The last instructions from the Department, dated August 29,[85] made no change in the tenor of the President’s orders. When Harrison joined his army, October 6, at the camp above Vincennes, he wrote to Eustis,[86]—
“I sincerely wish that my instructions were such as to authorize me to march up immediately to the Prophet’s town. The troops which I command are a fine body of men, and the proportion of regulars, irregulars, infantry, and dragoons such as I could wish it. I have no reason to doubt the issue of a contest with the savages, and I am much deceived if the greater part of both officers and men are not desirous of coming in contact with them.”
In doubt what to do next, Harrison waited while his army built a small wooden fort, to which he gave his own name, and which was intended to establish formal possession of the new purchase. While the army was engaged in this work, one of the sentinels was fired at and wounded in the night of October 10 by some person or persons unseen and unknown. Harrison regarded this as a beginning of hostilities by the Prophet, and decided to act as though war was declared. October 12 he received from Secretary Eustis a letter dated September 18, never published though often referred to,[87] which is not found in the records of the government. Harrison replied the next day:[88]—
“Your letter of the 18th ult. I had the honor to receive yesterday. My views have hitherto been limited to the erection of the fort which we are now building, and to a march, by way of feint, in the direction of the Prophet’s town, as high, perhaps, as the Vermilion River. But the powers given me in your last letter, and circumstances which have occurred here at the very moment on which it was received, call for measures of a more energetic kind.”
With this despatch Harrison enclosed a return of the soldiers present under his command. “You will observe,” he said, “that our effectives are but little over nine hundred.” The rank-and-file consisted of seven hundred and forty-two men fit for duty. Harrison thought this force too small, and sent back to Vincennes for four companies of mounted riflemen. Two of the four companies joined him,[89] but their strength was not reported. These returns showed that the army, with the two additional companies, numbered at least one thousand effectives. One of the officers of the Fourth U. S. Infantry, writing November 21, said that the force was a little upward of eleven hundred men.[90]
While the Americans were determined not to return without a battle, the Indians had been strictly ordered by Tecumthe to keep the peace, and showed the intention to avoid Harrison’s attack. As early as September 25, the Prophet sent a number of Indians to Vincennes to protest his peaceful intentions, and to promise that Harrison’s demands should be complied with.[91] Harrison returned no answer and sent no demands. October 28 he broke up his camp at Fort Harrison, and the army began its march up the river. The governor remained one day longer at the fort, and from there, October 29, sent some friendly Indians to the Prophet with a message requiring that the Winnebagoes, Pottawatomies, and Kickapoos, at Tippecanoe, should return to their tribes; that all stolen horses should be given up, and that murderers should be surrendered. He intended at a later time to add a demand for hostages,[92] in case the Prophet should accede to these preliminary terms.
Harrison did not inform the friendly Indians where they would find him, or where they were to bring their answer.[93] Crossing to the west bank of the Wabash to avoid the woods, the troops marched over a level prairie to the mouth of the Vermilion River, where they erected a blockhouse to protect their boats. The Vermilion River was the extreme boundary of the recent land-cession; and to cross it, under such circumstances, was war. Harrison looked for resistance; but not an Indian was seen, and November 3 the army resumed its march, keeping in the open country, until on the evening of November 5 it arrived, still unmolested, within eleven miles of the Prophet’s town. From the Vermilion River to Tippecanoe was fifty miles.
The next morning, November 6, the army advanced toward the town, and as the column approached, Indians were frequently seen in front and on the flanks. Interpreters tried to parley with them, but they returned no answer except insulting or threatening gestures. Two miles from the town the army unexpectedly entered a difficult country, thick with wood and cut by deep ravines, where Harrison was greatly alarmed, seeing himself at the mercy of an attack; but no attack was made. When clear of the woods, within a mile and a half of the town, he halted his troops and declared his intention to encamp. Daveiss and all the other officers urged him to attack the town at once; but he replied that his instructions would not justify his attacking the Indians unless they refused his demands, and he still hoped to hear something in the course of the evening from the friendly Indians sent from Fort Harrison. Daveiss remonstrated, and every officer in the army supported him. Harrison then pleaded the danger of further advance. “The experience of the last two days,” he said,[94] “ought to convince every officer that no reliance ought to be placed upon the guides as to the topography of the country; that, relying on their information, the troops had been led into a situation so unfavorable that but for the celerity with which they changed their position a few Indians might have destroyed them; he was therefore determined not to advance to the town until he had previously reconnoitred.”
The candor of this admission did not prove the military advantages of the halt; and neither of Harrison’s reasons was strengthened by a third, which he gave a month afterward in a letter to the Governor of Kentucky. “The success of an attack upon the town by day,” he said,[95] “was very problematical. I expected that they would have met me the next day to hear my terms; but I did not believe that they would accede to them, and it was my determination to attack and burn the town the following night.” Daveiss and the other officers, looking at the matter only as soldiers, became more urgent, until Harrison at last yielded, and resolving no longer to hesitate in treating the Indians as enemies,[96] ordered an advance, with the determination to attack. “I yielded to what appeared the general wish,” he said in his official report,[97] “and directed the troops to advance.” They advanced about four hundred yards, when three Indians sent by the Prophet came to meet them, bringing a pacific message, and urging that hostilities should if possible be avoided. Harrison’s conscience, already heavy-ladened, again gave way at this entreaty.[98] “I answered that I had no intention of attacking them until I discovered that they would not comply with the demands that I had made; that I would go on and encamp at the Wabash, and in the morning would have an interview with the Prophet and his chiefs, and explain to them the determination of the President; that in the mean time no hostilities should be committed.”
Had Harrison’s vacillation been due to consciousness of strength, his officers would have had no just reason for remonstrance; but he estimated his force at about eight hundred effective men, and the Indians at more than six hundred.[99] He knew that no victory over the Northern Indians had ever been won where the numbers were anything like equal.[100] Before him was an unknown wilderness; behind him was a line of retreat, one hundred and fifty miles long, and he had supplies for very few days. He could not trust the Indians; and certainly they could not trust him, for he meant in any case to surprise their town the next night. Delay was dangerous only to the whites,—advantageous only to the Indians. Daveiss felt so strongly the governor’s hesitation that he made no secret of his discontent, and said openly not only that the army ought to attack,[101] but also that it would be attacked before morning, or would march home with nothing accomplished.[102] Indeed, if Harrison had not come there to destroy the town, he had no sufficient military reason for being there at all.