Panther in the Sky (84 page)

“Listen to me, my children. I am going to tell you why the Miamis had a right to sell us their land. When the white people came to America, the Miamis lived in all the country of the Wabash. At that time the Shawnees lived in Florida and Georgia. Since then they moved from place to place, and only lately did they come near the Wabash. The Shawnees never lived in this part of the continent.…”

Tecumseh stiffened. Either Harrison was lying to advance his coming argument, or he simply did not know. The ancestors of the Shawnees had lived in this O-hi-o watershed, building mounds and living in walled towns long ago, long before being forced to the south. In fact, there was hardly any place east of
the Great River where the Shawnees had
not
lived. The old fathers and the Singers knew every detail of the Shawnees’ history, back to the Beginning, and Tecumseh had learned it from them. Harrison was ignorant or lying deliberately, and he continued:

“The Miamis have been here since before the memory of man. And now recently they thought they should sell some of their land to increase their annuity, which has long been of the greatest benefit to them, and which has always been paid promptly to them by the United States, in honor of its promises. So I say, this has
always
been the land of the Miamis, to do with as they saw fit. And the Shawnees have no justification to come from a distant country and try to control the Miamis in the use or disposal of their lands.…”

Tecumseh had been too angry for too many years, and now, hearing Harrison throw this accusation at the Shawnees, he lost his self-control. As if his blood had boiled over into his head, he sprang to his feet, his face a snarling grimace, pointed his finger into Harrison’s face, and cried in Shawnee:

“Oh, this man is a
liar!
What he says is false, and an insult! It is not the
Shawnee
who tries to keep this land, it is the
race of red men!
Hear him even now try to divide us up! He is a
liar!”

At Tecumseh’s first move and outcry, the council had been thrown into fearful confusion. Two men who understood his Shawnee words, Secretary Gibson and Winnemac, drew pistols, Gibson from his belt, Winnemac from under his cloak where he had been holding it concealed. Gibson shouted for a lieutenant to bring up the honor guard, and twelve soldiers came running with their pistols. Captain Floyd drew a dirk, and Harrison himself unsheathed his sword. At this move, Tecumseh snatched out his tomahawk and raised it, and his warriors leaped to their feet, whipping out their tomahawks and knives. They formed a defensive circle and stood fiery-eyed, ready to defend him, to do whatever he called upon them to do.

“He called you a liar,” Gibson told the governor.

Harrison scarcely heard him over the slamming of his heart. The alarm had spread beyond the council ground, and the bellowing of sergeants and the tramp of running feet could be heard all around. Some of the men in the crowd were drawing pistols and daggers and unsheathing sword canes, others rushed to the governor’s kitchen house woodpile to grab billets of wood, and some caught swooning ladies in their arms.

For a minute that seemed to be forever, the Shawnee chief and the governor stood poised with their steel to strike each other,
their eyes locked, glittering with hatred. An awesome, tense, wordless stillness rang in their ears. Tecumseh’s arm, thick with tense muscle and sinew, banded with silver, held his polished, silver-mounted tomahawk high. Harrison had never in his life felt death so close, seen so vividly this much swift power coiled to strike directly at him. His heart was hammering, and his face was pale, but he would be damned if he would show fear before this insolent savage.

Tecumseh heard Seekabo whisper behind him to the others:
“Weshecat-too-weh,
be strong. I will take Winnemac myself.” And the Potawatomi, who had not dared to stir from the grass where he lay; cocked his pistol, a ghastly sound in the stillness.

Harrison had to do something. This deadly situation had erupted in his own backyard. Though there was no doubt that Tecumseh and his few warriors could be killed by the hundreds of soldiers in the town, it was plain that much white men’s blood would be spilled, probably including his own, before they were dead. And then there were many more warriors outside of town, who might rush in if they heard gunfire.

So, slowly, in order not to set off Tecumseh’s arm, which was cocked like a hair-triggered flintlock, Harrison took a deep breath, made his facial muscles relax, and lowered his sword. He slipped it into its scabbard with a metallic sliding sound, stepped back a pace, stood straight, and raised a calming hand toward Gibson, toward the guards and officers. Then, still not taking his eyes off Tecumseh’s, he swallowed and said:

“I see no reason for this to go on. Gentlemen, this council is adjourned. Let’s all retire peaceably.”

Finally, when he saw Tecumseh lower that terrible tomahawk and heard him breathe some words to his warriors, only then did Harrison dare to move, to step out of that dreadful radius. Once out of it, he walked quickly toward his house, face and ears aflame, and the guests and dignitaries followed him, leaving the warriors in their little circle, the vacant chairs by the table, the soldiers standing awkwardly nearby. Some sheets of paper were lifted from the tabletop by a breeze and floated to the ground. Winnemac had slithered back a few feet and now rose with his pistol still in his hand and trotted after the governor. Barron stood in the distance looking at Tecumseh but seemed afraid to come close and had no idea what to say or do. This momentous council in which he had been forced to play such a thankless part had turned into a debacle and nearly into a disaster.

At last Tecumseh slipped his tomahawk into his waistband and turned to his warriors.

“You have been brave and good,” he said. “Come. Let us try to go back to our camp. But be ready. All the Blue-Coats are in motion, waiting for orders, and I do not trust Harrison.”

T
ECUMSEH ASKED TO BE LEFT ALONE WHEN THE WARRIORS
were back in the camp. He sat in the midst of his buzzing encampment and smoked and went back over the incident in his mind, and his heart cooled. He began to be angry now at himself, for losing control. Here was this opportunity to make Harrison and his officials aware of his viewpoint, and even though Harrison seemed impervious to reason, Tecumseh knew he should have remained patient and reasoned with him as long as possible. How often had he himself counseled his followers not to let themselves be provoked, told them even to suffer lies and insults, if necessary, to keep peace until the alliance was completed? And now he who was supposed to be their wise leader had let himself be provoked; perhaps Harrison even now was deciding that councils were useless, that it was time to attack Prophet’s Town.

Tecumseh sat with his fists clenched, and now he was as angry with himself as he had been at Harrison. Even poor Open Door, volatile and foolish as he was, could not have handled this any worse!

B
ARRON CAME UP TO THE
I
NDIAN CAMP IN THE MORNING AND
was brusque. He said Harrison wished to know what Tecumseh’s plans were. Was he going to stay encamped so near to the town with all his warriors, or would he be going back up the river to Prophet’s Town? The governor would like to know, so that his people and soldiers could return to their normal pursuits.

Tecumseh’s reply surprised Barron.

“Go and tell the governor that Tecumseh makes an apology for that anger which happened yesterday. We rose only to defend ourselves because the soldiers came running with their guns. Say that I have no wish to give personal offense to him, that this should not be one angry man against another, but a talk of principles between two peoples, a talk that should be finished, so each understands the other. Tell him that I would welcome him in my camp if he wants to visit me here, and that no harm would come to him here.” It had occurred to Tecumseh that Harrison might be more reasonable if he did not have to put up an appearance of strength and firmness before crowds of his own white people.
“Or,” Tecumseh added, “if he wants me to go there and explain my thoughts to him, I will go.”

H
ARRISON RODE INTO THE
I
NDIAN CAMP THAT AFTERNOON
on a great, light gray war-horse. He made a brave appearance; except for Barron, he was alone, though companies of soldiers and dragoons had quietly taken places all around the Indian camp.

In the midst of the camp, surrounded by the aromas of cedarwood and hickory smoke and baking Shawnee cake and roasting meat, Tecumseh offered Harrison his hand and showed him a place where they could sit to smoke and talk as man to man. It was a large section of a log two feet thick and ten feet long, the top side hewn flat to serve as a bench. They smoked from the pipe in the head of the same tomahawk that Tecumseh yesterday had held ready to strike Harrison, which the governor noted with a strange feeling in his breast.

Now Tecumseh felt pleasant and expansive. This was the proper way for two strong men to start building an understanding, if such a thing could possibly be done. Tecumseh was satisfied that Harrison was in his own way quite a strong man. And the governor had shown a certain nobility in accepting the invitation to come to the camp so soon after what had happened between them. As a man, if not as a representative of a policy, Harrison had risen a bit in Tecumseh’s esteem.

Harrison had surprised himself by agreeing to come. He had spent much of yesterday evening in a turmoil of novel feelings. He had been drained to exhaustion by the fright and the anger, then tormented to distraction by the yammerings of praise and sympathy and advice that his wife and staff and officers and guests had poured upon him for the rest of the day. He had cursed himself for not taking the war secretary’s suggestion and seizing Tecumseh—but then had cursed himself again for even considering such a treacherous recourse. Upon retiring finally and lying in the dark, he had found one image in his mind: that of this splendid savage standing ready to strike him—with this very pipe-tomahawk—and he had felt that never in his entire life had there been a moment of such exquisite dread. For that instant he had felt what the prey must feel in the claws of the predator. Harrison had lain in the dark remembering. He could hardly recall having drawn his sword, more a decoration than a weapon. He had apparently done that by reflex alone. He could vaguely remember that he had held it for some time pointed at that deep, wide,
muscle-girt chest, that heaving, red-painted, dark-oak barrel of a chest, and only by the old conditioning of the fencing school had he managed to hold it steady. He had lain thinking of Tecumseh’s eyes, which he had plumbed for so long, those curiously light, hazel-colored eyes, and recalled that he had looked through them as if into a long tunnel that stretched back through all time, back through the leafy silences of the wilderness, back to the dire beginnings of man, back even to the panthers and the wolves.… That incredible notion he had had, and then he had marveled that from this aboriginal soul with its deadly passions and dark superstitions there had come such a formidable line of reasoning, such an accurate recital of pertinent grievances. Harrison well knew that some of the grievances were valid. He was all too aware of the overbearing, lawless behavior of the white roughnecks who did the actual breaking through on the frontier, and he knew that those complaints of Tecumseh’s were, alas, justified. Late into the night, then, strangely, despite the requirements of his own principles and the doctrines of the administration toward the Indians, Harrison had come to admit to himself that this Tecumseh might be as brave and incorruptible a man as he had ever met, as perfect a man, in the natural sense of the word “man.” Here in this chief—not in that magnetic but murky-headed and vainglorious shaman Tenskwatawa, but here—was the Moses of the poor bewildered savages, and Harrison had regretted that such a wall of bitterness and hatred had built up between Tecumseh and himself. Some things had come to him only in retrospect, as he had lain in the dark alone with his mind: how he had loved the sound of this man’s voice and the rich music of the Shawnee tongue played in that voice—the lisping consonants, the orotund vowels. And how fearless the chief and his warriors had been, armed only with steel, two dozen of them in a town full of hundreds of armed troops; every one of the chieftains had looked as if ready to die to protect their chief—and most of them were not even Shawnees!

Oh, it was strange to Harrison, this succession of feelings he had had last night; he had tried to think of some parallel in his readings of ancient history. He had thought of Vercingetorix the Gaul, that nearly unconquerable foe of the Roman conquerors. Thus, full of admiration for his adversary, troubled by the early failure of the council, afraid that it might drive the Shawnees into an even tighter partnership with the British, Harrison had been delighted this morning when Barron had come to the mansion bearing Tecumseh’s apology and invitation, and he had spent little time wondering about the safety or advisability of it but
quickly made arrangements to come. And now he was glad he was here. This Tecumseh in a friendly mood was as warm and charming a fellow as Harrison had ever met.

As they sat side by side on the log talking, Tecumseh told Harrison in general terms about the anxieties created by the land-buying policies of the American government. “It is like a mighty river coming toward us,” he said, and as he spoke he edged closer to Harrison until their shoulders were touching. Harrison moved away slightly. “It threatens my people like a high flood of that river,” Tecumseh went on, once again scooting close enough to Harrison that their shoulders were touching, and once again Harrison moved a little away. “It is like a flood of that river pouring over the banks and making the people move to higher ground,” Tecumseh went on, once again pressing against Harrison, who again moved. “I,” said Tecumseh, scooting toward him again, “am trying to build a dam, to stop this flood before it rises to cover and drown all my people, all the red people.”