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"Shall we fight the Americans, father?" asked Sagaunash, or Billy Caldwell. He was half English and half Potawatomi, and acted as Tecumseh's secretary, to translate Shawnee into French or English. Tecumseh was gloomy. He had no faith in the British general. "Yes, my son. Before the sun sets we shall be in the enemy's smoke. Go. You are wanted by Proctor. I will never see you again."
There they had built for themselves rude huts made of sapling logs. Around these lodges, on the fertile land along the river were corn fields, where the Indian women worked while the men hunted or went to war. In this village, on a bluff near the river, stood Tecumseh's first home. His father was chief of a small tribe and was highly respected for his courage and good sense.
Proctor planted batteries on the shore of the river, and Tecumseh's Indians climbed trees and poured down a galling fire on the besieged.
Governor Harrison knew the treacherous nature of Indians and feared that Tecumseh's desire for peace might be feigned in order to throw him off his guard. He reasoned that it was scarcely to be expected and little to be wished that the United States should relinquish the territory for which the Indians were contending. The Indians would hardly give up the land without war.
* Authorities differ as to the facts of Tecumseh's birth. His earliest biographer, Benjamin Drake, holds that he was "wholly a Shawanoe" and that he was a fourth child, the Prophet and another son being twins. William Henry Harrison spoke of Tecumseh's mother as a Creek.
He states that Tecumseh's probable purpose in attending the meeting with a considerable force was to "make a strong impression upon the whites as to the extent of his influence among the Indians, and the strength of his party.
He not only provided the family with food and clothing, but also looked after the education of his younger brothers. Tecumseh was his favorite, and he strove to teach him all that was needful to make him a brave warrior and a good man. During Tecumseh's boyhood the Revolutionary war was being fought. The Indians took the part of the British.
Little familiarized as he was with the habits of European warfare, it could not escape the penetrating observation of such a mind, that the man who now proposed giving up his command without a struggle in its defence, was the same who, at French town, had suffered his troops to be cut to pieces, through mere nervousness to attack with the bayonet; and who, later at Sandusky, had through grossest neglect and ignorance, not only lost the means of securing a certain victory, but occasioned the most shameful waste of human life; neither had it escaped his observation that on almost every occasion wherein the hostile armies were brought in contact, he who called himself a leader was invariably a follower, and a follower at a most respectful distance a mode of heading an army, so differing from Tecumseh's own view of the duties of a great chief, that he could not understand by what perversion of the judgment of his really brave fellows, who were erroneously called his followers, he had been suffered to continue in his command so long.
"High Jack and me was hungry, so we came out and looked it over. There was goat steaks and fried rice-cakes, and plantains and cassava, and broiled land-crabs and mangoes nothing like what you get at Chubb's. "We ate hearty and had another round of rum. "'It must be old Tecumseh's or whatever you call him birthday, says I. 'Or do they feed him every day?
But it is proper, before entering upon the examination of his testimony, to state that he was not at the battle of the Thames; and that his letter, in regard to Tecumseh's death, was written in 1834, more than twenty years after the action was fought, and upon the eve of a political campaign, in which his friend, colonel Johnson, was an aspirant for a high and honorable office. Mr.
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