Panther in the Sky (74 page)

“These lands are ours! No one has a right to remove us! We were on these lands from the Beginning. The Great Good Spirit above appointed this place for us on which to kindle our fires, and here we will remain! As for boundaries, the Great Spirit
above knows no boundaries, nor will his red people acknowledge any!”

He stood directly in front of Shane, the whites showing all around the irises of his eyes, his deep chest rising and falling with his breathing. Even after they were spoken, his words seemed to resonate among the pole rafters of the long council house. He pointed at Shane’s chest and said, “If the president of the Seventeen Fires has any more to say to me, he must send a great man. I will have no more talk with Captain Wells!”

And then Open Door rose beside him. Raising both arms, his medicine fire stick in his right fist, he faced the People and called in that flutelike voice, so startling a sound after the deep roll of Tecumseh’s:

“This Miami squawman Wells has displeased me more than he can ever know! As mean a man as he is, he sends a still smaller man to talk to me. To
me!
Am I not the Prophet? Am I not a holy man, acclaimed by all the tribes? Why does not that president send to me the greatest man in his nation? If he would do this, maybe I, Tenskwatawa, would talk with him.
Maybe
I would!” Now he pointed his stick at Shane and shrilled, “I can bring darkness between him and me. More, I can bring the sun under my feet! What white man can do this? Tell me, you! What white man can do this?
Tell me!”

Shane, afraid to speak, stood looking down, the voices of the hundreds in the council lodge roaring in agreement around his head.

And when he rode out of town, the half-breed’s face was as pale as that of the purest white man. But a grim smile began to grow on his face as he galloped along the road toward Fort Wayne, passing one band after another of pilgrims. After what Captain William Wells had put him through, there would be a delicious, malicious satisfaction in telling him what had been said about him!

Shane laughed.

N
OW
O
PEN
D
OOR WAS FEELING VERY CONFIDENT IN EVERY
way. Two moons had passed with no more words from Captain Wells at Fort Wayne.

The numbers of pilgrims had been swelling with every week. Even Sauk and Assiniboines had come, from lands northwest of the Missi-se-pe headwaters. Some food was being harvested from the village gardens, but not enough. The three Shaker ministers who had visited the holy town had been so impressed with the
godliness in the place and so appalled by the hunger that they had supplied twenty-seven packhorse loads of provisions from their nearby settlement. Though Open Door had preached against the acceptance of white men’s food, he accepted it eagerly and managed to justify it by clever talking.

And then some very welcome and unexpected help had come from Blue Jacket.

Though bound by treaty not to fight the Americans, he had come to the town and expressed to Tecumseh his secret support of the religious work. He then worked out with the brothers a scheme to get more food for the village—from the American government itself. At first Tecumseh had objected to the idea. But after Blue Jacket explained that it would be a trick rather than begging, Tecumseh saw its appeal. Blue Jacket himself, who was known by the whites as one of the treaty Indians, would go up to the American fort at Detroit and, talking with an oiled tongue to the befuddled old commander General Hull, would get some provisions or annuity money and give it to Open Door’s town instead of the treaty Shawnees, who were already getting annuities. He went, and he did it.

Roundhead, a Wyandot village chief of great stature, had broken away from the Crane. He brought his people to come here and live permanently, this bringing still more prestige to the Prophet.

And news came that far away in the eastern sea, some British warships had shot their cannons at an American warship. There was much talk then of a new war between the two white nations. Such a war would mean, of course, more solicitous attention from the British, perhaps provisions, too. Maybe even the Americans would be more careful in their actions, so as not to drive the tribes into a war alliance with the British. Always the white nations had used the red men in their wars against each other. This time the red men, wiser in the wiles of the white men’s governments, and more unified than they had ever been, might be able to use a white man’s war to their own advantage.

In fact, one of the British traders from Canada, a man named Frederick Fisher, was in the village now, seated across from Open Door on a cattail-rush mat, talking in veiled terms about these very matters. A British trader on the prowl in O-hi-o had to be very careful what he said and how he said it in these times. He had to hint at England’s need for red allies in case of war but at the same time not make any overt invitation. England was bogged down in a distant war with Napoleon and could ill afford
a conflict on this continent. England’s fur trade with the Indians was depressed by that same war, and thus the old commercial cohesion between British and Indians was eroding. And in the minds of most Algonquian tribes there was also the bitter memory of the battle at Fallen Timbers, where the British commander had shut the gates of Fort Miami in the face of the routed Indians. That being the only battle Open Door had ever fought in, he was particularly bitter and skeptical of any British promises, either straightforward or tentative. Therefore he was, in his present euphoria of self-confidence, making light of both the Americans’ threat and the friendship of the British.

“You do not know how strong and pure the red men are now, Fisher. We do not fear the Blue-Coats, and we do not need the Redcoats. Ha, ha!” Open Door had blossomed as a man of words and enjoyed exercising his wit in a conversation like this. He could not give way to much levity when talking to his flock; that was always dead serious. So now Open Door smiled slyly, thinking in jokes. That had been a good one about Blue-Coats and Redcoats, he thought.

Open Door had eaten only vegetables and beans and roots for days, game being so depleted in the vicinity, and his intestines were bubbling in him like a brine kettle. He could feel some of his older sort of eloquence coming down, that particular kind of mocking language he had used to use, back in the days when he was a boy underdog, to get the last word in. So now he stood up slowly, saying as he rose from his mat:

“Do you know, Fisher, the white man is so little to me now, Long Knives or British, that I can tell you in one word what they all mean to me. Here, Fisher, is that word.”

Turning to put his ample behind close to Fisher’s face, bending over, biting his lower lip and raising his right foot off the ground, the Shawnee prophet pronounced his singular word.

The word started as the drumming of a ruffed grouse, increased to the growl of a bear, and then, as its last syllable, finished with the loud, wet sound of a horse blowing its lips. Fisher recoiled, his head enveloped by the fertile scent of the Prophet’s last word, and Open Door skipped about, helplessly carried away by his own cackling hilarity.

S
INCE THE
S
HAKERS WERE THE ONLY WHITE MEN WHO HAD
been permitted to see into all the doings of the Prophet’s village, they were asked by the governor of Ohio to write a report on their sojourn there. Profoundly impressed by the prayers, the sobriety,
and the selfless sharing of meager rations in the crowded town, they wrote:

The hearts of the Shakers had been won, and when, a few weeks later, Open Door sent to ask them for more food, the Gentle Believers again ransacked their own larders and granaries and sent another pack train to the hungry Indians.

Soon thereafter, the Shaker settlement was disturbed by shouts and hoofbeats. The visitors were militia officers. They were slit-eyed and white-lipped with anger, and their language was un-Christian. They charged the Shakers with sustaining “a goddamned Shawnee charlatan” and even accused them of encouraging him in his preparations to make war on the settlers. The Shakers were dumbfounded by the allegations and tried to convince the officers what a good and sober and devout place the Prophet’s town was. “Surely the Lord is in that place,” they insisted.

The militia officers retorted by threatening to put the Shakers to the sword for treason. And so the Shakers ended their brief association with the Shawnee prophet.

I
N THE SUMMER
, T
ECUMSEH WAS PULLED AWAY FROM HIS
duties at the holy town by an incident that threatened to fan the settlers’ fears into another Indian war.

The decomposing body of a white man named Myers had been found under a congregation of buzzards on a trailside near a new settlement called Urbana on the Mad River. Though most of the skin was gone, those who found the body had perceived in particular that it had no scalp.

At once the settlers were seething with fury and fear. There was only one explanation, in their opinion: this must have been the work of some of those transient Indians who were forever going to and from the town of the Shawnee charlatan! Surely this was only the beginning of a bloody uprising. The news went like the wind, and within days militia companies were mustering everywhere and standing by for orders, and farm families were moving into the safety of forts and towns.

For a few days more the situation simmered while Ohio leaders planned some approach that would calm the fears and meet the danger. At last they decided upon a big council, to be conducted by a commission of militia officers, for the purpose of questioning the Indian leaders and producing an Indian to hang. Only this, it seemed, could ease the tension and prevent a panic or a large-scale, indiscriminate retaliation.

Word was sent to tribes in and around western Ohio to bring their leading men to Springfield, a new settlement in Clark County near the ruins of the old Piqua. Black Hoof at once alleged that Tecumseh’s followers must have killed the man. Tecumseh asked, “Why does no one say it was Black Hoof’s?” The militia general Simon Kenton, who now lived near this town of Springfield, was put in charge of the commission, which comprised Kenton, Colonel Robert Patterson, and three other officers. The council was convened outdoors in an open field near an inn. Old Black Hoof and Blue Jacket arrived with 170 warriors. Tecumseh came with 130. Two parties of Wyandots came, Crane’s and Roundhead’s, and these two watched each other sullenly. It had been agreed in advance that all armed warriors would remain off the council ground, each faction to one side, and the white spectators on another part of the field, that only the chiefs and sharnans would come onto the council ground, and that they must stack all their weapons off to the side before entering. Waiting for them there were the commissioners with a large body of interpreters, clergymen, and other white men of the sort who feel that nothing important can be well conducted without their presence.

General Kenton, once known as the dreaded But-lah, no longer dressed like an Indian. But at fifty-two years he still gave the appearance of a man of extraordinary physical power, and his face was benign and good-humored and shrewd.

Black Hoof, silver-haired, dressed in a wool coat, and the solid, middle-aged Blue Jacket, led their chieftains in. Black Hoof was more than eighty years old now, but still erect and stately. He was a chief of great stature among many red men, and whites, too, for he had twice been to Washington and seen the Great White Father there. He had gone to plead for the plows and the agricultural advisers for which he had been so long awaiting.

Black Hoof now watched with masked emotions as Tecumseh and a score of his sinewy chieftains approached. Suddenly Black Hoof pointed and exclaimed about something that the white men themselves had just noticed: Tecumseh’s men had not divested themselves of their tomahawks or knives.

Kenton at once called to him, in Shawnee, and reminded him that all parties on the ground were to be unarmed. Tecumseh replied:

“I remember what happened to Cornstalk when he went unarmed among your people at Fort Randolph.”

Kenton drew up stiff momentarily. Then he said in a cordial tone, “There will be no trouble here. Please do not try to bring your hatchets into this peaceful council.”

Tecumseh held up his tomahawk and pointed to it. As white men crowded in close on him, he said, “But this is my pipe as well.” It had a tobacco bowl in the head and a hollow handle. “I might need to use it during this meeting.” Then he added, flashing a big smile: “One end or the other.” There were some chuckles among the Shawnees.

At this, a tall, long-jawed clergyman stepped toward Tecumseh and proffered a deacon’s pipe, a long-stemmed pipe of white clay now very thumb-smudged and blackened by use. “Maybe,” he said, “the chief might smoke for peace with this instead.”

Tecumseh took it but gave the parson such a hard look that he backed into the crowd. Then Tecumseh looked at the filthy object, sniffed the bowl, and made an exaggerated grimace of disgust. Then he flipped it back over his shoulder onto the ground. A roar of laughter went up around the council ground. White men and red alike howled at the parson’s discomfiture, and Tecumseh’s own warm, infectious laugh overrode the rest. Suddenly the tension was gone out of the air, and when Tecumseh and his followers moved on in to take their places, no more effort was made to disarm them. Black Hoof still looked miffed, but Blue Jacket was rocking with voiceless laughter.

Then the council was opened with the customary passing of a ceremonial pipe, and as the interpreters came forward and took their places, one of them, a big minister in a black frock and deerhide leggings, signaled toward Tecumseh with a big smile on his face. When Tecumseh saw him, the light of recognition flashed across his face, and he raised his hand in a salute. He wanted to cry out to him, “Big Fish!” But the pipe ceremony was too solemn to be disturbed by an outcry, so he and Stephen Ruddell simply stared at each other with sparkling eyes, their faces almost breaking with grins, nodding, shaking their heads. Even old Black Hoof was beaming. He, too, remembered the brotherhood of Tecumseh and Big Fish and their escapades in those long-ago skirmishes and battles. Tecumseh nodded toward Kenton and made a motion of holding a rifle, and Ruddell grinned and nodded, remembering
the time his rifle had misfired at Kenton’s chest. Ruddell was now a Baptist missionary and had come to work in Black Hoof’s town. As promised, he had returned to the Shawnees.