Panther in the Sky (67 page)

Tecumseh, who had been absorbed in his brother’s declarations, suddenly felt eyes upon him. He turned his head and saw, among the hundreds staring at Open Door, one pair of eyes again turned his way. Star Watcher’s eyes met his. They stared at each other across the crowd, their faces full of questions.

They, above all others in the nation, knew the strange powers of their brother’s mind, and each could see that the other was impressed by the cunning in those last words.

G
OVERNOR
W
ILLIAM
H
ENRY
H
ARRISON PUT HIS HANDS ON
the edge of the table and rose, leaving most of his breakfast on his plate. “Please excuse me, my dear. I must finish a letter. The messenger is waiting.”

Anna’s morning smile faded. She pointed with her pert little nose at his plate. “You’ve eaten hardly a thing!” She was annoyed. He never had time to sit through a breakfast with her. He was always in his office, meeting with Indian agents or Indian chiefs, or with traders or politicians, or with Mr. Stout, editor of the
Indiana Gazette.
Or, if he was alone, he was always writing, writing, writing his countless and interminable letters. In the eleven years of their marriage, she estimated, he must have written as many words as there were in the Bible. It was hard for her to understand why a man who was always succeeding at everything he undertook should waste so much time and ink
explaining.
She had always thought that unsuccessful men were the ones who needed to explain. He wrote long letters explaining his doings even where no explanations were asked for and often would send the same explanations to various government officials who could not possibly have any interest in them whatever.

In these last few months, she knew, he had been fretting terribly over some so-called Shawnee prophet and his mumby-jumby, which, in her secret opinion, was not even any of his business, being outside the Indiana Territory, back in Ohio. He was so preoccupied with it that he lost sleep as well as his appetite.

Anna Symmes Harrison sighed and excused him. She would just have to stroll in the garden alone. Again. He had built this handsome mansion and estate, called Grouseland, the most impressive place north of Louisville, but never allowed himself time to enjoy it. The only time he used the lawn and veranda was when he held councils out there with Indian chiefs. He would drop everything to spend a few hours with any bushloper or trader or missionary or half-breed who could confirm his fears with more distressing tales of that faraway Shawnee prophet and his cult.
And he was always muttering that the British must be behind it. British indeed!

She almost snorted into her teacup at the silliness of her husband’s concern. After all, the whole frontier was in the throes of revivalism, wild, trembling, screaming revivalism, with shrill-voiced evangelists whipping hundreds at a time into a frenzy; why shouldn’t the poor savages do the same? But of course she never expressed these opinions to him.

Governor Harrison shut his office door, sat down at his desk, and pulled out from a pigeonhole a rolled sheet upon which he had begun writing before dawn. He had been thinking about writing such a letter for a long time, but this latest horrible news had made it an urgent necessity. The influence of the Shawnee named Tenskwatawa had grown to alarming proportions in just a year, but now, with the news of the burning of witches, it was time to undermine that charlatan before he became too great a danger.

For months the rumors and reports of strange happenings had been trickling in. Along every Indian trace there were hundreds of warriors, women, and children traveling. And as all roads once had led to Rome, they all seemed now to lead to the Shawnee prophet’s new village near Greenville in Ohio. There, near the ruins of the fort where Harrison had assisted in Wayne’s great treaty, this mysterious Shawnee had built a town of some fifty or sixty cabins, many
wigewas,
and an enormous meetinghouse reported to be 150 feet long. The man called Tenskwatawa had proclaimed himself successor to the old shaman of the Shawnees. Moravian missionaries among the Delawares in eastern Indiana last summer had reported that their large congregations of hard-won Christian converts had suddenly shrunk to a handful. A few months later, large numbers of Ottawas, Wyandots, and Senecas had been seen on the trails, despite the harsh weather of early winter, and Harrison’s informants had told him that these people were going to hear the Shawnee preach. Traders along the way had reported the surprising news that they could not sell their liquor to very many members of those tribes anymore. Indeed, their sales of many items—ammunition, clothes, and tools—had mysteriously declined.

Then, two months ago, according to Governor Tiffin of Ohio, three Ohio militia officers had discovered a large council in progress on the headwaters of the Great Miami River and had been turned away when they went to investigate it. The Shawnees there had shaken hands with them in a very cool manner—and with their left hands only. Eventually Governor Tiffin had been assured
that the gathering was only a ceremony of worship, but the officers had remained suspicious because of the many painted feathers being displayed and a war post visible in the camp.

These distant activities, even though in another governor’s domain, had haunted Harrison’s sleep, for he did not like any secretive Indian activity that might somehow hinder his grand progression of land acquisitions.

But only now had he been shocked into action, by some very chilling news: a witch-hunt among the Delawares.

The details of it were so grisly that he had not even mentioned them to Anna. A group of Delaware warriors, who were disciples of this mysterious Shawnee prophet, had rounded up and confined a dozen Christian Delawares and old people in the town of Wah-pi-kah-me-kunk, charging them with being witches, then had summoned the Prophet himself to come from his town and judge them. After looking each in the face and allegedly seeing into his heart, he had named three as true witches.

The first was a Christian convert called Ann Charity, a favorite of the Moravian missionaries because she was, in every respect but the color of her skin, like a clean, devout, industrious old white woman. The witch-hunters had tied her to a pole over a bonfire, burning her feet and legs for four days until she had screamed her confession. Then they had lowered her into the blaze and burned her to death.

Next condemned had been Twisting Vines. This aged Delaware chief had been a leader in the treaty ceremonies with General Wayne at Greenville and in the decade since had been a model government Indian. Twisting Vines had been a Christian convert, though lately he had drifted away from it. Accused and tortured, the chief had confessed to poisoning people’s minds. Then he was tomahawked and burned while the missionaries were forced to watch.

The third condemned one had been a Christianized Mohawk called Joshua, whom Twisting Vines had implicated during his own
confession.
Joshua had been the missionaries’ carpenter and organist. The Moravians had pleaded desperately that this beloved and useful man be spared, but of course their pleas had only strengthened the witch-hunters’ suspicions, and Joshua had been sentenced to burn at the stake. The witch-hunts, according to reports Harrison received, continued to this day in the Delaware towns, though the Shawnee prophet had returned to his own village. Even in his horror, Harrison could perceive quite clearly what these three victims had had in common: they all had been
special favorites of the whites. In this lay the true basis for Governor Harrison’s alarm. And so he was writing a letter to the chiefs of the Delawares.

There, he thought, reading back over it, more than just a little pleased with his composition. It was straightforward, impassioned,
and adorned with the figurative language the red men so loved, but not too much of it. He read it through still another time, so pleased by it that he forgot it was an urgent message of life and death and that a messenger was waiting to take it to the Delawares. Then he took a deep breath, shook his head once, and signed it.

Your friend and adviser,
William Henry Harrison
Governor—Indiana Territory

Then he summoned the messenger.

T
ECUMSEH AND
G
ALLOWAY SAT ON CHAIRS NEAR THE
shelves of books after supper to smoke a pipe and talk. Galloway’s sons sat nearby, listening, while his wife and daughter scoured pots at the fireplace in the other end of the room.

Tecumseh had not meant to stop here. Much was happening now in the world of his own race, so much that he and Open Door were always on the move, and the brothers were so absorbed in matters of the deepest importance to all red men that he felt almost guilty about veering down to visit this white family again, to step across into the white man’s world he so deplored. But now he was at ease in the family again, being treated as an old close friend, as he had been each time he had come in the past years, and he was glad he had come. It was good to look at the site of Chillicothe and believe that through his efforts it might someday become the Shawnee capital again. And this was like a refuge from the tension of responsibility, from the strain and work of their sacred mission.

Open Door had had several more visions since his first one a year ago, and his religion had grown more elaborate; more rules and commandments had been given him, and he had developed new rituals and ceremonies and dances, while revising many of the old ones.

His religion had caught like a dry-grass fire, spreading among people who had been desperate for hope and pride. Doubters had been swept away by the fervor. The new village at Greenville now had more than seven hundred permanent residents, and there were always hundreds of visitors who had made their pilgrimage from distant tribes. By now four or five thousand had come, listened, then carried the word back to their homes. Always the drums beat, and there was singing and dancing. Mass prayer
meetings morning and night filled the People’s hearts with joy and unspeakable understanding.

But for the chief and shaman of such a town there was not a moment’s rest, ever. To feed the inhabitants, and the great numbers of pilgrims who always arrived hungry and exhausted by their hasty travel, was a great task.

And then there were matters that, by the very nature of the movement, required the greatest sort of tact and wisdom. With the people came their chiefs, who were often jealous of the importance being assumed by the Prophet and Tecumseh. These chiefs had to be persuaded, convinced, sometimes flattered—especially when they began to realize that this movement was not simply religious in nature. Tecumseh had to determine just how much information he could entrust with any chief at any time. Some of the chiefs were hungry for the spiritual guidance but were treaty-bound to the Americans. Tecumseh and his brother had conferred secretly with each other for hours on end about their signs and what the whole aim of Weshemoneto really was. Open Door himself had had to be persuaded that his own great transformation, his sudden prominence, his miracle, was only a part of the movement. He found it hard to stay humble.

“The Great Good Spirit wants to make the red men all one, so they will all agree not to give up their lands anymore,” Tecumseh would explain to him. “He has put you here to make all the red men one in heart, to turn them back to the old pure ways in which they did not need the white men. When they are all this way, then they can unite their minds also, and learn how to stop the white man and put him back where he came from. Weshemoneto has chosen us, my brother, to do this together. Each of us has a part to do that he does better. But,” he had added as an important caution, “until we are united, no one must know what the end of it is to be. Jealous men would set us against each other or betray us to the whites. The whites would grow scared and try to scatter us before we were strong enough. Therefore, my brother, we must stay at peace with the white men until our strength is complete. Maybe we will have to bear their insults sometimes. Maybe we will even have to profess brotherhood with them for a while, so they will leave us alone. This we can do if we must. We owe them a hundred hundred deceits.”