Read Online The Invasion of Canada by Pierre Berton - Free Book Online
Authors: Pierre Berton
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and, with violent gestures, starts to shout. Harrison notes, with concern, that Winemac is priming his pistols. John Gibson, the Indiana secretary, who understandsthe Shawnee tongue, whispers to Lieutenant Jesse Jennings of the 7th Infantry to bring up the guard quickly: “Those fellows mean mischief.” Tecumseh’s followers leap to their feet, brandishing tomahawks and war clubs. Harrison draws his sword. A Methodist minister runs to the house, seizes a rifle, and prepares to protect the Governor’s family. Up runs the twelve-man guard, muskets ready. Harrison motions them to hold their fire, demands to know what Tecumseh is saying. The answer is blunt: the Governor is a liar; everything he has said is false; the United States has cheated the Indians. The angry Harrison banishes Tecumseh and his followers from Grouseland. They leave in a fury, but the following day, his anger spent, Tecumseh apologizes.
What is the meaning of this singular incident? Had Tecumseh planned a massacre, as some believe, only to be faced down by Harrison and his troops? That is unlikely. It is more probable that, hearing the translation of Harrison’s words, he briefly lost his remarkable self-possession. It is also possible that it was a carefully staged part of a plan to convince Harrison of Tecumseh’s strength and leadership.
Harrison, mollified by the apology, visits Tecumseh at his camp on the outskirts of Vincennes and finds the Shawnee in a totally different mood. The menacing savage has been transformed into a skittish adversary. The two sit together on a bench, Tecumseh talking all the while and edging closer to the governor, who is forced to move over. Tecumseh continues to talk, continues to crowd Harrison, who presently finds himself on the very end of the bench. Harrison at length protests. The Shawnee laughs: how would he like to be pushed right off, as the Indians have been pushed off their lands by white encroachment?
But beneath this burlesque Harrison recognizes a firmness of purpose that makes him apprehensive. As the council proceeds Tecumseh makes it clear that he intends to prevent, by force if necessary, the lands ceded at Fort Wayne from falling into the hands of the whites. His final words are unequivocal:
“I want the present boundary line to continue. Should you cross it I assure you it will be productive of bad consequences.”
Harrison has no choice but to halt the surveys of the disputed territory. He will not get his two dollars an acre until the power of the Shawnee brothers is broken forever.
WHO ARE THESE SHAWNEE BROTHERS? Harrison may well ask himself. Where have they sprung from? What was it that produced from one Indian tribe and from the same parents the two most compelling native leaders of their time? What has made them rise above their own fellows, their own kin, so that their names are familiar to all the tribes from Michilimackinac to the borders of Florida?
The two do not even look like brothers. If Tecumseh is grudgingly admired, the Prophet is universally despised. To the white romantics one is a “good” Indian, the other “bad” – the noble savage and the rogue native, neat stereotypes in the bosom of a single family. Part of the contrast is physical. Tecumseh is almost too handsome to be true; his younger brother is ugly, awkward, and one-eyed, a handkerchief masking the empty socket, mutilated in childhood by a split arrow. One is a mystic, mercurial and unpredictable, the other a clear-eyed military genius. Yet the two are indivisible, their personalities and philosophies interlocking like pieces of an ivory puzzle.
In looking forward to a new future for the tribes, the brothers are gazing back upon an idyllic past when the vast hunting-grounds were open to all. The idea of land held in common springs directly from the Shawnee experience and must have been held by others before them. Always partially nomadic, the Shawnee were deprived of any share of the profits from lands
What is the meaning of this singular incident? Had Tecumseh planned a massacre, as some believe, only to be faced down by Harrison and his troops? That is unlikely. It is more probable that, hearing the translation of Harrison’s words, he briefly lost his remarkable self-possession. It is also possible that it was a carefully staged part of a plan to convince Harrison of Tecumseh’s strength and leadership.
Harrison, mollified by the apology, visits Tecumseh at his camp on the outskirts of Vincennes and finds the Shawnee in a totally different mood. The menacing savage has been transformed into a skittish adversary. The two sit together on a bench, Tecumseh talking all the while and edging closer to the governor, who is forced to move over. Tecumseh continues to talk, continues to crowd Harrison, who presently finds himself on the very end of the bench. Harrison at length protests. The Shawnee laughs: how would he like to be pushed right off, as the Indians have been pushed off their lands by white encroachment?
But beneath this burlesque Harrison recognizes a firmness of purpose that makes him apprehensive. As the council proceeds Tecumseh makes it clear that he intends to prevent, by force if necessary, the lands ceded at Fort Wayne from falling into the hands of the whites. His final words are unequivocal:
“I want the present boundary line to continue. Should you cross it I assure you it will be productive of bad consequences.”
Harrison has no choice but to halt the surveys of the disputed territory. He will not get his two dollars an acre until the power of the Shawnee brothers is broken forever.
WHO ARE THESE SHAWNEE BROTHERS? Harrison may well ask himself. Where have they sprung from? What was it that produced from one Indian tribe and from the same parents the two most compelling native leaders of their time? What has made them rise above their own fellows, their own kin, so that their names are familiar to all the tribes from Michilimackinac to the borders of Florida?
The two do not even look like brothers. If Tecumseh is grudgingly admired, the Prophet is universally despised. To the white romantics one is a “good” Indian, the other “bad” – the noble savage and the rogue native, neat stereotypes in the bosom of a single family. Part of the contrast is physical. Tecumseh is almost too handsome to be true; his younger brother is ugly, awkward, and one-eyed, a handkerchief masking the empty socket, mutilated in childhood by a split arrow. One is a mystic, mercurial and unpredictable, the other a clear-eyed military genius. Yet the two are indivisible, their personalities and philosophies interlocking like pieces of an ivory puzzle.
In looking forward to a new future for the tribes, the brothers are gazing back upon an idyllic past when the vast hunting-grounds were open to all. The idea of land held in common springs directly from the Shawnee experience and must have been held by others before them. Always partially nomadic, the Shawnee were deprived of any share of the profits from lands
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