In 1787 he left America with the intention of serving under Louis. When he reached Paris, he was met by a proposition to enter the service of Catherine of Russia, in which he was induced to engage by prospects of rank and glory. On his journey to St. Petersburg, he had a characteristic adventure in his passage from Stockholm to Revel, which he made while the navigation was interrupted by ice, traversing the sea, with great hardihood, in an open boat, extorting the labors of the boatmen by his threats of violence. He was well received by the Empress, who forwarded him to Potemkin, then in command on the Black Sea, in a war with the Turks. It is not necessary to recount the movements of a small squadron, with a divided command and jealous counsels, presided over by a whimsical, despotic court favorite. Many as were the vexations encountered by Jones in the inefficient resources, the shifts and expedients of foreign allies, and the straits of the American commissioners, they were light compared with the stifling restraints of Russian tyranny. Jones did much fighting, in his command of the Wolodomer, on the Black Sea, against the Pasha, but retired with little glory. Persecution followed at St. Petersburg—there was an assault upon his moral character, which was triumphantly disproved—various projects flitted through his teeming mind, and his connection with the country closed after a residence of fifteen months. It is sad to watch the last years of Paul Jones, not, indeed, of age, but of growing weariness and disease, as he renews his broken Russian hopes, and revives the old, faded, pecuniary claims on the French court. A gleam of sunshine appears in his aspirations to serve his country—for he still looked across the Atlantic—in the removal of the chains from the American sailors imprisoned at Algiers. His country listened to his cry; he was charged to treat with the Regency for their ransom, but before the commission reached him, he had passed to that land where the weary cease from sighing, and prisoners are at rest. Here, with Mercy bending over the scene, let the curtain fall. Paul Jones died at Paris, at the age of forty-five, of a dropsical affection, July 18, 1792.
The person of Paul Jones is well known by the numerous prints devoted to his brilliant exploits. You will see him, a little active man of medium height, not robust but vigorous, a keen black eye, lighting a dark, weather-beaten visage, compact and determined, with a certain melancholy grace.
He was one of nature's self-made men; that is, nature gave the genius, and he supplied the industry, for he knew how to labor, and must have often exerted himself to secure the attainments which he possessed. He was a good seaman, as well as a most gallant officer; sagacious in the application of means; vain, indeed, and expensive, but natural and generous; something of a poet in verse, much more in the quickness and vivacity of his imagination, which led him to plan nobly; an accomplished writer; and as he was found worthy of the warm and unchanging friendship of Franklin, that sage who sought for excellence while he looked with a kindly eye upon human infirmity, we, too, may peruse the virtues of the man and smile upon his frailties.[Back to Contents]
TECUMSEH[5]
By James A. Green
(1776-1813)
It would be a difficult matter for a well-read American to recall the names of more than four or five notable Indians, leaving, of course, contemporaneous red men out of the question. The list might comprise Pocahontas, best known, probably, for something she did not do; Powhatan, that vague and shadowy Virginian chief; King Philip, who had a war named after him and so succeeded in having his name embalmed in history; Pontiac, whose great conspiracy Parkman has made immortal, and Tecumseh. But, of them all, Tecumseh is easily foremost. He was a man who, had he been born to great position among civilized nations, would have stamped his name and fame upon the world. He was not a mere savage of the ordinary type, bloodthirsty, brutal beyond description, going upon one aimless raid after another to glut his passion for rapine and murder. These savage traits were not his, though all the good qualities of the Indian he possessed in double measure. He was fearless, he was untiring, and when once started toward an end he knew no rest until he had accomplished his design. He had a primitive dignity of thought and expression that marked him as a great orator. At the famous council at Vincennes, when Tecumseh had finished his speech and was about to sit down with his braves, the interpreter, pointing to General W. H. Harrison, said, "Your father wishes you to take a chair." But the ordinary courtesy of calling the white Governor the father of the red men was repugnant to Tecumseh, and with lofty mien and unpremeditated eloquence he declined the proffered seat. "No," he exclaimed, "the sun is my father, the earth is my mother, and I will rest on her bosom." And he sat down on Mother Earth with his assembled warriors, this act and fiery speech more than ever binding them to his fortunes.
Tecumseh was in reality the first of the great Ohio men. He was a Shawnee Indian, and his tribe, in the middle of the eighteenth century, had emigrated from Florida to what is now the State of Ohio, Tecumseh being born in what is now Clarke County, near the present city of Springfield, in an Indian town that bore the name of Piqua. This must not be confounded with the present Ohio town of Piqua, which is in another county altogether, the birthplace of Tecumseh now being the site of a straggling village bearing the name, West Boston. In his boyhood there was nothing unusual. He grew up in the stirring times when Daniel Boone, Simon Kenton, and the other hardy Kentucky pioneers. Long Knives the Indians called them—were leading their forces into the West. It was a time when the Indians were constantly fighting. They did not live in Kentucky, but they regarded the fertile woods and prairies south of the Ohio River as their hunting-grounds, and they attacked with savage cruelty all the whites that dared to encroach upon this territory. The whites in turn crossed the Ohio in reprisal, burnt the Indian towns, tomahawked women and children, destroyed corn-fields, and were as unrelenting and barbarous in their revenge as their savage foes.
Tecumseh was born about 1776, and in 1780 the village of Piqua was attacked by a party of 1,000 Kentuckians, who, after a fierce battle, drove out the Indians and destroyed the place. It was amid such scenes that the Indian boy grew to manhood. In that wild time, war was the only science, and butchery the only trade that an Indian could follow. One of the favorite Indian pursuits of the day was the capture of parties of emigrants and traders who came floating down the Ohio in canoes or "broadhorns." For miles the Indians would secretly follow such a party, and then when their opportunity came would strike their deadly blow. When a boy of seventeen Tecumseh was in a party making an attack on some boats near the present site of Maysville, Ky. The boats were captured and all the people in them slaughtered on the spot except one person, who was spared and later burnt alive. The horror of the spectacle so impressed Tecumseh that he then and there said he would never again be guilty of such cruelty, and the vigorous manner in which he protested against it so moved his companions that they agreed with him to not repeat the act. This resolution Tecumseh never altered; time and time again he protected women and children from his infuriated followers. At the battle of Fort Meigs a party of Americans was captured by the British and Indians. Though they had surrendered as prisoners of war, yet the savages were firing into them promiscuously, or selecting such as they chose to tomahawk in cold blood. This dreadful scene was interrupted by Tecumseh, who came spurring up and, springing from his horse to the ground, dashed aside two Indians who were about to murder an American, threatening to slay anyone who would dare to injure another prisoner. Turning to the British General, Proctor, he asked why such a massacre had been permitted. "Sir," said Proctor, "your Indians cannot be commanded." "Begone," was the angry reply of the outraged Tecumseh, "you are unfit to command. Go, put on petticoats." This was only one incident of many showing how far he was above the ordinary Indian in magnanimity of character. At the already mentioned Vincennes conference Tecumseh agreed with General William Henry Harrison—his unrelenting foe and who judged him as harshly as any of the frontiersmen who feared and hated him—that in case of an outbreak of hostilities the women and children on both sides were to be protected and respected. Certain it is that General Harrison would have made no such agreement had he not believed that his adversary would keep it.