The Ghost-dance religion and the Sioux outbreak of 1890

by James Mooney

INTRODUCTION

In the fall of 1890 the author was preparing to go to Indian Territory, under the auspices of the Bureau of Ethnology, to continue researches among the Cherokee, when the Ghost dance began to attract attention, and permission was asked and received to investigate that subject also among the wilder tribes in the western part of the territory. Proceeding directly to the Cheyenne and Arapaho, it soon became evident that there was more in the Ghost dance than had been suspected, with the result that the investigation, to which it had been intended to devote only a few weeks, has extended over a period of more than three years, and might be continued indefinitely, as the dance still exists (in 1896) and is developing new features at every performance. The uprising among the Sioux in the meantime made necessary also the examination of a mass of documentary material in the files of the Indian Office and the War Department bearing on the outbreak, in addition to the study in the field of the strictly religious features of the dance.

The first visit of about four months (December, 1890–April, 1891) was made to the Arapaho, Cheyenne, Kiowa, Comanche, Apache, Caddo, and Wichita, all living near together in the western part of what was then Indian Territory, but is now Oklahoma. These tribes were all more or less under the influence of the new religion. The principal study was made among the Arapaho, who were the most active propagators of the “Messiah” doctrine among the southern tribes and are especially friendly and cordial in disposition.

On returning to Washington, the author received a commission to make an ethnologic collection for the World’s Columbian Exposition, and, selecting the Kiowa for that purpose as a representative prairie tribe, started out again almost immediately to the same field. This trip, lasting three months, gave further opportunity for study of the Ghost dance among the same tribes. After returning and attending to the labeling and arranging of the collection, a study was made of all documents bearing on the subject in possession of the Indian Office and the War Department. Another trip was then made to the field for the purpose of investigating the dance among the Sioux, where it had attracted most attention, and among the Paiute, where it originated. On this journey the author visited the Omaha, Winnebago, Sioux of Pine Ridge, Paiute, Cheyenne, and Arapaho; met and talked with the messiah himself, and afterward, on the strength of this fact, obtained from the Cheyenne the original letter containing his message and instructions to the southern tribes. This trip occupied about three months.

A few months later, in the summer of 1892, another journey was made to the West, in the course of which the southern tribes and the Sioux were revisited, and some time was spent in Wyoming with the Shoshoni and northern Arapaho, the latter of whom were perhaps the most earnest followers of the messiah in the north. This trip consumed four months. After some time spent in Washington in elaborating notes already obtained, a winter trip (1892–93) was made under another commission from the World’s Fair to the Navaho and the Hopi or Moki, of New Mexico and Arizona. Although these tribes were not directly concerned in the Ghost dance, they had been visited by apostles of the new doctrine, and were able to give some account of the ceremony as it existed among the Havasupai or Cohonino and others farther to the west. On the return journey another short stay was made among the Kiowa and Arapaho. In the summer of 1893 a final visit, covering a period of five months, was made to the western tribes of Oklahoma, bringing the personal observation and study of the Ghost dance down to the beginning of 1894.

The field investigation therefore occupied twenty-two months, involving nearly 32,000 miles of travel and more or less time spent with about twenty tribes. To obtain exact knowledge of the ceremony, the author took part in the dance among the Arapaho and Cheyenne. He also carried a kodak and a tripod camera, with which he made photographs of the dance and the trance both without and within the circle. Several months were spent in consulting manuscript documents and printed sources of information in the departments and libraries at Washington, and correspondence was carried on with persons in various parts of the country who might be able to give additional facts. From the beginning every effort was made to get a correct statement of the subject. Beyond this, the work must speak for itself.

As the Ghost dance doctrine is only the latest of a series of Indian religious revivals, and as the idea on which it is founded is a hope common to all humanity, considerable space has been given to a discussion of the primitive messiah belief and of the teachings of the various Indian prophets who have preceded Wovoka, together with brief sketches of several Indian wars belonging to the same periods.

In the songs the effort has been to give the spirit and exact rendering, without going into analytic details. The main purpose of the work is not linguistic, and as nearly every tribe concerned speaks a different language from all the others, any close linguistic study must be left to the philologist who can afford to devote a year or more to an individual tribe. The only one of these tribes of which the author claims intimate knowledge is the Kiowa.

Acknowledgments are due the officers and members of the Office of Indian Affairs and the War Department for courteous assistance in obtaining documentary information and in replying to letters of inquiry; to Mr De Lancey W. Gill and Mr J. K. Hillers and their assistants of the art and photographic divisions of the United States Geological Survey; to Mr A. R. Spofford, Librarian of Congress; to Mr F. V. Coville, botanist, Agricultural Department; Honorable T. J. Morgan, former Commissioner of Indian Affairs; Major J. W. MacMurray, first artillery, United States Army; Dr Washington Matthews, surgeon, United States Army; Captain H. L. Scott, seventh cavalry, United States Army; Captain J. M. Lee, ninth infantry, United States Army; Captain E. L. Huggins, second cavalry, United States Army, of the staff of General Miles; the late Captain J. G. Bourke, third cavalry, United States Army; Captain H. G. Browne, twelfth infantry, United States Army; Judge James Wickersham, Tacoma, Washington; Dr George Bird Grinnell, editor of “Forest and Stream,” New York city; Mr Thomas V. Keam and the late A. M. Stephen, Keams Canyon, Arizona; Rev. H. R. Voth, Oraibi, Arizona; General L. W. Colby, Washington, District of Columbia; Mr D. B. Dyer, Augusta, Georgia; Rev. Myron Eells, Tacoma, Washington; Mr Emile Berliner and the Berliner Gramophone Company, for recording, and Professors John Philip Sousa and F. W. V. Gaisberg, for arranging the Indian music; W. S. Godbe, Bullionville, Nevada; Miss L. McLain, Washington City; Addison Cooper, Nashville, Tennessee; Miss Emma C. Sickels, Chicago; Professor A. H. Thompson, United States Geological Survey, Washington; Mrs L. B. Arnold, Standing Rock, North Dakota; Mr C. H. Bartlett, South Bend, Indiana; Dr T. P. Martin, Taos, New Mexico, and to the following Indian informants and interpreters: Philip Wells, Louis Menard, Ellis Standing Bear, American Horse, George Sword, and Fire Thunder, of Pine Ridge, South Dakota; Henry Reid, Rev. Sherman Coolidge, Norcok, Sage, and Sharp Nose, of Fort Washakie, Wyoming; Charley Sheep of Walker river, Nevada; Black Coyote, Sitting Bull, Black Short Nose, George Bent, Paul Boynton, Robert Burns, Jesse Bent, Clever Warden, Grant Left-hand, and the Arapaho police at Darlington, Oklahoma; Andres Martinez, Belo Cozad, Paul Setkopti, Henry Poloi, Little Bow, William Tivis, George Parton, Towakoni Jim, Robert Dunlap, Kichai, John Wilson, Tama, Igiagyahona, Deoñ, Mary Zotom, and Eliza Parton of Anadarko, Oklahoma.

THE NARRATIVE

Chapter I
PARADISE LOST

There are hours long departed which memory brings

Like blossoms of Eden to twine round the heart.

Moore.

The wise men tell us that the world is growing happier—that we live longer than did our fathers, have more of comfort and less of toil, fewer wars and discords, and higher hopes and aspirations. So say the wise men; but deep in our own hearts we know they are wrong. For were not we, too, born in Arcadia, and have we not—each one of us—in that May of life when the world was young, started out lightly and airily along the path that led through green meadows to the blue mountains on the distant horizon, beyond which lay the great world we were to conquer? And though others dropped behind, have we not gone on through morning brightness and noonday heat, with eyes always steadily forward, until the fresh grass began to be parched and withered, and the way grew hard and stony, and the blue mountains resolved into gray rocks and thorny cliffs? And when at last we reached the toilsome summits, we found the glory that had lured us onward was only the sunset glow that fades into darkness while we look, and leaves us at the very goal to sink down, tired in body and sick at heart, with strength and courage gone, to close our eyes and dream again, not of the fame and fortune that were to be ours, but only of the old-time happiness that we have left so far behind.

As with men, so is it with nations. The lost paradise is the world’s dreamland of youth. What tribe or people has not had its golden age, before Pandora’s box was loosed, when women were nymphs and dryads and men were gods and heroes? And when the race lies crushed and groaning beneath an alien yoke, how natural is the dream of a redeemer, an Arthur, who shall return from exile or awake from some long sleep to drive out the usurper and win back for his people what they have lost. The hope becomes a faith and the faith becomes the creed of priests and prophets, until the hero is a god and the dream a religion, looking to some great miracle of nature for its culmination and accomplishment. The doctrines of the Hindu avatar, the Hebrew Messiah, the Christian millennium, and the Hesûnanin of the Indian Ghost dance are essentially the same, and have their origin in a hope and longing common to all humanity.

Probably every Indian tribe, north and south, had its early hero god, the great doer or teacher of all first things, from the Inskeha and Manabozho of the rude Iroquoian and Algonquian to the Quetzalcoatl, the Bochica, and the Viracocha of the more cultivated Aztecs, Muyscas, and Quichuas of the milder southland. Among the roving tribes of the north this hero is hardly more than an expert magician, frequently degraded to the level of a common trickster, who, after ridding the world of giants and monsters, and teaching his people a few simple arts, retires to the upper world to rest and smoke until some urgent necessity again requires his presence below. Under softer southern skies the myth takes more poetic form and the hero becomes a person of dignified presence, a father and teacher of his children, a very Christ, worthy of all love and reverence, who gathers together the wandering nomads and leads them to their destined country, where he instructs them in agriculture, house building, and the art of government, regulates authority, and inculcates peaceful modes of life. “Under him, the earth teemed with fruits and flowers without the pains of culture. An ear of Indian corn was as much as a single man could carry. The cotton, as it grew, took of its own accord the rich dyes of human art. The air was filled with intoxicating perfumes and the sweet melody of birds. In short, these were the halcyon days, which find a place in the mythic systems of so many nations in the Old World. It was the golden age of Anahuac.” ([Prescott], 1.)[1] When at last his work is well accomplished, he bids farewell to his sorrowing subjects, whom he consoles with the sacred promise that he will one day return and resume his kingdom, steps into his magic boat by the seashore, and sails away out of their sight to the distant land of sunrise.

Such was Quetzalcoatl of the Aztecs, and such in all essential respects was the culture god of the more southern semicivilized races. Curiously enough, this god, at once a Moses and a messiah, is usually described as a white man with flowing beard. From this and other circumstances it has been argued that the whole story is only another form of the dawn myth, but whether the Indian god be an ancient deified lawgiver of their own race, or some nameless missionary who found his way across the trackless ocean in the early ages of Christianity, or whether we have here only a veiled parable of the morning light bringing life and joy to the world and then vanishing to return again from the east with the dawn, it is sufficient to our purpose that the belief in the coming of a messiah, who should restore them to their original happy condition, was well nigh universal among the American tribes.

This faith in the return of a white deliverer from the east opened the gate to the Spaniards at their first coming alike in Haiti, Mexico, Yucatan, and Peru. ([Brinton], 1.) The simple native welcomed the white strangers as the children or kindred of their long-lost benefactor, immortal beings whose near advent had been foretold by oracles and omens, whose faces borrowed from the brightness of the dawn, whose glistening armor seemed woven from the rays of sunlight, and whose god-like weapons were the lightning and the thunderbolt. Their first overbearing demands awakened no resentment; for may not the gods claim their own, and is not resistance to the divine will a crime? Not until their most sacred things were trampled under foot, and the streets of the holy city itself ran red with the blood of their slaughtered princes, did they read aright the awful prophecy by the light of their blazing temples, and know that instead of the children of an incarnate god they had welcomed a horde of incarnate devils. “The light of civilization would be poured on their land. But it would be the light of a consuming fire, before which their barbaric glory, their institutions, their very existence and name as a nation, would wither and become extinct. Their doom was sealed when the white man had set his foot on their soil.” ([Prescott], 2.)

The great revolt of the Pueblo Indians in August, 1680, was one of the first determined efforts made by the natives on the northern continent to throw off the yoke of a foreign oppressor. The Pueblo tribes along the Rio Grande and farther to the west, a gentle, peaceful race, had early welcomed the coming of the Spaniards, with their soldiers and priests, as friends who would protect them against the wild marauding tribes about them and teach them the mysteries of a greater “medicine” than belonged to their own kachinas. The hope soon faded into bitter disappointment. The soldiers, while rough and overbearing toward their brown-skin allies, were yet unable to protect them from the inroads of their enemies. The priests prohibited their dances and simple amusements, yet all their ringing of bells and chanting of hymns availed not to bring more rain on the crops or to turn aside the vengeful Apache. “What have we gained by all this?” said the Pueblos one to another; “not peace and not happiness, for these new rulers will not protect us from our enemies, and take from us all the enjoyments we once knew.”

The pear was ripe. Popé, a medicine-man of the Tewa, had come back from a pilgrimage to the far north, where he claimed to have visited the magic lagoon of Shipapu, whence his people traced their origin and to which the souls of their dead returned after leaving this life. By these ancestral spirits he had been endowed with occult powers and commanded to go back and rouse the Pueblos to concerted effort for deliverance from the foreign yoke of the strangers.

Wonderful beings were these spirit messengers. Swift as light and impalpable as thought, they passed under the earth from the magic lake to the secret subterranean chamber of the oracle and stood before him as shapes of fire, and spoke, telling him to prepare the strings of yucca knots and send them with the message to all the Pueblos far and near, so that in every village the chiefs might untie one knot from the string each day, and know when they came to the last knot that then was the time to strike.

From the Pecos, across the Rio Grande to Zuñi and the far-distant Hopi mesas, every Pueblo village accepted the yucca string and began secret preparation for the rising. The time chosen was the new moon of August, 1680, but, through a partial discovery of the plot, the explosion was precipitated on the 10th. So sudden and complete was the surprise that many Spaniards in the Pueblo country, priests, soldiers, and civilians, were killed, and the survivors, after holding out for a time under Governor Otermin at Santa Fé, fled to El Paso, and in October there remained not a single Spaniard in all New Mexico. ([Bandelier], 1a, 1b.)

Despite their bitter disappointment, the southern nations continued to cherish the hope of a coming redeemer, who now assumed the character of a terrible avenger of their wrongs, and the white-skin conqueror has had bloody occasion to remember that his silent peon, as he toils by blue Chapala or sits amid the ruins of his former grandeur in the dark forests of Yucatan, yet waits ever and always the coming of the day which shall break the power of the alien Spaniard and restore to their inheritance the children of Anahuac and Mayapan. In Peru the natives refused to believe that the last of the Incas had perished a wanderer in the forests of the eastern Cordilleras. For more than two centuries they cherished the tradition that he had only retired to another kingdom beyond the mountains, from which he would return in his own good time to sweep their haughty oppressors from the land. In 1781 the slumbering hope found expression in a terrible insurrection under the leadership of the mestizo Condorcanqui, a descendant of the ancient royal family, who boldly proclaimed himself the long lost Tupac Amaru, child of the sun and Inca of Peru. With mad enthusiasm the Quichua highlanders hailed him as their destined deliverer and rightful sovereign, and binding around his forehead the imperial fillet of the Incas, he advanced at the head of an immense army to the walls of Cuzco, declaring his purpose to blot out the very memory of the white man and reestablish the Indian empire in the City of the Sun. Inspired by the hope of vengeance on the conqueror, even boys became leaders of their people, and it was only after a bloody struggle of two years’ duration that the Spaniards were able to regain the mastery and consigned the captive Inca, with all his family, to an ignominious and barbarous death. Even then so great was the feeling of veneration which he had inspired in the breasts of the Indians that “notwithstanding their fear of the Spaniards, and though they were surrounded by soldiers of the victorious army, they prostrated themselves at the sight of the last of the children of the sun, as he passed along the streets to the place of execution.” ([Humboldt], 1.)

In the New World, as in the Old, the advent of the deliverer was to be heralded by signs and wonders. Thus in Mexico, a mysterious rising of the waters of Lake Tezcuco, three comets blazing in the sky, and a strange light in the east, prepared the minds of the people for the near coming of the Spaniards. ([Prescott], 3.) In this connection, also, there was usually a belief in a series of previous destructions by flood, fire, famine, or pestilence, followed by a regeneration, through, the omnipotent might of the savior. The doctrine that the world is old and worn out, and that the time for its renewal is near at hand, is an essential part of the teaching of the Ghost dance. The number of these cycles of destruction was variously stated among different tribes, but perhaps the most sadly prophetic form of the myth was found among the Winnebago, who forty years ago held that the tenth generation of their people was near its close, and that at the end of the thirteenth the red race would be destroyed. By prayers and ceremonies they were then endeavoring to placate their angry gods and put farther away the doom that now seems rapidly closing in on them. ([Schoolcraft], Ind. Tribes, 1.)

Chapter II
THE DELAWARE PROPHET AND PONTIAC

Hear what the Great Spirit has ordered me to tell you: Put off entirely the customs which you have adopted since the white people came among us.—The Delaware Prophet.

This is our land, and not yours.—The Confederate Tribes, 1752.

The English advances were slow and halting, for a long period almost imperceptible, while the establishment of a few small garrisons and isolated trading stations by the French hardly deserved to be called an occupancy of the country. As a consequence, the warlike northern tribes were slow to realize that an empire was slipping from their grasp, and it was not until the two great nations prepared for the final struggle in the New World that the native proprietors began to read the stars aright. Then it was, in 1752, that the Lenape chiefs sent to the British agent the pointed interrogatory: “The English claim all on one side of the river, the French claim all on the other—where is the land of the Indians?” ([Bancroft], 1.) Then, as they saw the French strengthening themselves along the lakes, there came a stronger protest from the council ground of the confederate tribes of the west: “This is our land and not yours. Fathers, both you and the English are white; the land belongs to neither the one nor the other of you, but the Great Being above allotted it to be a dwelling place for us; so, fathers, I desire you to withdraw, as I have desired our brothers, the English.” A wampum belt gave weight to the words. ([Bancroft], 2.) The French commander’s reply was blunt, but more practiced diplomats assured the red men that all belonged to the Indian, and that the great king of the French desired only to set up a boundary against the further encroachments of the English, who would otherwise sweep the red tribes from the Ohio as they had already driven them from the Atlantic. The argument was plausible. In every tribe were French missionaries, whose fearless courage and devotion had won the admiration and love of the savage; in every village was domiciliated a hardy voyageur, with his Indian wife and family of children, in whose veins commingled the blood of the two races and whose ears were attuned alike to the wild songs of the forest and the rondeaus of Normandy or Provence. It was no common tie that bound together the Indians and the French, and when a governor of Canada and the general of his army stepped into the circle of braves to dance the war dance and sing the war song with their red allies, thirty-three wild tribes declared on the wampum belt, “The French are our brothers and their king is our father. We will try his hatchet upon the English” ([Bancroft], 3), and through seven years of blood and death the lily and the totem were borne abreast until the flag of France went down forever on the heights of Quebec.

For some time after the surrender the unrest of the native tribes was soothed into a semblance of quiet by the belief, artfully inculcated by their old allies, that the king of France, wearied by his great exertions, had fallen asleep for a little while, but would soon awake to take vengeance on the English for the wrongs they had inflicted on his red children. Then, as they saw English garrisons occupying the abandoned posts and English traders passing up the lakes even to the sacred island of the Great Turtle, the despairing warriors said to one another, “We have been deceived. English and French alike are white men and liars. We must turn from both and seek help from our Indian gods.”

In 1762 a prophet appeared among the Delawares, at Tuscarawas, on the Muskingum, who preached a union of all the red tribes and a return to the old Indian life, which he declared to be the divine command, as revealed to himself in a wonderful vision. From an old French manuscript, written by an anonymous eyewitness of the scene which he describes, we have the details of this vision, as related by Pontiac to his savage auditors at the great council of the tribes held near Detroit in April, 1763. Parkman gives the story on the authority of this manuscript, which he refers to as the “Pontiac manuscript,” and states that it was long preserved in a Canadian family at Detroit, and afterward deposited with the Historical Society of Michigan. It bears internal evidence of genuineness, and is supposed to have been written by a French priest. ([Parkman], 1.) The vision, from the same manuscript, is related at length in Schoolcraft’s Algic Researches.

According to the prophet’s story, being anxious to know the “Master of Life,” he determined, without mentioning his desire to anyone, to undertake a journey to the spirit world. Ignorant of the way, and not knowing any person who, having been there, could direct him, he performed a mystic rite in the hope of receiving some light as to the course he should pursue. He then fell into a deep sleep, in which he dreamed that it was only necessary to begin his journey and that by continuing to walk forward he would at last arrive at his destination.

Early the next morning, taking his gun, ammunition, and kettle, he started off, firmly convinced that by pressing onward without discouragement he should accomplish his object. Day after day he proceeded without incident, until at sunset of the eighth day, while preparing to encamp for the night by the side of a small stream in a little opening in the forest, he noticed, running out from the edge of the prairie, three wide and well-trodden paths. Wondering somewhat that they should be there, he finished his temporary lodging and, lighting a fire, began to prepare his supper. While thus engaged, he observed with astonishment that the paths became more distinct as the night grew darker. Alarmed at the strange appearance, he was about to abandon his encampment and seek another at a safer distance, when he remembered his dream and the purpose of his journey. It seemed to him that one of these roads must lead to the place of which he was in search, and he determined, therefore, to remain where he was until morning, and then take one of the three and follow it to the end. Accordingly, the next morning, after a hasty meal, he left his encampment, and, burning with the ardor of discovery, took the widest path, which he followed until noon, when he suddenly saw a large fire issuing apparently from the earth. His curiosity being aroused, he went toward it, but the fire increased to such a degree that he became frightened and turned back.

He now took the next widest of the three paths, which he followed as before until noon, when a similar fire again drove him back and compelled him to take the third road, which he kept a whole day without meeting anything unusual, when suddenly he saw a precipitous mountain of dazzling brightness directly in his path. Recovering from his wonder, he drew near and examined it, but could see no sign of a road to the summit. He was about to give way to disappointment, when, looking up, he saw seated a short distance up the mountain a woman of bright beauty and clad in snow-white garments, who addressed him in his own language, telling him that on the summit of the mountain was the abode of the Master of Life, whom he had journeyed so far to meet. “But to reach it,” said she, “you must leave all your cumbersome dress and equipments at the foot, then go and wash in the river which I show you, and afterward ascend the mountain.”

He obeyed her instructions, and on asking how he could hope to climb the mountain, which, was steep and slippery as glass, she replied that in order to mount he must use only his left hand and foot. This seemed to him almost impossible, but, encouraged by the woman, he began to climb, and at length, after much difficulty, reached the top. Here the woman suddenly vanished, and he found himself alone without a guide. On looking about, he saw before him a plain, in the midst of which were three villages, with well-built houses disposed in orderly arrangement. He bent his steps toward the principal one, but after going a short distance he remembered that he was naked, and was about to turn back when a voice told him that as he had washed himself in the river he might go on without fear. Thus bidden, he advanced without hesitation to the gate of the village, where he was admitted and saw approaching a handsome man in white garments, who offered to lead him into the presence of the Master of Life. Admiring the beauty of everything about him, he was then conducted to the Master of Life, who took him by the hand and gave him for a seat a hat bordered with gold. Afraid of spoiling the hat, he hesitated to sit down until again told to do so, when he obeyed, and the Master of Life thus addressed him:

I am the Master of Life, whom you wish to see and with whom you wish to speak. Listen to what I shall tell you for yourself and for all the Indians.

He then commanded him to exhort his people to cease from drunkenness, wars, polygamy, and the medicine song, and continued:

The land on which you are, I have made for you, not for others. Wherefore do you suffer the whites to dwell upon your lands? Can you not do without them? I know that those whom you call the children of your Great Father [the King of France] supply your wants; but were you not wicked as you are you would not need them. You might live as you did before you knew them. Before those whom you call your brothers [the French] had arrived, did not your bow and arrow maintain you? You needed neither gun, powder, nor any other object. The flesh of animals was your food; their skins your raiment. But when I saw you inclined to evil, I removed the animals into the depths of the forest that you might depend on your brothers for your necessaries, for your clothing. Again become good and do my will and I will send animals for your sustenance. I do not, however, forbid suffering among you your Father’s children. I love them; they know me; they pray to me. I supply their own wants, and give them that which they bring to you. Not so with those who are come to trouble your possessions [the English]. Drive them away; wage war against them; I love them not; they know me not; they are my enemies; they are your brothers’ enemies. Send them back to the lands I have made for them. Let them remain there. ([Schoolcraft], Alg. Res., 1.)

The Master of Life then gave him a prayer, carved in Indian hieroglyphics upon a wooden stick, which he was told to deliver to his chief on returning to earth. ([Parkman], 2.) His instructor continued:

Learn it by heart, and teach it to all the Indians and children. It must be repeated morning and evening. Do all that I have told thee, and announce it to all the Indians as coming from the Master of Life. Let them drink but one draught, or two at most, in one day. Let them have but one wife, and discontinue running after other people’s wives and daughters. Let them not fight one another. Let them not sing the medicine song, for in singing the medicine song they speak to the evil spirit. Drive from your lands those dogs in red clothing; they are only an injury to you. When you want anything, apply to me, as your brothers do, and I will give to both. Do not sell to your brothers that which I have placed on the earth as food. In short, become good, and you shall want nothing. When you meet one another, bow and give one another the [left] hand of the heart. Above all, I command thee to repeat morning and evening the prayer which I have given thee.

The Indian received the prayer, promising to do as he had been commanded and to recommend the same course to others. His former conductor then came and, leading him to the foot of the mountain, bid him resume his garments and go back to his village. His return excited much surprise among his friends, who had supposed him lost. They asked him where he had been, but as he had been commanded to speak to no one until he had seen the chief, he motioned with his hand to signify that he had come from above. On entering the village he went at once to the wigwam of the chief, to whom he delivered the prayer and the message which he had received from the Master of Life. ([Schoolcraft], Alg. Res., 2.)

Although the story as here given bears plain impress of the white man’s ideas, it is essentially aboriginal. While the discrimination expressed by the Master of Life in favor of the French and against the English may have been due to the fact that the author of the manuscript was a Frenchman, it is more probable that we have here set forth only the well-known preference of the wild tribes. The occupancy of a region by the English always meant the speedy expulsion of the natives. The French, on the contrary, lived side by side with the red men, joining in their dances and simple amusements, and entering with fullest sympathy into their wild life, so that they were regarded rather as brethren of an allied tribe than as intruders of an alien race. This feeling is well indicated in the prophet’s narrative, where the Indians, while urged to discard everything that they have adopted from the whites, are yet to allow the French to remain among them, though exhorted to relentless war on the English. The difference received tragic exemplification at Michilimackinac a year later, when a handful of French traders looked on unarmed and unhurt while a crew of maddened savages were butchering, scalping, and drinking the blood of British soldiers. The introduction of the trivial incident of the hat is characteristically Indian, and the confounding of dreams and visions with actual happenings is a frequent result of mental exaltation of common occurrence in the history of religious enthusiasts. The Delaware prophet regards the whole experience as an actual fact instead of a distempered vision induced by long fasts and vigils, and the hieroglyphic prayer—undoubtedly graven by himself while under the ecstasy—is to him a real gift from heaven. The whole story is a striking parallel of the miraculous experiences recounted by the modern apostles of the Ghost dance. The prayer-stick also and the heavenly map, later described and illustrated, reappear in the account of Känakûk, the Kickapoo prophet, seventy years afterward, showing in a striking manner the continuity of aboriginal ideas and methods.

The celebrated missionary, Heckewelder, who spent fifty years among the Delawares, was personally acquainted with this prophet and gives a detailed account of his teachings and of his symbolic parchments. He says:

In the year 1762 there was a famous preacher of the Delaware nation, who resided at Cayahaga, near Lake Erie, and travelled about the country, among the Indians, endeavouring to persuade them that he had been appointed by the Great Spirit to instruct them in those things that were agreeable to him, and point out to them the offences by which they had drawn his displeasure on themselves, and the means by which they might recover his favour for the future. He had drawn, as he pretended, by the direction of the Great Spirit, a kind of map on a piece of deerskin, somewhat dressed like parchment, which he called “the great Book or Writing.” This, he said, he had been ordered to shew to the Indians, that they might see the situation in which the Mannitto had originally placed them, the misery which they had brought upon themselves by neglecting their duty, and the only way that was now left them to regain what they had lost. This map he held before him while preaching, frequently pointing to particular marks and spots upon it, and giving explanations as he went along.

The size of this map was about fifteen inches square, or, perhaps, something more. An inside square was formed by lines drawn within it, of about eight inches each way; two of these lines, however, were not closed by about half an inch at the corners. Across these inside lines, others of about an inch in length were drawn with sundry other lines and marks, all which was intended to represent a strong inaccessible barrier, to prevent those without from entering the space within, otherwise than at the place appointed for that purpose. When the map was held as he directed, the corners which were not closed lay at the left-hand side, directly opposite to each other, the one being at the southeast by south, and the nearest at the northeast by north. In explaining or describing the particular points on this map, with his fingers always pointing to the place he was describing, he called the space within the inside lines “the heavenly regions,” or the place destined by the Great Spirit for the habitation of the Indians in future life. The space left open at the southeast corner he called the “avenue,” which had been intended for the Indians to enter into this heaven, but which was now in the possession of the white people; wherefore the Great Spirit had since caused another “avenue” to be made on the opposite side, at which, however, it was both difficult and dangerous for them to enter, there being many impediments in their way, besides a large ditch leading to a gulf below, over which they had to leap; but the evil spirit kept at this very spot a continual watch for Indians, and whoever he laid hold of never could get away from him again, but was carried to his regions, where there was nothing but extreme poverty; where the ground was parched up by the heat for want of rain, no fruit came to perfection, the game was almost starved for want of pasture, and where the evil spirit, at his pleasure, transformed men into horses and dogs, to be ridden by him and follow him in his hunts and wherever he went.

The space on the outside of this interior square was intended to represent the country given to the Indians to hunt, fish, and dwell in while in this world; the east side of it was called the ocean or “great salt-water lake.” Then the preacher, drawing the attention of his hearers particularly to the southeast avenue, would say to them, “Look here! See what we have lost by neglect and disobedience; by being remiss in the expression of our gratitude to the Great Spirit for what he has bestowed upon us; by neglecting to make to him sufficient sacrifices; by looking upon a people of a different colour from our own, who had come across a great lake, as if they were a part of ourselves; by suffering them to sit down by our side, and looking at them with indifference, while they were not only taking our country from us, but this (pointing to the spot), this, our own avenue, leading into those beautiful regions which were destined for us. Such is the sad condition to which we are reduced. What is now to be done, and what remedy is to be applied? I will tell you, my friends. Hear what the Great Spirit has ordered me to tell you! You are to make sacrifices, in the manner that I shall direct; to put off entirely from yourselves the customs which you have adopted since the white people came among us. You are to return to that former happy state, in which we lived in peace and plenty, before these strangers came to disturb us; and, above all, you must abstain from drinking their deadly beson, which they have forced upon us, for the sake of increasing their gains and diminishing our numbers. Then will the Great Spirit give success to our arms; then he will give us strength to conquer our enemies, to drive them from hence, and recover the passage to the heavenly regions which they have taken from us.”

Such was in general the substance of his discourses. After having dilated more or less on the various topics which I have mentioned, he commonly concluded in this manner: “And now, my friends, in order that what I have told you may remain firmly impressed on your minds, and to refresh your memories from time to time, I advise you to preserve, in every family at least, such a book or writing as this, which I will finish off for you, provided you bring me the price, which is only one buckskin or two doeskins apiece.” The price was of course bought (sic), and the book purchased. In some of those maps, the figure of a deer or turkey, or both, was placed in the heavenly regions, and also in the dreary region of the evil spirit. The former, however, appeared fat and plump, while the latter seemed to have nothing but skin and bones. ([Heckewelder], 1.)

From the narrative of John McCullough, who had been taken by the Indians when a child of 8 years, and lived for some years as an adopted son in a Delaware family in northeastern Ohio, we gather some additional particulars concerning this prophet, whose name seems to be lost to history. McCullough himself, who was then but a boy, never met the prophet, but obtained his information from others who had, especially from his Indian brother, who went to Tuscarawas (or Tuscalaways) to see and hear the new apostle on his first appearance.

It was said by those who went to see him that he had certain hieroglyphics marked on a piece of parchment, denoting the probation that human beings were subjected to whilst they were living on earth, and also denoting something of a future state. They informed me that he was almost constantly crying whilst he was exhorting them. I saw a copy of his hieroglyphics, as numbers of them had got them copied and undertook to preach or instruct others. The first or principal doctrine they taught them was to purify themselves from sin, which they taught they could do by the use of emetics and abstinence from carnal knowledge of the different sexes; to quit the use of firearms, and to live entirely in the original state that they were in before the white people found out their country. Nay, they taught that that fire was not pure that was made by steel and flint, but that they should make it by rubbing two sticks together.... It was said that their prophet taught them, or made them believe, that he had his instructions immediately from Keesh-she-la-mil-lang-up, or a being that thought us into being, and that by following his instructions they would, in a few years, be able to drive the white people out of their country.

I knew a company of them who had secluded themselves for the purpose of purifying from sin, as they thought they could do. I believe they made no use of firearms. They had been out more than two years before I left them.... It was said that they made use of no other weapons than their bows and arrows. They also taught, in shaking hands, to give the left hand in token of friendship, as it denoted that they gave the heart along with the hand. ([Pritts], 1.)

The religious ferment produced by the exhortations of the Delaware prophet spread rapidly from tribe to tribe, until, under the guidance of the master mind of the celebrated chief, Pontiac, it took shape in a grand confederacy of all the northwestern tribes to oppose the further progress of the English. The coast lands were lost to the Indians. The Ohio and the lakes were still theirs, and the Alleghanies marked a natural boundary between the two sections. Behind this mountain barrier Pontiac determined to make his stand. Though the prospect of a restoration of the French power might enable him to rally a following, he himself knew he could expect no aid from the French, for their armies had been defeated and their garrisons were already withdrawn; but, relying on the patriotism of his own red warriors, when told that the English were on their way to take possession of the abandoned posts, he sent back the haughty challenge, “I stand in the path.”

To Pontiac must be ascribed the highest position among the leaders of the Algonquian race. Born the son of a chief, he became in turn the chief of his own people, the Ottawa, whom it is said he commanded on the occasion of Braddock’s defeat. For this or other services in behalf of the French he had received marks of distinguished consideration from Montcalm himself. By reason of his natural ability, his influence was felt and respected wherever the name of his tribe was spoken, while to his dignity as chief he added the sacred character of high priest of the powerful secret order of the Midé. ([Parkman], 3.) Now, in the prime of manhood, he originated and formulated the policy of a confederation of all the tribes, an idea afterward taken up and carried almost to a successful accomplishment by the great Tecumtha. As principal chief of the lake tribes, he summoned them to the great council near Detroit, in April, 1763, and, as high priest and keeper of the faith, he there announced to them the will of the Master of Life, as revealed to the Delaware prophet, and called on them to unite for the recovery of their ancient territories and the preservation of their national life. Under the spell of his burning words the chiefs listened as to an oracle, and cried out that he had only to declare his will to be obeyed. ([Parkman], 4.) His project being unanimously approved, runners were sent out to secure the cooperation of the more remote nations, and in a short time the confederation embraced every important tribe of Algonquian lineage, together with the Wyandot, Seneca, Winnebago, and some of those to the southward. ([Parkman], 5.)

Only the genius of a Pontiac could have molded into a working unit such an aggregation of diverse elements of savagery. His executive ability is sufficiently proven by his creation of a regular commissary department based on promissory notes—hieroglyphics graven on birchbark and signed with the otter, the totem of his tribe; his diplomatic bent appeared in his employment of two secretaries to attend to this unique correspondence, each of whom he managed to keep in ignorance of the business transacted by the other ([Parkman], 6); while his military capacity was soon to be evinced in the carefully laid plan which enabled his warriors to strike simultaneously a crushing blow at every British post scattered throughout the 500 miles of wilderness from Pittsburg to the straits of Mackinaw.

The history of this war, so eloquently told by Parkman, reads like some old knightly romance. The warning of the Indian girl; the concerted attack on the garrisons; the ball play at Mackinac on the king’s birthday, and the massacre that followed; the siege of Fort Pitt and the heroic defense of Detroit; the bloody battle of Bushy run, where the painted savage recoiled before the kilted Highlander, as brave and almost as wild; Bouquet’s march into the forests of the Ohio, and the submission of the vanquished tribes—all these things must be passed over here. They have already been told by a master of language. But the contest of savagery against civilization has but one ending, and the scene closes with the death of Pontiac, a broken-spirited wanderer, cut down at last by a hired assassin of his own race, for whose crime the blood of whole tribes was poured out in atonement. ([Parkman], 7.)

Chapter III
TENSKWATAWA THE SHAWANO PROPHET

I told all the redskins that the way they were in was not good, and that they ought to abandon it.—Tenskwatawa.

A very shrewd and influential man, but circumstances have destroyed him.—[Catlin].

Fig. 56—Tenskwatawa the Shawano prophet, 1808 and 1831.

EXPLANATION OF FIGURE 56

The first portrait is taken from one given in Lossing’s American Revolution and War of 1812, iii (1875), page 189, and thus described: “The portrait of the Prophet is from a pencil sketch made by Pierre Le Dru, a young French trader, at Vincennes, in 1808. He made a sketch of Tecumtha at about the same time, both of which I found in possession of his son at Quebec in 1848, and by whom I was kindly permitted to copy them.” The other is a copy of the picture painted by Catlin in 1881, after the tribe had removed to Kansas. The artist describes him as blind in his left (?) eye, and painted him holding his medicine fire in his right hand and his sacred string of beans in the other.

Forty years had passed away and changes had come to the western territory. The cross of Saint George, erected in the place of the lilies of France, had been supplanted by the flag of the young republic, which in one generation had extended its sway from the lakes to the gulf and from the Atlantic to the Rocky mountains. By treaties made in 1768 with the Iroquois and Cherokee, the two leading Indian confederacies in the east, the Ohio and the Kanawha had been fixed as the boundary between the two races, the Indians renouncing forever their claims to the seaboard, the Delaware, and the Susquehanna, while they were confirmed in their possession of the Alleghany, the Ohio, and the great northwest. But the restless borderer would not be limited, and encroachments on the native domain were constantly being made, resulting in a chronic warfare which kept alive the spirit of resentment. The consequence was that in the final struggle of the Revolution the Indian tribes ranged themselves on the British side. When the war ended and a treaty of peace was made between the new government and the old, no provision was made for the red allies of the king, and they were left to continue the struggle single-handed. The Indians claimed the Ohio country as theirs by virtue of the most solemn treaties, but pioneers had already occupied western Pennsylvania, western Virginia, and Kentucky, and were listening with eager attention to the reports brought back by adventurous hunters from the fertile lands of the Muskingum and the Scioto. They refused to be bound by the treaties of a government they had repudiated, and the tribes of the northwest were obliged to fight to defend their territories. Under the able leadership of Little Turtle they twice rolled back the tide of white invasion, defeating two of the finest armies ever sent into the western country, until, worn out by twenty years of unceasing warfare, and crushed and broken by the decisive victory of Wayne at the Fallen Timbers, their villages in ashes and their cornfields cut down, the dispirited chiefs met their conqueror at Greenville in 1795 and signed away the rights for which they had so long contended.

Fig. 57—Greenville treaty medal, obverse and reverse.

By this treaty, which marks the beginning of the end with the eastern tribes, the Indians renounced their claims to all territory east of a line running in a general way from the mouth of the Cuyahoga on Lake Erie to the mouth of the Kentucky on the Ohio, leaving to the whites the better portion of Ohio valley, including their favorite hunting ground of Kentucky. The Delaware, the Wyandot, and the Shawano, three of the leading tribes, were almost completely shorn of their ancient inheritance and driven back as refugees among the Miami.

The Canadian boundary had been established along the lakes; the Ohio was lost to the Indians; for them there was left only extermination or removal to the west. Their bravest warriors were slain. Their ablest chieftain, who had led them to victory against St Clair, had bowed to the inevitable, and was now regarded as one with a white man’s heart and a traitor to his race. A brooding dissatisfaction settled down on the tribes. Who shall deliver them from the desolation that has come on them?

Now arose among the Shawano another prophet to point out to his people the “open door” leading to happiness. In November, 1805, a young man named Laulewasikaw (Lalawe′thika, a rattle or similar instrument—Gatschet), then hardly more than 30 years of age, called around him his tribesmen and their allies at their ancient capital of Wapakoneta, within the present limits of Ohio, and there announced himself as the bearer of a new revelation from the Master of Life, who had taken pity on his red children and wished to save them from the threatened destruction. He declared that he had been taken up to the spirit world and had been permitted to lift the veil of the past and the future—had seen the misery of evil doers and learned the happiness that awaited those who followed the precepts of the Indian god. He then began an earnest exhortation, denouncing the witchcraft practices and medicine juggleries of the tribe, and solemnly warning his hearers that none who had part in such things would ever taste of the future happiness. The firewater of the whites was poison and accursed; and those who continued its use would after death be tormented with all the pains of fire, while flames would continually issue from their mouths. This idea may have been derived from some white man’s teaching or from the Indian practice of torture by fire. The young must cherish and respect the aged and infirm. All property must be in common, according to the ancient law of their ancestors. Indian women must cease to intermarry with white men; the two races were distinct and must remain so. The white man’s dress, with his flint-and-steel, must be discarded for the old time buckskin and the firestick. More than this, every tool and every custom derived from the whites must be put away, and they must return to the methods which the Master of Life had taught them. When they should do all this, he promised that they would again be taken into the divine favor, and find the happiness which their fathers had known before the coming of the whites. Finally, in proof of his divine mission, he announced that he had received power to cure all diseases and to arrest the hand of death in sickness or on the battlefield. ([Drake], Tecumseh, 1.) To avoid repetition, it may be stated that, except when otherwise noted, the principal facts concerning Tecumtha and the prophet are taken from Drake’s work, the most valuable published on the subject. The prophet and his doctrines are also spoken of at some length by Tanner, Kendall, Warren, and Catlin, as hereafter quoted, while the history of Tecumtha is a part of the history of Ohio valley, to be found in any work treating of that section and period.)

In an account quoted by Drake, probably from an English writer, it is stated that the prophet was noted for his stupidity and intoxication until his fiftieth (?) year, when one day, while lighting his pipe in his cabin, he suddenly fell back apparently lifeless and remained in that condition until his friends had assembled for the funeral, when he revived from his trance, and after quieting their alarm, announced that he had been to the spirit world and commanded them to call the people together that he might tell them what he had seen. When they had assembled, he declared that he had been conducted to the border of the spirit world by two young men, who had permitted him to look in upon its pleasures, but not to enter, and who, after charging him with the message to his people already noted, had left him, promising to visit him again at a future time. ([Drake], Ab. Races, 1.)

Although the language of this account is somewhat overdrawn, the main statements are probably correct, as it is in complete accordance with the Indian system by which all truth has been revealed in dreams and trances from the first dawn of tradition down to Smohalla and the messiah of the Ghost dance.

His words aroused an intense excitement among his hearers, and the impression deepened as the tidings of the new gospel were carried from camp to camp. Those who were addicted to drunkenness—the besetting sin of the Indians since their acquaintance with the whites—were so thoroughly alarmed at the prospect of a fiery punishment in the spirit world that for a long time intoxication became practically unknown among the western tribes. Their zeal led also to the inauguration of a crusade against all who were suspected of dealing in witchcraft or magic arts; but here the prophet took advantage of this feeling to effectually rid himself of all who opposed his sacred claims. It was only necessary for him to denounce such a person as a witch to have him pay the forfeit with reputation, if not with life.

Among the first of his victims were several Delawares—Tatepocoshe (more generally known as Teteboxti), Patterson, his nephew, Coltos, an old woman, and an aged man called Joshua. These were successively marked by the prophet, and doomed to be burnt alive. The tragedy was commenced with the old woman. The Indians roasted her slowly over a fire for four days, calling upon her frequently to deliver up her charm and medicine bag. Just as she was dying, she exclaimed that her grandson, who was then out hunting, had it in his possession. Messengers were sent in pursuit of him, and when found he was tied and brought into camp. He acknowledged that on one occasion he had borrowed the charm of his grandmother, by means of which he had flown through the air over Kentucky, to the banks of the Mississippi, and back again, between twilight and bedtime; but he insisted that he had returned the charm to its owner, and, after some consultation, he was set at liberty. The following day a council was held over the case of the venerable chief Tatepocoshe, he being present. His death was decided upon after full deliberation; and, arrayed in his finest apparel, he calmly assisted in building his own funeral pile, fully aware that there was no escape from the judgment that had been passed upon him. The respect due to his whitened locks induced his executioners to treat him with mercy. He was deliberately tomahawked by a young man, and his body was then placed upon the blazing fagots and consumed. The next day the old preacher Joshua met a similar fate. The wife of Tatepocoshe and his nephew Billy Patterson were then brought into the council house and seated side by side. The latter had led an irreproachable life, and died like a Christian, singing and praying amid the flames which destroyed his body. While preparations were making for the immolation of Tatepocoshe’s wife, her brother, a youth of 20 years of age, suddenly started up, took her by the hand, and, to the amazement of the council, led her out of the house. He soon returned, and exclaiming, “The devil has come among us (alluding to the prophet), and we are killing each other,” he reseated himself in the midst of the crowd. This bold step checked the wild frenzy of the Indians, put an end to these cruel scenes, and for a time greatly impaired the impostor’s influence among the Delawares. ([Drake], Tecumseh, 2.)

The prophet now changed his name to Tenskwatawa, “The Open Door” (from skwa′te, a door, and the′nui, to be open; frequently spelled Elskwatawa), significant of the new mode of life which he had come to point out to his people, and fixed his headquarters at Greenville, Ohio, where representatives from the various scattered tribes of the northwest gathered about him to learn the new doctrines. Some, especially the Kickapoo, entered fervently into his spirit, while others were disposed to oppose him. The Miami, who regarded the Shawano as intruders, were jealous of his influence, and the chiefs of his own tribe were somewhat inclined to consider him in the light of a rival. To establish his sacred character and to dispel the doubts of the unbelievers, he continued to dream dreams and announce wonderful revelations from time to time, when an event occurred which effectually silenced opposition and stamped him as one inspired.

By some means he had learned that an eclipse of the sun was to take place in the summer of 1806. As the time drew near, he called about him the scoffers and boldly announced that on a certain day he would prove to them his supernatural authority by causing the sun to become dark. When the day and hour arrived and the earth at midday was enveloped in the gloom of twilight, Tenskwatawa, standing in the midst of the terrified Indians, pointed to the sky and cried, “Did I not speak truth? See, the sun is dark!” There were no more doubters now. All proclaimed him a true prophet and the messenger of the Master of Life. His fame spread abroad and apostles began to carry his revelations to the remotest tribes.

We get but fragmentary light in regard to the details of the doctrine and ceremonies of this religious revival, as well as of that which preceded it. There were then no railroads, no newspaper correspondents to gather each day’s proceedings, and no telegraph to flash the news across the continent before nightfall; no reservation system, with its attendant army of employees, everyone a spy when an emergency arose; and no investigators to go among the tribes and study the matter from an ethnologic point of view. Our information is derived chiefly from military officers, who knew these things only as vague rumors of Indian unrest fomented by British agents; from the statements of a few illiterate interpreters or captives among the savages, and from the misty recollections of old men long after the excitement had passed away. Of the dances which are a part of every important Indian ceremony, the songs which they chanted, the peculiar dress or adornments which probably distinguished the believers—of all these we know nothing; but we may well surmise that the whole elaborate system of Indian mythology and ceremonial was brought into play to give weight to the words of the prophet, and enough is known to show that in its leading features the movement closely resembled the modern Ghost dance.

It is impossible to know how far the prophet was responsible for the final shaping of the doctrine. Like all such movements, it undoubtedly grew and took more definite form under the hands of the apostles who went out from the presence of its originator to preach to the various tribes. A religion which found adherents alike in the everglades of Florida and on the plains of the Saskatchewan must necessarily have undergone local modifications. From a comparison of the various accounts we can arrive at a general statement of the belief.

The prophet was held to be an incarnation of Manabozho, the great “first doer” of the Algonquian system. His words were believed to be the direct utterances of a deity. Manabozho had taught his people certain modes of living best suited to their condition and capacity. A new race had come upon them, and the Indians had thrown aside their primitive purity of life and adopted the innovations of the whites, which had now brought them to degradation and misery and threatened them with swift and entire destruction. To punish them for their disobedience and bring them to a sense of their duty, Manabozho had called the game from the forests and shut it up under the earth, so that the tribes were now on the verge of starvation and obliged to eat the flesh of filthy hogs. They had also lost their old love for one another and become addicted to the secret practices of the poisoner and the wizard, together with the abominable ceremonies of the calumet dance. They must now put aside all these things, throw away the weapons and the dress of the white man, pluck out their hair as in ancient times, wear the eagle feather on their heads, and clothe themselves again with the breechcloth and the skins of animals slain with the bows and arrows which Manabozho had given them. ([Kendall], 1.) They must have done with the white man’s flint-and-steel, and cook their food over a fire made by rubbing together two sticks, and this fire must always be kept burning in their lodges, as it was a symbol of the eternal life, and their care for it was an evidence of their heed to the divine commands. The firewater must forever be put away, together with the medicine bags and poisons and the wicked juggleries which had corrupted the ancient purity of the Midé rites. Instead of these the prophet gave them new songs and new medicines. Their women must cease from any connection with white men. They were to love one another and make an end of their constant wars, to be kind to their children, to keep but one dog in a family, and to abstain from lying and stealing. If they would listen to his voice and follow his instructions, the incarnate Manabozho promised that at the end of four years (i. e., in 1811) he would bring on two days of darkness, during which he would travel invisibly throughout the land, and cause the animals which he had created to come forth again out of the earth. ([Kendall], 2.) They were also promised that their dead friends would be restored to them.

The ideas as to the catastrophe that was to usher in the new era seem to have varied according to the interpreter of the belief. Among the Ottawa, and perhaps among the lake tribes generally, there was to be a period of darkness, as already stated. Among the Cherokee, and probably also among the Creek, it was believed that there would be a terrible hailstorm, which would overwhelm with destruction both the whites and the unbelievers of the red race, while the elect would be warned in time to save themselves by fleeing to the high mountain tops. The idea of any hostile combination against the white race seems to have been no part of the doctrine. In the north, however, there is always a plain discrimination against the Americans. The Great Father, through his prophet, is represented as declaring himself to be the common parent alike of Indians, English, French, and Spaniards; while the Americans, on the contrary, “are not my children, but the children of the evil spirit. They grew from the scum of the great water, when it was troubled by an evil spirit and the froth was driven into the woods by a strong east wind. They are numerous, but I hate them. They are unjust; they have taken away your lands, which were not made for them.” ([Kendall], 3.)

From the venerable James Wafford, of the Cherokee nation, the author in 1891 obtained some interesting details in regard to the excitement among the Cherokee. According to his statement, the doctrine first came to them through the Creek about 1812 or 1813. It was probably given to the Creek by Tecumtha and his party on their visit to that tribe in the fall of 1811, as will be related hereafter. The Creek were taught by their prophets that the old Indian life was soon to return, when “instead of beef and bacon they would have venison, and instead of chickens they would have turkeys.” Great sacred dances were inaugurated, and the people were exhorted to be ready for what was to come. From the south the movement spread to the Cherokee, and one of their priests, living in what is now upper Georgia, began to preach that on a day near at hand there would be a terrible storm, with a mighty wind and hailstones as large as hominy mortars, which would destroy from the face of the earth all but the true believers who had previously taken refuge on the highest summits of the Great Smoky mountains. Full of this belief, numbers of the tribe in Alabama and Georgia abandoned their bees, their orchards, their slaves, and everything else that might have come to them through the white man, and, in spite of the entreaties and remonstrances of friends who put no faith in the prediction, took up their toilsome march for the mountains of Carolina. Wafford, who was then about 10 years of age, lived with his mother and stepfather on Valley river, and vividly remembers the troops of pilgrims, with their packs on their backs, fleeing from the lower country to escape from the wrath to come. Many of them stopped at the house of his stepfather, who, being a white man, was somewhat better prepared than his neighbors to entertain travelers, and who took the opportunity to endeavor to persuade them to turn back, telling them that their hopes and fears alike were groundless. Some listened to him and returned to their homes, but others went on and climbed the mountain, where they waited until the appointed day arrived, only to find themselves disappointed. Slowly and sadly then they took up their packs once more and turned their faces homeward, dreading the ridicule they were sure to meet there, but yet believing in their hearts that the glorious coming was only postponed for a time. This excitement among the Cherokee is noted at some length in the Cherokee Advocate of November 16, 1844, published at Tahlequah, Cherokee Nation. Among the Creek the excitement, intensified by reports of the struggle now going on in the north, and fostered and encouraged by the emissaries of Spain and England, grew and spread until it culminated in the summer of 1813 in the terrible Creek war.

Enough is known of the ceremonial of this religion to show that it must have had an elaborate ritual. We learn from Warren that the adherents of the prophet were accustomed to perform certain ceremonies in solemn councils, and that, after he had prohibited the corrupt secret rites, he introduced instead new medicines and songs, and that at the ancient capital of the Ojibwa on Lake Superior the Indians collected in great numbers and performed these dances and ceremonies day and night. ([Warren], 1.) They were also instructed to dance naked, with their bodies painted and with the warclub in their hands. ([Kendall], 4.) The solemn rite of confirmation, known as “shaking hands with the prophet,” was particularly impressive. From the narrative of John Tanner, a white man captured when a child from his home in Kentucky and brought up among the wild Ojibwa, we get the best contemporary account of the advent of the new doctrine in the north and its effect on the lake tribes. He says:

It was while I was living here at Great Wood river that news came of a great man among the Shawneese, who had been favoured by a revelation of the mind and will of the Great Spirit. I was hunting in the prairie, at a great distance from my lodge, when I saw a stranger approaching. At first I was apprehensive of an enemy, but as he drew nearer, his dress showed him to be an Ojibbeway; but when he came up, there was something very strange and peculiar in his manner. He signified to me that I must go home, but gave no explanation of the cause. He refused to look at me or enter into any kind of conversation. I thought he must be crazy, but nevertheless accompanied him to my lodge. When we had smoked, he remained a long time silent, but at last began to tell me he had come with a message from the prophet of the Shawneese. “Henceforth,” said he, “the fire must never be suffered to go out in your lodge. Summer and winter, day and night, in the storm, or when it is calm, you must remember that the life in your body and the fire in your lodge are the same and of the same date. If you suffer your fire to be extinguished, at that moment your life will be at its end. You must not suffer a dog to live; you must never strike either a man, a woman, a child, or a dog. The prophet himself is coming to shake hands with you; but I have come before, that you may know what is the will of the Great Spirit, communicated to us by him, and to inform you that the preservation of your life, for a single moment, depends on your entire obedience. From this time forward we are neither to be drunk, to steal, to lie, or to go against our enemies. While we yield an entire obedience to these commands of the Great Spirit, the Sioux, even if they come to our country, will not be able to see us; we shall be protected and made happy.” I listened to all he had to say, but told him, in answer, that I could not believe we should all die in case our fire went out; in many instances, also, it would be difficult to avoid punishing our children; our dogs were useful in aiding us to hunt and take animals, so that I could not believe the Great Spirit had any wish to take them from us. He continued talking to us until late at night; then he lay down to sleep in my lodge. I happened to wake first in the morning, and, perceiving the fire had gone out, I called him to get up and see how many of us were living and how many dead. He was prepared for the ridicule I attempted to throw upon his doctrine, and told me that I had not yet shaken hands with the prophet. His visit had been to prepare me for this important event, and to make me aware of the obligations and risks I should incur, by entering into the engagement implied in taking in my hand the message of the prophet. I did not rest entirely easy in my unbelief. The Indians, generally, received the doctrine of this man with great humility and fear. Distress and anxiety was visible in every countenance. Many killed their dogs, and endeavored to practice obedience to all the commands of this new preacher, who still remained among us. But, as was usual with me, in any emergency of this kind, I went to the traders, firmly believing that if the Deity had any communications to make to men, they would be given, in the first instance, to white men. The traders ridiculed and despised the idea of a new revelation of the Divine will, and the thought that it should be given to a poor Shawnee. Thus was I confirmed in my infidelity. Nevertheless, I did not openly avow my unbelief to the Indians, only I refused to kill my dogs, and showed no great degree of anxiety to comply with his other requirements. As long as I remained among the Indians, I made it my business to conform, as far as appeared consistent with my immediate convenience and comfort, with all their customs. Many of their ideas I have adopted, but I always found among them opinions which I could not hold. The Ojibbeway whom I have mentioned remained some time among the Indians in my neighborhood, and gained the attention of the principal men so effectually that a time was appointed and a lodge prepared for the solemn and public espousing of the doctrines of the prophet. When the people, and I among them, were brought into the long lodge, prepared for this solemnity, we saw something carefully concealed under a blanket, in figure and dimensions bearing some resemblance to the form of a man. This was accompanied by two young men, who, it was understood, attended constantly upon it, made its bed at night, as for a man, and slept near it. But while we remained no one went near it or raised the blanket which was spread over its unknown contents. Four strings of mouldy and discoloured beans were all the remaining visible insignia of this important mission. After a long harangue, in which the prominent features of the new revelation were stated and urged upon the attention of all, the four strings of beans, which we were told were made of the flesh itself of the prophet, were carried with much solemnity to each man in the lodge, and he was expected to take hold of each string at the top, and draw them gently through his hand. This was called shaking hands with the prophet, and was considered as solemnly engaging to obey his injunctions, and accept his mission as from the Supreme. All the Indians who touched the beans had previously killed their dogs; they gave up their medicine bags, and showed a disposition to comply with all that should be required of them.

We had now been for some time assembled in considerable numbers. Much agitation and terror had prevailed among us, and now famine began to be felt. The faces of men wore an aspect of unusual gloominess; the active became indolent, and the spirits of the bravest seemed to be subdued. I started to hunt with my dogs, which I had constantly refused to kill or suffer to be killed. By their assistance, I found and killed a bear. On returning home, I said to some of the Indians, “Has not the Great Spirit given us our dogs to aid us in procuring what is needful for the support of our life, and can you believe he wishes now to deprive us of their services? The prophet, we are told, has forbid us to suffer our fire to be extinguished in our lodges, and when we travel or hunt, he will not allow us to use a flint and steel, and we are told he requires that no man should give fire to another. Can it please the Great Spirit that we should lie in our hunting camps without fire, or is it more agreeable to him that we should make fire by rubbing together two sticks than with a flint and a piece of steel?” But they would not listen to me; and the serious enthusiasm which prevailed among them so far affected me that I threw away my flint and steel, laid aside my medicine bag, and, in many particulars, complied with the new doctrines; but I would not kill my dogs. I soon learned to kindle a fire by rubbing some dry cedar, which I was careful to carry always about me, but the discontinuance of the use of flint and steel subjected many of the Indians to much inconvenience and suffering. The influence of the Shawnee prophet was very sensibly and painfully felt by the remotest Ojibbeways of whom I had any knowledge, but it was not the common impression among them that his doctrines had any tendency to unite them in the accomplishment of any human purpose. For two or three years drunkenness was much less frequent than formerly, war was less thought of, and the entire aspect of affairs among them was somewhat changed by the influence of one man. But gradually the impression was obliterated; medicine bags, flints, and steels were resumed; dogs were raised, women and children were beaten as before, and the Shawnee prophet was despised. At this day he is looked upon by the Indians as an impostor and a bad man. ([Tanner], 1.)

Tanner’s account is confirmed by Warren, from the statements of old men among the Ojibwa who had taken part in the revival. According to their story the ambassadors of the new revelation appeared at the different villages, acting strangely and with their faces painted black—perhaps to signify their character as messengers from the world of shades. They told the people that they must light a fire with two dry sticks in each of their principal settlements, and that this fire must always be kept sacred and burning. They predicted the speedy return of the old Indian life, and asserted that the prophet would cause the dead to rise from the grave. The new belief took sudden and complete possession of the minds of the Ojibwa and spread “like wildfire” from end to end of their widely extended territory, and even to the remote northern tribes in alliance with the Cree and Asiniboin. The strongest evidence of their implicit obedience to the new revelation was given by their attention to the command to throw away their medicine bags, the one thing which every Indian holds most sacred. It is said that the shores of Lake Superior, in the vicinity of the great village of Shagawaumikong (Bayfield, Wisconsin), were strewn with these medicine bags, which had been cast into the water. At this ancient capital of the tribe the Ojibwa gathered in great numbers, to dance the dances and sing the songs of the new ritual, until a message was received from the prophet inviting them to come to him at Detroit, where he would explain in person the will of the Master of Life. This was in 1808. The excitement was now at fever heat, and it was determined to go in a body to Detroit. It is said that 150 canoe loads of Ojibwa actually started on this pilgrimage, and one family even brought with them a dead child to be restored to life by the prophet. They had proceeded a considerable distance when they were met by an influential French trader, who reported, on the word of some who had already visited the prophet’s camp and returned, that the devotees there were on the brink of starvation—which was true, as the great multitude had consumed their entire supply of provisions, and had been so occupied with religious ceremonies that they had neglected to plant their corn. It was also asserted that during the prophet’s frequent periods of absence from the camp, when he would disappear for several days, claiming on his return that he had been to the spirit world in converse with the Master of Life, that he was really concealed in a hollow log in the woods. This is quite probable, and entirely consistent with the Indian theory of trances and soul pilgrimages while the body remains unconscious in one spot. These reports, however, put such a damper on the ardor of the Ojibwa that they returned to their homes and gradually ceased to think about the new revelation. As time went on a reaction set in, and those who had been most active evangelists of the doctrine among the tribe became most anxious to efface the remembrance of it. One good, however, resulted to the Ojibwa from the throwing away of the poisonous compounds formerly in common use by the lower order of doctors, and secret poisoning became almost unknown. ([Warren], 2.)

When the celebrated traveler Catlin went among the prairie tribes some thirty years later, he found that the prophet’s emissaries—he says the prophet himself, which is certainly a mistake—had carried the living fire, the sacred image, and the mystic strings (see portrait and description) even to the Blackfeet on the plains of the Saskatchewan, going without hindrance among warring tribes where the name of the Shawano had never been spoken, protected only by the reverence that attached to their priestly character. There seems no doubt that by this time they had developed the plan of a confederacy for driving back the whites, and Catlin asserts that thousands of warriors among those remote tribes had pledged themselves to fight under the lead of Tecumtha at the proper time. His account of the prophet’s methods in the extreme northwest agrees with what Tanner has reported from the Ojibwa country. ([Catlin], 1.) But disaster followed him like a shadow. Rivals, jealous of his success, came after him to denounce his plans as visionary and himself as an impostor. The ambassadors were obliged to turn back to save their lives and retrace their way in haste to the far distant Wabash, where the fatal battle of Tippecanoe and the death of his great brother, Tecumtha, put an end to all his splendid dreams.

Chapter IV
TECUMTHA AND TIPPECANOE

These lands are ours. No one has a right to remove us, because we were the first owners.—Tecumtha to Wells, 1807.

The Great Spirit gave this great island to his red children. He placed the whites on the other side of the big water. They were not contented with their own, but came to take ours from us. They have driven us from the sea to the lakes—we can go no farther.—Tecumtha, 1810.

The President may sit still in his town and drink his wine, while you and I will have to fight it out.—Tecumtha to Harrison, 1810.

And now we begin to hear of the prophet’s brother, Tecumtha, the most heroic character in Indian history. Tecumtha, “The Meteor,” was the son of a chief and the worthy scion of a warrior race. His tribe, the Shawano, made it their proud boast that they of all tribes had opposed the most determined resistance to the encroachments of the whites. His father had fallen under the bullets of the Virginians while leading his warriors at the bloody battle of Point Pleasant, in 1774. His eldest and dearest brother had lost his life in an attack on a southern frontier post, and another had been killed fighting by his side at Wayne’s victory in 1794. What wonder that the young Tecumtha declared that his flesh crept at the sight of a white man!

But his was no mean spirit of personal revenge; his mind was too noble for that. He hated the whites as the destroyers of his race, but prisoners and the defenseless knew well that they could rely on his honor and humanity and were safe under his protection. When only a boy—for his military career began in childhood—he had witnessed the burning of a prisoner, and the spectacle was so abhorrent to his feelings that by an earnest and eloquent harangue he induced the party to give up the practice forever. In later years his name was accepted by helpless women and children as a guaranty of protection even in the midst of hostile Indians. Of commanding figure, nearly six feet in height and compactly built; of dignified bearing and piercing eye, before whose lightning even a British general quailed; with the fiery eloquence of a Clay and the clear-cut logic of a Webster; abstemious in habit, charitable in thought and action, brave as a lion, but humane and generous withal—in a word, an aboriginal American knight—his life was given to his people, and he fell at last, like his father and his brothers before him, in battle with the destroyers of his nation, the champion of a lost cause and a dying race.

His name has been rendered “The Shooting Star” and “The Panther Crouching, or Lying in Wait.” From a reply to a letter of inquiry addressed to Professor A. S. Gatschet, the well-known philologist, I extract the following, which throws valuable light on the name system and mythology of the Shawano, and shows also that the two renderings, apparently so dissimilar, have a common origin:

Shawano personal names are nearly all clan names, and by their interpretation the clan to which the individual or his father or mother belongs may be discovered. Thus, when a man is called “tight fitting” or “good fit,” he is of the Rabbit clan, because the fur fits the rabbit very tightly and closely. The name of Tecumtha is derived from nila ni tka′mthka, “I cross the path or way of somebody, or of an animal.” This indicates that the one so named belongs to the clan of the round-foot or claw-foot animals, as panther, lion, or even raccoon. Tecumtha and his brother belonged to the clan of the manetuwi msipessi or “miraculous panther” (msi, great, big; pishiwi, abbreviated pessi, cat, both combined meaning the American lion). So the translations “panther lying in wait,” or “crouching lion,” give only the sense of the name, and no animal is named in it. But the msi-pessi, when the epithet miraculous (manetuwi) is added to it, means a “celestial tiger,” i. e., a meteor or shooting star. The manetuwi msi-pessi lives in water only and is visible not as an animal, but as a shooting star, and exceeding in size other shooting stars. This monster gave name to a Shawano clan, and this clan, to which Tecumtha belonged, was classed among the claw-foot animals also. The quick motion of the shooting star was correctly likened to that of a tiger or wildcat rushing upon his prey. Shooting stars are supposed to be souls of great men all over America. The home of the dead is always in the west, where the celestial bodies set, and since meteors travel westward they were supposed to return to their western home.

Fig. 58—Tecumtha.

One of the finest looking men I ever saw—about 6 feet high, straight, with large, fine features, and altogether a daring, bold-looking fellow.—Captain Floyd, 1810.

One of those uncommon geniuses which spring up occasionally to produce revolutions and overturn the established order of things—Governor Harrison.

EXPLANATION OF FIGURE 58

This portrait is a copy of the one given by Lossing in his American Revolution and the War of 1812, iii. (1875), page 283. He quotes a description of Tecumtha’s personal appearance by a British officer who saw him in 1812, and then goes on to give the history of the portrait. “Captain J. B. Glegg, Brock’s aid-de-camp, has left on record the following description of Tecumtha at that interview: ‘Tecumseh’s appearance was very prepossessing; his figure light and finely proportioned; his age I imagined to be about five and thirty [he was about forty]; in height, 5 feet 9 or 10 inches; his complexion light copper; countenance oval, with bright hazel eyes, bearing cheerfulness, energy, and decision. Three small silver crosses or coronets were suspended from the lower cartilage of his aquiline nose, and a large silver medallion of George the Third, which I believe his ancestor had received from Lord Dorchester when governor-general of Canada, was attached to a mixed-colored wampum string and hung round his neck. His dress consisted of a plain, neat uniform, tanned deerskin jacket, with long trowsers of the same material, the seams of both being covered with neatly cut fringe, and he had on his feet leather moccasins, much ornamented with work made from the dyed quills of the porcupine.’ The portrait of Tecumtha above given is from a pencil sketch by Pierre Le Dru.... In this I have given only the head by Le Dru. The cap was red, and in front was a single eagle’s feather, black, with a white tip. The sketch of his dress (and the medal above described), in which he appears as a brigadier-general of the British army, is from a rough drawing, which I saw in Montreal in the summer of 1858, made at Malden soon after the surrender of Detroit, where the Indians celebrated that event by a grand feast. It was only on gala occasions that Tecumtha was seen in full dress. The sketch did not pretend to give a true likeness of the chief, and was valuable only as a delineation of his costume. From the two we are enabled to give a pretty faithful picture of the great Shawnoese warrior and statesman as he appeared in his best mood. When in full dress he wore a cocked hat and plume, but would not give up his blue breechcloth, red leggings fringed with buckskin, and buckskin moccasins.”

Tecumtha was now in the prime of manhood, being about 40 years of age, and had already thought out his scheme of uniting all the tribes in one grand confederation to resist the further encroachments of the whites, on the principle that the Indians had common interests, and that what concerned one tribe concerned all. As the tribes were constantly shifting about, following the game in its migrations, he held that no one tribe had any more than a possessory right to the land while in actual occupancy, and that any sale of lands, to be valid, must be sanctioned by all the tribes concerned. His claim was certainly founded in justice, but the government refused to admit the principle in theory, although repeatedly acting on it in practice, for every important treaty afterward made in Mississippi valley was a joint treaty, as it was found impossible to assign the ownership of any considerable section to any one particular tribe. The Shawano themselves hunted from the Cumberland to the Susquehanna. As a basal proposition, Tecumtha claimed that the Greenville treaty, having been forced on the Indians, was invalid; that the only true boundary was the Ohio, as established in 1768, and that all future cessions must have the sanction of all the tribes claiming rights in that region.

By this time there were assembled at Greenville to listen to the teachings of the prophet hundreds of savages, representing all the widely extended tribes of the late region and the great northwest, all wrought up to the highest pitch of excitement over the prospect of a revival of the old Indian life and the perpetuation of aboriginal sovereignty. This was Tecumtha’s opportunity, and he was quick to improve it. Even those who doubted the spiritual revelations could see that they were in danger from the continued advances of the whites, and were easily convinced that safety required that they should unite as one people for the preservation of a common boundary. The pilgrims carried back these ideas to their several tribes, and thus what was at first a simple religious revival soon became a political agitation. They were equally patriotic from the Indian point of view, and under the circumstances one was almost the natural complement of the other. All the evidence goes to show that the movement in its inception was purely religious and peaceable; but the military spirit of Tecumtha afterward gave to it a warlike and even aggressive character, and henceforth the apostles of the prophet became also recruiting agents for his brother. Tecumtha himself was too sensible to think that the whites would be destroyed by any interposition of heaven, or that they could be driven out by any combination of the Indians, but he did believe it possible that the westward advance of the Americans could be stopped at the Ohio, leaving his people in undisturbed possession of what lay beyond. In this hope he was encouraged by the British officials in Canada, and it is doubtful if the movement would ever have become formidable if it had not been incited and assisted from across the line.

In the spring of 1807 it was estimated that at Fort Wayne fifteen hundred Indians had recently passed that post on their way to visit the prophet, while councils were constantly being held and runners were going from tribe to tribe with pipes and belts of wampum. It was plain that some uncommon movement was going on among them, and it also was evident that the British agents had a hand in keeping up the excitement. The government became alarmed, and the crisis came when an order was sent from the President to Tecumtha at Greenville to remove his party beyond the boundary of 1795 (the Greenville treaty). Trembling with excitement, Tecumtha rose and addressed his followers in a passionate speech, dwelling on the wrongs of the Indians and the continued encroachments of the whites. Then, turning to the messenger, he said, “These lands are ours. No one has a right to remove us, because we were the first owners. The Great Spirit above has appointed this place for us, on which to light our fires, and here we will remain. As to boundaries, the Great Spirit above knows no boundaries nor will his red children acknowledge any.” ([Drake], Tecumseh, 3.) From this time it was understood that the Indians were preparing to make a final stand for the valley of the Ohio. The prophet continued to arouse their enthusiasm by his inspired utterances, while Tecumtha became the general and active organizer of the warriors. At a conference with the governor of Ohio in the autumn of 1807 he fearlessly denied the validity of the former treaties, and declared his intention to resist the further extension of the white settlements on Indian lands.

The next spring great numbers of Indians came down from the lakes to visit Tecumtha and his brother, who, finding their following increasing so rapidly, accepted an invitation from the Potawatomi and Kickapoo, and removed their headquarters to a more central location on the Wabash. The Delaware and Miami, who claimed precedence in that region and who had all along opposed the prophet and Tecumtha, protested against this move, but without effect. The new settlement, which was on the western bank of the river, just below the mouth of the Tippecanoe, was known to the Indians as Kehtipaquononk, “the great clearing,” and was an old and favorite location with them. It had been the site of a large Shawano village which had been destroyed by the Americans in 1791, and some years later the Potawatomi had rebuilt upon the same place, to which they now invited the disciples of the new religion. The whites had corrupted the name to Tippecanoe, and it now generally became known as the Prophet’s town.

Nothing else of moment occurred during this year, but it was learned that Tecumtha contemplated visiting the southern tribes in the near future to enlist them also in his confederacy. In 1809, however, rumors of an approaching outbreak began to fill the air, and it was evident that the British were instigating the Indians to mischief in anticipation of a war between England and the United States. Just at this juncture the anger of Tecumtha’s party was still further inflamed by the negotiation of treaties with four tribes by which additional large tracts were ceded in Indiana and Illinois. The Indians now refused to buy ammunition from the American traders, saying that they could obtain all they wanted for nothing in another quarter. In view of the signs of increasing hostility, Governor Harrison was authorized to take such steps as might be necessary to protect the frontier. Tecumtha had now gained over the Wyandot, the most influential tribe of the Ohio region, the keepers of the great wampum belt of union and the lighters of the council fire of the allied tribes. Their example was speedily followed by the Miami, whose adhesion made the tribes of the Ohio and the lakes practically unanimous. The prophet now declared that he would follow in the steps of Pontiac, and called on the remote tribes to assist those on the border to roll back the tide which would otherwise overwhelm them all. In return, the Sauk and Fox sent word that they were ready whenever he should say the word.

In the summer of 1810, according to a previous arrangement, Tecumtha, attended by several hundred warriors, descended the river to Vincennes to confer with Governor Harrison on the situation. The conference began on the 15th of August and lasted three days. Tecumtha reiterated his former claims, saying that in uniting the tribes he was endeavoring to dam the mighty water that was ready to overflow his people. The Americans had driven the Indians from the sea and threatened to push them into the lakes; and, although he disclaimed any intention of making war against the United States, he declared his fixed resolution to insist on the old boundary and to oppose the further intrusion of the whites on the lands of the Indians, and to resist the survey of the lands recently ceded. He was followed by chiefs of five different tribes, each of whom in turn declared that he would support the principles of Tecumtha. Harrison replied that the government would never admit that any section belonged to all the Indians in common, and that, having bought the ceded lands from the tribes who were first found in possession of them, it would defend its title by arms. To this Tecumtha said that he preferred to be on the side of the Americans, and that if his terms were conceded he would bring his forces to the aid of the United States in the war which he knew was soon to break out with England, but that otherwise he would be compelled to join the British. The governor replied that he would state the case to the President, but that it was altogether unlikely that he would consent to the conditions. Recognizing the inevitable, Tecumtha expressed the hope that, as the President was to determine the matter, the Great Spirit would put sense into his head to induce him to give up the lands, adding, “It is true, he is so far off he will not be injured by the war. He may sit still in his town and drink his wine, while you and I will have to fight it out.” The governor then requested that in the event of an Indian war Tecumtha would use his influence to prevent the practice of cruelties on women and children and defenseless prisoners. To this he readily agreed, and the promise was faithfully kept. ([Drake], Tecumseh, 4.)

The conference had ended with a tacit understanding that war must come, and both sides began to prepare for the struggle. Soon after it was learned that the prophet had sent belts to the tribes west of the Mississippi, inviting them to join in a war against the United States. Outrages on the Indians by settlers intensified the hostile feeling, and the Delawares refused to deliver up a murderer until some of the whites who had killed their people were first punished. Harrison himself states that the Indians could rarely obtain satisfaction for the most unprovoked wrongs. In another letter he says that Tecumtha “has taken for his model the celebrated Pontiac, and I am persuaded he will bear a favorable comparison in every respect with that far-famed warrior.”

In July, 1811, Tecumtha again, visited Harrison at Vincennes. In the course of his talk he said that the whites were unnecessarily alarmed, as the Indians were only following the example set them by the colonies in uniting for the furtherance of common interests. He added that he was now on his way to the southern tribes to obtain their adhesion also to the league, and that on his return in the spring he intended to visit the President to explain his purposes fully and to clear away all difficulties. In the meantime he expected that a large number of Indians would join his colony on the Wabash during the winter, and to avoid any danger of collision between them and the whites, he requested that no settlements should be made on the disputed lands until he should have an opportunity to see the President. To this Harrison replied that the President would never give up a country which he had bought from its rightful owners, nor would he suffer his people to be injured with impunity. This closed the interview, and the next day Tecumtha started with his party for the south to visit the Creek and Choctaw. About the same time it was learned that the British had sent a message to the prophet, telling him that the time had now come for him to take up the hatchet, and inviting him to send a party to their headquarters at Malden (now Amherstburg, Ontario) to receive the necessary supplies. In view of these things Harrison suggested to the War Department that opportunity be taken of Tecumtha’s absence in the south to strike a blow against his confederacy. Continuing in the same letter, he says of the great Indian leader:

The implicit obedience and respect which the followers of Tecumseh pay to him is really astonishing, and more than any other circumstance bespeaks him one of those uncommon geniuses which spring up occasionally to produce revolutions and overturn the established order of things. If it were not for the vicinity of the United States, he would perhaps be the founder of an empire that would rival in glory Mexico or Peru. No difficulties deter him. For four years he has been in constant motion. You see him to-day on the Wabash, and in a short time hear of him on the shores of Lake Erie or Michigan or on the banks of the Mississippi, and wherever he goes he makes an impression favorable to his purposes. He is now upon the last round, to put a finishing stroke to his work. I hope, however, before his return that that part of the fabric which he considered complete will be demolished, and even its foundations rooted up. ([Drake], Tecumseh, 5.)

On this trip Tecumtha went as far as Florida and engaged the Seminole for his confederacy. Then, retracing his steps into Alabama, he came to the ancient Creek town of Tukabachi, on the Tallapoosa, near the present site of Montgomery. What happened here is best told in the words of McKenney and Hall, who derived their information from Indians at the same town a few years later:

He made his way to the lodge of the chief called the Big Warrior. He explained his object, delivered his war talk, presented a bundle of sticks, gave a piece of wampum and a war hatchet—all which the Big Warrior took—when Tecumthé, reading the spirit and intentions of the Big Warrior, looked him in the eye, and, pointing his finger toward his face, said: “Your blood is white. You have taken my talk, and the sticks, and the wampum, and the hatchet, but you do not mean to fight. I know the reason. You do not believe the Great Spirit has sent me. You shall know. I leave Tuckhabatchee directly, and shall go straight to Detroit. When I arrive there, I will stamp on the ground with my foot and shake down every house in Tuckhabatchee.” So saying, he turned and left the Big Warrior in utter amazement at both his manner and his threat, and pursued his journey. The Indians were struck no less with his conduct than was the Big Warrior, and began to dread the arrival of the day when the threatened calamity would befall them. They met often and talked over this matter, and counted the days carefully to know the day when Tecumthé would reach Detroit. The morning they had fixed upon as the day of his arrival at last came. A mighty rumbling was heard—the Indians all ran out of their houses—the earth began to shake; when at last, sure enough, every house in Tuckhabatchee was shaken down. The exclamation was in every mouth, “Tecumthé has got to Detroit!” The effect was electric. The message he had delivered to the Big Warrior was believed, and many of the Indians took their rifles and prepared for the war. The reader will not be surprised to learn that an earthquake had produced all this; but he will be, doubtless, that it should happen on the very day on which Tecumthé arrived at Detroit, and in exact fulfillment of his threat. It was the famous earthquake of New Madrid on the Mississippi. ([McKenney and Hall], 1.)

The fire thus kindled among the Creek by Tecumtha was fanned into a blaze by the British and Spanish traders until the opening of the war of 1812 gave the opportunity for the terrible outbreak known in history as the Creek war.

While Tecumtha was absent in the south, affairs were rapidly approaching a crisis on the Wabash. The border settlers demanded the removal of the prophet’s followers, stating in their memorial to the President that they were “fully convinced that the formation of this combination headed by the Shawano prophet was a British scheme, and that the agents of that power were constantly exciting the Indians to hostility against the United States.” Governor Harrison now sent messages to the different tribes earnestly warning them of the consequences of a hostile outbreak, but about the same time the prophet himself announced that he had now taken up the tomahawk against the United States, and would only lay it down with his life, unless the wrongs of the Indians were redressed. It was known also that he was arousing his followers to a feverish pitch of excitement by the daily practice of mystic rites.

Fig. 59—Harrison treaty pipe.

Harrison now determined to break up the prophet’s camp. Accordingly, at the head of about 900 men, including about 250 regulars, he marched from Vincennes, and on the 5th of November, 1811, encamped within a few miles of the prophet’s town. The Indians had fortified the place with great care and labor. It was sacred to them as the spot where the rites of the new religion had been so long enacted, and by these rites they believed it had been rendered impregnable to the attacks of the white man. The next day he approached still nearer, and was met by messengers from the town, who stated that the prophet was anxious to avoid hostilities and had already sent a pacific message by several chiefs, who had unfortunately gone down on the other side of the river and thus had failed to find the general. A truce was accordingly agreed on until the next day, when terms of peace were to be arranged between the governor and the chiefs. The army encamped on a spot pointed out by the Indians, an elevated piece of ground rising out of a marshy prairie, within a mile of the town. Although Harrison did not believe that the Indians would make a night attack, yet as a precaution he had the troops sleep on their arms in order of battle.

At 4 o’clock in the morning of the 7th, Governor Harrison, according to his practice, had risen preparatory to the calling up the troops, and was engaged, while drawing on his boots by the fire, in conversation with General Wells, Colonel Owen, and Majors Taylor and Hurst. The orderly drum had been roused for the purpose of giving the signal for the troops to turn out, when the attack of the Indians suddenly commenced upon the left flank of the camp. The whole army was instantly on its feet, the campfires were extinguished, the governor mounted his horse and proceeded to the point of attack. Several of the companies had taken their places in the line within forty seconds from the report of the first gun, and the whole of the troops were prepared for action in the course of two minutes, a fact as creditable to their own activity and bravery as to the skill and bravery of their officers. The battle soon became general, and was maintained on both sides with signal and even desperate valor. The Indians advanced and retreated by the aid of a rattling noise, made with deer hoofs, and persevered in their treacherous attack with an apparent determination to conquer or die upon the spot. The battle raged with unabated fury and mutual slaughter until daylight, when a gallant and successful charge by our troops drove the enemy into the swamp and put an end to the conflict.

Prior to the assault the prophet had given assurances to his followers that in the coming contest the Great Spirit would render the arms of the Americans unavailing; that their bullets would fall harmless at the feet of the Indians; that the latter should have light in abundance, while the former would be involved in thick darkness. Availing himself of the privilege conferred by his peculiar office, and perhaps unwilling in his own person to attest at once the rival powers of a sham prophecy and a real American bullet, he prudently took a position on an adjacent eminence, and when the action began, he entered upon the performance of certain mystic rites, at the same time singing a war song. In the course of the engagement he was informed that his men were falling. He told them to fight on—it would soon be as he had predicted. And then, in louder and wilder strains, his inspiring battle song was heard commingling with the sharp crack of the rifle and the shrill war whoop of his brave but deluded followers. ([Drake], Tecumseh, 6.)

Drake estimates the whole number of Indians engaged in the battle at between 800 and 1,000, representing all the principal tribes of the region, and puts the killed at probably not less than 50, with an unusually large proportion of wounded. Harrison’s estimate would seem to put the numbers much higher. The Americans lost 60 killed or mortally wounded, and 188 in all. ([Drake], Tecumseh, 7.) In their hurried retreat the Indians left a large number of dead on the field. Believing on the word of the prophet that they would receive supernatural aid from above, they had fought with desperate bravery, and their defeat completely disheartened them. They at once abandoned their town and dispersed, each to his own tribe. Tecumtha’s great fabric was indeed demolished, and even its foundations rooted up.

The night before the engagement the prophet had performed some medicine rites by virtue of which he had assured his followers that half of the soldiers were already dead and the other half bereft of their senses, so that the Indians would have little to do but rush into their camp and finish them with the hatchet. The result infuriated the savages. They refused to listen to the excuses which are always ready to the tongue of the unsuccessful medicine-man, denounced him as a liar, and even threatened him with death. Deserted by all but a few of his own tribe, warned away from several villages toward which he turned his steps, he found refuge at last among a small band of Wyandot; but his influence and his sacred prestige were gone forever, and he lived out his remaining days in the gloom of obscurity.

From the south Tecumtha returned through Missouri, Iowa, and Illinois, everywhere making accessions to his cause, but reached the Wabash at last, just a few days after the battle, only to find his followers scattered to the four winds, his brother a refugee, and the great object of his life—a confederation of all the tribes—brought to nothing. His grief and disappointment were bitter. He reproached his brother in unmeasured terms for disobeying his instructions to preserve peace in his absence, and when the prophet attempted to reply, it is said that Tecumtha so far forgot his dignity as to seize his brother by the hair and give him a violent shaking, threatening to take his life.

Early in 1812 Tecumtha sent a message to Governor Harrison, informing him of his return from the south, and stating that he was now ready to make the proposed visit to the President. To this Harrison replied, giving his permission, but refusing to allow any party to accompany him. This stipulation did not please the great leader, who had been accustomed to the attendance of a retinue of warriors wherever he went. He declined the terms, and thus terminated his intercourse with the governor. In June, 1812, he visited the agent at Fort Wayne, and there reiterated the justice of his position in regard to the ownership of the Indian lands, again disclaimed having had any intention of making war against the United States, and reproached Harrison for marching against his people in his absence. In return, the agent endeavored to persuade him now to join forces with the United States in the approaching conflict with England. “Tecumtha listened with frigid indifference, made a few general remarks in reply, and then with a haughty air left the council house and took his departure for Malden, where he joined the British standard.” ([Drake], Tecumseh, 8.) His subsequent career is a part of the history of the war of 1812.

Formal declaration of war against Great Britain was made by the United States on June 18, 1812. Tecumtha was already at Malden, the British headquarters on the Canadian side, and when invited by some friendly Indians to attend a council near Detroit in order to make arrangements for remaining neutral, he sent back word that he had taken sides with the king, and that his bones would bleach on the Canadian shore before he would recross the river to join in any council of neutrality. A few days later he led his Indians into battle on the British side. For his services at Maguaga he was soon afterward regularly commissioned a brigadier general in the British army.

We pass over the numerous events of this war—Maguaga, the Raisin, Fort Meigs, Perry’s victory—as being outside the scope of our narrative, and come to the battle of the Thames, October 5, 1813, the last ever fought by Tecumtha. After Perry’s decisive victory on the lake, Proctor hastily prepared to retreat into the interior, despite the earnest protests of Tecumtha, who charged him with cowardice, an imputation which the British general did not dare to resent. The retreat was begun with Harrison in close pursuit, until the British and Indians reached a spot on the north bank of the Thames, in the vicinity of the present Chatham, Ontario. Here, finding the ground favorable for defense, Tecumtha resolved to retreat no farther, and practically compelled Proctor to make a stand. The Indian leader had no hope of triumph in the issue. His sun had gone down, and he felt himself already standing in the shadow of death. He was done with life and desired only to close it, as became a warrior, striking a last blow against the hereditary enemy of his race. When he had posted his men, he called his chiefs about him and calmly said, “Brother warriors, we are now about to enter into an engagement from which I shall never come out—my body will remain on the field of battle.” He then unbuckled his sword, and, placing it in the hands of one of them, said, “When my son becomes a noted warrior and able to wield a sword, give this to him.” He then laid aside his British military dress and took his place in the line, clothed only in the ordinary deerskin hunting shirt. ([Drake], Tecumseh, 9.) When the battle began, his voice was heard encouraging his men until he fell under the cavalry charge of the Americans, who had already broken the ranks of the British regulars and forced them to surrender. Deprived of their leader and deserted by their white allies, the Indians gave up the unequal contest and fled from the field. Tecumtha died in his forty-fourth year.

After the close of the war the prophet returned from Canada by permission of this government and rejoined his tribe in Ohio, with whom he removed to the west in 1827. ([Schoolcraft], Ind. Tribes, 2.) Catlin, who met and talked with him in 1832, thus speaks of him:

This, no doubt, has been a very shrewd and influential man, but circumstances have destroyed him, as they have many other great men before him, and he now lives respected, but silent and melancholy, in his tribe. I conversed with him a great deal about his brother Tecumseh, of whom he spoke frankly, and seemingly with great pleasure; but of himself and his own great schemes he would say nothing. He told me that Tecumseh’s plans were to embody all the Indian tribes in a grand confederacy, from the province of Mexico to the Great Lakes, to unite their forces in an army that would be able to meet and drive back the white people, who were continually advancing on the Indian tribes and forcing them from their lands toward the Rocky mountains; that Tecumseh was a great general, and that nothing but his premature death defeated his grand plan. ([Catlin], 2.)

Chapter V
KÄNAKÛK AND MINOR PROPHETS