The Governor has paid a just and worthy tribute to his savage foe. In a letter of August seventh, 1811, he writes to the department of war as follows: "The implicit confidence 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 that of Mexico or Peru. No difficulties deter him. His activity and industry supply the want of letters. For four years he has been in constant motion. You see him today on the Wabash, and in a short time you 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."
While these stirring events were happening at the frontier capital, and on the thirty-first of July, a considerable body of the citizens of Vincennes, both English and French, met at the seminary building, and after selecting Ephraim Jordan as president and one James Smith as secretary, certain resolutions were "fallen into," which vividly portray the emotions of the frontiersmen of that day and their dire apprehension of impending danger. The resolutions stated in substance that the safety of the persons and property of the inhabitants could never be effectively secured, but by the breaking up of the combination formed on the Wabash by the Shawnee Prophet; that the inhabitants regarded this combination as a British scheme; that but for the prompt measures of Governor Harrison, it was highly probable that the town would have been destroyed and the inhabitants massacred. The Rev. Samuel T. Scott, the Rev. Alexander Devin, Colonel Luke Decker, Francis Vigo and others, were appointed as a committee to draft an address to the President of the United States, setting forth their situation and praying for relief. On the same day this address was duly formulated and signed by the committee above mentioned, and forwarded to the chief executive of the nation. In it, the citizens breathed forth their terrors and fear of the Wabash banditti, and their alarm at the constant depredations committed on the frontier. One passage is significant. "The people have become irritated and alarmed, and if the government will not direct their energies, we fear that the innocent will feel the effects of their resentment, and a general war be the consequence." A temper of this kind could not long be disregarded. Temporizing must cease.
CHAPTER XXIII
THE MUSTER AND THE MARCH
—The rally of the Kentuckians and their clansmen in southern Indiana, to Harrison's support—The coming of the support of the Fourth United States Regiment—The march to the Tippecanoe battlefield.
In the summer and early autumn of the year 1811, the British were again distributing arms and ammunition among the tribes of the northwest and rallying them for that second and final struggle with the United States. In August of that year a Potawatomi chief informed Harrison that he was present when a message from the British agent was delivered to the Prophet, "telling him that the time had arrived for taking up arms, and inviting him to send a party to Malden to receive the necessary supplies." A statement made by Captain Benjamin Parke of the light dragoons of Vincennes, to the Governor on the thirteenth of September, was to the effect that the Indians of the Wabash and the Illinois had recently visited Elliott at Malden; "that they are now returning from thence with a larger supply of goods than is known ever to have been distributed to them before; that rifles or fusees are given to those who are unarmed, and powder and lead to all." A similar communication made by the Hon. Waller Taylor, a judge of the supreme court of the Territory, stated that, "The spirit of hostility manifested by the Prophet and his followers (who, it is said, are daily increasing); the thefts and murders committed within a few months past, and the unusual quantities of arms, ammunition, etc., which not only these, but the Indians generally have received from the British agent at Fort Malden, strongly evidence a disposition to commence war as soon as a fit opportunity occurs."
In this same month of September, Touissant Dubois, a French-Canadian agent of the Governor's, reported to him that all the Indians along the Wabash had been, or were then, on a visit to the British agency. "He (Dubois) has been in the Indian trade thirty years and has never known, as he thinks, more than one-fourth as many goods given to the Indians as they are now distributing. He examined the share of one man (not a chief) and found that he had received an elegant rifle, 25 pounds of powder, 50 of lead, 3 blankets, 3 strouds of cloth, 10 shirts, and several other articles. He says that every Indian is furnished with a gun (either rifle or fusil), and an abundance of ammunition. A trader of this country was lately at the King's stores at Malden. He saw 150 kegs of powder (supposed to contain about 60 pounds each), and he was told that the quantity of goods for the Indian Department which had been sent over this year exceeded that of common years by twenty thousand pounds sterling. It is impossible to ascribe this profusion to any other motive than that of instigating the Indians to take up the tomahawk. It cannot be to secure their trade, for all the peltries collected on the waters of the Wabash in one year, if sold in the London market, would not pay the freight of the goods which have been given to the Indians." The contagion of unrest, thus encouraged and cultivated, was, as Captain Parke observed, rapidly spreading to all the tribes of the Wabash, the lakes and the Mississippi, and the influence of the Prophet was daily increasing. Unless the nest of banditti at Tippecanoe was broken up, the axe would quickly fall on all the settlements.
The plans of the Governor were speedily formed and most energetically carried forward. His purposes were, to call upon the tribes to immediately deliver up any and all of their people who had been concerned in the murders on the frontier; to require them to fulfill "that article of the Treaty of Greenville which obliges them to give information and to stop any parties passing through their districts with hostile intentions;" to further require them to cause such of their warriors as had joined the Prophet to immediately return to their tribes, or be put out of their protection. Of the Miamis he would demand an absolute disavowal of all further connection with the Prophet, and a disapprobation of his continued occupancy of their lands. All the tribes were to be reminded of the lenity, justice and continued consideration of the United States, and the efforts of the government to civilize them and promote their happiness, and warned that in case they took up the tomahawk against their fathers, no further mercies might be expected. To enforce these requirements, spread terror among the recalcitrant, and give strength to the wavering, he proposed to move up to the upper line of the New Purchase with two companies of regulars, fourteen or fifteen companies of militia, and two troops of dragoons. He hoped thus to dissolve the Prophet's bands without the effusion of blood, but in case of a continued defiance he proposed to march into the Indian country and enforce his demands with sword in hand.