Brother, let me ask,
Do you remember how our father fell?
TECUMSEH. Who can forget Kanawha's bloody fray?
He died for home in battle with the whites.
PROPHET. And you remember, too, that boyish morn,
When all our braves were absent on the chase—
That morn when you and I half-dreaming lay
In summer grass, but woke to deadly pain
Of loud-blown bugles ringing through the air.
They came!—a rush of chargers from the woods,
With tramplings, cursings, shoutings manifold,
And headlong onset, fierce with brandished swords,
Of frontier troopers eager for the fight.
Scarce could a lynx have screened itself from sight,
So sudden the attack—yet, trembling there,
We crouched unseen, and saw our little town
Stormed, with vile slaughter of small babe and crone,
And palsied grandsire—you remember it?
TECUMSEH. Remember it! Alas, the echoing
Of that wild havoc lingers in my brain!
O wretched age, and injured motherhood,
And hapless maiden-wreck!
PROPHET. Yet this has been
Our endless history, and it is this
Which crams my very veins with cruelty.
My pulses bound to see those devils fall
Brained to the temples, and their women cast
As offal to the wolf.
TECUMSEH. Their crimes are great—
Our wrongs unspeakable! yet my revenge
Is open war. It never shall be said
Tecumseh's hate went armed with cruelty.
There's reason in revenge; but spare our own!
These gloomy sacrifices sap our strength;
And henceforth from your wizard scrutinies
I charge you to forbear. But who's the white
You hold as captive?
PROPHET. He is called LEFROY—
A captive, but too free to come and go.
Our warriors struck his trail by chance, and found
His tent close by the Wabash, where he lay
With sprained ankle, foodless and alone.
He had a book of pictures with him there
Of Long-Knife forts, encampments and their chiefs—
Most recognizable; so, reasoning thence,
Our warriors took him for a daring spy,
And brought him here, and tied him to the stake.
Then he declared he was a Saganash—
No Long-Knife he! but one who loved our race,
And would adopt our ways—with honeyed words,
Couched in sweet voice, and such appealing eyes
That Iena, our niece—who listened near—
Believing, rushed, and cut him from the tree.
I hate his smiles, soft ways, and smooth-paced tread,
And would, ere now, have killed him but for her;
For ever since, unmindful of her race,
She has upheld him, and our matrons think
That he has won her heart.
TECUMSEH. But not her hand! This cannot be, and I must
see to it:
Red shall not marry white—such is our law.
But graver matters are upon the wing,
Which I must open to you. Know you, then,
The nation that has doomed our Council-Fires—
Splashed with our blood—will on its Father turn,
Once more, whose lion-paws, stretched o'er the sea,
Will sheathe their nails in its unnatural tides,
Till blood will flow, as free as pitch in spring,
To gum the chafed seams of our sinking bark.
This opportunity, well-nursed, will give
A respite to our wrongs, and heal our wounds;
And all our nations, knit by me and ranged
In headship with our Saganash allies,
Will turn the mortal issue 'gainst our foes,
And wall our threatened frontiers with their slain.
But till that ripened moment, not a sheaf
Of arrows should be wasted, not a brave
Should perish aimlessly, nor discord reign
Amongst our tribes, nor jealousy distrain
The large effects of valour. We must now
Pack all our energies. Our eyes and ears
No more must idle with the hour, but work
As carriers to the brain, where we shall store,
As in an arsenal, deep schemes of war!
[A noise and shouting without.]
But who is this?