Panther in the Sky (82 page)

A
SURPRISING THING CAME UP IN THE COUNCIL.
U
SUALLY IT
was women who called for peace and kindness when the men were hot for war. But this time the women wanted killing. It was not war they wanted, but many of them wanted Barron to be executed for the panic he had caused by riding in, for the terror he had caused the children. Open Door’s wife, as the village women’s chief, was most ardently for it. And even when Tecumseh reminded them that by Shawnee law a guest is safe, and the council voted not to let Barron be hurt, the women then held a secret council of their own and plotted to kill Barron while he slept in the House of the Stranger. It was Star Watcher who came to Tecumseh in the evening and revealed the plot. Tecumseh squeezed her hand. Then he invited Barron to stay in his own lodge, and he prepared a pallet beside his own fire for him.

Tecumseh had another motive for doing this. He needed to talk to Barron.

That night as the white man sat and smoked in the small, flickering light from the fire-ring, the soft drone of village life and the creaking of crickets and katydids filling the night outside the lodge, Tecumseh asked the question that had been in his mind. “What does your governor mean when he says, ‘Show us the rightful owners of those lands’? In our eyes, Weshemoneto is the only rightful owner, but he put us here,
all
of us, not just Miamis and Delawares and Potawatomis, to use it. What does he mean, ‘show him’? Tell me truly, as my friend and guest.”

Barron’s face twisted up with the implications of this question, and finally he shrugged and said, “A rightful owner, by law, is someone who has a deed. You know of ‘deed’? Of ‘title’?”

“A white man I know once showed me his deed. They are on paper, yes? They have words and lines on them.”

“Yes, that’s right, I reckon.”

“And so a land treaty, such as the one made at Fort Wayne, is a deed or a title?”

“Well … yes, in a way.…”

“But then a deed or title is something a white man would have but a red man would not have?”

“Umm …” Barron shrugged and nodded.

“And only one who has a deed or title to a land can sell that land?”

“Well … I suppose that’s what the governor means, yes.”

“Then, Barron, since Little Turtle and Cracking Noise and Winnemac are red men—at least on their skins—and had no
deeds and titles, then they could not sell those lands to him. I believe this is what you have been saying.”

“Umm …” Barron waggled his fingers, as if trying to pull some kind of refuting argument out of the air.

“So, then,” Tecumseh said with some satisfaction, “I told my people in the council today that I will go talk to Harrison at Vincennes. I have just proven to you that those chiefs could not sell him that land. I will go then and prove it to him just so, and he will have to burn up the paper treaty and leave us the lands, as his letter said he would do if I proved.”

Barron looked at Tecumseh with genuine appreciation in his eyes. But he smiled on one side of his mouth and shook his head. “Chief,” he said, “you can try that on Governor Harrison. But don’t be surprised if he disagrees.”

“But how can he disagree? I have proven.”

“Nevertheless,” said Barron, raising his eyebrows and bobbing his head, “he might disagree.”

Now Tecumseh’s eyes hardened. “Then you say now that these things he said in the letter are only words, and that he does not really mean to give the land back to us, no matter what we prove. That when your governor writes his word in a letter, it is like a treaty, not to be believed.”

Barron fidgeted and tried to smile, but he could not look in Tecumseh’s eyes.

T
HE NEXT DAY
T
ECUMSEH TOLD
B
ARRON, WITH
O
PEN
D
OOR
standing by:

“Tell Harrison that we will meet each other in one moon from now, at which time I will have decided whether to go and see President. You can say it will be the first time I have looked upon Harrison since he was beside Wayne at the place of the Fallen Timbers, where he stood beside Wayne’s chair and listened to him talk, outside their tent near the flag. If his memory is as clear as mine, he will recall that day. Tell him that Tecumseh will come to help him understand the owning of land and to prove the truth. That I do not mean to attack his town, as the bad birds have told him. And that when I prove to him about the false treaty, I will expect him to burn it in the fire. Tell him I will bring some of my principal chiefs and, perhaps, too, a great many of the young men who like to be present on such occasions. Perhaps a hundred. Now, Barron, let me escort you to the road, with some warriors who will protect you until you are a good way along.”

“Pr-protect me?” Barron looked at the half-dozen armed warriors Tecumseh had summoned. Suddenly he was afraid.

“They will protect you until you are safe from our women. Go, Barron. I will take your hand again at Vincennes.”

And Open Door stood sullen as the messenger was escorted away. He glanced out of the side of his eye at his brother.

So, it was to be Tecumseh again going to do the big things.

It was not that Open Door would have wanted to be bothered with another trip to Vincennes, to face Harrison again. But to sit in the palace of the president!

And again he felt that bitter ache. He seemed to lose as Tecumseh gained.

B
EFORE IT WAS TIME TO GO TO
V
INCENNES, RUNNERS CAME
to Prophet’s Town from Harrison. Their only message was that Tecumseh should come with just a very small party, in order that the town of Vincennes should not be alarmed.

Once again Tecumseh’s blood grew hot. Did not Harrison understand that the number of people traveling to council with their chief was a sign of their support for him, an acknowledgment of his importance to them?

“Beware,” said some of the chieftains. “This governor wants you to come with few warriors so that he may seize you or kill you!”

Tecumseh decided to take with him only a select retinue of two dozen, made up of his bodyguards and his tribal chiefs. “But,” he added, “if any more choose to follow us, that is a matter of their own hearts. And if they wish to bring their wives and children, to have a look at the white governor’s town, I will not stop them. The presence of women and children would ease the white people’s fears that we are a war party.”

“T
HEY’RE HERE
, C
AP’N,” EXCLAIMED THE ORDERLY
. “T
HEY
just showed up round the bend, and they’re some spectacle!”

“Well, then, let’s go have us a look at this spectacle,” replied Captain George Rogers Clark Floyd, commanding officer of the little fort overlooking the Wabash. Captain Floyd was a nephew and namesake of the old Long Knife general and bore himself with an authoritative posture and self-confidence befitting the name. He professed to be in awe of no man, nor afraid of any, and he was hard to impress.

But after that day, he wrote home in a letter:

Tecumseh made his camp near a Shaker village between Fort Knox and Vincennes. All the warriors and women had been exhorted to make their best appearance, to be polite but reserved with any whites who came around the camp, to accept no presents, especially liquor, and to get into no trouble. The Shakers hosted and helped them.

Barron came out to greet Tecumseh the next morning. It was a Sunday, and the tones of a church bell came through the sycamores and willows from Vincennes. The bell made Tecumseh think of Ga-lo-weh and Rebekah. Now here he was, again visiting white people in their own place. But such a difference in the circumstances now! There with Ga-lo-weh he had been a private friend; here it seemed that every whiteface west of the mountains was looking on, and not in a friendly way. The town was full of
Blue-Coats walking in ranks, dragoons in helmets riding the streets, white women in voluminous dresses and sunbonnets that hid the shapes of their bodies and almost hid their faces as well, and all the officers and Supreme Court judges of the territory. They were all waiting for the council to proceed, and Harrison had called for it to begin the next day.

But Tecumseh had come as an equal and was not going to have his schedule dictated. He wanted time for the Shakers to look over the town and be sure that no tricks or traps had been arranged.

On Monday he decided to let Harrison fidget and sweat for another day and sent Barron to inquire whether Harrison would be attended by armed men in the council. Soon Barron came puffing and sweating back into Tecumseh’s camp with Harrison’s reply that the matter could be at Tecumseh’s choice. So Tecumseh sent Barron puffing back to say that the men ought not to have muskets and rifles on the council ground, but only side arms. To Tecumseh that meant only knives and tomahawks, which his warriors always kept at their sides to defend themselves against treachery. At last all that was settled, and Tecumseh believed Harrison should be well aware by now that a Shawnee chief was not one to be hurried or shoved around. Just to make sure Harrison understood, though, he did not hurry over to the town on Tuesday morning, either; in fact, while the guests and dignitaries waited and milled around Harrison’s veranda and under a canopied arbor, sweating in the muggy heat of an overcast day, Tecumseh stayed in his camp until afternoon, praying with his people, pondering on his speech, and making sure the companies of Blue-Coats were too confused and weary to plan any treachery. Even at that, it required courage and faith for the two dozen warriors and chiefs to walk down the road into the heavily armed town of their enemy, leaving their guns behind.

Still, they were fierce and formidable enough to make the onlookers draw back to the edges of the streets as they walked in, in a double file, with Tecumseh at their head. They were all lithe and erect; all wore only breechclouts and clean, fringed deerskin leggings and beaded moccasins; all were naked from the waist up, and their bodies and faces were decorated with red paint. All had shaved or plucked their heads bare except for the scalplock. Tecumseh himself was shirtless and wore over his shoulder a long scarlet cape that billowed as he walked. His black hair was still long, hanging to his shoulders, bound around by a colorful head-kerchief decorated with one eagle feather. Barron showed them
the way onto the grounds of Harrison’s estate, through a grove of trees on level lawn.

As they approached the mansion, Tecumseh saw that an arbor by the veranda had been covered with a canopy to give shade for a large number of chairs. Behind the elegantly dressed white people stood a platoon of honor guards, with pistols in their belts. He saw the figure he took to be Harrison and saw also among those people the contemptible Winnemac, dressed in a light cloak, and he saw the young captain named for Clark who had stopped him at the fort.

Suddenly a prickling of caution was set up in him by the sight of this arrangement; he felt as if he were walking into a trap. His warriors were like animals being funneled into a dead end during a hunting drive.

So he stopped in the grove of trees, a hundred paces from the veranda, and his warriors stopped behind him. Barron, unaware, went on a few more steps until the chuckles of the spectators stopped him. He hurried back, red-faced, perspiring. “What now?” he asked.

“Tell Harrison we will talk here.”

Barron made an exasperated motion toward the elaborate arrangement on the veranda. Tecumseh said:

“My people talk in the council circle, where no man is higher than the other. I will not go before that … 
thing
they sit on, and look up to Harrison. He may come out here.”

“But, Chief,” Barron now pleaded, “you’re to sit up there with him!”

“And my people on the ground looking up? No. Let him come out here. I have traveled many days to see him. He can come off the side of his house.”

Barron looked as if he might explode. “It would be so much trouble to move all those chairs! Be reasonable, Chief!”

“Barron, only the white men’s chairs need be moved. We do not require chairs.”

So Barron bustled back and forth two or three more times, and finally the arrangements were modified and all the white men’s chairs had been brought out into the grove. Harrison stayed on the distant veranda until all this milling around was done and then at last came down and walked toward the grove with his dignitaries behind him. Tecumseh’s eyes flashed.