On the Border with Andrew Jackson

by John T. McIntyre

Frank Lawrence, who stood beside Jack, felt him start suddenly, and heard him draw in a long breath.

“Shawnees!” said Jack in a whisper. “One a great chief, the other a medicine man!” His hand went out and closed upon the arm of the friendly Cherokee. “What more do you know of them, Running Elk?”

“They come to the villages of the Cherokee before last harvest moon. They are from the north. The chief is Tecumseh and the medicine man is Elskwatawa.”

“By Jingo!” Jack’s voice was lifted to such a pitch that Frank quickly grasped him by the shoulder to recall him to a sense of their position. Then in a lower tone, the frontier youth continued: “Then the thing is spreading! These two are down here again trying to get the Creeks and other tribes into the league against the whites!”

Tecumseh, which, translated, means “Wild-Cat-Springing-on-its-Prey,” was a Shawnee, and perhaps one of the most famous and sagacious of all the savage chieftains who figure in the stirring history of the border. At the time in which the boys saw him beside the camp-fire in the Alabama wilderness he was about forty-five years of age. He was the son of a Shawnee chief, but his mother had been a Creek; his birthplace was Old Piqua, near where the town of Springfield, Ohio, now stands. Elskwatawa, which means “the Loud Voice,” was his brother, a Shawnee sorcerer of great fame and known throughout the frontier of that day as the “Prophet.” These two, shrewd and able far above their race, saw that if the advance of the white men were not stopped the power of the Indian would be stripped from him forever.

So they set about forming a confederation of all the tribes, and in a solid body striking a desperate blow to regain the hunting grounds wrested from them by the paleface.

The fame of the Prophet, as has been stated, was very great; the credulous red man looked upon him with awe, and never for a moment thought of doubting any utterances he saw fit to make. Tecumseh shrewdly saw the value of this; with mystic jargon, with religious mummery, the superstitions of the tribes were played upon until the confederation became a thing of fear to the scattered whites in the border settlements. From near and far the savages vowed to follow the commands of the “Great Spirit” as voiced by the Prophet; the Delawares, the Wyandottes, the Ottawas, the Kickapoos, the Winnebagoes and Chippewas had been dancing and preparing for the great blow at the white interloper for many months; and evidently not satisfied with this, the two leaders had secretly made their way south a second time, and were now, most likely, engaged in trying to arouse the Creeks and other nations against the settlers.

All this passed through the minds of Frank and Jack; for they were well acquainted with the force behind the movement; indeed, it had been the one topic talked of in the lonely cabins or the little hamlets at which they halted during the journey through the forest.

“Well, if Tecumseh’s got down here again, and the Prophet with him, there’s likely to be an outbreak,” spoke Jack, with assurance. “For the Creeks have been acting ugly for some time, and it’ll not take much to set them on the war-path.”

Frank turned to Running Elk.