Panther in the Sky (63 page)

The fire on the end of the twig burned bright over the pipe bowl. It grew brighter. It grew blindingly bright like the sun.

Then a terrific roaring scream exploded in his head.

Loud Noise’s wife heard him grunt. She looked up at him.

His eye had rolled back till only the white showed. The pipe and burning twig fell from his hands. A great sucking noise sounded from his throat.

And slowly he toppled to his side and lay curled up like a stillborn.

T
HICK
W
ATER WITH A RACING HEART WATCHED
T
ECUMSEH
begin to weave his spell again through the semicircle of warriors and chiefs seated before him in the Delaware council house. Thick Water had traveled to villages throughout the Middle Ground with Tecumseh in the last three years and had heard him say these truths over and over, and they seemed more powerful each time.

“The white man’s trap closes upon us!” Tecumseh cried. “Already you know that the white men’s chief Jefferson has bought from the French father those sunset lands that lie beyond the Missi-se-pe to the Shining Mountains. Already you have seen two Long Knife captains lead soldiers out into those lands. Do you believe just because they go far away that their going will not bother us? Listen! I will tell you what they are doing!” Tecumseh stretched his arm to point to the west. His listeners were taut with attention. He had been talking to them for an hour, and his voice was like thunder, his reason like lightning.

From the constant and bewildering movements of the white men, only Tecumseh seemed able to deduce just what they were really doing at any time, and why, and Thick Water was convinced
that this was the truth and that it was the most important truth the red men could learn.

Tecumseh went on:

“I have traveled far. I have talked with the Sioux, and their neighbors who live beyond the Great River, who were called to council with those two captains. They told me what those captains said to them. Those captains told them that American traders would soon follow them up the Missouri-se-pe, bringing them goods that will make them happier and make their days easier, and that the Sioux should trade with them, not with the British traders. Those captains put their flag up on a pole and said the Sioux must now live under it. They said that if they would be good red children of the white father Jefferson, and would be friendly to the whites who followed, then the white father would smile on them and send them many desirable things. In council they gave the chiefs a taste of whiskey. Maybe that is one of the ‘desirable things’ the white men will take to the Sioux. Ha!

“But they said if the Sioux would
not
give their hand to the white men, the white father Jefferson would send into their country more white soldiers than they could count, to make them behave!”

Tecumseh paused and looked in the faces of his listeners and saw many of them clench their jaws, saw their eyelids harden. They had heard just such warnings themselves in the past, and the white armies had come, and come again, and again. It was the familiar story, and now it was happening to People far in the west, the Sioux and others beyond the Sioux. The Sioux were not especially liked by the Indians in this council lodge, for they were arrogant and pushy and perhaps deserved to be pushed themselves. But it was not good to hear of this being done to any red men, even remote and alien nations like the Sioux, if it was the white men doing it.

“Now hear what I say,” Tecumseh went on. “I have learned the names of those captains. One is named Clark.” He paused, and they murmured that familiar name. “Yes. ‘Clark.’ Is that name an echo in your ears? This Captain Clark is a young brother of the great old enemy General Clark. I tell you this is so!

“Do you remember what happened to us after General Clark appeared in our country? Were we not scattered and driven out of our homelands? Did we not lose everything when the old Clark came into our country? Remember. Remember!

“And now if this young Clark does the same to all the land in the west, where will we withdraw ourselves when they grow
too thick here? I remind you that we are surrounded by white men, and they tighten their trap around us even now. There is no place to go, except Canada. And the Long Knives covet Canada, too.

“And do you think the Long Knife government means to let us keep these lands we now inhabit, between O-hi-o, which we have lost, and the Wabash-se-pe, which we are losing? Oh, we sit here now, yes. But in the west, we no longer have a path to the Missi-se-pe. In the south, we have only a narrow path to the O-hi-o-se-pe. And in the east, white men have been coming across the lines of Wayne’s treaty for all the ten years since that treaty was made, and they kill much game in our lands, so that our women and children are hungry. They bring whiskey across the line and sell it. And they have murdered many of our people, and the treaty forbids us to punish them for those murders. Do you remember the murder of our brother Waw-wil-a-weh, who was killed even though he had embraced the white man’s ways? And so many others? The white men say there has been peace ever since Wayne’s treaty, because we are forbidden to kill white men. But they shoot our hunters as if we were the hunted!

“Listen! I warn you of something very close to us:

“Here where we now live, the whites now call this the Indiana Territory. This word means ‘Land of the Indians.’ But what is a territory? Just before they drove the Shawnees from O-hi-o, they named O-hi-o a territory, and put a governor over it. St. Clair. You remember St. Clair. And thus two years ago O-hi-o was changed from a territory to what they call a state. It is now the Seventeenth Fire of their nation. Even a young man remembers when that nation was the
Thirteen
Fires!

“Now, my brothers, heed this: This Indiana Territory where we live,
it
now has a governor. Yes! The white chief Jefferson has put a governor in Vincennes, in the heart of ‘the Land of the Indians,’ a governor who can decide on land treaties. Does this not warn you of what the white chief intends? If they truly believed it is the ‘Land of the Indians,’ why would they put a white governor here?”

Now his voice took on an edge that made their scalps prickle:

“Beware of this governor! I have seen him in dreams, long before I saw him riding beside General Wayne on the battlefield, learning from old Wayne how to invade lands! That day Weshemoneto pointed to him and told me this will be our greatest enemy, worse for us than the old Clark or Wayne! Listen:

“In only two years, this governor has stolen from the red man by treaties more land than Wayne took from us by war!

“Listen! Two years ago I could ride three days south from here and six days west from here, on our lands. Now I can ride only one day south and three days west. Do you remember as I do? Two years ago at Fort Wayne this governor made a treaty with foolish chiefs, which gave him land reaching two days’ travel all around Vincennes. Two moons later at Vincennes he made another treaty, which took from us ten times that much more land, from the Illinois-se-pe south to the Beautiful River. Last year he took all the land south of the great Bison Trace as far west as the Wabash-se-pe, and then all the land between the Illinois-se-pe and the Great River! Think of this! And at this moment he calls
more
chiefs to him at Vincennes, for
more
such treaties! Before this year ends, old fools living on annuity dollars may give him the land upon which you are now seated!

“Unless! Unless we all join our hands and tell him with one voice: ‘No! Red men will not move back anymore, will never sign another treaty! The Great Good Spirit put
us
here!’ We must show this governor we all have the same heart, that no red man will ever sell another handful of ground to him, ever! We must make our old chiefs see they are killing their own people with their treaty marks, and that if they mark again, we will kill
them!

“Brothers, I say: Beware this governor who sits beside the Wabash-se-pe at Vincennes. Refuse him anything he asks! Take nothing he offers! Do not provoke him, for that would give him an excuse to strike us. But refuse him! Any red man who takes that governor by the hand and marks another treaty is a traitor to all our race, and ought to be put to death for killing our life!

“Go warn your old chiefs that they had better not go when he calls them! Warn them that we are tired of feeling the trap tighten on us! Beware of this governor, whose name is
Harrison!”

Their response swept through the council house as one great, breathy voice. And Thick Water was more moved than any of them.

A
S HE RODE HOME UP THE RIVER WITH HIS LITTLE GROUP OF
chieftains and bodyguards, Tecumseh knew he had as usual stirred his listeners deeply and had given them a look at the truth that they had never seen very clearly before, and that it was a truth that would not easily go to sleep in their minds. Hundreds throughout this territory had heard his warnings and his explanations
of what was happening, and they discussed them in their own councils after he left. He carried in his soul the sound of their cries of affirmation, the sight of their glittering eyes.

And yet this seemed a task that would never be finished. There were still important chiefs who resisted Tecumseh’s words and undermined his warnings. Many of those who had signed the Treaty of Greenville thought Tecumseh was a dangerous upstart. They feared he would bring the Long Knives’ might down upon them again. Black Hoof was against him—his own elder chief, the true chief of the Shawnees. If his own chief was against him, how could other tribes follow him? Black Hoof, Little Turtle, and Tarhe of the Wyandots were three of the greatest chiefs the Algonquian nations had ever had, and in their age and wisdom they had chosen to take the white man’s path. They honored the treaty despite the white man’s violations of it, and they lived on the annuity the white man’s government gave them. They had grown to need the white man’s tools and goods and were bogged down in the white man’s credit, as in quicksand. They had to agree with what the white chiefs wanted. They were not themselves anymore. It was too late for them to go back to the old ways and to walk the old warpaths again. They had been tamed and put in invisible harness. And so these old, tamed men feared Tecumseh, because he was not tamed. He was a great warrior with a mighty voice, who somehow understood what the white men were doing and how they did it, who excited the young men and made them proud and defiant, and who traveled tirelessly to towns everywhere with his message of resistance. But being a Kispoko, he could never rightfully be the chief of all the Shawnees. And if he was not the true chief of his own tribe, how could he imagine himself the chief of all the Indians? Who had ever even heard of a chief of all the Indians? The Indians were not all one people. Why did he keep talking to them as if they were?

Tecumseh knew that was how people felt, and that was why it was an endless task. Even when he swayed some leaders, others would weaken and fall away from him, some through fear of the white government, some simply because they decided he was assuming too much power. Or his old allies would die. Breaker-in-Pieces, war chief of the nearby Delawares, had seemed to believe in Tecumseh’s cause, but he had died last year of a white man’s sickness, and the Delaware king Twisting Vines was the old man who had exchanged wampum belts with Wayne at the Greenville Treaty: he certainly was not for Tecumseh. And there were some tribal chiefs who would not stand beside Tecumseh simply because
others did. This jealousy between tribes was the oldest and firmest obstacle to his dream. Each tribe thought of itself as the People and set itself above the others. And while some might make temporary alliances in the face of a common crisis, such as Pontiac’s and Little Turtle’s and Chief Brant’s confederations, it was beyond their minds to envision themselves as one red People.

But, Tecumseh knew, somehow they would
have
to. Only if they would unite as a single council of all the red men would they become a force so powerful that the white chief Jefferson and all his ministers and agents and generals would be unable to play tribe against tribe or make land treaties with this old chief or that old chief. If all the red men were of one heart, the white man’s government then would have to council with a body as strong as itself. In the face of such strength, the white men would have to stop where the red men told them to stop.

It was a magnificent notion, this of Tecumseh’s; it had grown out of a lifetime of signs and hard thinking, and he had planted the seed of it in the minds of many red leaders and warriors. He had traveled to more towns and spoken to more councils than any other Indian had been known to do. He knew it would be a task of years. He was ready to spend his life at it. He knew it was what the Great Good Spirit had assigned to him. But sometimes his heart would grow heavy, and he would think, I do not have a lifetime to do it in! Unless this Harrison is stopped, the rest of our lands might be gone from us by the next season! Oh, my poor, many-headed People! You are like that tribe of Moses that Big Fish spoke of: enemies to yourselves! Will you never allow yourselves to be saved? Is there no way to bind your many hearts into one unbreakable bundle?

And that was what he was thinking now as he rode in the dusk past the ancient mounds of a once great Indian nation, returning to his little town, when a youth came running down the river path crying for him.

“Pe-eh-wah! Pe-eh-wah!
Hurry! Your brother dies!”

L
OUD
N
OISE’S WIFE AND CHILDREN WERE CRYING
. H
E WAS
on his back beside the fire. The people were already talking about the arrangements for burial and mourning. When Tecumseh entered his brother’s crowded lodge, he could only wonder if he had killed himself by drinking, but he did not say this, with the wife and people there. No doubt they were already thinking it themselves.

He knelt beside the pudgy body. There seemed to be no breathing. Here lay this dissipated lump of flesh which, though such a strange and wretched nothingness of a person, was his last blood brother, from the same womb. There would be those who thought he was better off now. Yet Tecumseh was dismayed as well as aggrieved. His signs had seemed to say that Loud Noise would have a part in the events to come. This went against the signs!