Panther in the Sky (89 page)

The white governor Harrison was coming very slowly up the Wabash-se-pe with his big army. His army crept slowly, but he was coming; there was no doubt that the Prophet’s holy town was where Harrison was coming with his big army!

At the present time, the army was stopped on the banks of the river at a place halfway between Vincennes and Prophet’s Town, and there they were building a fort. The place was called High Ground, Terre Haute by the French, and was a favored camping place for red men traveling up and down the Wabash-se-pe. In the long-ago war against the Iroquois, a battle had been fought there, and it was a sacred place to the Wabash tribes. Now the Americans were there cutting down trees to make a fort, on that sacred place. Worst of all, it was within the lands of the Fort Wayne Treaty. Tecumseh had asked Harrison not to move into that country until he had come back from the south and talked to the president, but Harrison had come into that country now and was building a fort. Moreover, it was clear that he intended to come farther with his army. He had not gathered eleven hundred soldiers just to build a fort.

Open Door sighed and sighed. On learning of Harrison’s approach, he had sent messengers in all directions, asking warriors to come to Prophet’s Town. Then his messengers had learned that Harrison also had sent messengers, to all the friendly and neutral tribes, telling them to stay out of his path.

The beans slipped through his palm. They were shiny like old wood from being pulled through the hands of hundreds of his
followers and from being pulled through his own when he was worried like this.

He heard Charcoal Burner’s voice calling to him from outside and a flurry of excited voices in the distance. Open Door was silent for a moment, scowling. He admired Charcoal Burner and was glad to have his help in Tecumseh’s absence. But in a way he resented him, too. It was as if Tecumseh had not thought the Prophet could manage matters or make wise decisions in his absence and had set Charcoal Burner beside him as a watchdog. On learning of Harrison’s advance some weeks ago, Charcoal Burner had come to Open Door and said, “Remember. We are not to fight them. Tecumseh told us not to let ourselves be provoked. Everything depends upon it.”

“I remember that,” Open Door had said, irritated. “I do not mean to be provoked.” But at the same time, he had resented it.

Now he called for Charcoal Burner to come into the medicine lodge. As the door flap opened, Open Door could see the yellow-and-red leaves of the trees in the valley. Harrison, like all the Long Knife leaders before him, was coming before the approach of winter and no doubt meant to burn Prophet’s Town and destroy all its foods and leave the people hungry and homeless in the face of winter.

Charcoal Burner said, “Some Miamis have come. Harrison sent them with a message for you.”

“So. Then let us go and see these faithful dogs of government, and hear their message.”

The message was that if the Prophet would disperse his warriors and surrender all of his followers who had been involved in the raids in Illinois, and all who had stolen horses or otherwise troubled the whites this summer, Harrison would not attack Prophet’s Town.

“What do you want to reply?” asked Charcoal Burner.

“He is still far down the river, building his fort,” Open Door answered. “I do not believe he really dares to come into our lands and attack us here.”

“I,” said Charcoal Burner, “believe he dares.”

“If we send our warriors away and leave our sacred village to the white soldiers,” Open Door hissed, “do you believe they will not come and burn it down? What will become of the People’s faith? Have I not told them this town is protected by Weshemoneto, and that anyone who tries to hurt it will die or lose his mind? Do you doubt this? Do you want the People to think I doubt my own words?”

“Father, listen to me,” Charcoal Burner said, leaning forward in earnestness. “I believe in you. I believe the Great Good Spirit will favor us. But I have watched Harrison’s soldiers come along the river. I do not think they are harmless or afraid. I have seen them shoot squirrels out of the trees from the backs of their moving horses.”

“You are afraid.”

All the kindness went out of Charcoal Burner’s face. “Draw those words back into your mouth, Father, for they poison the air between us.”

“I draw the words back into my mouth,” Open Door apologized impatiently. “But I tell you, I do not want to cower before this snake’s dung of a white man!”

“Tecumseh did not advise you to cower. Only to keep the People safe until his return. Not to do battle.”

Open Door scowled past Charcoal Burner. His hands, now mindlessly pulling the string of beans again, were shaking. “I am not a warrior, I am a holy man,” he said as if reminding himself. “I will call Weshemoneto for guidance.”

“Yes. But what will we tell the Miamis?”

Thoughts raced behind Open Door’s eye. “That I will meet with Harrison and discuss his demands. Only that. That we do not understand why he comes into our country with an army, that he insults our hearts. I will go and talk with him, if it will keep him from my town for a while.” He thought of the large supplies of food and the new British guns stored in the town. How could the people flee ahead of Harrison’s horse soldiers with all that? No. Harrison must be delayed, and perhaps words would delay him.

But in the meantime, Open Door would send to the Kickapoos and Potawatomis for more warriors and have the people make a hiding place in the woods for all the food. He suspected that talk would not stop the Long Knife governor for very long.

T
HE THOUSANDS OF
C
HOCTAWS WERE FULL OF FIRE WHEN
the drums stopped.

Tecumseh stood naked except for breechcloth and moccasins, his skin gleaming from the exertions of the war dance; his warriors stood ranked behind him, breathing hard, eyes wild. The dance had had a powerful effect on this enormous crowd of Choctaws, evoking yips and howls from the warriors and moans of admiration from the women. Much of the Choctaw nation was here, eager to hear him. Many of them had heard him first when
he had addressed them in their own towns, then had followed him here to Moshuletubbe’s Town to hear him again.

For weeks Tecumseh had been in the Choctaw country, crossing and recrossing the Noxubee River to go from one town to another, dancing the Shawnee dance with his agile warriors, giving variations of the same speech, exciting the young men of his audiences until they were ready to take up their weapons at once and follow him to the north. Except for one problem, he would have had hundreds of Choctaws pledged to his cause by now, but because of that one problem, he was not sure he had even one.

That one problem was Pushmataha, the principal Choctaw war chief.

Pushmataha towered over the village chiefs who now stood nearby on the knoll at the roots of the giant council tree. He wore a white cotton robe that draped from his broad shoulders to his feet. On his head was a turban decorated with long, curving plumes. His face was wide, almost black from sun, and his eyes were glittering, fierce as an eagle’s.

Pushmataha had first opposed Tecumseh at Hoentubbe’s Town, and in the weeks since then he had taken it upon himself to go everywhere Tecumseh went in his nation and to follow every one of Tecumseh’s speeches with a rebuttal. As principal war chief of the nation, he threw a powerful weight of discouragement over the passion Tecumseh was creating.

So now, here again in Moshuletubbe’s Town, in a wide, sloping draw that allowed everyone to see the dancers and hear the speakers clearly, thousands sat ready to hear the final round of the traveling debate between Tecumseh and Pushmataha. Tecumseh knew he would have to try to stir the people’s souls to such heights that Pushmataha’s cautions would not even reach their hearts.

Unfortunately, there was a white man seated among the chiefs this time. He was a prominent settler named Colonel Pitchlynn, a friend of the village chief Moshuletubbe. The colonel’s curiosity had been aroused by all the stir Tecumseh’s presence had created in the region. Tecumseh did not want to talk with an American in the audience but would have offended Moshuletubbe if he had insisted on his removal. And so the white man sat listening. The Choctaw chiefs stood before the great tulip tree on a rise of level ground in the center of the natural amphitheater, and Tecumseh and his dancers stood before them facing the listeners, who were so many they were crowded together. Even at Prophet’s Town
at the spring and fall gatherings Tecumseh had never seen so many in one place. If only all these could join him!

He held his right hand high. In it was his war club. In his left was a bundle of the red sticks.

“Brothers and sisters of the great Choctaw nation, hear me! I am Tecumseh, born a Shawnee but now war chief of all tribes north of the O-hi-o-se-pe. The long star you have seen in the sky is mine. I was born by the light of a shooting star—your fathers here remember that star—and now that star has returned to warn you of the time of greatest danger. I am Tecumseh. Following my signs, I have united tribes who once were jealous enemies, so that they might stand together and resist the enemy of all red men: the Americans! The Americans are at this moment plowing up the graves of my ancestors. Tomorrow they will be plowing up the graves
of your
ancestors! Brothers! I have been given signs that tell me when and how to stop them! There is little time left. Before three moons, all red men must join hands to do this!

“Brothers, hear what has been done to the red men in my land! It will be done to you as well, unless you will take my hand!”

He looked up and spread his arms, looking bewildered, and cried:

“Where today are the Mohican? The Narragansett? The Pequot? The Pocanoket? And the other old and once powerful tribes?” He left the question hanging in the firelight. Then he said:

“As snow vanishes before the sun, they have melted. They died of disease, of poverty, of drunkenness. Of trying in vain to fight alone against the spawn of the Serpent, the white man!

“Look toward their country, that once was so wide and beautiful. What do you see? Stumps and fences! Muddy roads! The fertile earth gone, washed away, the graves of their ancestors plowed up, the elk and the deer gone, only dark smoke and noise remaining, where once the air was clean and the lark sang! So will it be with you the Choctaw.”

He cried out fervently: “This great tree under which I stand!” He turned and spread his arms toward it, reaching like a growing tree. “In its shade you played in your childhood. You rested after the hunt. You listened to the words of the councils. This very tree, which was already a growing tree before the white men even found our shores, will be cut down to make fences, to keep you out of lands which you now call yours, but they will soon call theirs! Soon their wagon roads will pass over the graves of your fathers, and the place of their rest will be blotted out forever, horse dung will drop on it, iron wheels roll over it.

“When a people has no place anymore, it is no longer a people. Think not, mighty Choctaw, that you can sit idle and passive while the ravages of the white men go around you and destroy someone else! No! They will not go around! You, like all the rest, will be uprooted! You too will be like fallen leaves and smoke before the wind! It has happened to the Narragansett, the Mohican, the Pequot. It will happen to the Choctaw, the Creek, the Chickasaw, to all red men—unless we become one in our heart, unless we see clearly together, act wisely together, stand bravely together.

“Sleep no more, O Choctaw! Stop dreaming that the Seventeen Fires will favor you and not hurt you! Your chief, Pushmataha, keeps saying that your fathers went up and shook hands with the first white chief Washington, and you remember that, but the white men will not remember it! Every year, my brothers, every year the white intruders turn against the tribes who were friendly to them. Every year they grow more arrogant, more greedy, more numerous. If you bleed, they care not. Your life is nothing to them. You are only in their way. They have never punished the murderers of any red man. They have murdered our great chiefs, even in peacetime, and gone unpunished. They have cheated us of our hunting grounds, and paid us with empty promises, with salt they had stolen from us, with kegs of rotten meat that make us sicken and die.

“Before the white men came, we could follow the game animals anywhere, we could put seeds in any ground that felt rich between our fingers, and any red man could speak what was in his heart, and had to ask no one but his Creator for anything. But how is it now? Those who were the greatest chiefs must beg for everything. They must beg before agents who are liars and thieves and spies. They must beg before governors, who look down on them from high chairs, and insult them, and threaten them.

“Now we are hungry every winter. Every new season, hundreds of our people die of diseases bred in the unclean ways of the white people. Every year hundreds go crazy from their whiskey, and every day we have to ask the white man for permission to stand up!”

Hundreds in the audience were grimacing now, and many were crying out in anger and astonishment. Now was the time to tell them how the desperate tribes had regained the favor of the Great Good Spirit.

He told them how his brother had been changed at once from a drunkard into the greatest force for sobriety. He told how the
inhabitants of Prophet’s Town had come from over the horizons in every direction to live with their great shaman, how they had cast off their dependence on the white men, and how they now labored to do only good in the eyes of the Master of Life and to save the lands he had entrusted to them. He made the Choctaws laugh and cheer when he told how the white governor there had for six years been unable to intimidate or debauch them. He spoke of Prophet’s Town as a haven of brotherhood and morality in a sea of white man’s corruption, of the united warriors as a brotherhood of brave and strong men surrounded by drunkards and weaklings. The Choctaws listened to this, and he could see in their faces a yearning to be like those brave and united people.