Panther in the Sky (79 page)

A large group of men with their families, bringing their belongings on travois poles pulled by horses and dogs, came into view one day, and when they rode smiling into Prophet’s Town they were recognized as the Kickapoos from the Vermillion and Sangamon river towns of Illinois. They were yearning for the favor of the Great Good Spirit. They were troubled by the closeness of the new white settlements. They had been eager all winter to pack up and come.

After them came a messenger from Shabbona, the Charcoal Burner, a subchief of the Sauk Chief Black Hawk, saying that he would come soon with many of his people.

“Black Hawk is a great one,” Tecumseh said with delight, “and Charcoal Burner is no less. How pleased I will be to have them live here!”

Another large body of families soon came into sight on the prairie and proved to be all the Potawatomies of Withered Hand, with their giant one-handed chief riding at their head. He had not had nearly so many people on his first visit. But scores had turned their backs on Winnemac and Five Medals after the treaty and had come with Withered Hand.

What Tecumseh had predicted was happening.

B
Y NOW EVEN
B
LACK
H
OOF’S EYES MIGHT HAVE BEEN
opened to the white man’s treachery, Tecumseh believed, so in the Raspberry Moon he rode to the Auglaize.

Wapakoneta now looked much like a white man’s town, cabins and a mill surrounded by corn fields planted in rows instead of hills, pigs running everywhere, milk cows grazing within fenced fields.

Tecumseh asked for a council. Black Hoof and a few of his old men would not come, but most of the warriors had been shaken
out of their lethargy by news of the Fort Wayne treaty, and they came. Black Hoof sent Stephen Ruddell to attend as an observer and as a calming influence. Also present in the edge of the crowd was Johnston, the new Indian agent from Fort Wayne.

A little council fire burned in the semicircle where Tecumseh spoke. He poured out his heart and mind to the Shawnee warriors. Never had he spoken so well. He was talking to his own people, in his own tongue, without the need to pause for a translator. Interpreters usually were unable to convey the stunning figurative language or the logic that marched forth from him, but on this audience nothing was lost. When he told them how they were being changed from a proud, free people into slaves of credit and livestock, they knew he was right, and they were pained and angry. It hurt to hear stated outright what had been eating their hearts for so long. When he invited them to leave this unnatural condition and become free men, warriors and hunters as Weshemoneto had meant them to be, the longing shone in their eyes, and for the moment, even in their drab and muddy farmers’ garb, they looked like Shawnees again.

“All the American promises are two-tongued,” he told them. “The white men drove you to this place and told you to live here. When Black Hoof went to Washington and asked for a title to this place, did the government give him a title? No! They put him off, because they want no red man to have a written title to anyplace! If he had a title, it would be harder to chase him off. They have never given a red man a title to any piece of land—even his own!—because they do not mean to let him stay anywhere! Is this not plain to you now? When white men make a treaty, it gives them title, and tells them where they can stay, but for the red man it only says where he can
not
stay! How long do you think you will be here before they want this place and write a treaty to put you out?

“Come, my brothers! Move your families to the Prophet’s town on the Wabash-se-pe at Tippecanoe. There is a land from which the red man will never let himself be moved. There live a thousand warriors now with their families, and more come every day, from all nations, and there they live in harmony with each other, favored by the Master of Life, sworn to allow no white government to push them back any farther.

“The white people there are afraid. Because they see that we are strong and free, the white people stay at a distance. They are afraid we are preparing to attack Vincennes. The governor calls together his militia and sends to Washington for Blue-Coats. He
blames the British. He blames everyone but the guilty one: himself! Now we tell this governor only the truth, which he will not believe: that we are not planning to make war, but that we prepare ourselves to stand together against him if he tries to take more of our country. Is our town a war camp? No. It is a home of free people. But if a people mean to stay free, they must be strong and ready. It is not true that we plan to attack Vincennes. We mean only to keep a place where we can stand, and burn our fires, to live as we were created to live. Brothers! Do not stoop at the plow like white farmers! Do not eat the flesh of filthy hogs! You are red men! You are greater than hog eaters!”

When Tecumseh had finished, the Shawnee men clearly were stirred. Their voices were an excited buzz in the council ground. And, seeing this, Stephen Ruddell came forward to speak, to try to warn them of the trouble they would be in if they went to the Wabash with Tecumseh. Ruddell had never thought he would be opposing his old friend, but it was apparent to him that Tecumseh was trying to lead them away from the path preferred by the one true God.

Ruddell stood before them now and drew from his pocket a piece of paper. They all knew what it was. Black Hoof had had him read it to them many times. Ruddell cried:

“My children! Give me your best attention! You see what I hold here. Warrior Tecumseh tells you that Governor Harrison is not your friend. But you know the kind words Harrison wrote in this letter to Black Hoof. You remember how he praised him, and you, for your peacefulness, for your industry, and for shutting your ears to the bad birds of the British! You remember his good words. Brother,” he said, turning to Tecumseh, “you need to read this letter, too, to hear how kind Governor Harrison is, how he loves the red—”

As Tecumseh, eyes flashing, snatched the paper out of his hand, Reverend Ruddell remembered with pride that it was he who had taught Tecumseh how to read.

But Tecumseh did not read it. He did not even look at it. He flipped it contemptuously onto the fire. All watched in silence as it flared up. Ruddell stood blinking, astounded.

“Listen!” Tecumseh cried, pointing at the ashes. “If Governor Harrison were here, I would serve him in the same way!” And then, with a scornful glance at Stephen Ruddell, who had once been his good friend Big Fish, Tecumseh turned and walked away.

And when he was ready to return to the Tippecanoe, many of Black Hoof’s young warriors were ready to go with him.

O
PEN
D
OOR WAS CALLED FROM HIS MEDICINE LODGE ON A
hot, dry day by an excited runner. The Wyandots were coming!

Although he was already swollen with pride and confidence about the thousand warriors in his town, the Prophet was thrilled by this message, and he hurried out to greet them.

Roundhead was at the head of their column, which was so long and wide that it made a dust cloud on the dry prairie road. Roundhead was one of Open Door’s favorite disciples; he had already proven himself as a witch-hunter, and he was a respected war chief, too, one of Tecumseh’s best aides. He held high in one hand a long spear decorated with a fan of hawk feathers, and in his other hand he held up the Great War Belt.

Open Door’s chest heaved at the sight of the Great Belt. It had been the symbol of Indian unity in the old days of the defense of O-hi-o. Now these Wyandots had brought it with them, which meant that they were here as their nation, not as a dissident fragment of their nation! The Wyandots were venerated by the western tribes for their strength and wisdom, being called uncles by all the tribes, and it was to them that the Great Belt had been given for safekeeping after Wayne’s conquest of O-hi-o. The arrival of the Wyandots nearly doubled the size of the warrior contingent, and the Great War Belt carried enough medicine to equal still another thousand. Roundhead dismounted and handed the Great Belt to Open Door, and the people cheered.

They called a council. Here Roundhead explained why the Wyandots had come.

“For a long time,” he said, “under the power of the Crane and old Leatherlips, the Wyandots stood apart from the Prophet’s movement. Only I and a few others believed. But the rest of my people finally saw that the whites were ignoring their own boundaries from the Greenville Treaty and creeping ever deeper into our tribal lands. Then last year many were shaken out of their sleep by the Fort Wayne Treaty. Then early this year, Harrison made threats that all Indians had better behave, and this angered us. And, finally, this spring, the disciples of your prophet came with this challenge: ‘How can the mighty Wyandots, keepers of the Great War Belt, sit idle on that great token while the white men keep stealing land from all the red men?’ All this at once cleared our heads. Now these of us have denounced the Crane and Leatherlips, and mounted up to ride here.”

Furthermore, he recounted, as his procession had moved past the Mississinewa with the Great Belt, they had paused for a conference among the Miamis there and had shamed Little Turtle for allying with the whites against his own race. At this, still more Miami warriors had spurned Little Turtle and left him and were now following the Wyandots to this place!

Open Door stood beaming and praised Roundhead for all this. He reminded the whole council of the prediction that Tecumseh had made last year after the Fort Wayne treaty: that the old traitorous chiefs would lose their hold upon the warriors, that hundreds would see the truth and come swarming to Prophet’s Town. “And now!” Open Door cried. “See us! We swarm like an anthill, just as he said! We have been favored at last with good crops! We have new hunting guns and provisions from the British, who help us because they believe our cause is right! The Great Good Spirit favors our People!”

S
TAR
W
ATCHER WAS WORRIED BECAUSE THERE WAS HARDLY
any salt. With the fall hunts beginning, there was not enough salt in Prophet’s Town to preserve meat for winter.

Of course, she thought, with so many people here, the meat might not last long enough to need to be preserved. Nevertheless, salt had become precious since the arrival of the white men in Kain-tuck-ee and O-hi-o; they had not only killed off the game and cut down the woods, they had also taken over the salt licks. They had barred the red men from those places where, since the Beginning, they had made the salt they needed. There were few salt licks in what remained of the Land of the Indians. So now if the Indians wanted salt, they had to buy it from the white traders, whose price was high. But some of the tribes whose leaders had signed land treaties now got part of their annuity payments in salt. Because the Shawnee leaders Tecumseh and Open Door had signed no treaties, salt was always scarce in their village.

One day while Tecumseh was still away in Ohio, a large
voyageur
canoe came up the river from Vincennes, its crew made up of French paddlers. They stopped on the shore and said they had some barrels of annuity salt on board that were for the Kickapoos, due them under the terms of the treaty their old chiefs had signed before the Kickapoos had moved here. The Kickapoos refused to accept it. To take it would imply that they supported the treaty, which they did not. The Frenchmen in the canoe, however, had been told to leave it here. They had more salt for other bands up the Wabash and did not want to paddle all this Kickapoo
salt upstream just to take it back down to Vincennes. Open Door was called down to the riverbank to deal with the problem. The salt was very valuable. But what would Tecumseh say if it were accepted? Open Door had a head full of big matters and small details already, being the spiritual leader of a town of hundreds and hundreds of people, and he did not know what t
o
decide. Finally he told the Frenchmen to leave it on the bank. If it was still there when they came back down the river, they could load it and take it back to Vincennes. “No one will touch it,” he said. “My people do not steal.” He would let Tecumseh and the Kickapoos decide the matter when his brother returned. After all, it was not a spiritual concern.

So the Frenchmen shrugged, left the salt barrels on the riverbank, and resumed their journey against the current.

The women, desperate for salt, looked at the barrels every day, but none took any, which made Star Watcher proud of them.

When Tecumseh returned from the Auglaize with his new Shawnee followers and found Roundhead there with his huge party of Wyandots and the Great Belt, there was much celebrating and talking to be done.

Then one day the big canoe returned down the river and slid to the bank. The crew had delivered salt annuities to Miamis and Delawares upstream and were back, and they were surprised to see the salt barrels still there, untouched. Indians gathered on the bank, and soon there was a hubbub.

Tecumseh emerged from the crowd, saw the salt and the white men, and looked angry. Open Door explained what had happened.

To Tecumseh, the salt annuity was one of the American government’s great insults to the red man. It symbolized the hated dependency into which the Indians had been forced, as well as the theft of the salt that Weshemoneto had given the People.

He strode down the riverbank toward the head boatman, who was an arrogant-looking, deep-chested, black-bearded man wearing a scarlet
voyageur’s
cap, its floppy crown hanging jauntily down over his left ear.

Tecumseh stopped in front of the startled man, snatched off his red hat, and threw it in the river. As the man opened his mouth to bellow a protest, Tecumseh grabbed his thick hair above his ears with both fists.

“Are you an American dog?” he yelled into the man’s grimacing face. Then with all the force of his sinewy arms, he shook the man by his hair until he was screaming for mercy through
his clashing teeth. When Tecumseh released him, the man was cross-eyed and staggering to stay on his feet. Tecumseh turned to the others, who cringed and backed away. He pointed at the kegs and the canoe. “Take it back to Harrison. Tell him Tecumseh says we will have nothing from him.”