TECUMSEH. Comrades, and faithful warriors of our race!
Ye who defeated Hartnar and St Clair,
And made their hosts a winter's feast for wolves!
I call on you to follow me again,
Not now for war, but as forearmed for fight.
As ever in the past so is it still:
Our sacred treaties are infringed and torn;
Laughed out of sanctity, and spurned away;
Used by the Long-Knife's slave to light his fire,
Or turned to kites by thoughtless boys, whose wrists
Anchor their fathers' lies in front of heaven.
And now we're asked to Council at Vincennes;
To bend to lawless ravage of our lands,
To treacherous bargains, contracts false, wherein
One side is bound, the other loose as air!
Where are those villains of our race and blood
Who signed the treaties that unseat us here;
That rob us of rich plains and forests wide;
And which, consented to, will drive us hence
To stage our lodges in the Northern Lakes,
In penalties of hunger worse than death?
Where are they? that we may confront them now
With your wronged sires, your mothers, wives and babes,
And, wringing from their false and slavish lips
Confession of their baseness, brand with shame
The traitor hands which sign us to our graves.
MIAMI CHIEF. Some are age-bent and blind, and others
sprawl,
And stagger in the Long-Knife's villages;
And some are dead, and some have fled away,
And some are lurking in the forest here,
Sneaking, like dogs, until resentment cools.
KICKAPOO CHIEF. We all disclaim their treaties. Should
they come,
Forced from their lairs by hunger, to our doors,
Swift punishment will light upon their heads.
TECUMSEH. Put yokes upon them! let their mouths be
bound!
For they are swine who root with champing jaws
Their fathers' fields, and swallow their own offspring.
Enter the PROPHET in his robe—his face discoloured.
The Prophet! Welcome, my brother, from the lodge of
dreams!
Hail to thee, sagest among men—great heir
Of all the wisdom of Pengasega!
PROPHET. This pale-face here again! this hateful snake,
Who crawls between our people and their laws!
(Aside.)
Your greeting, brother, takes the chill from mine,
When last we parted you were not so kind.
TECUMSEH. The Prophet's wisdom covers all. He knows
Why Nature varies in her handiwork,
Moulding one man from snow, the next from fire—
PROPHET. Which temper is your own, and blazes up,
In winds of passion like a burning pine.
TECUMSEH. 'Twill blaze no more unless to scorch our
foes.
My brother, there's my hand—for I am grieved
That aught befell to shake our proper love.
Our purpose is too high, and full of danger;
We have too vast a quarrel on our hands
To waste our breath on this.