Sustained honor: The Age of Liberty Established

by John R. Musick

Soon after the council at Vincennes, Tecumseh went South among the Creeks to extend the confederacy of the people of Indiana among them. There is a tradition among the Tuckabachees that Tecumseh, failing to enlist them in his enterprise, in his wrath said:

"When I return to the North, I will stamp on the earth and make it tremble." When the effects of the earthquake of New Madrid were felt, the Tuckabachees said:

"Tecumseh has reached the North."

The hostile demonstrations on the part of the Indians in Indiana alarmed the people of that territory, and General Harrison therefore took measures to increase his regular force. He warned the Indians to obey the treaty at Greeneville; but at the same time he prepared to break up the prophet's establishment if necessary. In September, the prophet sent assurances to the governor that his intentions were pacific. About the same time, he dispatched a message to the Delawares, who were friendly, asking them to join him in a war against the United States, stating that he had taken up the tomahawk and would not lay it down but with his life, unless their wrongs were redressed. The Delaware chiefs immediately visited the prophet to dissuade him from commencing hostilities and were grossly insulted. On the 6th of November, 1811, Governor Harrison, with about nine hundred and fifty effective troops, composed of two hundred and fifty of the 4th Regiment U. S. Infantry, one hundred and thirty volunteers and a body of militia, being within a mile and a half of the prophet's town, was urged to make an immediate assault upon the village; but this he declined, as his instructions from the president were positive not to attack the Indians as long as there was a probability of their complying with the demands of the government. The Indians, in the course of the day, endeavored to cut off his messengers and evinced other hostile symptoms, which determined Harrison to at once march upon the town, when he was met by three Indians, one of them a principal counselor of the prophet, who avowed that the prophet's designs were pacific. Accordingly a suspension of hostilities was agreed upon, and the terms of peace were to be settled on the following morning by the governor and the prophet's chief. At night the army encamped about three fourths of a mile from the prophet's town.

The governor was well convinced of the hostility of the prophet. He believed that after attempting to lull his suspicions he intended to make a treacherous attack on the Americans. Little anticipation of a night attack was indulged, yet every precaution was taken to resist one if made. All the guards that could be used in such a situation, and all such as were used by Wayne, were employed on this occasion. That is, camp guards, furnishing a chain of sentinels around the whole camp at such a distance as to give notice of the approach of an enemy in time for the troops to take their position, and yet not far enough to prevent the sentinels from retreating to the main body if overpowered. The usual mode of stationing picket guards at a considerable distance in advance of the army or camp, would be useless in Indian warfare, as they do not require roads to march upon, and such guards would be inevitably cut off. Orders were given in the event of a night attack, for each corps to maintain its position at all hazards until relieved or further orders were given to it. The whole army was kept during the night in the military position called lying on their arms. The regular troops lay in their tents with their accoutrements on, and their guns at their sides. The militia had no tents, but slept with their clothes and bullet pouches on, and their guns under them, to keep them dry. The order of the encampment was a line of battle to resist a night attack; and so, as every man slept opposite to his post in the line, there was nothing for the troops to do, in case of an assault, but to rise and take their position a few steps in the rear of the fires around which they had reposed. The guard of the night consisted of two captains' commands of forty-two men and of four non-commissioned officers each and two subalterns' guards of twenty men and non-commissioned officers each--the whole amounting to about one hundred and thirty men, under command of a field officer of the day. The night was dark and cloudy, and after midnight there was a drizzling rain.

At four o'clock in the morning of Nov. 7, 1811, Governor Harrison, according to practice, had risen, preparatory to the calling up of the troops, and was engaged, while drawing on his boots by the fire, in conversation with General Wells, Colonel Owens, and Majors Taylor and Hurst. The orderly drum had been roused to sound the reveille for the troops to turn out, when there came the report of a sentry's rifle on the left flank, followed by a score of shots, and the morning air rang loud with the wild war-whoops of savages.

In an instant the army was in line, the campfires were extinguished, and the governor mounted his horse and proceeded to the point of attack. Several companies had taken their places in the line within forty seconds after the report of the first gun, and in two minutes the whole army was ready for action; a fact as creditable to their own activity and bravery, as to the skill and energy of their officers. The battle soon became general, and was maintained on both sides with signal and even desperate valor. The Indians advanced or 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 on the spot. The battle raged with unabated fury and mutual slaughter until daylight, when a gallant and successful charge by the troops drove the enemy into the swamp, and put an end to the conflict.

Prior to the assault, the prophet had given his followers assurance, 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 test 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. Soon after the engagement commenced, he was informed that his men were falling. He told them to fight on, it would soon be as he predicted; and then in, wilder and louder 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. Some of the Indians who were in the conflict, subsequently informed the agent at Fort Wayne, that there were more than a thousand warriors in the battle, and that the number of wounded was unusually great. In the precipitation of their retreat, they left thirty-eight on the field. Some were buried during the engagement in their town. Others no doubt subsequently died of their wounds. Drake places their number in killed at not less than fifty.

Of the whites, thirty-five were killed in the action, and twenty-five died subsequently. The total number of killed and wounded was one hundred and eighty-eight,--probably as great and possibly greater than the loss of the Indians. Among the slain were Colonel Abraham Owen and Major Joseph Hamilton Davies of Kentucky.

Though the battle of Tippecanoe, considered as a conflict from the losses on each side, would to-day be regarded only as a skirmish, yet it had a great moral influence in restraining the savages in the northwest, and, but for the meddling of the British agents, a permanent peace with the Indians could have been established.