Panther in the Sky (31 page)

“But Captain Byrd made the chiefs promise that at the next fort the warriors would only kill white people who refused to give up. So we went. It was to a fort called Martin’s. They gave up without fighting, and so then we had still more prisoners, almost as many prisoners as we numbered ourselves. The chiefs told Captain Byrd, We must kill these many prisoners so we can go on and fight Boone’s and Harrod’s forts, as you promised we would do! But Byrd said, No, these prisoners will be taken to Detroit. We cannot strike any more forts till another time. So we had to come back, as you see.”

Tecumseh could see Star Watcher listening very carefully to all this, saying nothing as she fed the warriors. Now Chiksika took up the story.

“We were angry. We did not want to come back yet. But what could be done? So we killed the prisoners who were too weak to come, then we started back. Warriors were angry about all these prisoners. When they fell down or got slow, we killed them. Byrd got madder. He told his soldiers not to let us do that. So we are back, as you see. We did more than has ever been done against the Long Knives. We burned two forts and brought home five
hundred prisoners for whom the British will pay us, and got much loot. But Boone’s Fort is still there, and Harrod’s, and some other new forts, and now Clark’s big fort at the Falling Water place. We have only forty scalps among eight hundred warriors, and no one is satisfied. Maybe Byrd will have glory in taking so many prisoners to Detroit. But will red men go to war with this Captain Byrd again? No! He has no stomach!”

Star Watcher had been listening to Chiksika with her lips pressed tight shut. Now she smiled, but her eyes were sharp and were aimed straight into his.

“I am sorry there are still Long Knife forts there,” she said. “But you know my heart, brother. You know I am glad those white women and their children are alive. They are helpless. For their lives I would thank Captain Byrd, and it sounds to my ear as if the cowards were red men, who would not go to fight their great enemy Clark, but kill mothers and children!”

Chiksika, too surprised to answer, had to swallow her criticism with the food she was feeding him. Tecumseh, despite his adoration of his older brother, found he liked better what his sister had said.

B
LACK
H
OOF KEPT ONE OF THE PRISONERS AFTER
B
YRD WENT
on to Detroit. This was a big, pleasant boy of about twelve years, a son of one of the chiefs of Ruddell’s Town. His name was Stephen Ruddell. Black Hoof adopted him into the Chalagawtha sept and named him Sinnanatha, which meant Big Fish. Black Hoof would joke about the boy, saying, “I went to Kain-tuck-ee, and there I caught this Big Fish.”

Big Fish was a bold, good-spirited boy, and he quickly took to life in the tribe. As a white boy he had had to work most of the time, but here he could spend his days playing games and hunting. He was a good athlete, and before long he became another rival whom Tecumseh had to strive to beat.

In the beginning, Big Fish knew no Shawnee words, but if he was shown how a game or contest was done, then he could play it well at once. One day in early autumn, Big Fish trounced Thick Water. So the boys of Chillicothe decided that this strong, active newcomer should be pitted against their champion Tecumseh in a wrestling match. Finding himself encircled by spectators and facing this sinewy, hawk-eyed Shawnee boy, Stephen Ruddell presumed that he was about to be engaged in a fistfight, as such an arrangement would have meant in a white town. He was ready.
He was accustomed to winning fistfights. “All right, Chief, whenever you’re set,” he taunted. “I’m about to bust your snot horn.”

Tecumseh, understanding none of the words, crouched with open hands and began circling, looking for an opening. Suddenly the white boy snapped out with his right fist. Tecumseh, whose reflexes were so quick he could grab a fly out of the air, caught the boy’s wrist in both hands and held him fast, protesting in Shawnee: “No! We do not strike. We wrestle.” He let go of the fist, and before he could step back to start again, the boy’s left fist shot out. Tecumseh ducked out of its way and grabbed the arm in a powerful lock.

Now the white boy understood. He considered himself no novice at wrestling, either, and quickly broke the armlock in a single heaving motion that flung Tecumseh into the dirt. Tecumseh bounced to his feet, and the two now circled each other with mutual respect, being cheered on by the circle of watchers.

Tecumseh and Big Fish fought in the dust for a long time, straining and sweating, groaning with the pain they inflicted on each other, before Tecumseh finally, with swiftness and surprise, threw Big Fish on his face and bent both of his arms up behind him and locked him in place. Big Fish strained until he realized it was futile, then he nodded. The spectators yipped with delight. When Tecumseh let him up, Big Fish smiled, his face so flushed and dusty that it looked the color of an Indian’s, not a white boy’s. His smiling face reminded Tecumseh of the young man named Copper Hair at Piqua Town.

And that evening Tecumseh thought:

Now Chiksika is here. I must ask him to ride with me to see this Copper Hair in Piqua Town. We could take the
livres,
the, the
books,
he called them, and maybe he could explain to me how they do what they do to catch Weshemoneto’s words and hold them in a book.

Suddenly Tecumseh wanted to do that more than he wanted anything. It might be a bad thing of the white people, doing that to words. But it was certain that Tecumseh would not be able to settle his thoughts until he knew about it. Chiksika knew very well the nature of Tecumseh’s persistent curiosity, so he agreed. They would ride to Piqua Town, and they would take the books, and they would talk to this Copper Hair.

T
ECUMSEH CAME AWAKE FEELING A HAND AROUND HIS
ankle, the way his family members always woke each other if there was something urgent. The first thing he was aware of was
that he was lying not in the family
wigewa,
but on the ground under bright stars. Then he remembered where he was: on the trace between Chillicothe and Piqua Town, with Chiksika. It was Chiksika’s hand on his ankle, and his voice, strained with anxiety, was saying:

“Come look, brother. Something is wrong.”

The tone and the words made Tecumseh’s heart quicken, and he scrambled up from his bed of leaves. “Come here,” Chiksika said. By starlight Tecumseh could see him going up toward the crest of the high meadow on whose edge they had made their little camp, and he followed him.

The elevated clearing gave them a wide view of the vast, starry sky and the horizons all the way around. Chiksika pointed toward the south. “The sun does not rise there.”

Above the southern horizon was a faint, reddish glow. In that direction lay Chillicothe. Chiksika and Tecumseh had left Chillicothe the day before for their journey to Piqua Town. They had traveled in a leisurely way, stopping here and there to study this beautiful land that lay between the Little Miami-se-pe and the Mad River, stopping again to hunt game for a meal, finally making an early camp halfway between the two towns and sitting up late by the campfire to talk about all matters that were on their minds, from Captain Byrd’s campaign to the strange things called books that Tecumseh had brought along. They could have gone all the way to Piqua in three hours but instead had enjoyed this lazy summer trip, a reminder of the old, peaceful days when Chiksika had spent much of his time teaching Tecumseh.

Tecumseh looked at the glow on the horizon, then put his hand on Chiksika’s hard arm and felt that it was quivering. Tecumseh said, “Do you think Chillicothe is on fire?”

“We had better go back.”

Their horses, hobbled, were a few yards away on the meadow. Tecumseh, tingling with alarm, hurried to get them while Chiksika ran down to gather their guns and bundles from the camp. In a few minutes they were riding back toward Chillicothe as fast as the darkness would allow, their minds full of dread and their hearts racing. They thought of Star Watcher and the three boys and of all the other people who were dear to them. They were less than a mile down the trace when Tecumseh said, “Listen!”

They reined in. Somewhere to the west, some horses were running fast, several horses, going toward Piqua.

“Should we follow them?” Tecumseh asked. “They could tell us what is wrong.”

Chiksika paused a moment, considering this, then said, “No. They would be to Piqua before we could catch up. And maybe they are not even our people. Come!” They urged their horses on toward Chillicothe. The stars were fading now as the eastern sky grayed. The sky was still red ahead of them.

Suddenly Chiksika raised his hand and hissed. He guided his horse toward a copse of trees left of the trace. As they rode into the cover, Tecumseh could hear from some distance down the trace the stirring sounds of many people moving: hooves, creaking sounds, low voices, now and then a shout. It sounded like a whole nation moving in the dark. It could be the Long Knife army; that was Tecumseh’s first thought. But then he heard the crying of an infant.

“It is the People!” Chiksika said, and they rode out.

Soon they heard Black Hoof’s deep voice, and when they were close enough to see him in the gloom, Chiksika rode alongside and Black Hoof grumbled the news.

“The Long Knife army comes. Ten hundred or more. But-lah shows them the way, and the Long Knife Clark commands.”

Chiksika made a snake hiss. “Them! They have burned the town?”

“We
burned the town.”

“We?”

“I said to burn the town, to hide everything, to abandon Chillicothe. We burned it to deny it to this Clark. Anything else was useless. But we leave them nothing.…” He paused, then added with a choked sound, “Nothing but the crops in the fields.” His voice sounded bitterly angry.

“There was time to do all this? How?”

“One of the Long Knives deserted, and came and warned us. Also, our friend Girty, he and his brothers saw the Long Knife army half a day away from Chillicothe and came with the warning in time. We had some hours to prepare. We put the town on fire in the middle of the night and came on. All of us. I hope I will never have to do that again. There is no more a Chillicothe, my son.” His face was terrible in the early half-light as they rode slowly on.

“But the families are all safe?” Chiksika looked back as he asked this and could see the long, dark line of homeless people coming along. Tecumseh watched them. He had not felt so forlorn for the People since the nation had split and his mother had gone away west with the others.

“They are all behind me,” Black Hoof said. “But how safe are
we? If this Clark chief does not stop at Chillicothe, we will have to stand and fight him at Piqua Town. In the log houses and the three-sided fort there, maybe we could make a stand. Some of the Wyandots and Delawares from Byrd might still be in Piqua, to reinforce us; I sent riders to find out. Even then their army is three times the number of our warriors. Listen, my son: If this Clark smashes Piqua Town, there is no hope. And I fear he will smash Piqua Town.”

“Why are you sure? Our people will fight like wildcats on our own land!”

“Because”—here Black Hoof lowered his voice—“this Clark chief brings a cannon.”

It was terrible to hear Black Hoof talk without hope. Black Hoof was over fifty summers in age. He was one of the greatest Shawnee war chiefs ever. When very young he had helped to wipe out Braddock’s British army and had been one of the most active fighters ever since. He was not one in whose voice anyone would ever expect to hear defeat.

B
Y AFTERNOON, SCOUTS CAME SAYING THAT
C
LARK’S ARMY
had burned and slashed all the corn and crops at Chillicothe and was coming on. Corn, beans, and squash, the three sacred sisters delegated by Our Grandmother to provide for the People. The warriors were outraged by this sacrilege and were clamoring to ambush Clark on the road from Chillicothe to Piqua. Because he was having to cut a road for his cannon part of the way, it was taking him a long time to come.

Chiksika was one of the fiery ones who spoke in favor of the ambush. He argued, “What good can his big rolling-gun do him when we are all around him and he cannot see us in the woods?” So a large band of warriors rode down to ambush him. When they first saw his army, it had already crossed the Little Miami and was halfway to the Mad River, which flowed by Piqua Town. And it soon became clear that Clark would be hard to ambush. All around his army he kept scouts and flankers, and some of the scouts had cur dogs.

Finally an ambush was laid in a good place. But before Clark’s army reached that place, a deluge of rain came and forced the army to stop, and Clark put it in a defensive square that could not be attacked. It was as if this Clark had even his God helping him.

At last Black Hoof knew that Clark could not be kept from reaching Piqua Town, so he counciled with the chieftains and
warriors on how to defend the town. The most urgent thing was the safety of the families. Like many of the Shawnee towns, Piqua had been planned with routes of escape. Black Hoof pointed to the high stone river bluff behind the town. A ravine through that bluff formed a protected passageway out of the valley onto the high ground to the northwest. “Have the women and children go out by that way and take all they can carry of food and seed and tools. If we fail to stop Clark here, then the warriors will escape by that way later. But I vow that none of us shall flee unless all else is lost.”

Black Hoof was realistic. He did not really believe that the Long Knives could be stopped. But he did not intend to let his people be trapped and massacred. He loved his people, and their preservation was his first concern.

T
ECUMSEH STILL HAD HIS BOOKS IN A PARFLECHE BAG ON HIS
pony, but now in this desperate turmoil of preparations for defense and flight, he gave the books no thought. He kept watching for the man named Copper Hair, but what he wanted to ask him if he saw him now was not about the books, but one question. At last, near the three-sided fort, Tecumseh heard his name called, and Copper Hair came trotting over to him, smiling. Tecumseh, his blood hot, asked him the question.