Panther in the Sky (55 page)

Some of the warriors began to pound on the abatis gate with their gun butts and hatchets.

“Father,” a mighty voice bellowed over the clamor. It was Blue Jacket’s voice. He was pointing at Major Campbell. “Father! You have promised to help us! Your children need you now! You see us! We come in great trouble! Many are hurt, many dead!” He swung his arm and pointed up the river toward the fallen woods. “You see the Americans coming. You must shoot your cannons at them! You must let us come in. Father, can you not hear our voices? Can you not remember your promise?” He was calling all this out in Shawnee. The officers on the high wall did not reply. They did not look down. It was as if the Indians were not there. Now Blue Jacket, who had often said he hated the white man’s tongue and would never use it again, began shouting at the British officers in that language, using many words Tecumseh had never used before. He was calling Campbell a traitor and a coward and a son of something.

And now Tecumseh understood what was happening, and his heart went bleak and cold and hard inside him.

The British were afraid. They had not expected the Long Knives to get through the fallen timbers. They were too afraid to help the warriors. There was nothing that could be done to persuade them to help. They were so ashamed, they could not even look at the huge crowd of desperate warriors, their allies
who had fought to hold the Americans away from the fort. In the last war the Americans had knocked down the English king, and now the British were afraid to be in another war with them, regardless of their many fervent promises to the tribes. Tecumseh looked up at the British in their splendid scarlet coats, and disdain swelled within him. He stood straight, taking a long, deep breath, his arm still holding one arm of his dead brother, his brother who had died trying to keep the Americans from reaching the fort. And then Tecumseh shouted over the uproar:

“Brothers! Come away! These are not allies! They are whitefaces! They are cowards! They are as bad as the Long Knives! Come away! We must care for ourselves!” And, face drawn in a sneer, shaking his bloody war club toward Major Campbell, he turned off the road, saying to Loud Noise, “Come. We must go down the river and find a place to bury this brave warrior, our brother.”

A
ND SO THE
B
LUE
-C
OATS OF
G
ENERAL
A
NTHONY
W
AYNE INFESTED
the rich, beautiful valley of the lower Maumee-se-pe. They yelled and whooped and slashed all the crops, and girdled the trees in the orchards, and burned villages, and plundered McKee’s store and burned his house, and destroyed all the crops on the beautiful island at the foot of the rapids—all within view of the British in the fort, who made no effort to stop it. The three sacred sisters, corn, squash, and beans, were cut and smashed and burned, and this sacrilege demoralized the Shawnees even more. The soldiers scalped and skinned or mutilated every body they found. They went into a burial ground and dug up old corpses, and took items from the graves, and drove stakes through the bodies. Soon the beautiful valley lay under a pall of smoke and stench. The British stood in their fort and watched all this and did not move.

The defeated warriors of the confederation went down the river past the fort to the place where Swan Creek flowed into the river, five miles down, and made a camp there and prepared to defend the women and children if the Long Knives came on down. Tecumseh buried Stands-Between, the second of his brothers to die in his arms. Then he went back up the river to a place from which he could watch the Americans, his heart cold and bitter. He saw that Wayne was building a fortification within view of the British fort. He saw the desolate, smoking valley, all wasted.

While he was watching, General Wayne and his young aide rode out from their fortification and rode close to the walls of
the British fort, within a pistol shot of it, then rode insolently around the fort, looking at it as if it were nothing, defying the Redcoat cowards inside to shoot. Tecumseh looked long at the young officer. This man, he knew, had something important to do with the signs. Tecumseh felt nothing when he looked at the old general, nothing but hatred and regret. But when his eyes went back to the young officer, he could hear the wind whispering something to him, though there was no wind blowing, and he could feel the earth grumbling beneath his feet, though nothing moved.

In that dark head and slender figure of the distant young officer on a war-horse, Tecumseh saw the evil for which the spirits had always been preparing him. He could not stop looking at him.

There was no doubt of it. That was the one.

F
OUR WEEKS LATER, IN THE
P
APAW
M
OON, A
S
HAWNEE
woman came down to Swan Creek. She had been caught in the summer by General Wayne’s scouts, and now they had sent her back so that she could carry a message to the tribes from General Wayne. Captain Elliott, the Indian agent, translated it to the red men.

Matthew Elliott had been issuing three thousand rations a day to the defeated warriors and their families at Swan Creek, and there was a fear that if the tribes remained here, neither fighting nor at peace, supplies would be exhausted early in the winter. So even Captain Elliott did not try very hard to discourage the Indians from going to hear General Wayne.

The chiefs sent no answer to General Wayne’s letter right away. They had much talking to do among themselves. They were still licking their wounds, and Wayne had built a chain of strong forts clear through their country, from the O-hi-o-se-pe to the western end of Lake Erie. His words sounded kind, the chiefs said, but he
was
a chieftain of Washington, and he was in control, so it was doubtful that the terms of peace would be good for the tribes.

“What will we do?” Tecumseh was asked by Big Fish, and by Seekabo, and even by Stands Firm, who once had been like a father to Tecumseh but since had become like a son to him.

Tecumseh had not smiled since Stands-Between’s death. He finally did smile, a grim, wolfish smile.

“My brother Chiksika told me, before he died in the south, that even when Black Hoof and Little Turtle put their marks on the white man’s treaties, I would refuse. My brother Chiksika always said the truth.”

“Would you not even go to listen to the Long Knife chief?”
asked Seekabo. “You would not have to put your mark on his treaty.”

Tecumseh put his hand to his waist, palm down, and swept it over the fire, as if throwing something away. “I prefer to hear truth. All the treaties of the Long Knives have been made of lies. This one will be also. I would rather go away and sit in the woods alone and hear the truth of silence than sit in a square room with white men and hear false promises. No, brother. If I do not go to a treaty, by the law of our People, I am not bound to live by that treaty.

“And you have heard me. I would never live by a treaty of lies. This Long Knife Wayne has not defeated me. He has not made me afraid to fight on. I do not have to go when he calls.”

Many young warriors believed as Tecumseh did and chose not to go to the treaty council. They gathered around him and made their own council. The future of their nation was now hanging in doubt. No one knew what sort of boundaries the white general would try to draw now, but these young men chose to stay as near the old Shawnee lands as they could without being bothered by the Long Knife army. And so they agreed to go with Tecumseh to a place where he had often had hunting camps. It was in the valley of a stream called Deer Creek, a tributary of the Mad River, about a day’s journey northeast of the ruins of old Chillicothe Town. To this place many of the younger Shawnees went, and in council they chose Tecumseh as their chief, and here they built a small, orderly town of
wigewas
set in two rows along the creekside, with a council house on a hillock. Wives and sisters and children of the warriors came, and also some young Wyandot and Delaware warriors who had become attached to Tecumseh during Wayne’s advance. And also among Tecumseh’s followers was Star Watcher, and there was also the Peckuwe maiden, She-Is-Favored.

It was too late in the year to plant any crops, so the women worked hurriedly to build the huts and forage for wild foods, while the warriors went out and scoured the forests and plains for game. Much meat would have to be got and preserved to make up for the lack of corn. To arouse the hunters’ best efforts, Tecumseh proposed that the hunt be a contest, with each hunter accumulating the skins of all the deer he killed. Showing their first happy eagerness for anything since the tragedy at Fallen Timbers, the young men spread out into the countryside, each determined to do the greatest good for the new little town and
gain renown as well. The time of the contest hunt was set at three days.

And so they hunted with uncommon skill and attention. Even the least successful of the hunters brought in three hides; several came with four to six; a few even came in with ten or twelve hides. The women became very busy drying venison as the contest went on.

Tecumseh himself ranged the faint but familiar paths along the creeks and the meadows, hunting as Chiksika had taught him, praying for help from the Masters of the Game, thinking as the buck deer thinks and as the doe thinks, standing motionless among the falling yellow leaves, sniffing breezes, kneeling to examine deep tracks in the creek banks, armed with both bow and rifle, sending off arrow or ball with the quickest reflexes, thinking at every moment of the needs of these people who were now
his
responsibility, and his fortunes in the hunt were far better than any he had ever enjoyed. When the period of the contest was over, Tecumseh had obtained for his band enough venison for many, many pounds of jerky and no less than thirty deerskins for his people’s clothes and shelter. She-Is-Favored looked at him as the people celebrated him, and it was plain that she wanted to be chief’s wife.

Tecumseh saw what was in her eyes, and he considered. Star Watcher, who seemed able to read his thoughts, hurried to tell him: “A chief should have a wife. He should have a wife not just to care for his needs and warm his bed and give him pleasure and children, but also because it has always been so, since the Beginning. The wife of the chief is the leader of the women’s council, and speaks for them in the open council. You know how important she is in the Bread Dance and Green Corn Dance.” Then she added, “Her father surely would bring many of the warriors of his village to live here and strengthen us.”

Tecumseh knew all this. An unmarried chief was not traditional, and he did hope to keep the old ways strong in his band, even though the whites were scattering tribes and changing everything. “Yes, my sister. A chief should have a wife.” But in his heart he did not yet want a wife. He had his destiny signs, and a wife could distract and limit him as he searched for the meanings. And he had told himself often that this time of war and terror and moving was not a good time for children to be born Shawnee. So he agreed in principle that he needed a wife but did not yet move toward marriage. In this small village he saw She-Is-Favored almost every day. He thought of the qualities he had
seen in her that made her seem a gift to the People. And whenever he looked at her he could not help thinking how it would be to lie with her and could see that she too was thinking such thoughts. It was like a force that could be felt between them, and the dwellers of the town could sense it. But it was not time yet.

Better, he thought, to wait and see what our world will be after the big treaty council next summer with the Long Knife general. After that, we might not even have a place to lie on.