The American Invasion of Canada by Pierre Berton

Author:Pierre Berton
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781620874981
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing

5

CHICAGO

Horror on Lake Michigan

The wretchedness of that night who can tell! the despondency that filled the hearts of all, not so much in regard to the present as from apprehension for the future, who...can comprehend?... Alas, where were their comrades-friends, nay, brothers of yesterday? Where was the brave, the noble-hearted Wells...the manly Sergeant Nixon...the faithful Corporal Green-and nearly two-thirds of the privates of the detachment?

–From Wau-nan-gee, by John Richardson.

FORT DEARBORN, ILLINOIS TERRITORY, august 15, 1812. Billy Wells has blackened his face in the fashion of a Miami warrior. It is a sign that he expects to be killed before sundown.

He has come to escort the garrison and the people of Chicago from the protection of the fort to the dubious security of Fort Wayne on the Maumee. It is not his doing; the move has been explicitly ordered by General Hull, who is himself only a day away from defeat and disgrace. Billy Wells has greater reason than Hull for pessimism; his blackened face betrays it.

Billy Wells is that curious frontier creature, a white man who thinks like an Indian-citizen of a shadow world, half civilized, half savage, claimed by two races, not wholly accepted by either. His story is not unusual Captured by the Miami as a child, raised as a young warrior, he grew to manhood as an Indian, took the name of Black Snake, married the sister of the great war chief Little Turtle, became a leader of his adoptive people. As the years drifted by, the memories of his childhood-he is a descendant of a prominent Kentucky family-began to blur. Did he dream them? Was he really white? In the successful attacks on the Maumee against Harmar in 1790 and St. Clair in 1791 he fought with tomahawk and war club by the side of his brother-in-law. In that last battle-the greatest defeat inflicted on any American force by Indians in pre-Custer days-he butchered several white soldiers. But when the grisly work was done, old memories returned, and Billy Wells was haunted by a nagging guilt. Was it possible that he had actually killed some of his own kinsmen? Guilt became obsession. The call of blood defeated the bonds of friendship. Wells could no longer remain an Indian: he must leave his wife, his children, his old crony Little Turtle and return to his own people. There was a legendary leave-taking: “We have long been friends [to Little Turtle]; we are friends yet, until the sun stands so high [pointing to the sky] in the heavens; from that time we are enemies and may kill one another.”

Billy Wells joined General Anthony Wayne, advancing down the Maumee, became chief of Wayne’s scouts, fought on the white side in the Battle of Fallen Timbers. The battle over, his wife and family rejoined him. Billy Wells was appointed government agent and interpreter at Fort Wayne; Little Turtle, rendered docile by defeat, continued as his friend and confidant.

Yet no one can be quite sure of Billy Wells, who, like Matthew Elliott, prospers from his government and Indian connections.

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