Panther in the Sky (75 page)

In the preliminary statements of the council’s purpose, Ruddell proved a skillful enough interpreter, and the council proceeded to its subject, the murder of Myers. The white commissioners said it was beyond doubt that Myers had been killed by an Indian. They demanded that whoever the killer was, he must be identified by his own chief and turned over to the white authorities for retribution. The Crane was the first chief to respond. He stood up and asserted that none of his Wyandots could have had anything to do with it. He spoke of his acknowledged friendship with the Americans, and his mark on their treaty, and his strong desire to keep this chain of friendship intact.

When the Crane finished, Tecumseh rose gracefully and was asked to speak. As he moved to the front of the council, the Indians all leaned forward, and the white men all noticed the intensity of their attention. The commissioners and spectators all had their eyes on this striking warrior chief who, even in unadorned deerhide, made a finer sight than either the white men’s Indians in their dark suits or the garish, befeathered warriors. Some of the whites knew this Tecumseh was a legendary warrior and the brother of the notorious Shawnee prophet; others had no idea who he was but could sense his importance, not only by his bearing, but by the expectancy that had fallen over the other red men. It was feared by many that he who had at first warmed the council with laughter might now fan it to flames by accusing Black Hoof’s people of the murder.

Tecumseh faced the crowd and looked them over. It entered his thoughts suddenly that he ought to see Ga-lo-weh here, since he was an important man in the vicinity and his home was scarcely ten miles away. But there was no Ga-lo-weh among the spectators. Tecumseh did see some familiar white faces, men he knew he had fought years ago.

The breeze hushed in the foliage, and birds were singing in the sunlight. Stephen Ruddell cleared his throat.

Tecumseh could have made his statement in English, for the edification of the white commissioners. But his real audience, he knew, was this gathering of red men. His oratorical skill was greatest in his own tongue, and he did not mean to let the white men think mockingly of his imperfect English. He began, and at first the white men, not understanding his words, were captivated by the sheer power, tone, and inflections of his voice, by the grace
and power of his gestures, by his imposing stance—and by the intense concentration of his red audience.

“The Great Good Spirit has brought us together so that we may speak and hear the truth about a death that has happened. We red chiefs are expected to point at one of our people and say, ‘Here is the man who killed your Myers; take him and hang him up to die.’ ” The Indians nodded and muttered.

“I do not know who killed that man,” Tecumseh said. “Ask Black Hoof. Perhaps he knows.” At once there was an uproar. Black Hoof rose to his feet with a swiftness amazing for a man of his years and shouted that Tecumseh was a liar. His chieftains formed around him, facing Tecumseh’s followers. For a few minutes the armed men around the field hesitated and milled, readying their guns, while the commissioners shouted for order. Black Hoof was yelling that Tecumseh’s renegade Indians at the Prophet’s town or the many visiting Indians there must have killed the white man. For a moment a great fight seemed imminent, and the town of Springfield had its first big scare. At last the hubbub died down. Tecumseh and Black Hoof stared at each other. Black Hoof had broken the protocol by interrupting a speaker, and at last he sat down, realizing that he had acted like a white man. Then Tecumseh resumed, in a mild voice:

“No, I do not truly think even Black Hoof knows. I do not believe that anyone here knows.

“If I did know the name of a warrior who killed that man, would I deliver him to you white men, for you to hang him up? Would you be able to prove he had done it? Would you even bother to try to prove it? I do not think so. You do not seek justice. You seek a red man whom you can hang up, to satisfy the cries of your people.

“Why do I say you do not seek justice? I can remember many times since the Greenville Treaty when red men and women were killed, and though you had the murderers in your hands, your judging councils turned them loose, as if justice were of no importance to you.

“I remember when an Indian family gave shelter to three white men, who killed the family in their sleep. Those three white men were not hung up.

“I remember when a white man made a red man drunk and killed him after he went to sleep. You had that white man and you knew what he had done, but you did not hang him up. Earlier, I remember when your Captain McGary killed the old Chief Moluntha with a hatchet, while the chief stood prisoner, holding
a peace treaty and your flag, and many soldiers stood and watched him do it. But was McGary executed?

“Still more seasons back, our great Chief Cornstalk, his son, and Chief Red Hawk were murdered while unarmed in a room at Fort Randolph, where they were visiting on a peace mission.”

Whenever Tecumseh paused and let Ruddell translate, the commissioners grew more gray and grave. And Tecumseh went on, his voice now harder:

“I remember when all the family of Logan the Mingo were murdered by Greathouse, whom they had trusted. Was Greathouse executed for that? No, not until the Shawnees caught him seventeen years later on the Beautiful River and made their own justice.

“I remember when your militiamen went to Gnadenhutten and put one hundred Jesus Indians, men and women and children, into a big room and smashed all their heads even while they prayed to your Jesus Christ. Were any of those militiamen ever executed? No.

“If you wish to hear of more, I am able to talk for a long time without tiring, or without repeating any names, or running out of such stories.

“But you brought us here to talk instead about the death of a man called Myers, who you say was murdered, although you do not really know if he was killed by a red man who had to defend himself against this Myers. Or maybe he was killed by a
white
man.” There was a rumble of consternation among the spectators at this suggestion. Tecumseh waited till it subsided, then went on. “Maybe this Myers was killed by an Indian woman whom he had molested. Your white men seem to like to bother our women, when there are no warriors around. If you want to hear of such cases, I can recite them for a day or two.” This conjecture made the commissioners squirm, and the men writing down the words of the council did not even put their pens to their paper. It was not the kind of allegation that should be written on a record.

The commissioners looked as if they might like to cut Tecumseh off here, but in a council with Indians every speaker was allowed to talk until he was through. At each of Tecumseh’s pauses, the congregation of red men nodded and made throaty noises of agreement.

“So,” he went on now, “maybe your Myers was killed because he was doing harm to a red man or a woman, as your lawless people think they can do. If so, then justice has already been done
in this case. No one will ever know what happened, because Myers cannot speak anymore, and the person who took his scalp, whether it was a red man or one of the many white men who also take scalps—did you not know that?—that person has surely passed on out of the country. I do not believe any of our people did this killing of Myers. A warrior takes a scalp for one reason only: so that when he tells a story of a victory, he can show that his story is true. Would a
secret
murderer take a scalp and come home and boast to me that he had killed a helpless white man? No. Because all red men know that in my town, the Prophet teaches against violence. He teaches for peace. Every morning and every night in my town, all the People pray that we will not have violence with the whites. And so a man would not come there to brag of such a thing, so why would he take the scalp?

“I do not know how it is in Black Hoof’s town; maybe they do not pray for peace.” As the old chief’s eyes flashed, Tecumseh added: “But Black Hoof’s people are under a treaty not to fight white men, and red men do not violate treaties.” Black Hoof’s momentary look of anger passed, and he nodded in agreement. It was plain that Tecumseh’s line of talk now was pleasing all the red men present. And the red men were, after all, the audience he cared about. In fact, his voice had such clarity and carrying power that even the three hundred warriors waiting in the distance off the council ground could hear him. That included Black Hoof’s followers and the Crane’s Wyandots, any of whom Tecumseh knew might be swayed to his cause.

Now Ruddell had translated the statement about treaties, and Tecumseh moved ahead in that vein:

“My mind is confused about what a white man means by the word ‘treaty.’ When the white man makes a treaty with us, we think he is giving us his word. Maybe our trouble is that we do not understand what whites mean by ‘treaty.’ Perhaps some white man here is a great explainer, and could tell us what a white man thinks a treaty is for. The long and sad story of treaties on this land, from the first when your ships came to the shore of the sunrise, make me think that a treaty is not what the red man believed it to be. Maybe the red man has a mist of trust before his eyes, and cannot see what is really there. From what I have seen and studied of all the treaties from that day, I come to believe that a white man with a treaty is like a dog who wants permission to put his nose in the doorway and smell the meat cooking inside. ‘Only my nose,’ this dog promises, and he waves his tail to show he is sincere.” The Indians in the council, even a few of the white
men, were getting the drift of this and smiling, already thinking ahead to the dog’s next move, and then the next and the next. Tecumseh said:

“I will begin with the first treaty made with the English white men, by Chief Powhatan in Virginia, who did not think any harm would come from a dog’s nose in his doorway. And then I will tell how with each treaty the dog got farther inside the doorway and closer to the meat, until all the meat was inside the dog.”

The Indians laughed aloud. Even those old chiefs who had signed treaties with the white men nodded and smiled grimly because they had seen the terms of their treaties diminished little by little, either by the individual white settlers who simply ignored them or by the government officials who regularly brought forth new treaties that overreached the old ones. It was evident in the faces of the chiefs that they were eager to sit here and hear a long story full of righteous grievances.

Tecumseh set forth on his narrative of treaties and deceits. He spoke of old names like Samoset and Massasoit and of tribes and treaties the educated white men could only vaguely recall and the uneducated ones had never even heard of. The terms of each treaty he described in detail, and then he related all the specific violations by which each had been destroyed or nullified. He related how whiskey and rum had been used to confuse the red men at treaty councils and how it was brought into towns and sold to make the people more weak and confused so that they would go blind into new treaties. On and on he went, his voice rolling forth, pausing only to let his words be translated. Stephen Ruddell was sweating with the effort of remembering so many names and details long enough to translate them into English. Another interpreter, who was translating from Shawnee to Wyandot, was having even worse trouble and sometimes simply stood gaping, his mind unable to correlate so many unfamiliar things. The white people were astounded that so much information existed, and more so that it had been compiled and arranged in one aboriginal mind; they were appalled that he was standing here in a council to which they themselves had invited him and serving up this long, compelling indictment of the perfidies of their race. The red men in the council were like an empty cup that he was filling up with vitriol.

Nearly two hours later, as Tecumseh was reaching the present day in his history of broken trust, condemning Governor Harrison’s awesome series of land treaties and the corrupt chiefs who had signed them in return for promises of more annuity money,
the commissioners were almost numb with the weight of their mistake and had whispered an agreement among themselves that perhaps the case of Myers’s death should just be dropped, not even mentioned again in this council. Its importance seemed to have shrunk down very small. And one other thing was being whispered guardedly among the old implacable Indian fighters who made up the commission:

That this Tecumseh was a dangerous man, perhaps as dangerous as his brother the fantastic shaman, and that it might not be a bad idea, at some propitious time, to kidnap or kill them both.

By now all the red men were leaning toward the speaker as leaves stretch toward the sun, and their eyes glittered and their faces were intense with indignation. The commissioners were not sure whether the whole body of them would rise up and leave in defiance or even rush for their weapons. The interpreters were now merely stumbling along, translating a phrase here, a sentence there, left behind by the arrow of his narrative.

Suddenly he paused and looked over his shoulder at the commissioners and said:

“This is why I expect neither truth nor justice in your councils, and this is why I will never mark your treaties, and this is why I discourage all my red brothers from putting their mark on them.

“But we in our town by Greenville do not talk for war against the whites. We only say, Here is what the white men did when they got close to us; let us forever keep at a little distance from them. This is what you white men want, too. Your treaties always tell us, move off a little farther.

“Brothers, we cannot move any farther. You are all around us and tightening in. But in our hearts we can be pure and peaceful and sober, and depend upon ourselves and each other, and leave the white men alone. We would only do ourselves more harm if we attacked white people, or likewise if we listened to any more of their promises.

“And therefore I, Tecumseh, who value my people’s freedom more than my own life, I assure the commissioners here that in my camp we do not incite our people to war with the whites; on the contrary, we teach and plead for patience, and truth, and wisdom, and each morning and night we pray for these. This is the word of my heart, and I tell it to you, because you have been so busy trying to find out what we do there. I will assure your highest chiefs of it: ours is not a war camp, and we do not go about murdering white men.”