Panther in the Sky (78 page)

Open Door, intense and worried, greeted him at the door of his medicine lodge, and the two went inside at once. Open Door said, “You know of the council at Fort Wayne?”

“Only that it will be. Tell me what you know.”

“That Harrison is as cunning as the thieving fox. He kept his treaty council from me as long as he could, for he knows we would oppose it. He does not imagine we know of it even now. He has summoned all his faithful red dogs. Little Turtle and Pacane of the Miamis. Of the Delawares, Beaver and Cracking Noise. Winnemac and Five Medals of the Potawatomi. And others, but, of course, none who live on the land he wants. Not us.”

“What land is it, my brother?”

Open Door described the boundaries, and Tecumseh’s blood grew hotter at every word.

It was a vast area of woods and prairies north and east of Vincennes, in the Wabash-se-pe and White River watersheds, from the Greenville Treaty line near O-hi-o all the way across to the Wabash-se-pe and even across it into the Illinois lands. Tecumseh knew very well these lands that were being coveted by Harrison now; a dozen tribes had villages in them and depended upon their hunting grounds for their food. And if Harrison got it, the American boundaries would reach within two days’ march of the Prophet’s town!

“While you were gone,” Open Door said, “I did what you told me to do to keep the white men at ease about us. I went to Fort Wayne and Vincennes to assure the Americans again that we are peaceful. There is a new Indian agent at Fort Wayne, called Johnston.
Wells is gone. Annuity dollars had been sticking to his fingers while he counted them, they say. I got on well with this Johnston. He believed what I said to him, and I thought he would not alarm Harrison about us as Wells was always doing. But when I went to Vincennes in the next moon, Harrison was cold to me. He had changed his manner since the first time I visited him. He accused me of harboring troublemakers here. I assured him that I discourage any talk of troubling the Americans. But I could not make him believe me.

“And while I was there he did not tell me he was calling this big land treaty council! Brother, is this not a man of two faces?”

“As we have long known!” Tecumseh exhaled sharply between clenched teeth and pounded his thigh with his fist. “Do our friends in those tribes now have enough voice to keep the old traitors from marking a treaty? Do you think so?”

“I
think
so,” Open Door replied. “Have we not warned them again and again that Harrison will try to do what he is now trying to do? Will they not believe it now by seeing it, and speak up in time? And are not the old chiefs aware by now that if they mark another treaty, they will be known as witches?”

Tecumseh nodded, then shook his head, brusquely, angrily. He did not like this killing of “witches” and had stopped Open Door and his zealots before, when they had been executing suspects too enthusiastically. But still the fear of such witch-hunts was very strong, and it had kept some of the government chiefs humble. “So, then,” Tecumseh said at last. “The Miamis and the Delawares and the Potawatomies will go to Fort Wayne to meet with Harrison, and there is nothing we can do to stop them from going. To try to threaten them or stop them by force would ruin the wholeness we have been trying to build here. So they will go. Many of them probably have gone already, hoping the kegs will be opened early. All we can do is encourage our people in those tribes to talk against marking it, and send a few hawks to sit in the crowd and keep a watch on them.…” His voice trailed off, then suddenly he clenched his fists until they shook and ground his teeth together. “Think, brother!” he hissed. “Think of how much land he tries to grab this time! No; rather, think how little it will leave for all the red people if he does take it!”

He sighed. Suddenly he yearned only for someone whose presence could calm the great tightness these vexations had drawn in him. “I am hungry and tired,” he said. “Let us go over to Star Watcher’s house. I long to see my sister. And my son.”

L
ITTLE
T
URTLE LIMPED INTO THE COUNCIL HOUSE, WITH
fourteen hundred red men watching him, their feelings a mixture of curiosity, respect, and annoyance. Though he was the most honored war chief here, it had been nearly fifteen years since he had given up to the Long Knives; he was wholly a white man’s Indian now, doing everything he could to help his people adapt to the white man’s strange and demanding ways. And though he lived closest to Fort Wayne, he had taken days and days to get to the council house because he suffered from gout and had been unable to come forth. But at last he was here, and the council could begin.

During that long wait, the Potawatomies of Five Medals and Winnemac had begged Governor Harrison to open the whiskey kegs. But he had held them off. And many of these thirsty red men were now blaming Little Turtle for keeping them thirsty this long.

The massive two-story blockhouses of the fort overshadowed the council house. From his table, Governor Harrison could see out the door to the old Miami town that General Harmar had attacked two decades ago before Little Turtle had trounced him.

Now the tribes asked for whiskey again.

But Harrison wanted these important and long-awaited talks to go quickly, and he believed it was more effective to hold out the whiskey as a reward than to get the Indians confused with it in the beginning, so he kept the kegs locked in the fort.

Now all the chiefs at last were on hand, and Harrison began his speech. He told them why they should be willing to sell the land between the Wabash and White rivers. This land had little game anymore, he said. Although the chiefs knew this was not true, they did not interrupt him, because whiskey was waiting. He told them how important the annuity money was to the support of their people, because the cost of goods would always be going up and because the war in Europe was depressing the values of their peltries. “It is better to raise pigs and cattle for their meat and skins than to hunt game,” he said. “They are easy to keep,
need little land, and they increase, while game, on the other hand, always decreases.” He gave such reasoning for two hours.

When he felt he had convinced the Indians that the land was of little value to them, Harrison then showed a map of the piece the white people needed. It looked small on a map. But the map was a meaningless picture of a country to the eye and mind of the red man, who does not see land as lines on a flat parchment surface, so some explaining was necessary. “If,” he said, “you stood at the place where Raccoon Creek pours into the Wabash, in the middle of the morning, ten o’clock exactly, and looked toward the sun, that line between your eyes and the sun would be the northern boundary. The southern boundary will be where the northern boundary is now,” he said, “above Vincennes.”

Now they understood. Most of them in their lives had been at the place where Raccoon Creek flowed into the Wabash-se-pe. They told the governor they would go to the Delaware camp beside the fort and hold council among themselves and give him their answer as soon as they agreed upon it. Several of the chiefs indicated that a drink of whiskey would help them think. Harrison suggested that it would be better to have the drink as a celebration for agreeing.

A
MONG
T
ECUMSEH’S FRIENDS WHO SAT IN THE COUNCIL AND
watched the opinion form were Seekabo the Creek and Billy Caldwell, a half-Irish Shawnee who had been schooled by Black Robes and could write. The council took a long time, as there were three tongues to be translated, and many misunderstandings to be labored through, many kinds of fear and eagerness.

The Potawatomies were most eager to have the whiskey kegs opened; they were slavering at the thought of it, so they recommended the sale at once. After all, they did not even have any claim to the land south of that ten o’clock line and thus nothing to lose, but whiskey to gain. The Delawares were thirsty, too, so they agreed, although more reluctantly, as they did use some of that land.

But Little Turtle was not ready. Something was bothering him, and he had to go and talk to Harrison in private. He limped away, taking his interpreters with him.

Little Turtle had to know whether the dismissal of his son-in-law Wild Potato, William Wells, from the Indian agency was going to diminish his own position in the favor of the Seventeen Fires. Harrison smiled and assured him that he would be esteemed as he had always been. So the old Miami smiled and said
he would do all he could to advance the treaty, and he limped back to the Delaware camp.

Then there followed a long squabble over the annuity dollars. In the evening the Miami chiefs sent word to Harrison that their young men were thirsty, and that if they could have a little whiskey, they would leave the chiefs alone to decide about the dollars. With a sigh, Harrison agreed to ration out a little: only two gallons for each tribe, until the rest of the agreement was done.

With that as an appetizer, the rest of the haggling was concluded very quickly. Winnemac came to Harrison after dark, but his smile was enough to light the night. He said, “I thought our father Harrison will sleep better knowing we have agreed to accept your offer.”

Of course Harrison was too exultant to sleep for a long time. For ten thousand dollars he had bought three million acres of the land called Indiana, meaning “Land of the Indians.”

T
ECUMSEH SAT, HIS EYES SMOLDERING, HIS STOMACH CHURNING
with disgust, as Seekabo related what had been done at Fort Wayne. Open Door sat beside him, huffing and gnashing his teeth.

“After the chiefs agreed to say yes to the treaty, there were many arguments over this and that. Harrison gave the chiefs a little whiskey now and then to make them mellow. When all was ’settled, he called everyone together and spoke a long time about the British. He said the British were the cause of all the red men’s woes, that the Americans are the red men’s brothers.”

“Hear that,” Open Door said through his teeth to Tecumseh. “Hear
that!”

“The chiefs who put their marks on the treaty were Cracking Noise, Beaver, Winnemac, Five Medals, Little Turtle, and Pacane.”

“Hear those names and remember them,” Open Door said just above a whisper. “They are probably witches and should all be killed.”

“After that,” said Billy Caldwell, “Harrison rode away to Vincennes with his piece of paper. The kegs were broken open. For several days there was much drinking in the Indian camps. Several warriors were killed having fights with knives. It was a bad time. There was much anger, and the whiskey made it worse. Not many were pleased with what their chiefs had done. Many Miami warriors who have always been faithful to Little Turtle now say that he is too contemptible to speak of, that to say his name makes them vomit. There are Potawatomi warriors and Delaware warriors
who told us even before we left Fort Wayne that they should have listened to your warnings, that what you said was true, but before now they could not see.”

“Listen,” Tecumseh said when the awful report was over. “Here is what we believe, and here is what we must say to anyone, even to the Americans:

“Those chiefs did not have a right to sell that land, which belongs to all red men. Therefore Harrison’s piece of paper means nothing. White men will never occupy that country. When they come in with their instruments to put lines on it, or with tools to cut the trees or plow the ground, they will risk their lives.

“The chiefs who put their marks on that treaty have betrayed all red men. These chiefs are now in danger; they deserve to be killed for what they have done. Listen:

“Harrison surely feels full of satisfaction now, for the success of his crime. But I foresee this: It will cost him more than the few dollars. It has opened the eyes of hundreds who have been blind. Now they know that we have told them the truth from the beginning, and I say that they will be coming here to join us by hundreds by the time of the next planting. I foresee that from this time the government chiefs will be losing their hold upon their people. Warriors, and all men who can think, will see now that Harrison means to take the very land they stand on, and that if this is permitted, there will not be a spot of ground anywhere for them to step back on. You know that he bought the Illinois land five years ago. There is no place for them to step back.

“At last they can see this! At last they must come to us here and say, ‘Brothers, how can we unite and keep this from happening anymore?’ In the next summer they will be of one heart with us. I will go to the south then and embrace the Five Nations also. Brother! Today we are closer than we have ever been to standing all together, and how funny it is that it is Harrison himself with his greed and his cunning who sweeps us into each other’s arms!

“We must guard our old boundaries, for in our eyes this new one does not exist. And we must entreat the British agents for more supplies, my brother, for this place soon will be swarming like an anthill with people whose eyes are open wide!”

W
ILLIAM
H
ENRY
H
ARRISON HAD JUST HELD A GREAT BANQUET
at Vincennes, with territorial officials and prominent settlers in attendance, to celebrate his latest remarkable land acquisition, when a letter was brought from Prophet’s Town by a messenger.

The letter was from Open Door. It was short and direct. It
made no overtures of friendliness or politeness. It warned Harrison not to send surveyors into any land north of the old boundary. It read:

With the green of springtime began the swarm that Tecumseh had predicted. Warriors riding in small bands appeared on the distant prairies, coming from north, west, and east. They were Miamis and Delawares. They came, saying they had quit listening to their old chiefs.