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In the first place, the Shawnees were actuated in a small degree by their desire to lessen the sufferings of their captive.
Westward of the Delawares lay the Shawnee villages, along the Scioto and on the Pickaway plains; but it must be remembered that the Shawnees, Delawares, and Wyandots were closely united and their villages were often mixed in together.
In the smallest of the three large mounds of this group were found stone graves of precisely the type attributable, when found south of the Ohio, to the Shawnees. They were not in a situation where they could be ascribed to intrusive burials, but in the bottom layer of a comparatively large mound with a thick and undisturbed layer of hard-packed clay above them.
Their plumes and eagle feathers waved proudly in the morning breeze. Now and then the long, peculiarly broken yell of the Shawnees rang out clear and strong. The soldiers were drawn off to one side and well out of range of the settlers' guns. Their red coats and flashing bayonets were new to most of the little band of men in the block-house. "Ho, the Fort!"
He asked the Shawnees of the upper country, also, to join him and the Prophet. But they declined to meddle. Old Black Hoof, a chief whose memory extended back ninety years, advised against it. The Prophet was more clever than Tecumseh. The Wyandots were the keepers of the great belt which had bound the Ohio nations together in Little Turtle's day.
Not one of the prisoners was aware what Indian village was to be their destination, although the scout, from his familiarity with the region through which they were conducted, was convinced that they were being taken to the place called Chillicothe. His surmise proved to be correct, and on the fifth day the returning party with their prisoners arrived at the capital of the Shawnees.
Yet he was framed for gentleness, and he surpassed another great Ohio Indian as much in breadth of character, as he surpassed Tecaughretanego in an ideal of conduct. Tecumseh, the famous war chief of the Shawnees, was born at the ancient town of Piqua on Mad River, not far from the present city of Springfield, in Clark County.
"We know that you are brave men," Captain Chêne the soldier courteously answered, and the daubed countenances of the Shawnees, peering from the thickets behind him, tried to leer. "Governor Hamilton appreciates your situation. The force against you is over-whelming, but he has charged me not to destroy you. He does not wish even to treat you with harshness.
When next the white man reached the country a century and a half later he found the Xualans had been swept away by the conquering Cherokees, and he witnessed there the most sanguinary contest between Indians of which our annals give any account a pitched battle two days in duration, between the invading Shawnees, who lorded it over what is now Kentucky, Ohio and Indiana and the Cherokees, who dominated the country the southeast of the Cumberland range.
The Virginian borderers were fearfully exasperated, and ready to take vengeance upon any Indians, whether peaceful or hostile; while the Shawnees and Mingos, on their side, were arrogant and overbearing, and yet alarmed at the continual advance of the whites.
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