counter, watching with amusement this exchange.

Elliott slumped a bit. “Well, if I
must
pay, I suppose …” He pulled a heavy box from the recesses behind the counter. It was chained to the counter and had a hasp and lock. As he unlocked it, he protested, “I do wish you would keep in mind the way we do things, though.…” He raised the lid and lifted out some printed currency. But Tecumseh put his hand firmly on his arm and said:

“Give him hard money, not rag money.”

Elliott put the bills back with a sigh and counted out the equivalent of a hundred dollars in gold and silver coin and gave it to Tecumseh, who put it in the boy’s hand, then turned to Elliott and held out his palm.

“One dollar more,” he said.

Elliott closed the box as firmly as his lips, but Tecumseh’s rigid fingers nudged his chest.

“One dollar more, Elliott.”

Elliott reopened the box with a sigh and gave him another dollar in coin. Tecumseh put it in the boy’s hand. “That one is to pay you for trouble you had getting your money. Now come, boy. I have young men who will ride you home safe.”

T
HE SCOUTS ON THE ROAD FROM THE WEST TOLD
T
ECUMSEH
that they had discovered some American messengers trying to get to the fort and had chased them.

Quickly he sent a larger scouting party up the Maumee. It was the next morning before they returned, and their news was urgent: Up the river, camped on the shore near many boats, was another American army. Hundreds of militia soldiers. Maybe ten hundreds or more.

Now, Tecumseh thought as he rode toward Fort Miami to report
this news to Procter, how will it go now? Will Harrison come out and fight so we can win? Or will he just fill up his hole so full of groundhogs that it will take the cannons a year to kill them? He thought quickly of all the ways it could happen. It would be tomorrow, whatever it was. The scouts had said the army was but two hours up the Maumee.

Harrison surely does not know yet that they are there, Tecumseh thought. Could I attack them where they are with no walls around them? He thought of getting up the river with warriors, Redcoats, and cannon, and ambushing their boats before they reached the American fort.

He knew that would be the best thing to do, but he knew it could not be done because Procter would refuse or take too long to move even if he did agree.

B
UT THE INITIATIVE WAS TAKEN OUT OF
T
ECUMSEH
’
S HANDS.
A messenger from the reinforcements slipped through and got into the fort to tell Harrison.

Harrison had already decided how to use the arriving militia. He needed to stop that bombardment. There were nearly a hundred graves in the fort by now and almost that many wounded in the hospital. Conferring quickly with his officers, he outlined a daring two-pronged sortie against the British batteries.

The order was for General Clay to float down through to the foot of the rapids and to divide his force just above the fort. The larger part, eight hundred commanded by Colonel William Dudley, was to land on the north shore of the river, storm the British batteries on the bluff, and spike the big cannons to render them useless, then return to their boats and cross to the safety of the fort. The remaining four hundred Kentuckians would land on the south shore near the fort, where a large contingent of Harrison’s troops would rush out and join them for a quick assault on the mortar and howitzer emplacements southeast of the fort, and then those troops too would retreat into the fort before they could be fully engaged by Tecumseh’s Indians. In his orders, Harrison then warned General Clay against the kinds of mistakes that could result from too much of that reckless Kentucky courage, which, he wrote, “if persisted in is as fatal in its results as cowardice.”

T
HE BOATS CAME DOWN THROUGH THE RAPIDS EARLY THE
next morning, after the daily bombardment had already begun. Tecumseh’s warriors were shooting at them from the banks even
before they landed, and he could see by the way the boats were being maneuvered that they were going to land on both sides of the river.

Tecumseh kept the main body of his warriors in the woods near the east end of the fort and watched to see what the Americans were going to do. Off in the distance to the north he could hear heavy gunfire as his warriors and a few British soldiers attacked the Americans landing on that shore. Gunsmoke and dust caught the rising sun, and it was hard to see anything. He could see the hundreds of American troops coming around the road on the south side of the fort now and could see that they were not heading for the south gate, but toward the mortar batteries, running and cheering themselves on. At that moment he saw the south gate of the fort open and heard another throaty yell as about three hundred soldiers from the fort hurried out to join the others in a hard charge through the clearing toward the mortar batteries. And now that it was clear to Tecumseh that these Americans were going for the batteries on this side, he knew that was what those on the other side would be doing, too. They would be trying to storm the big guns. Harrison was smart and bold.