[503] Michigan Pioneer Collections, XI, 467-69.
With the rapid advance of white settlement following Wayne's victory, new cessions of land were from time to time demanded. That the red man must go down before this advancing tide of invasion was inevitable. That he should struggle against his impending fate was but natural. The plan advanced in 1786 offered the only prospect of even temporarily holding back the whites, and this the more far-sighted among the Indians were shrewd enough to perceive. Harrison reported in 1802 the existence among them of an agreement that no proposition relating to their lands could be acceded to without the consent of all the tribes.[504] Nevertheless several treaties carrying large cessions of land were made during the next few years. One of these, in particular, made by the Piankeshaws and Delawares in August, 1804, excited the anger of the other tribes.[505] Others negotiated by Harrison in 1808 and 1809 again aroused them. To an agent of Harrison Tecumseh stated, in the summer of 1810, that the continuance of friendship with the United States was impossible unless the encroachment should cease.[506] "The Great Spirit," he said, "gave this great island to his red children, he placed the whites on the other side of the big water; they were not contented with their own, but came to take ours from us. They have driven us from the sea to the lakes, we can go no farther." This was repeated to Harrison himself a few weeks later at the Council of Vincennes, and the determination was proclaimed to put to death all the chiefs who had been parties to the late treaties, and to take away from the village chiefs the management of their tribal affairs and place it in the hands of the warriors.[507]
[504] Dawson, Harrison, 19.
[505] Ibid., 61-63.
[506] Ibid., 153.
[507] Ibid., 155.
The Council of Vincennes closed with an ultimatum on the part of Tecumseh that the President must either agree to give up the lands recently purchased and promise never to make another treaty without the consent of all the tribes, or else prepare for war. Harrison agreed to transmit Tecumseh's demands to the President, but assured him there was no probability of their acceptance; to which the red leader's grim rejoinder was that in that event "you and I will have to fight it out." A year passed, however, and war was not yet begun. In 1811 another council was held between the leaders of the rival races.[508] Some murders had been committed in Illinois for which Harrison demanded satisfaction. Tecumseh professed himself unable to afford it. At the same time he informed the Governor that he had succeeded in uniting the northern tribes, and at the close of the council would set out for the south to bring the southern tribes also into union.
[508] For an account of this council see ibid., 182-85.
Tecumseh departed on his mission, but returned to find his hopes of realizing the red man's Utopia forever blasted. The settlers of Indiana, frantic with fear of the threatened destruction, demanded that the government take steps effectually to avert it.[509] Equipped at last with an adequate military force, Harrison determined to forestall the anticipated blow by striking first. The fight of Tippecanoe followed in November, 1811, and the Prophet's shrill battle song on that field was at once the death song to Indian unity and to peace on the frontier. Henceforth, if the dream of Tecumseh was to be realized, the Indians must, as he had threatened, throw in their lot with the British, and improve the opportunity afforded by a war between the two white nations.
[509] Ibid., 187-90.