Panther in the Sky (83 page)

“Barron! Those men, and all those soldiers, they have pistols in their belts! I do not like this! I said sidearms, and he agreed!”

“Sidearms,” Barron answered with a sigh, “means pistols, to them.”

“You did not tell me that!”

Barron had had enough. “Is the chief afraid?”

Tecumseh’s eyes froze on him. “I saved you from angry women once, Barron. You owe me a life, and I might take it, for what you have said. Now stand away. I want to have a clear look at this governor.”

Harrison came with his retinue. He wore an elegant frock coat with a high collar despite the close heat, and a shiny ceremonial sword hung at his left side from a silken sash. He was hatless, and his short hair was combed forward on the brow and temples. There was a strange, barely perceptible lopsidedness about his eyes, which, as Open Door had said, made his penetrating stare hard to look at. Though his physique was not imposing, there was something in his carriage that suggested uncommon strength, and in the hard, arrogant look of his visage, no timidity was revealed. He shook hands with Tecumseh, looking him over quickly, then went to the biggest armchair a few feet away and stood in front of it. Then he pointed at the chair next to it and said something to Barron. Barron told Tecumseh:

“Your father says for you to sit by his side.”

Tecumseh, head high, looked at Harrison for a moment, then suddenly raised a brawny arm to point at the sky, and his strong voice filled the grove.

“Father? The Great Good Spirit is my father! The earth is my mother, and on her bosom I will recline!” He seated himself on the ground, and all his warriors immediately sat down in a semicircle behind him.

Harrison puckered his lips. Then he began:

“Well, if our guest is finally satisfied with everything, we can begin at last. As you know, it is my desire to discuss with Tecumseh the relations between my people and his …” A damp wind suddenly turned the leaves of the trees underside up, and drops of rain sprinkled cool on heated faces. A rushing, hissing sound was coming from the river, and the finely dressed white people murmured and stirred. Harrison hurried on, glancing up: “And to give him a chance to carry his grievances to the president, if he so desires it.…”

And then suddenly a deluge of summer rain came hushing across the estate, and the white people were scurrying toward the canopied arbor and the porch, and Harrison, his caesarean hairdo plastered wetly to his head, his shoulders so hunched that his coat
collar covered his ears, shouted the obvious fact that the council was adjourned and slogged off after his guests toward the canopy.

Tecumseh and his warriors walked unescorted back through the town to their camp in the downpour, convinced that Weshemoneto had not meant for them to talk with the governor on this day. When they came into their camp, the women cried out in alarm; the dissolved paint running down their bodies had made them appear blood-soaked.

A
WEEK HAD GONE BY WITH WEATHER AND OTHER INFLUENCES
postponing the council, but at last the chief and the governor were face to face again in the grove, under a clear sky, and it looked as if the council could proceed. Now there was a table in front of Harrison’s chair. Beside him sat old John Gibson, secretary of the Indiana Territory, a gray-haired man whose face was so long that he was known to the Indians as Horsehead. Gibson, who had been married for decades to a Mingo woman, understood the Shawnee tongue. He, like most of the white men, wore a pair of pistols. On the other side of Harrison was Captain Floyd from Fort Knox. On the grass between Harrison’s table and Tecumseh sat Winnemac the Potawatomi. Harrison had chosen him as one of the interpreters, which had annoyed Tecumseh tremendously. But Tecumseh was not going to let an unpleasant detail like that prevent him any longer from saying what he had come to say. He stood looking at Harrison and began:

“Brother …” He noticed the flicker of anger that crossed the governor’s face because he had not called him “Father.” “I wish you to give me close attention, because I think you do not clearly understand. I want to speak to you about promises that the Americans have made.

“You recall the time when the Jesus Indians of the Delawares lived near the Americans, and had confidence in their promises of friendship, and thought they were secure, yet the Americans murdered all the men, women, and children, even as they prayed to Jesus?”

This immediate mention of the Gnadenhutten massacre made Harrison set his face hard. But Tecumseh had not come here to please Harrison with sweet words. He went on: “The same promises were given to the Shawnee one time. It was at Fort Finney, where some of my people were forced to make a treaty. Flags were given to my people, and they were told they were now the children of the Americans. We were told, If any white people mean to harm you, hold up these flags and you will then be safe
from all danger. We did this in good faith. But what happened? Our beloved chief Moluntha stood with the American flag in front of him and that very peace treaty in his hand, but his head was chopped by an American officer, and that American officer was never punished.

“Brother, after such bitter events, can you blame me for placing little confidence in the promises of Americans? That happened before the Treaty of Greenville. When they buried the tomahawk at Greenville, the Americans said they were our new fathers, not the British anymore, and would treat us as well. Since that treaty, here is how the Americans have ‘treated us well’: They have killed many Shawnees, many Winnebagoes, many Miamis, many Delawares, and have taken land from them. When they killed them, no American ever was punished. Not
one.

“It is you, the Americans, by such bad deeds, who push the red men to do mischief. You do not want unity among the tribes, and you destroy it. You try to make differences between them. We, their leaders, wish them to unite and consider their land the common property of all, but you try to keep them from this. You separate the tribes and deal with them that way, one by one, and advise them not to come into this union. Your states have set an example of forming a union among all the Fires; why should you censure the Indians for following that example?

“But, brother, I mean to bring all the tribes together, in spite of you, and until I have finished, I will not go to visit your president. Maybe I will when I have finished—maybe. The reason I tell you this: you want, by making your distinctions of Indian tribes and allotting to each a particular tract of land, to set them against each other, and thus to weaken us.

“You never see an Indian come, do you, and endeavor to make the white people divide up?

“You are always driving the red people this way! At last you will drive them into the Great Lake, where they can neither stand nor walk.”

Tecumseh watched Harrison keenly for some kind of response, but the governor’s face was stolid. He sat with his hands enfolded in each other on the table, his eyes never moving from Tecumseh’s.

“Brother,” Tecumseh went on, “you ought to know what you are doing to the Indians. Is it by the direction of the president you make these distinctions? It is a very bad thing, and we do not like it. Since my residence at Tippecanoe, we have tried to level all distinctions, to destroy village chiefs, by whom all such
mischief is done. It is they who sell our lands to the Americans. Brother, these lands that were sold and the goods that were given for them were done by only a few. The Treaty of Fort Wayne was made through the threats of Winnemac; but in the future we are going to punish those chiefs who propose to sell the land.”

He paused and gave Winnemac a murderous stare, forcing him to look down, and suddenly cried out, “There sits the black dog who makes lies and tells them, to cause white men and red men to hate each other!” Then he turned his eyes from Winnemac, leaving him to writhe in fury, and continued: “The only way to stop this evil is for all the red men to unite in claiming an equal right in the land. That is how it was at first, and should be still, for the land never was divided, but was for the use of everyone. Any tribe could go to an empty land and make a home there. And if they left, another tribe could come there and make a home. No groups among us have a right to sell, even to one another—and surely not to outsiders who want all, and will not do with less.” And now his voice rankled with sarcasm.

“Sell a country!” he cried. “Why not sell the air, the clouds, and the Great Sea, as well as the earth? Did not the Great Good Spirit make them all for the use of his children?”

Suddenly his whole visage changed. He turned an expectant expression upon Harrison and said: “Brother, I was glad to hear what you told us. You said that if we could prove that the land was sold by people who had no right to sell it, you would restore it. I will prove that those who did sell did not own it. Did they have a deed? A title? No! You say those prove someone owns land. Those chiefs only
spoke
a claim, and so you pretended to believe their claim, only because you wanted the land. But the many tribes with me will not agree with those claims. They have never had title to sell, and we agree this proves you could not buy it from them. If the land is not given back to us, you will see, when we return to our homes from here, how it will be settled. It will be like this:

“We shall have a great council, at which all the tribes will be present. We shall show to those who sold that they had no right to the claim they set up, and we shall see what will be done to those chiefs who did sell the land to you. I am not alone in this determination; it is the determination of all the warriors and red people who listen to me. Brother, I now wish
you
to listen to me. If you do not wipe out that treaty, it will seem that
you
wish me to kill all the chiefs who sold the land! I tell you so because I am authorized by all the tribes to do so! I am the head of them all!
All my warriors will meet together with me in two or three moons from now. Then I will call for those chiefs who sold you this land, and we shall know what to do with them.” Now he pointed straight at Harrison’s face and said slowly in a sharp voice: “If you do not restore the land, you will have had a hand in killing them!”

As this was translated, and the white people began to understand that he was seriously threatening to kill other Indian chiefs, they began turning to each other and buzzing to each other their horror and consternation; it was as if they only now realized how much in earnest he was about all this. Harrison, still not showing a trace of emotion, simply raised a hand and held it up and looked around at them until this fearful clamor subsided. Then he turned again to Tecumseh, who was beginning to wonder if his logic was making the least impression upon the governor. Tecumseh was not used to using the unadorned language this subject and this audience required. When he spoke to his own race he spoke to their emotions, with figurative language that made them see glorious or terrible pictures in their heads and feel joy or remorse in their hearts, and he yearned to pour out the familiar oratory of the heart. Suddenly, then, he cried out:

“I am a Shawnee! I am a warrior! My forefathers were warriors. From them I took only my birth into this world. From my tribe I take nothing. I am the maker of my own destiny! And O that I might make the destiny of my red people, of our nation, as great as I conceive to in my mind, when I think of Weshemoneto, who rules this universe! I would not then have to come to Governor Harrison and
ask
him to tear up this treaty and wipe away the marks upon the land. No! I would say to him, ‘Sir, you may return to your own country!’ The being within me hears the voice of the ages, which tells me that once, always, and until lately, there were no white men on all this island, that it then belonged to the red men, children of the same parents, placed on it by the Great Good Spirit who made them, to keep it, to traverse it, to enjoy its yield, and to people it with the same race. Once they were a happy race! Now they are made miserable by the white people, who are never contented but are always coming in! You do this always, after promising not to anymore, yet you ask us to have confidence in your promises. How can we have confidence in the white people? When Jesus Christ came upon the earth, you killed him, the son of your own God, you nailed him up! You thought he was dead, but you were mistaken. And only after you thought you killed him did you worship him, and start
killing those who would not worship him.… What kind of a people is this for us to trust?” Most of the white people were now gasping and muttering, some even putting their hands over their ears, but Harrison still sat expressionless.

“Now, brother,” Tecumseh went on, “everything I have said to you is the truth, as Weshemoneto has inspired me to speak only truth to you. I have declared myself freely to you about my intentions. And I want to know your intentions. I want to know what you are going to do about the taking of our land. I want to hear you say that you understand now, and will wipe out that pretended treaty, so that the tribes can be at peace with each other, as you pretend you want them to be. Tell me, brother. I want to know now.”

Then he billowed his cape behind him with a sweep of his arm and in a graceful motion sank to sit cross-legged on the ground. The eyes of his chieftains were on him, glittering, full of pride. But Harrison still sat with his hands before him on the table and no expression. He was angry. He had brought these Indians here to chide them for creating tension on the frontier, but instead he had been challenged and accused and put on the defensive by Tecumseh.

After a moment he stood up and walked out from behind the table, his left wrist resting on the silver guard of his ceremonial sword. He stood in front of Tecumseh, looking down on him. At his feet Winnemac reclined like a faithful dog, his cloak draped over him.

Harrison made no preamble but headed straight to the point, as Tecumseh had.

“I do not see how you can say the Indians are one nation. It is absurd to say the red men are all one people. If your Great Spirit meant this to be, why did he give you different tongues?