Letters (62 page)

I learnt fast. And in the process came to respect, even more than formerly, the red men’s famous harmony with their land (to
sell
which, they regarded less as treason than as fraud, since in their view no man had title to what was every man’s). I saw the ultimate harmlessness of even the fierce Wyandots & once-fierce Senecas, by contrast with the whites: Tecumseh’s comparison was of a pack of wolves to a forest fire. To my surprise I came to feel ever more clearly my distance from the Indians, even as I bridged it: were I not part Indian, there could have been no bridge; were I not mainly & finally European-American, no bridge would have been needed. From this last I came to see what Tecumseh later told me Pontiac had seen (and what I now know my grandfather knew before Pontiac): that while the wolf may make the deer a finer animal, & the eagle quicken the race of rabbits, all flee together from the fire, or perish in it. As there was no longer any real
where
for the Indian to flee…

Yet he was no defeatist. That the Indians perhaps had only different ways to lose meant to Tecumseh that the choice of ways was all the more important. Hence his preference for the tomahawk, for example, together with his recognition that only British artillery might truly drive back American artillery. Hence his tireless exhortations to the chiefs
not
to forget their differences, which were as old & “natural” as those between hare & hawk, but to work for their common good despite them, against the menace. The flaw in his reasoning, of course, was that exemplary conduct presumes someone to benefit from the example. If deer & wolf rise above their ancient differences to stand together, what have they taught the fire? Tecumseh’s reply to this question (which I never put) was in his bearing, his eloquence, his selfless energy, his spaciousness of heart & the general fineness of his character, which I think must far exceed his hero Pontiac’s: to be thus-&-such a man (these virtues preacht), to behave in thus-&-such a fashion, were excellent & sweet yea tho one perish—especially if one is to perish in any case. This tragical (but nowise despairing) lesson is what Tecumseh taught, in a language neither English nor Algonkin.

By the time that contemptible treaty was sign’d (September 30, 1809, anniversary as it happens of Adam & Eve’s eviction from Paradise, according to tradition, & of Ebenezer Cooke’s inadvertent loss of his father’s estate), I had enough grasp of the language to be trusted with the errand of reporting to Governor Harrison Tecumseh’s anger, as well as the Wyandots’ enlistment into the confederacy. With credentials supplied by the Canadian secret service, I pass’d as a scout for the U. States secret service charged with learning the extent of British instigation of the Indian alliance, and reported truthfully to Harrison that the confederacy grew stronger every season. That while the British understandably were cheer’d by it, they had as yet provided little beyond moral support to Tecumseh & the Prophet, but were likely to supply them with weapons if the confederacy chose to resist the new “treaty” with force, as Tecumseh was prepared to do. That the real instigators of Indian solidarity were just such spurious or broken treaties. That the best strategy against that solidarity (and against driving the Indians to join the British in the coming war) was to cease invading their territory & murdering them with legal impunity.

The last point Harrison granted; he even worried (what I’d not dared hope) that President Madison, who rather shared my general position, might be persuaded to set aside the treaty he Harrison had just negotiated—a move which would put the Governor uncomfortably betwixt his constituents & the man he must rely on for political & military support. Cheer’d, I went off to Boston & my business with John Henry; then return’d to the Prophet’s town by way of Vincennes (& Castines Hundred) in the spring, this time as Harrison’s messenger to the Prophet, whom he invited to the capital to discuss the treaty. I reminded him that the real leader was Tecumseh. All the more reason to invite his brother instead, Harrison felt: promote any jealousy betwixt them. Andrée & I agreed that now the obnoxious treaty was accomplisht, the next great step toward Indian confederacy would be for Tecumseh successfully to resist by force its implementation, then to negotiate with President Madison its repeal. This would establish his leadership in the eyes of the Americans, the British, & his own people, & give him authority in Washington & London to barter his allegiance or neutrality in the coming war for firm guarantees of an Indian free state. I deliver’d myself (in Algonkin) of this opinion, together with Harrison’s invitation. To my dismay, Tenskwatawa loudly declared I should be executed as a spy: he had got wind thro the winter of my pose with Harrison, and feign’d to believe it was no pose; that I & possibly Star-of-the-Lake as well were in the pay of the Long Knives.

It was fortunate for me that his indictment included your mother, for while Tecumseh forbade torture, he believed in the swift execution of spies. But the Chief knew of my facility with documents & other credentials; he chided his brother, veto’d my execution, praised my improvements in their tongue, & subsequently took me as his interpreter—with 400 fine young warriors, for effect—to the 1st of a series of conferences with Harrison in Vincennes. It was my 1st experience of his statesmanship: the man was magnificent, both as orator & as tactician: always eloquent; tactful & forceful by turns; & so possest of memory & information that he could recite the provisions & violations of every Indian treaty made & broken by the Long Knives “since the Seventeen Fires had been Thirteen & had fought for their sovereignty, as his people were now conjoin’d to fight for theirs.” The pretenders who had sign’d the last of those treaties, he declared, were dead men. The confederacy would no more accede to Madison’s order to disband than would the Seventeen Fires to such an order from himself. & cetera. Harrison was enough imprest with Tecumseh to delay moving settlers onto the treaty lands—& to request troops from the War Department. Tecumseh was enough imprest with my services, & my Algonkin, to speak to me now on those matters he had tabled earlier.

What he vouchsafed me, in effect, over the following year, was a clear tho fleeting glimpse of what Andrée has since seen to be the pattern of our family history; more generally, he re-introduced me to the tragical view. Tecumseh understood to the heart Pontiac’s dilemma at the siege of Detroit (as explain’d in my 3rd letter); for that reason he would always attack, attack, preferably at night & hand-to-hand, & leave siege operations when necessary to whatever white allies the confederacy might enlist from time to time. The confederacy itself he view’d as a necessary evil, contrary to the Indians’ ancient pluralism, & for that reason he thot its central authority best left more spiritual than political. Thus his willing dependency on his undependable brother. Farther down the white man’s road toward a central
government
he would not go, tho he was not at all certain the Indians could prevail without one. He pointed out to me that my father & grandfather had had a common esteem for Pontiac, whatever their other motives & differences. Perhaps one or both of them had thot to aid him in the long run by misleading or impeding him in the short, as one strengthens a child by setting obstacles in his path, or tells him simple myths till he can grasp the hard true ones. But Tecumseh question’d both my father’s conviction, that his parents had betray’d Pontiac, & mine, that my father had betray’d, for example, the Iroquois under Joseph Brant. If he believed that, he declared, he would have permitted Tenskwatawa to tomahawk me, & would himself put a knife thro the heart of Star-of-the-Lake, whom he still loved, ere we could betray him. As it was—and since he had little time for a wife & children nor any wish to leave behind a young widow & orphans—he gave his blessings to our match, hoped it would be fruitful, & pray’d that we would set no helpful obstacles in his path, as he was no child.

I rusht to Castines Hundred with these tidings. To Andrée (now 22, & I nearing 35!) they were not news: she came to me smiling, & soon after wed me privately in the Iroquois ceremony, as my grandmother & grandfather had been wed. Andrée had just commenced her research of the family history; she was fascinated by our likeness to our grandsires. And tho she knew I had not the peculiar defect of male Burlingames (which they have always overcome), she follow’d the example of Andrée I in declining to marry me Christian-fashion till I had got her with child.

Sweet last summer! Mme de Staël wrote me from Coppet of her troubles with Napoleon; of her friend Schlegel’s narrow rescue of her manuscript
De l’Allemagne;
of her current affair with a Swiss guardsman half her age,
très romantique mais peu esthétique.
She wonder’d whether I thot it safe for her to move to her New York property if Napoleon hounded her from Coppet; surely “we” were not going to war with Britain, Europe’s only hope against the bloody Corsican? I was obliged to reply that unlike Paris in Year III, which appear’d dangerous but was safe, upstate New York in 1811 appear’d safe but would soon be dangerous. To convince her, I attacht a copy of a letter I’d forged with Andrée’s help for the purpose of inflaming the American press against the British: based on a real one sent from Major James Crawford at Niagara to Governor Haldimand in Quebec on January 3, 1782, it itemized eight boxes of scalps lifted by the Senecas & presented to the Governor-General for bounty payment: 43 “Congress soldiers,” 93 “farmers kill’d in their houses,” 97 farmers kill’d working in their fields, 102 more farmers of which 18 scalps were “markt with yellow flame to show that they were burnt alive after being scalpt,” 81 women, “long hair, those braided to show they were mothers,” 193 boys’ scalps “various ages,” 211 girls’ scalps big and little, “small yellow hoops markt hatchet, club, knife, & cet,” 122 “mixt scalps including 29 infants… only little black knife in middle to show ript out of mothers body,” & cet. Joel Barlow wrote from Kalorama, his house in Washington, that he was sailing reluctantly from Annapolis aboard the
Constitution
as Madison’s minister to France, to deal with Napoleon’s foreign minister in a final effort to prevent war betwixt the U. States & G. Britain. He recall’d fondly my assistance in his dealings with the Dey of Algiers, & wisht I could be with him now. Toot Fulton, he was sad to report, had married soon after the
Clermont’s
success; Ruthy was disconsolate. The war-hawk American Secretary of State, Barlow’s friend James Monroe, had instructed General Mathews in Georgia by secret letter on January 26 to move against the Floridas “with all possible expedition, concealing from general observation the trust committed to you with that discretion which the delicacy and importance of the undertaking require.” In May the U. States frigate
President
crippled the British sloop-of-war
Little Belt
off Sandy Hook, to the delight of Henry Clay & his fellow hawks, much increast in strength since the 1810 congressional elections. Surely the 12th Congress would declare Andrée’s War of 1811 when it convened in the fall! Tecumseh inform’d Governor Harrison early in the year that he would not only remain neutral, but fight on the side of the Seventeen Fires in the coming war if President Madison would set aside Harrison’s false treaty & make no future ones without consent of the chiefs assembled at the Tippecanoe. White citizens’ committees from Vincennes to St. Louis petition’d Madison to move against the Prophet’s town, disperse the confederacy, & drive out the British Indian traders who were “behind it.”

At Castines Hundred, whilst the Baron tiskt & tutted, your parents kiss’d & coo’d—and made plans. Barlow himself believed that inasmuch as the Westerners & Southerners were hottest for the war, my friend Tecumseh was of more immediate moment in the matter than Napoleon & George III together (that latter so sunk into madness now that a Regency bill was expected daily, but still urging in his lucid moments that troops be sent to recover his lost America). Joel could but hope that if France & England were persuaded to lift their decrees against American merchant shipping, the Indian issue itself would not be a sufficient
casus belli;
he implored me to use whatever influence I had to keep Tecumseh neutral. I had not seen fit to tell him that I was become a hawk myself, tho at the time of Burr’s trial in Richmond, when I had visited Barlow in Philadelphia to aid him with the new
Columbiad,
I’d spoken warmly of Tecumseh’s plan for an Indian nation, and tried to work into Joel’s epic a denunciation of “Manifest Destiny” by Columbus himself.

It seem’d to us now—your mother & me—that Tecumseh’s willingness to treat directly with Madison, before the confederacy had proved its strength to both Washington & London, was premature. Our friend replied that they would not be ready to prove their strength for another year, by when he hoped more of the southern nations, especially the Creeks, would be represented at the Prophet’s town: his present objective was to temporize with Harrison thro the winter whilst he did more diplomatic work in the South. It seem’d to us too that Barlow’s mission was dangerous to our cause: just possibly Madison’s gamble would work, and if there were no war to bring British troops to the Great Lakes & the Mississippi Valley (and divert the Americans’ energies from their Manifest Destiny), Tecumseh’s cause was lost. We resolved therefore on a double course: to make sure—what was anyhow unlikely—that Harrison did not agree to send Tecumseh to Madison before our friend left for his southern enterprise; and to see to it Barlow’s French mission fail’d.

The 1st we accomplisht in July, by suggesting to Harrison that his own goals might be attain’d without bloodshed, in Tecumseh’s absence, by moving infantry and militia conspicuously up the Wabash to establish a fort near the Prophet’s town: their leader gone, the Indians would likely disband before such a show of force, and Harrison would then negotiate from a position of strength with his own Indiana constituents as well as with Tecumseh. We caution’d him that attacking the Prophet’s town directly would serve only to rally the Indians, as an attack on Mecca would rally the Islamites (had we actually believed that, of course, we would have urged attack). Harrison agreed, and after a last fruitless conference at Vincennes on July 27, Tecumseh bid us farewell till spring & set off southwards down the Wabash with 20 warriors.