and a line drawn from that river and Post Vincennes due north to the territorial line between the United States and Canada, should, for the purposes of a territorial government, constitute a separate territory, and be called Illinois. Ninnian Edwards, then chief justice of Kentucky, was appointed governor, and Nathaniel Pope, an eminent member of the Kaskaskia bar, secretary of the Illinois Territory, which was thus started on the way of the first grade of its existence. Kaskaskia, with the romance of a century and the mists of more remote tradition clinging about its venerable precincts, was selected as the seat of government.

Tecumseh had an able assistant in the person of Blue Jacket, the great Shawnee warrior. The two held similar views, the leading principles of which were to combine all the tribes to prevent the sale of land by a single tribe, to join the British in the event of war, with the hope of recovering the lands previously ceded. They held that in the treaty of Greenville the United States had admitted the right to the lands to be jointly in all the tribes, and, therefore, had no right to purchase territory of a single tribe without the consent of all the others. +

"The various tribes in the habit of visiting Detroit and Sandwich were annually subsidized by the British. Where the American agent at Detroit gave one dollar by way of an annuity, the British agent on the other side of the river would give the Indians ten. This course of iniquity had the intended effect; the Indians were impressed with a great aversion for the Americans, and desired to recover the lands ceded at Greenville, and for which they were yearly receiving the stipulated annuity. They wished again to try their strength with the Big Knife, in order to wipe away the disgrace of their defeat by Gen. Wayne. They were still promised aid by the British in the advent of a war between the latter and the United States."+

The teachings of the Prophet and the schemes of Tecumseh could have only one result. Gen. Harrison saw the storm that was too surely approaching, and exerted himself, with great address, to protect the inhabitants committed to his care, scattered, as they were, at great distances over an extensive territory. By an admirable system he had spies, in the guise of traders, and Indians, whom he had by his winning manners drawn about him, in the villages of all of the disaffected tribes, by means of whom he was kept fully informed

*Second U. S. Statutes at Large, p. 114.

+ McAfee's History of the Late War, p. 9.
McAfee, p. 9.

of the purposes of Tecumseh and his brother, the Prophet. While Tecumseh was traveling, visiting the various tribes in the northwest, and perfecting his schemes, the governor was preparing for what he knew would surely come

war.

The Prophet, becoming bolder every day, at last, in the month of April, 1809, required his followers "to take up the hatchet against the white people, to destroy the inhabitants of Vincennes and those on the Ohio, who lived as low down as its mouth and as high up as Cincinnati, telling them that the Great Spirit had ordered them to do this, and that their refusal would result in their own destruction." A number of Chippeways, Ottawas and Pottawatomies were so alarmed at this bold avowal that they hurried away from the Prophet.* The estimated force of the Prophet at this time was from six to eight hundred men; and if, as it was reported, the defection had extended to all the tribes between the Illinois River and Lake Michigan, that number might be doubled.†

The governor dispatched another one of his interpreters, Joseph Barron, to the Prophet's town, in the hope that, when informed of the strength and resources of the United States, the Indians would be prevented from commencing hostilities. This speech was delivered to the Prophet by Barron, in the presence of Tecumseh. No answer was made, but one was promised to be sent back by the interpreter. The latter lodged for the night with Tecumseh, when a general conversation ensued, in which Tecumseh denied "an intention to make war, but declared that it was not possible to be friends with the United States, unless the latter would abandon the idea of extending settlements further to the north and west, and explicitly acknowledge the principle that all the lands in the western country were the common property of all the tribes. The Great Spirit," said Tecumseh, "gave this island to his red children. He placed the whites on the other side of the big water. They were not contented with their own, but came to take ours from They have driven us from the sea to the lakes we can go no farther. They have taken upon them to say this tract is the Miami's, this is the Delaware's, and so on; but the Great Spirit intended it as the common property of all. Our father tells us that we have no business upon the Wabash-that the land belongs

us.

* Memoirs of Gen. Harrison, pp. 126, 127.

Idem, 138. About this time an old Piankashaw, named Grosble, or Big-Corn, a particular friend to Gen. Harrison and the United States, asked the former for permission to move beyond the Mississippi, alleging that he heard nothing among the Indians but news of war, and as he intended to take no part in it he wished to be out of danger.

to other tribes. The Great Spirit ordered us to come here, and here we will stay."

Tecumseh told the interpreter that he would come to Vincennes and visit Gen. Harrison, and bring with him about thirty of the principal men. Accordingly, on the 12th of August, 1810, Tecumseh arrived at Vincennes, where a council was held, at which mutual explanations were made in the presence of a large concourse of Indians, militia and the citizens of the town. Tecumseh, in his speech, took the grounds of a common ownership by all the Indians of all the lands, and of the inability of one tribe to dispose of any part of it without the consent of all the others. He grew very violent as the interpreter was rendering Gen. Harrison's reply. The Indians sprang to their feet, seizing their tomahawks and war clubs, bending their eyes fiercely upon the governor. The militia were

quickly marched up to the scene of the difficulty, and order was restored. The next morning Tecumseh, greatly mortified at his display of anger and bad manners, met the governor with an apology. The latter assured him that he would submit his propositions to the president, adding, at the same time, that there was little probability of their being acceded to. "Well," said Tecumseh, "as the great chief is to determine the matter, I hope the Great Spirit will put sense enough into his head to induce him to direct you to give up this land. It is true he is so far off that he will not be injured by the war. He may still sit in his town and drink his wine whilst you and I will have to fight it out."* And fight it out they did, as we will now proceed to show.

Events transpiring subsequent to the conference at Vincennes clearly demonstrated that there was no other alternative; either the Prophet's town had to be destroyed, and the purposes of Tecumseh thwarted, or else the advancing line of white population would be driven back from whence it came.

The boldness and insolence of the assemblage at the Prophet's town increased daily; hostile parties were continually leaving that place for the white settlements, where they killed the inhabitants and stole their horses. Finally, Gov. Harrison received orders to proceed to the Prophet's town with a military force, which he was only to use after all efforts to effect a peaceable dispersion of its occupants had failed. The governor left Vincennes on the 26th of September, 1811, with a force of nine hundred effective men, composed of the 4th Reg. U. S. regulars, with a body of militia, and a

*Memoirs of Gen. Harrison, p. 159.

TIPPECANOE CAMPAIGN.

287

hundred and thirty volunteer dragoons. The regulars had been organized for some time, and were well drilled and ably officered. James Miller, who subsequently immortalized himself at Lundy's Lane by replying, when asked if he could take the English battery on the hill, "I will try, sir," and in the heroism and success with which he made the effort, being the lieutenant-colonel.* The militia, who were all volunteers, had been well trained by the governor in person in all those peculiar evolutions practiced by Gen. Wayne's army, and which had been found so efficient in operating against the Indians in a covered country. On the 3d of October the army, moving up on the east side of the Wabash, reached a place on the bank of the stream some two miles above the old Wea village of We-au-ta-no, "The Risen Sun," called by many the "Old Orchard Town," and time out of mind, by the early French traders, Terre Haute. Here the governor halted, according to his instructions, within the boundary of the country already ceded by the Indians, and occupied his time in erecting a fort, while waiting the return of messengers whom he had dispatched to the Prophet's town, demanding the surrender of murderers, and the return of stolen horses. sheltered there, and requiring that the Shawnees, Winnebagoes, Pottawatomies and Kickapoos collected there should disperse and return to their own tribes. The messengers were treated with great insolence by the Prophet and his council, who, to put an end to all hopes of peace, sent out a small war party to precipitate hostilities. This war party, finding no stragglers about the governor's encampment, shot at and wounded one of his sentinels. The Delaware chiefs who went with the messengers to the Prophet's town advised the governor, on their return, that it would be in vain to expect that anything short of force would obtain satisfaction for past injuries or security for the future. They also informed him that the strength of the Prophet was daily increasing by accessions of ardent and giddy young men from every tribe, and particularly from those along and beyond the Illinois River.

The new fort was finished on the 28th of October, and by the unanimous request of all the officers it was christened "Fort Har rison."*

*This intrepid officer was so extremely ill of the fever when the regiment marched that he could scarcely walk. He did go, however, as far as Ft. Harrison, and on the completion of this work he could go no farther, and the fort, with a garrison consisting of invalids like himself, was assigned to his command.

The illustration is copied from a lithograph in possession of M M. Redford, Danville, Illinois. It is one of a number of impressions printed by Modesit & Hager in 1848. It was drawn from descriptions given by old settlers who were well acquainted

On the 29th of October Gov. Harrison moved up the Wabash, crossing Raccoon Creek at Armysburg, and ferrying his army over the Wabash at the mouth of the former stream on boats sent up the river for that purpose. The army encamped on the 2d of November some two miles below the mouth of the Big Vermilion, and about a mile below the encampment a block-house, partly jutting over the river, twenty-five feet square, was erected on the edge of a small prairie sloping down to the water's edge. The block-house was gar

risoned with a sergeant and eight men, in whose charge were left the boats which up to this time had been used for the transportation of supplies. On the 3d the army left the block-house, crossed the Vermilion and entered the prairies, the route passing just east of State

*

with the fort and surroundings before its demolition, and was pronounced a faithful and good representation.

Samuel R. Brown, in his Western Gazetteer, p. 69, gives an account he received from the French traders at Fort Harrison, in 1816, of the traditional great battles fought between the Indians, many years ago, on the ground at Fort Harrison. On account of the rarity of the volume in which it is found, the veracity of its author, the time when and persons from whom he received it, and the interest attaching to the tradition, we insert it here:

"The French have a tradition that an exterminating battle was fought in the beginning of the last century, on the ground where Fort Harrison now stands, between the Indians living on the Mississippi and those of the Wabash. The bone of contention was the lands lying between those rivers, which both parties claimed. There were about a thousand warriors on each side. The condition of the fight was that the victors should possess the lands in dispute. The grandeur of the prize was peculiarly calculated to inflame the ardor of savage minds. The contest commenced about sunrise. Both parties fought desperately. The Wabash warriors came off conquerors, having seven men left alive at sunset, and their adversaries but five. The mounds are still to be seen where it is said the slain were BURIED."

*Memoirs of General Harrison: Dillon's Indiana, p. 463.