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Two Potawatomi captured on the fifth of June, said that a message had been sent to their tribe to join in the war against the United States; that the British were at Roche de Bout on the Maumee with about four hundred troops and two pieces of artillery, exclusive of the Detroit militia, and that they "had made a fortification around Colonel McKee's house and store at that place, in which they had deposited all their stores and ammunition, arms, clothing and provisions with which they promised to supply all the hostile Indians in abundance, provided they would join and go with them to war; that about two thousand warriors had been assembled, and that Governor Simcoe had promised that fifteen hundred British troops and militia would join them in the attack on the Americans."
This would indicate that the Potawatomi had already pushed the Miami tribe south of the Wabash at this place and had taken possession of the country.
This statement is borne out by the testimony of the famous Potawatomi chieftain Shaubena, of northern Illinois, who says that the trade in buffalo robes east of the Mississippi ceased in about the year 1790; that when a youth he joined in the chase of buffalos on the prairies, but while he was still young, they all disappeared from the country.
Hunting for weeks and months and enduring privation, suffering and toil, they came in at last with their women and children to buy rifles, ammunition and clothing. Here mingled the Miami, the Potawatomi, the Ottawa and the Wyandot; a motley gathering of all the tribes. In the end the result was always the same, and always pitiful.
Its bluffs, now adorned with the habitations of a peaceful people, then presented the wild and rugged beauty of pristine days; its terraces, stretching back to the prairies of the north and west, were crowned with forests primaeval; while naked Miamis, Weas and Potawatomi in canoes of bark, rounded its graceful courses to the waters of the Ohio.
That even the whole compensation proposed to be given for the lands would be given to the Miamis if they insisted upon it, but that they knew the offense which this would give to the other tribes, and that it was always the Governor's intention so to draw the treaty that the Potawatomi and Delawares would be considered as participating in the advantages of the treaty as allies of the Miamis; not as having any rights to the land."
To those who have read Jefferson's speeches to the Little Turtle, the Miamis, Potawatomi and Delawares in the year 1808, near the close of his second administration, the broad humanitarianism and fatherly benevolence of the third president is at once apparent.
Within the limits of the settlement were villages of Ottawas, Potawatomi, and Wyandots, with whose inhabitants the French lived on free and easy terms.
The Miamis were loud in their remonstrances against this trespassing, and denounced the Potawatomi as squatters, "never having had any lands of their own, and being mere intruders upon the prior estate of others," but the Potawatomi were not dispossessed and were afterwards parties to all treaties with the United States government for the sale and disposal of said lands.
Tecumseh's voice had been heard constantly, shouting for victory as before him old Annawan the Wampanoag and Cornstalk the other Shawnee had shouted. Suddenly the voice had ceased. A cry arose instead: "Tecumseh is dead! Tecumseh is dead!" And at that, as a Potawatomi afterward explained, "We all ran."
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