Tippecanoe 1811 by John F. Winkler

Author:John F. Winkler
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781472807830
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2015-02-19T16:00:00+00:00

Tecumseh’s “Shooting Star,” the Great Comet of 1811, created wide excitement across North America and Europe. In Russia, wrote Leo Tolstoy in War and Peace, it “was said to portend all kinds of woes and the end of the world.” This 19th-century engraving reproduced a drawing of the comet by the British astronomer and antiquary William Henry Smyth. (Author’s collection)

On the evening of September 19, Boyd’s 4th Regiment regulars ended their 1,022-mile-long river journey to Vincennes. “It was dark before we landed,” wrote Adam Walker of Lt. Abraham Hawkins’ US Rifle Regiment company, “and by the noise and confusion about us, we concluded the town to be overrun with troops. A rabble soon gathered about the boats and assisted in hauling them ashore. Their whooping and yells, and their appearance caused us to doubt whether we had not actually landed among the savages themselves.”

As the American regulars were landing, Tecumseh’s party arrived at Tuckabatchee. Despite his humiliating reception by the Chickasaws, the Shawnee remained confident. Now he would be with his mother’s people, the Creeks. His mother, he had told Ruddell, had named him Tecumseh, the “Shooting Star,” for a light that had raced across the heavens on the night of his birth. And now, as a sign of the Great Spirit’s approval of his mission, a great Shooting Star had appeared in the night sky.

On September 20, Tecumseh and the northern Indians waited until sunset to make a dramatic appearance at Hawkins’ council. With faces painted black, eagle feathers rising from their headbands, and stiff buffalo tails hanging from their belts and extending from bands around their arms, they arrived just as the day’s talk was ending. After parading around the council site several times, they shook hands with the assembled chiefs and gave them gifts of tobacco.

For the next eight days, Tecumseh sat at the council in silence, listening to Hawkins and the southern chiefs. Finally the American Indian agent asked him whether he had come to recruit allies for a war against the Americans. “The Indians,” Tecumseh responded, “should unite in peace and friendship among themselves and cultivate the same with their white neighbors.”

But after each day’s sunset, Tecumseh’s Shooting Star reappeared. And below the great, long-tailed light, Creek warriors watched with delight as Tecumseh and his party performed the war dance of the Shawnee. To the beat of a drum, the singing northern Indians marched in unison solemnly around a post. Then each in turn leapt forward to attack it with his tomahawk, shouting of his deeds in prior battles. Soon Creek warriors were joining in what they called “the dance of the lakes.”

As the Indians talked and danced in Tuckabatchee, Harrison reviewed his march, encampment, and battle plans with his officers. The army, he explained, would advance about 70 miles to a site on the east bank of the Wabash known as Bataille des Illinois. There, where the Iroquois had fought a great 17th-century battle against the Illinois Indians, the Americans would build a fort. Then they would advance to Prophetstown.

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