They preached that dogs were to be killed; lodge fires were never to go out; liquor was not to be drunk; wars were not to be waged, unless ordered by the Prophet. Each warrior was obliged to draw the string of beads through his fingers; by this, he "shook hands" with the Prophet, and swore to obey his teachings.

It was rumored that within four years a great "death" would cover the entire land, and that only the Indians who followed the Prophet would escape. These should enjoy the land, freed of the white men.

Tecumseh bowed before his talented brother, and had his own dreams; dreams of a vast war league against the Americans. The Prophet was in control of eight or ten thousand warriors.

The Prophet's band at Greenville increased to four hundred—Shawnees, Delawares, Wyandots, Chippewas, and others; a regular hodge-podge.

Captain William Wells, who was the Indian agent at Fort Wayne, asked them to have four chiefs come in, to listen to a message from their Great Father, the President.

On a sudden Tecumseh took the lead, as head chief.

"Go back to Fort Wayne," he ordered of the runner, a half-breed Shawnee, "and tell Captain Wells that my fire is kindled on the spot appointed by the Great Spirit above; and if he has anything to say to me, he must come here. I shall expect him in six days from this time."

Captain Wells then sent the message. The President asked the Indians to move off from this ground which was not theirs. He would help them to select other ground.

Tecumseh replied hotly, in a speech of defiance.

"These lands are ours; no one has a right to remove us, because we were the first owners. The Great Spirit above knows no boundaries, nor will his red people know any. If my father, the President of the Seventeen Fires, has anything more to say to me, he must send a big man as messenger. I will not talk with Captain Wells."

"Why does not the President of the Seventeen Fires send us the greatest man in his nation?" demanded the Prophet. "I can talk to him; I can bring darkness between him and me; I can put the sun under my feet; and what white man can do this?"

This month of May, 1807, fifteen hundred Indians had visited the Prophet. They came even from the Missouri River, and from the rivers of Florida. A general up-rising of the tribes was feared.

Governor Harrison worked, sending many addresses. He could not stem the tide set in motion by the Prophet and kept in motion by Tecumseh.

"My children," appealed Governor Harrison, "this business must be stopped. You have called in a number of men from the most distant people to listen to a fool, who speaks not the words of the Great Spirit, but those of the devil and of the British agents. My children, your conduct has much alarmed the white settlers near you. They desire that you will send away those people, and if they wish to have the impostor with them they can carry him. Let him go to the Lakes; he can hear the British more distinctly."

"I am sorry that you listen to the advice of bad birds," answered the Prophet, of the one eye and the cunning heart. "I never had a word with the British, and I never sent for any Indians. They came here themselves, to hear the words of the Great Spirit."

Tecumseh also made speeches, at the councils. Once he spoke for three hours, accusing the whites of having broken many treaties. Some of his sentences the interpreter refused to translate, they were so frank and cutting. The teachings of the Prophet his brother were apparently all for peace, and against evil practices such as drinking and warring; and Governor Harrison could only wait, watchfully. But he did not like the signs in the horizon. There were too many Indians traveling back and forth.

The war of 1812 with Great Britain was drawing nearer. The Sacs and Foxes of the Mississippi country had accepted presents from the British. Governor Harrison was warned that the Prophet and Tecumseh had been asked to join.

In the summer of 1808 the Prophet moved his town to the north bank of the Tippecanoe River, on the curve where it enters the upper Wabash River in northern Indiana. He still had a following of Shawnees, Chippewas, Potawatomis, Winnebagos, and so forth.

This was Miami land, shared by the Delawares. They objected. But the Prophet's Town remained.

In 1809 the United States bought from the Miamis a large piece of territory which included this land. The Prophet's people refused to move off. The Great Spirit had told them that the Indians were to hold all property in common; therefore no tribe might sell land without the consent of all the tribes.

Tecumseh was absent, on a visit to other tribes. He asked the Wyandots and the Senecas to come to Prophet's Town on the Tippecanoe. But the Wyandots and the Senecas had no wish to offend the United States again. They remembered that the British had not opened the gates of the fort to them, when the "Big Wind" was blowing them backward—"You are painted too much, my children," they accused the British of saying—and they were wary of Tecumseh.

He asked the Shawnees of the upper country, also, to join him and the Prophet. But they declined to meddle. Old Black Hoof, a chief whose memory extended back ninety years, advised against it.

The Prophet was more clever than Tecumseh. The Wyandots were the keepers of the great belt which had bound the Ohio nations together in Little Turtle's day. The Prophet asked them if they still had it, and if they, the "elder brothers," would sit still while a few Indians sold the land of all the Indians.

They replied they were glad to know that the belt had not been forgotten. Let the Indians act as one nation. They passed the belt to the Miamis—and the Miamis were forced to obey.

Governor Harrison was told that there were eight hundred warriors at the Prophet's Town, and that Vincennes was to be attacked.

News of Tecumseh came from here, there, everywhere. He seemed to be constantly traveling, carrying the words of the Prophet his brother. Something was going on, underneath the peace blanket. Governor Harrison and others of the whites read the puzzle in this wise:

The peace blanket spread by the Prophet to cover all red nations and make them one, concealed a hatchet, as the blanket of Pontiac concealed a gun. The Indians were to be increased and strengthened by right living and good habits, until fitted to stand on their feet without aid. Then, all together, as one nation, they could strike for their country, from the Ohio River west to the Missouri.

Tecumseh was to be the Pontiac who would lead them. It was a scheme so wonderful, so patient and so shrewd, that the Western whites might well gasp before it.

The governor and Tecumseh had never met. The Prophet had been in Vincennes several times, to explain that he preached only peace—which was true. But the town at the Tippecanoe was getting to be a nuisance. Horse-thieves and murderers used it as a shelter, and the authority of the United States was defied. A messenger sent there by the governor was threatened by the Prophet with death.

The message was sent to warn the brothers that the Seventeen Fires were surely able to defeat all the Indians united, and that if there were complaints, these should be taken directly to the President. Tecumseh replied:

"The Great Spirit gave this great 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 us. They have driven us from the sea to the lakes; we can go no farther. They say one land belongs to the Miamis, another to the Delawares, and so on; but the Great Spirit intended it as the property of us all. Our father tells us we have no right upon the Wabash. The Great Spirit ordered us to come here, and here we will stay."

However, Tecumseh said that he remembered the governor as a very young man riding with General Wayne, and he would go to Vincennes and talk with him. He probably would bring thirty of his men.

"The governor may expect to see many more than that," added the Prophet.

Tecumseh brought not thirty, but four hundred warriors, painted and armed. Attended by a small guard, the governor stood to receive him on the broad columned porch of the official mansion. Tecumseh, with forty braves, approached, and halted. He did not like the porch; he asked that the council be held in a grove near by.

"Your father says that he cannot supply seats enough there," answered the interpreter.

"My father?" retorted Tecumseh, his head high. "The sun is my father, the earth is my mother, and on her bosom will I repose!"

In the grove he made a ringing, fiery speech. He accused the United States of trying to divide the Indians, so as to keep them weak. He blamed the "village" or "peace" chiefs for yielding, and said that now the war chiefs were to rule the tribes. He warned the governor that if the lands along the Wabash were not given back to the Indians, the chiefs who had signed the sale would be killed, and then the governor would be guilty of the killing. He threatened trouble for the whites if they did not cease purchasing Indian land.

"It is all nonsense to say that the Indians are all one nation," reproved Governor Harrison, who was as fearless as Tecumseh. "If the Great Spirit had intended that to be so, he would not have put six different tongues into their heads. The Miamis owned these lands in the beginning, while the Shawnees were in Georgia. You Shawnees have no right to come from a distant country, and tell the Miamis what shall be done with their property."

Tecumseh sprang up and angrily interrupted.

"That is a lie! You and the Seventeen Fires are cheating the Indians out of their lands."

The warriors leaped up, as if to attack. The few whites prepared for defense.

"You are a man of bad heart," thundered the governor, to Tecumseh. "I will talk with you no more. You may go in safety, protected by the council-fire, but I want you to leave this place at once."

Other councils were held. Tecumseh stood as firm as a rock, for what he considered to be the rights of the Indians. He was very frank. He said that if it were not for the dispute about the land, he would continue to be the friend of the Seventeen Fires. He would rather fight with them than against them. He had no love for the British—who clapped their hands and sicked the Indians on as if they were dogs. As for making the Indians one nation, had not the Seventeen Fires set an example when they united? It was true, he said, that now all the Northern tribes were one. Soon he was to set out, and ask the Southern tribes to sit upon the same blanket with the Northern tribes.

The governor knew. From Governor William Clark of Missouri he had received a letter telling him that friendship belts and war belts were passing among the nations west of the Missouri River, calling them to an attack on Vincennes. The Sacs of the upper Mississippi had sent to Canada for ammunition.

From Chicago had come word that the Potawatomis and other tribes near Fort Dearborn were preparing.

Governor Harrison had suggested that the two brothers travel to Washington and talk with the President about lands. He himself had no power to promise that treaties should not be made with separate nations. He also said, to Tecumseh:

"If there is war between us, I ask you to stop your Indians from abusing captives, and from attacking women and children."

Tecumseh promised, but he went out upon his trip. Before he left, he asked that nothing should be done regarding the land, before he came back; a large number of Indians were on the way to settle there, and they would need it as a hunting-ground! If they killed the cattle and hogs of the white people, he would fix up everything with the President, on his return.

So in August of 1811 he left, taking twenty warriors. With the fire-brand of tongue and the burning mystery of his presence he kindled the nations of the South. He spoke in the name of the Great Prophet. He urged them all to join as one people and dam back the white wave that was seeking to swallow them.

He told them that the Prophet had stationed a "lamp" in the sky, to watch them for him—and sure enough, a comet flamed in the horizon. To a Creek chief in Alabama he said:

"You do not mean to fight. I know the reason. You do not believe that the Great Spirit has sent me. You shall know. I go from here to Detroit; when I arrive there I will stamp on the ground with my foot and shake down all your houses."

In December occurred an earthquake which destroyed New Madrid town on the Mississippi in southern Missouri, and was felt widely. The ground under the Creek nation trembled. The Creeks covered their heads and cried aloud:

"Tecumseh has got to Detroit!"

That was so. In December Tecumseh really had got to Detroit. But he had stamped his foot before time, and he had not made the earth to tremble. He had stamped in wrath not at the Creeks, but at his own people.



When he had left for the North he was ready to strike, at any moment, with five thousand warriors of North, South and West. When he arrived home, he found that his plans were shattered like a bubble; he had no Prophet, and the former Prophet had no town!



CHAPTER XIII

BRIGADIER GENERAL TECUMSEH (1812-1813)

THE RISE AND FALL OF A STAR

In Vincennes, the white chief, Governor William Henry Harrison, had grown tired of the insults and defiance from the Prophet. He took nine hundred regulars and rangers, to visit the Prophet's Town, himself, and see what was what.

He camped within a mile of the sacred place, on a timber island of the marshy prairie seven miles north-east of the present city of Lafayette, Indiana. During the darkness and early daylight of November 7, this 1811, he was attacked by the Prophet's warriors. He roundly whipped them in the hot battle of Tippecanoe.

The Prophet had brewed a kettle of magic, by which (he proclaimed to his warriors) he had made one half of the American army dead, and the other half crazy. During the attack he sat upon a high piece of ground, and howled a song that should keep his warriors invisible and turn the bullets of the white men.

But something was wrong with the kettle, and something was wrong with the song; for the Americans fought hard when surprised, and none seemed to be dead; and of the one thousand Shawnees, Winnebagos, Chippewas, Kickapoos, forty were killed by the bullets and many more wounded.

Of the Americans, thirty-seven were killed and one hundred and fifty-two wounded. They pressed on to the town, and burned it in spite of the Great Spirit.

"You are a liar!" accused a Winnebago, of the Prophet. "You said that the white people were dead or crazy, when they were all in their senses and fought like demons!"

When Tecumseh arrived with his good news, the Indians were scattered. In his camp the "Prophet" was being hooted at by even the children. Tecumseh was so enraged with his brother for not having somehow kept the peace until the time for war was ripe, that he seized him by the hair of the head and shook him until his teeth rattled.

To Governor Harrison, Tecumseh announced that he was well-minded for the visit with the President.

"If you go, you must go alone, without any company of warriors," replied the governor.

"I am a great chief, and I will not go in such a shameful fashion," said Tecumseh. So he went to Canada instead.

Now the game was up. The Prophet had proved to be no prophet from the Great Spirit. The Indians felt cheated, and were not afraid to speak boldly.

Councils were held by twelve tribes, together. Band opposed band. The Delawares, the Miamis, the Kickapoos, most of the Wyandots, were for peace with the Americans, and for letting the British alone. So were the Potawatomis; they accused the Prophet of leading them falsely.

Captain Elliott, the traitor and British agent, threatened to have the Wyandots arrested for their talk.

The band of Canadian Wyandots touched the British war-hatchet; so did Tecumseh and the Prophet. The war between the white people had commenced.

Between-the-logs brought a message to the Canadian Wyandots, from Head Chief Crane, of all the Wyandots. They were to come back to their hunting-grounds.

Round-head of the hostile Wyandots spoke.

"Tell the American commander it is our wish that he should send more men against us. We want to fight in good earnest."

The British agent Captain Elliott spoke. "Tell my wife, your American father, that I want her to cook the provisions for me and my red children more faithfully than she has done. If she wishes to fight with me and my children, she must not burrow in the earth like a ground-hog. She must come out and fight fairly."

Between-the-logs answered valiantly, in behalf of Chief Crane the wise man:

"Brothers! I entreat you to listen to the good talk I have brought. If you doubt what I have said about the force of the Americans, you can send some of your people to examine it. The truth is, your British father tells you lies and deceives you.

"And now, father, I will bear your message to my American father. You compare the Americans to ground-hogs. I must confess that a ground-hog is a hard animal to fight. He has such sharp teeth, such a stubborn temper, and such unconquerable spirit, that he is truly a dangerous animal, especially when in his own hole. But, father, you will have your wish. Before many days you will see the ground-hog floating on yonder lake, paddling his canoe toward your hole; and then you may attack him to suit yourself!"

This council was held at Brownstown, beside Lake Erie, south of Detroit. Nobody cared anything about the Prophet—he was no warrior. But an invitation was sent to Tecumseh, in Canada, across the Detroit River.

"No," he answered. "I have taken sides with the king, my father, and my bones shall bleach upon this shore before I will recross that stream to join in any good words council."

The Wyandots privately told Between-the-logs that the most of them were being held prisoners by the British; but that they accepted the belt from Head Chief Crane, and would return to the Americans as soon as possible. And they did.

Tecumseh, however, had made up his mind. He was an honest enemy. There never was anything half-way about Tecumseh. His promised army of five thousand warriors had shrunk to less than one hundred; only thirty of these were with him, but he set about getting more.

The Prophet his brother was down at the Fort Wayne agency in Indiana. "Open Door" had partly explained away his failure in the battle of Tippecanoe. His wife, he said, had touched his medicine and spoiled its power, before the battle, and he had not known.

Tecumseh sent a rider with word for the Prophet to remove all the Indian women and children to the Mississippi, and to bid the warriors strike Vincennes. He himself would join, if he lived, in the country of the Winnebagos—which was Wisconsin.

Delawares, Senecas, Chief Crane's Wyandots and the majority of the Shawnees themselves refused to rise against the Americans. The other Indians waited for stronger signs. But they did not need to wait long.

Tecumseh's star became fixed in the sky—he won the first battle of the war and won it for the British. Commanding seventy Indians and forty soldiers he whipped an American force at Brownstown.

In a second battle there, although the Americans were not captured it was Tecumseh again who held his position longest. As reward, he was promoted to brigadier general in the army of the king.

The Americans surrendered Michilimackinac. The American big chief, General Hull, retreated out of Canada.

Runners from Brigadier General Tecumseh spread the news. The Indians waited no longer. The Potawatomis rose, the Miamis rose, the Ottawas and Winnebagos and Kickapoos rose. Sioux of Minnesota and Sacs of Illinois hastened forward. General Tecumseh ruled.

To the Miamis and Winnebagos was assigned the task of taking Fort Harrison near present Terre Haute of Indiana; to the Potawatomis and Ottawas, aided by Tecumseh and some English, was assigned the task of taking Fort Wayne.

But the Shooting Star's old foe, William Henry Harrison, was out upon the war trail again. He lifted the siege of Fort Wayne. The attack upon Fort Harrison also failed. From now on he and Tecumseh fought their fight, to a finish.

This fall and winter of 1812 Tecumseh traveled once more. From Canada he journeyed south across a thousand miles of forest, prairie and waters clear to the Indians of Georgia, Tennessee and Alabama. He did not now come with word from any Prophet, to make the red people one nation and a better nation.

He came as a British officer, to bid the Southern Indians join the king's standard, and fight the Americans into the sea while he and the English did the same work in the north.

He distributed bundles of red sticks for them to count—one stick a day. With the last stick, they were to strike.

The Creeks and Cherokees were persuaded, and strike they did. A bloody trail they made, which many rains did not wash clean.

Back to the war in the spring of 1813, Tecumseh brought into camp six hundred fresh warriors from the Wabash. Now two thousand fighting men obeyed his orders alone. His command frequently out-numbered the British command. He was not a general in name only; he knew military strategy—"he was an excellent judge of position," admitted the British officers. He was consulted in the war councils.

The British thought much of him; the Americans were obliged to think much about him. But the star of Harrison also was marching on. The two stars came together, in the trail.

Tecumseh with his Indians, and the British General Proctor with his soldiers besieged the troublesome American general at Fort Meigs, near by the battle field of Fallen Timbers. So again the two rival chiefs were face to face.

An American detachment was surprised and captured. The Indians commenced to kill and torture. General Proctor looked on. Tecumseh heard and rushed to the scene. He had given his word to General Harrison, two years ago, and he was furious at the insult to his honor.

Defending the prisoners with knife and tomahawk, he sprang for the British general.

"Who dares permit such acts!"

"Sir, your Indians cannot be controlled."

"Begone!" roared Tecumseh. "You are unfit to command; go and put on petticoats."

After that he openly despised General Proctor.

He sent a note in to his American foeman:

"General Harrison: I have with me eight hundred braves. You have an equal number in your hiding place. Come out with them and give me battle. You talked like a brave when we met at Vincennes, and I respected you; but now you hide behind logs and in the earth, like a ground-hog. Give me answer. Tecumseh."

But General Harrison knew his business, and carried on to the successful end.

That end was not far distant. General Tecumseh and General Proctor together failed to take Fort Meigs. General Proctor ordered a retreat. General Harrison followed on the trail. General Tecumseh hated to retreat. At every step he was abandoning Indian country.

The retreat northward to Canada continued. Tecumseh was fighting the battle of his people, not of the English; he wished to go no farther.

He proposed to his warriors that they leave for another region, and let the Americans and British fight their own war.

"They promised us plenty of soldiers, to help us. Instead, we are treated like the dogs of snipe-hunters; we are always sent ahead to rouse the game."

"You got us into this war by your promises," retorted the Sioux and the Chippewas. "You have no right to break us."

Any appeal to Tecumseh's honor was certain to win; he stuck. Then American ships under Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry fought British ships under Commodore Barclay, on Lake Erie, and gained a great victory.

From an island near shore the Tecumseh warriors peered eagerly, to the sound of the heavy guns.

"A few days since you were boasting that you commanded the waters," had said Tecumseh, to General Proctor. "Why do you not go out and meet the Americans? They are daring you to meet them; you must send out your fleet and fight them."

Now, after the battle, the British general asserted:

"My fleet has whipped the Americans, but the vessels are injured and have gone to Put-in Bay, to refit. They will be here in a few days."

Tecumseh was no fool. He had before caught the general in a lie. Here at Fort Maiden opposite Detroit he challenged him in a hot speech.

Father! Listen to your children. You have them now all before you.

The war before this, our British father gave the hatchet to his red children, when our old chiefs were alive. They are now dead. In that war our father was thrown flat on his back by the Americans, and our father took them by the hand without our knowledge. We are afraid that our father will do so again.

Summer before last, when I came forward with my red brothers, and was ready to take up the hatchet in favor of our British father, we were told not to be in a hurry—that he had not yet decided to fight the Americans.

Listen! When war was declared, our father stood up and gave us the tomahawk, and told us that he was then ready to strike the Americans—that he wanted our aid—and that he would surely get us our lands back, which the Americans had taken from us.

Listen! When we were last at the Rapids [Fort Meigs] it is true that we gave you little assistance. It is hard to fight people who live like ground-hogs.

Father, listen! Our ships have gone out; we know they have fought; we have heard the great guns; but we know nothing of what happened. Our ships have gone one way, and we are much astonished to see our father tying up everything and preparing to run away the other, without letting his red children know what it is about.

You always told us to remain here, and take care of our lands; it made our hearts glad to hear that was your wish. You always told us you would never draw your foot off British ground. But now, father, we see you are drawing back, and we are sorry to see our father doing so without seeing the enemy. We must compare our father's action to a fat dog, that carries its tail upon its back, but when frightened, drops it between its legs and runs off.

Father, listen! The Americans have not yet defeated us by land; neither are we sure that they have done so by water.

We wish to remain here, and fight the enemy, should they appear. If they defeat us, we will then retreat with our father.

At the battle of the Rapids [Fallen Timbers] last war, the Americans certainly defeated us; and when we returned to our father's fort at that place, the gates were shut against us. Now instead of that, we see our British father making ready to march out of his garrison.

Father! You have got the arms and ammunition which our great father sent for his red children. If you have an idea of going away, give them to us, and you may go and welcome. Our lives are in the hands of the Great Spirit. We are resolved to defend our lands, and if it be his will, we wish to leave our bones upon them.

General Proctor writhed under this speech, but he had to swallow it. He might have done better by taking council with Tecumseh and attacking the Americans at the instant of their landing on the Canadian shore. The Indians would have fought very hard, even yet, for him. But he ordered the retreat again, he burned Fort Maiden, and marched inland up the Thames River of southwestern Ontario.

Tecumseh went unwillingly. His Indians were down-hearted. General Harrison crossed from Detroit, and pursued. Tecumseh felt the sting.

"We are now going to follow the British," he said to Jim Blue-jacket, son of old Chief Blue-jacket, "and I believe we shall never return."

He rode with General Proctor in a buggy, and suggested several places that looked good for making a stand.

Once General Proctor agreed. It was indeed an excellent spot, where a large creek joined the Thames.

"We will here defeat General Harrison or leave our bones," he declared.

That was a talk right to Tecumseh's liking.

"When I look upon these two streams they remind me of the Wabash and the Tippecanoe of my own country," he said hopefully.

But after Tecumseh had gladly arranged his warriors, General Proctor decided to leave them as a rear guard and to march on with his soldiers. The Americans brought up ten cannon, and Tecumseh was wounded in the left arm, and the Indians had to retreat, also.

On the fourth of October, which was a few days afterward, at another good place Tecumseh said that he would go no farther into Canada. This was British soil, not Indian soil. Unless the Americans were whipped and the trail home was opened, how were his Indians ever to help the other Indians fight?

On the morning of the next day, October 5, 1813, he and General Proctor made their battle plans.

"Shall we fight the Americans, father?" asked Sagaunash, or Billy Caldwell. He was half English and half Potawatomi, and acted as Tecumseh's secretary, to translate Shawnee into French or English.

Tecumseh was gloomy. He had no faith in the British general.

"Yes, my son. Before the sun sets we shall be in the enemy's smoke. Go. You are wanted by Proctor. I will never see you again."

He posted his men. Then he addressed his chiefs.

"Brother warriors! We are about to enter a fight from which I shall not come out. My body will remain." He handed his sword and belt to a friend.

"When my son becomes a great warrior, and able to use a sword, give him this."

Then Tecumseh stripped off his red uniform coat, bearing the gold epaulets of a British brigadier general. He was to fight as an ordinary Indian, in buckskin hunting-shirt.

There were nine hundred British soldiers and one thousand Indians. They were well stationed. The left flank, British, was protected by the deep Thames River; the right flank, Indian, was protected by a soft swamp. The Americans of General Harrison came on. They numbered three thousand: one hundred and twenty United States regulars, the rest Kentucky volunteer infantry with one regiment of mounted riflemen under bold Colonel Richard M. Johnson of Kentucky.

Tecumseh would have given a great deal to whip this doughty General Harrison who had come out of his "hole" at last. There were old scores between them. But, as Between-the-logs had warned, "a ground-hog is a very difficult animal."

General William Henry Harrison of Virginia knew how to fight when in his "hole," or fort—and he knew how to fight when out of his "hole," and he knew Indian fighting as well as white fighting.

Here were three brigadier generals—Harrison, Tecumseh, and Proctor.

But the battle was soon over. General Proctor had made the mistake of posting his soldiers in open order. General Harrison's eye was quick to note the weakness. He let the Indians alone, for a few minutes, and sent the right of the mounted backwoodsmen in a charge against the British.

The horses broke clear through, wheeled—and the deed had been done. The British soldiers threw aside their guns, to surrender; General Proctor dashed furiously away in his buggy.

Headed by Colonel Johnson himself, the left companies of the mounted riflemen now charged upon Tecumseh. The infantry followed.

The Indians had small chance, but they fought well. Tecumseh waited until they could see the flints in the American rifles. Then he fired, raised the Shawnee war-whoop, they all fired, and rushed with their tomahawks to the encounter.

Yes, they fought well. Their close volley had killed many Americans. The horse leader, who was Colonel Johnson, had been wounded; the horse soldiers were fighting on foot, because the swamp had entangled the horses' legs. The American infantry barely stood fast, under the first shock.

Tecumseh's voice had been heard constantly, shouting for victory—as before him old Annawan the Wampanoag and Cornstalk the other Shawnee had shouted. Suddenly the voice had ceased.

A cry arose instead: "Tecumseh is dead! Tecumseh is dead!" And at that, as a Potawatomi afterward explained, "We all ran."

Some people said that Tecumseh had charged with the tomahawk upon the wounded Colonel Johnson, and that Colonel Johnson had shot him with a pistol, just in time. Some people denied this. Colonel Johnson himself said that he did not know—he did not pause to ask the Indian's name, and did not stay to examine him! There was quite an argument over the honor—but Tecumseh did not care. He was lying dead, in his simple buckskin, and for a time was not even recognized.

A gaudily dressed chief was mistaken for him, until friendly Indians with General Harrison stated that the great Tecumseh had a ridge on his thigh, from a broken bone.

By this he was found, after nightfall. He was brought to the camp-fires, where a circle of the Kentuckians gathered about him, to admire his fine figure and handsome face. He had been a worthy foeman.

So Tecumseh quit, at last. He never could have lived to see the white men pushed across the Ohio, and all the red men occupying the West as one nation. That was not written of his star, or any other star.

But he left a good reputation. He had been of high mind and clean heart, and he had fought in the open. The British adjutant-general at Montreal issued public orders lamenting his death and praising his bravery. The British throne sent his young son, Puck-e-sha-shin-wa, a sword, and settled a pension upon the family, in memory of the father.

The Prophet received a pension, too. He stayed in Canada until 1826, when he moved down among the Shawnees of Ohio again. He long out-lived his greater brother, and died in the Shawnee village in present Kansas, in 1837. He posed as a prophet to the very last.

As for General William Henry Harrison, who had broken them both—borne onward by his nickname "Old Tippecanoe" he became, in 1841, ninth President of the United States; and on his reputation of having "killed Tecumseh," Colonel Johnson already had been a vice-president.



CHAPTER XIV

THE RED STICKS AT HORSESHOE BEND (1813-1814)

AND THE WONDERFUL ESCAPE OF CHIEF MENEWA

As fast as Tecumseh and the Open Door, or their messengers, traveled, they left in their trail other prophets. Soon it was a poor tribe indeed that did not have a medicine-man who spoke from the Great Spirit.

When Tecumseh first visited the Creeks, in Georgia and Alabama, they were not ready for war. They were friendly to the whites, and were growing rich in peace.

The Creeks belonged to the Musk-ho-ge-an family, and numbered twenty thousand people, in fifty towns. They had light complexions, and were good-looking. Their women were short, their men tall, straight, quick and proud.

Their English name, "Creeks," referred to the many streams in their country of Georgia and eastern Alabama. They were also called "Muskogee" and "Muscogee," by reason of their language—the Musk-ho-ge-an.

They were well civilized, and lived almost in white fashion. They kept negro slaves, the same as the white people, to till their fields, and wait upon them; they wore clothing of calico, cotton, and the like, in bright colors. Their houses were firmly built of reed and cane, with thatched roofs; their towns were orderly.

With the Chickasaws and the Choctaws, their neighbors in western Alabama and in Mississippi, they were at war, and had more than held their own.

White was their peace color, and red their war color. And when Tecumseh gave them the red sticks, on which to count the days, he did nothing new. The war parties of the Creeks already were known as Red Sticks.

This was their custom: that a portion of their towns should be White Towns, where peace ceremonies should be performed and no human blood should be shed; the other portion should be Red Towns, where war should be declared by erecting a red-painted pole, around which the warriors should gather. The war clans were Bearers of the Red, or, Red Sticks.

The first visit by Tecumseh, in 1811, carrying his Great Spirit talk of a union of all Indian nations, failed to make the Creeks erect their red poles. Even the earthquake, that Tecumseh was supposed to have brought about by the stamping of his foot, failed to do more than to frighten the Creeks.

But they caught the prophet fad. Their pretended prophets began to stir them up, and throw fear into them. In 1802 the United States had bought from the Creeks a large tract of Georgia; the white people were determined to move into it. Alarmed, the Creeks met in council, after Tecumseh's visit, and voted to sell no more of their lands without the consent of every tribe in the nation. Whoever privately signed to sell land, should die. All land was to be held in common, lest the white race over-run the red. That was a doctrine of the Shawnee Prophet himself, as taught to him by the Great Spirit.

When Tecumseh came down from Canada, in the winter of 1812, on his second visit, the Creeks were ripening for war. Their Red Sticks party was very strong. The many prophets, some of whom were half negro, had declared that the whites could be driven into the sea. The soil of the Creek nation was to be sacred soil.

Traders had been at work, promising aid, and supplying ammunition, in order to enlist the Creeks upon the British side.

So in the Red Towns the Red Sticks struck the painted poles; the peace party sat still in the White Towns, and was despised by the Reds as white in blood as well as in spirit.

The hope of the Creeks was to wipe the white man's settlements from the face of Mississippi, Georgia and Tennessee. Alabama, in the middle, would then be safe, also. But the Choctaws, the Chickasaws, the Cherokees, refused to join. The White Sticks themselves listened to the words of their old men, and of Head Chief William Macintosh; they said that they had no feud with the United States.

Commencing with President Washington, the United States had treated the Creeks honestly; the Creek nation had grown rich on its own lands.

The Red Sticks went to war—and a savage war they waged; the more savage, because by this time, the spring of 1813, all the Creeks were not of pure blood. They had lived so long in peace, in their towns, that their men and women had married not only among the white people but also among the black people; therefore their blood was getting to be a mixture of good and bad from three races.

Head Chief William Macintosh was the peace chief. He was half Scotch and half Creek, and bore his father's family name. He joined the side of the United States.

The war chiefs were Lam-o-chat-tee, or Red Eagle, and Menewa. They, too, were half-breeds.

Chief Red Eagle was called William Weatherford, after his white trader father who had married a Creek girl. He lived in princely style, on a fine plantation, surrounded with slaves and luxury.

Menewa was second to Chief Macintosh. His name meant "Great Warrior"; and by reason of his daring he had earned another name, Ho-thle-po-ya, or Crazy-war-hunter. He was born in 1765, and was now forty-eight years old. He and Chief Macintosh were rivals for favor and position.

Menewa was the head war chief—he frequently crossed into Tennessee, to steal horses from the American settlers there. A murder was committed by Indians, near his home; Georgians burned one of his towns, as punishment. Chief Macintosh was accused of having caused this murder, in order to enrage the white people against Menewa; and when Macintosh stood out for peace, Menewa stood out for war.

He and Chief Weatherford led the Red Sticks upon the war trail; but greater in rank than either of them was Monahoe, the ruling prophet, of Menewa's own band. He was the head medicine-chief. He was the Sitting Bull of the Creeks, like the later Sitting Bull of the Sioux.

Out went the Red Sticks, encouraged by Monahoe and the other prophets. Already the white settlers had become alarmed at the quarrel between the Macintosh bands and the Menewa bands. When two Indian parties fight, then the people near them suffer by raids. All Alabama, Mississippi and Georgia prepared for defense.

There were killings; but the first big blow with the Creek hatchet, to help the British and to drive the Americans into the sea, was struck in August against Fort Mimms, at the mouth of the Alabama River in southwestern Alabama above Mobile.

With all the cunning of the three bloods, the warriors waited until sand enough had drifted, day by day, to keep the gate of the fort from being quickly closed. Then, at noon of August 30, they rushed in. The commander of the fort had been warned, but he was as foolish as some of those officers in the Pontiac war. The garrison, of regulars, militia, and volunteers, fought furiously, in vain. More than three hundred and fifty—soldiers, and the families of settlers, both—were killed; only thirty persons escaped.

Now it was the days of King Philip, over again, and this time in Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi, instead of in Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut. At the news of Fort Mimms, the settlers fled for protection into towns and block-houses. If the Choctaws, the Chickasaws and other Southern Indians joined in league with the Creeks, there easily would be fifteen thousand brave, fierce warriors in the field.

However, the Choctaws and Chickasaws enlisted with the United States; Chief Macintosh's friendly Creeks did not falter; and speedily the fiery Andy Jackson was marching down from Tennessee, at the head of two thousand picked men, to crush out the men of Menewa and Weatherford.

Other columns, from Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi, also were on the trail. The Creeks fought to the death, but they made their stands in vain. The United States was on a war footing; it had the soldiers and the guns and the leaders; its columns of militia destroyed town after town—even the sacred Creek capital where warriors from eight towns together gathered to resist the invader. Yes, and even the town built by direction of the prophets and named Holy Ground and protected by magic.

By the close of 1813, this Jackson Chula Harjo—"Old Mad Jackson," as the Creeks dubbed him—had proved to be as tough as his later name, "Old Hickory." But Menewa and Weatherford were tough, too. They and their more than one thousand warriors still hung out.

In March they were led by their prophets to another and "holier" ground; Tohopeka, or Horseshoe Bend, on the Tallapoosa River in eastern Alabama.

The Creek town of Oakfuskee was located below. And here, in 1735, some eighty years before, there had been a fort of their English friends. It was good ground.

Chief Prophet Monahoe and two other prophets, by song and dance enchanted the ground inside the bend, and made it safe from the foot of any white man. Monahoe said that he had a message from Heaven that assured victory to the Creeks, in this spot. If the Old Mad Jackson came, he and all his soldiers should die, by wrath from a cloud. Hail as large as hominy mortars would flatten them out.

As was well known to the Creeks, Old Mad Jackson was having his troubles. The Great Spirit had sent troubles upon him—had caused his men to rebel, and his provisions to fail, until acorns were saved and eaten. The United States could not much longer fight the British and the Indians together. Let the Creeks not give up.

The Horseshoe was rightly named, for a sharp curve of the Tallapoosa River enclosed about one hundred acres of brushy, timbered bluffs and low-land, very thick to the foot. The entrance to the neck was only three hundred yards wide. On the three other sides the river flowed deep.

Menewa was the field commander of the Red Sticks, at this place. He showed a great head—he was half white and half red, but all Creek in education. Across the neck, at its narrowest point he had a barricade of logs erected, from river bank to river bank.

The barricade, of three to five logs piled eight feet high and filled with earth and rock, was pierced with a double row of port-holes: one row for the kneeling warriors, and one for the standing warriors. The barricade was built in zigzags, along a concave curve, so that attackers would be cut down by shots from two sides as well as from in front. By reason of the zig-zags it could not be raked from either end.

All around the high ground back of the barricade, trees were laid, and brush arranged so that the warriors might, if driven, pass back from covert to covert, until they reached the huts of the women and children and old men, at the river, behind. Here a hundred canoes were drawn up, on the bank, in readiness.

But the Red Sticks of Chief Menewa had no thought of flight. They were one thousand. Their prophets had assured them over and over that the medicine of the Creek nation was strong, at last; that the Great Spirit was fighting for them; that the bullets of the Americans would have no effect, and that the Americans themselves would die before the barricade was reached. The cloud would come and help the Creeks, with hail—hail like hominy mortars!

On March 24 "Old Mad Jackson," just appointed by President Madison to be major-general in the United States army, set out against "Crazy-war-hunter" Menewa at Tohopeka.

The way was difficult, through dense timber, swamps and cane-brakes. Alabama, in these days, had been only thinly settled by white people.

He had three thousand men: a part of the 39th U. S. Infantry, a thousand Tennessee militia, six hundred friendly Creeks and Cherokees. He had two cannon: a six-pounder and a three-pounder.

His chief assistant was General John Coffee of Alabama, who had formerly been his business partner. Major Lemuel P. Montgomery, a Virginian of Tennessee, commanded one battalion of the regulars. He was six feet two inches, aged twenty-eight, and "the finest looking man in the army." Young Sam Houston, who became the hero of Texas independence, was a third lieutenant. Head Chief William Macintosh, Menewa's rival, led the Creeks. Chief Richard Brown led the Cherokees.

In the evening of March 26 bold General Jackson viewed the Red Sticks' fort, and found it very strong. He was amazed by the skill with which it had been laid out. No trained military engineers could have done better.

But his Indian spies saw everything—they saw the line of canoes drawn up in the brush along the river bank behind, at the base of the bend; and General Jackson decided to do what the Red Sticks had not expected him to do.

Early in the next morning, March 27, he detached General Coffee, with seven hundred mounted men, the five hundred Cherokees and the one hundred Creeks, to make a circuit, cross the river below the bend, and come up on the opposite side, behind the Horseshoe. This would cut off escape in canoes.

With the remainder of his soldiers he advanced to the direct attack upon the breast-works. He planted his two cannon. At ten o'clock he opened hot fire with the camion and with muskets.

Chief Menewa's Red Sticks were ready and defiant. They answered with whoops and bullets. Their three prophets, horridly adorned with bird crests and feathers and jingling charms, danced and sang, to bring the cloud. The balls from the cannon only sank into the damp pine logs, and did no damage. The musket balls stopped short or hissed uselessly over.

For two hours Old Mad Jackson attacked, from a distance. He had not dared to charge—the prophets danced faster, they chanted higher—the Red Sticks had been little harmed—they whooped gaily—they had faith in their Holy Ground.

But suddenly there arose behind them a fresh hubbub of shots and shouts, and the screams of their women and children; the smoke of their burning huts welled above the tree-tops. General Coffee, with his mounted men, had completely surrounded the bend, on the opposite side of the river; his Indians had swum across, had seized the canoes, had ferried their comrades over by the hundred, the soldiers were following—and now the Menewa warriors were between two fires.

At the instant, here came Mad Jackson's troops to charge the barricade.

That was a terrible fight, at the breast-works. Chief Menewa encouraged his men. The test of the Holy Ground protected by the Great Spirit and the prophets had arrived.

The battle was to decide whether the Creek nation or the American nation was to rule in Georgia and Alabama, and the Red Sticks made mighty defense. While they raged, they looked for the cloud in the sky.

So close was the fighting, that musket muzzle met musket muzzle, in the port-holes; pistol shot replied to rifle shot; and bullets from the Red Sticks were melted upon the bayonets of the soldiers.

Major Lemuel Montgomery sprang upon the top of the barricade. Back he toppled, shot through the head. "I have lost the flower of my army," mourned General Jackson, tears in his eyes.

Lieutenant Houston received an arrow in his thigh; and later, two bullets in his shoulder.

Lieutenants Moulton and Somerville fell dead.

Again and again the white warriors were swept from the barricade by the Red Sticks' arrows, spears, tomahawks and balls. Others took their places, to ply bayonets and guns—stabbing, shooting. The uproar in the rear grew greater, and many of the Red Sticks behind the breast-works were being shot in the back; the voices of the prophets had weakened; no cloud appeared in the sky, bearing to the whites death from the Great Spirit.

Beset on all sides, Chief Menewa's men began to scurry back for their timber shelters, to fight their way to the river. But no one surrendered.

Having won the barricade, and cut off the escape of the Red Sticks in the opposite direction, the white general halted the further attack. He sent a flag of truce forward, toward the jungle.

"If you will stop fighting, your lives will be spared," he ordered the interpreter to call. "Or else first remove your women and children, so they will not be killed."

But the anxious eyes of warrior and prophet had seen the Spirit cloud rising, at last, into the sky; high pealed their whoops and chants again; a volley of bullets answered the truce flag.

The white soldiers re-opened with musket balls and grape-shot. The Cherokee and Creek scouts, fighting on their side, tried to ferret out the hiding places. Alas, the cloud proved to be only a little shower, and then vanished. The Great Spirit had deserted the prophets.

The American bullets thickened. With torches and blazing arrows the jungle was set afire. Roasted from their coverts, the Red Sticks had to flee for the river. When they fled, the rifles of the Tennessee sharp-shooters caught them in mid-stride, or picked them off, in the river.

Chief Menewa was bleeding from a dozen wounds. He made desperate stand, but the cloud had gone, the fire was roaring, Head Prophet Monahoe was down dead, dead; the Great Spirit had smitten him through the mouth with a grape-ball, as if to rebuke him for lying. There was only one prophet left alive. Him, Menewa angrily killed with his own hand; then joined the flight.

He plunged into the river. His strength was almost spent, and he could not swim out of reach of the sharp-shooters' bullets. The water was four feet deep. So he tore loose a hollow joint of cane; and crouching under the water, with the end of the cane stuck above the surface, he held fast to a root and breathed through the cane.

Here he stayed, under water, for four hours until darkness had cloaked land and river, and the yelling and shooting had ceased. Then, soaked and chilled and stiffened, he cautiously straightened up. He waded through the cane-brake, hobbled all night through the forest, and got away.

But he had no army. Of his one thousand Red Sticks eight hundred were dead. Five hundred and fifty-seven bodies were found upon the Horseshoe battle-field. One hundred and fifty more had perished in the river. Only one warrior was unwounded. Three hundred women and children had been captured—and but three men. The Red Sticks of the Creek nation were wiped out.

Of the whites, twenty-six had been killed, one hundred and seven wounded. Of the Cherokee and Creek scouts, twenty-three had been killed, forty-seven wounded.

Chief William Macintosh also had fought bravely, but he had not been harmed.

The Red Sticks now agreed to a treaty of peace with the United States; and Chief Menewa, scarred from head to foot, was the hero of his band. "One of the bravest chiefs that ever lived," is written after his name, by white historians. In due time he again opposed Chief Macintosh, and won out.

For in 1825 Macintosh was bribed by the white people to urge upon his nation the selling of the last of their lands in Georgia. He signed the papers, so did a few other chiefs; but the majority, thirty-six in number, refused.

Only some three hundred of the Creeks were parties to the signing away of the land of the whole nation. The three thousand other chiefs and warriors said that by Creek law, which Chief Macintosh himself had proposed, the land could not be sold except through the consent of a grand council.

As the nation owned the land, and had built better towns, and was living well and peacefully, the council decided that Chief Macintosh must be put to death—for he was a traitor and he knew the law.

Chief Menewa was asked to consent; he ruled, by reason of his wisdom and his scars. Finally he saw no other way than to order the deed done, for the Creek law was plain.

On the morning of May 1 he took a party of warriors to the Chief Macintosh house, and surrounded it. There were some white Georgians inside. He directed them to leave, as he had come to kill only Chief Macintosh, according to the law.

So the white men, and the women and children, left. When Chief Macintosh bolted in flight, he was shot dead.

The Georgia people, who desired the Creek land, prepared for war, or to arrest Menewa and his party. But the President, learning the ins and outs of the trouble, and seeing that the land had not been sold by the Creek nation, ordered the sale held up. The Creeks stayed where they were, for some years.

Menewa went to war once more, in 1836, and helped the United States fight against the Seminoles of Florida. In return for this, he asked permission to remain and live in his own country of the Creeks. But he was removed, with the last of the nation, beyond the Mississippi to the Indian Territory.

There, an old man, he died.



CHAPTER XV

BLACK-HAWK THE SAC PATRIOT (1831-1838)

THE INDIAN WHO DID NOT UNDERSTAND

The two small nations of the Sacs and the Foxes had lived as one family for a long time. They were of the Algonquian tongue. From the northern Great Lakes country they had moved over to the Mississippi River, and down to Illinois and Iowa. Their number was not more than six thousand. They were a shave-head Indian, of forest and stream, and accustomed to travel afoot or in canoes.

The Foxes built their bark-house villages on the west side of the Mississippi, in Iowa's "great nose." They called themselves Mus-qua-kees, or the Red Earth People. They said that they had been made from red clay. Their totem was a fox; and the French of the Great Lakes had dubbed them Foxes—had asserted that, like the fox, they were quarrelsome, tricky and thievish. As warriors they were much feared. They had lost heavily.

The Sacs built opposite, on the Illinois shore, from Rock River down. They called themselves Saukees, from their word O-sa-ki-wug, or Yellow Earth People. They were larger and better looking than the Foxes, and not so tricky; but their bravery was never doubted.

These two nations together drove out the other Indians in this new country. They whipped even the Sioux, who claimed the northern Iowa hunting grounds; they whipped the Omahas, Osages and Pawnees of the west, the Mascoutins to the south, and the Illinois tribes. They were here to stay.

While the men hunted and fished and went to war, the women raised great crops of beans, squashes, melons, potatoes and Indian corn, and gathered the wild rice of the lakes.

Among the Sac leaders was Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak—Big-black-breast, or Black-hawk. Like Little Turtle of the Miamis he had not been born a chief; but he was of the Thunder clan, the head clan of the Sacs.

His father was Py-e-sa, a warrior of the rank of braves, and keeper of the tribal medicine-bag. His grandfather was Na-na-ma-kee, or Thunder—also a brave.

Black-hawk was born in 1767, in Sauk-e-nuk, the principal Sac village, where Rock Island, Illinois, now stands, north of the mouth of the Rock River.

He won the rank of brave when he was only fifteen years old. He did this by killing and scalping an Osage warrior, on the war-trail against these head-takers. After that he was allowed in the scalp-dances.

He went against the Osages a second time. With seven men he attacked one hundred, and escaped carrying another scalp. When he was eighteen, he and five comrades pierced the Osage country across the Missouri River, and got more scalps. When he was nineteen, he led two hundred other braves against the Osages, and killed five Osages with his own hand.

By his deeds he had become a chief.

In a battle with the Cherokees, below St. Louis, his father Pyesa fell. Young Black-hawk was awarded the medicine-bag—"the soul of the Sac nation."

In the early spring of 1804 a man of the Sac band then living on the Missouri, near St. Louis, to hunt and trade, killed a white man. He was arrested. The Sacs and Poxes held a council and chose four chiefs to go to St. Louis and buy their warrior's freedom with presents. This was the Indian way.

The chiefs selected were Pa-she-pa-ho, or Stabber, who was head chief of the Sacs; Quash-qua-me, or Jumping Fish; Ou-che-qua-ha, or Sun Fish; and Ha-she-quar-hi-qua, or Bear.

They went in the summer of 1804 and were gone a long time. When they returned, they were wearing new medals, and seemed ashamed. They camped outside of Saukenuk for several days, before they reported in council. The man they had been sent to get was not with them.

Finally, in the council they said that they had signed away a great tract of land, mostly on the west side of the Mississippi above St. Louis, in order to buy the warrior's life; they had been drunk when they signed—but that was all right. However, when they had signed, the warrior was let out, and as he started to come to them, the soldiers had shot him dead.

They still were not certain just what land they had signed away. That made the council and people angry. Black-hawk called the chiefs fools. They had no right to sell the land without the consent of the council. After this, the "Missouri band" of the Sacs kept by themselves, in disgrace.

It was too late to do anything more about the treaty. The United States had it. An Indian gets only one chance—and Head Chief Pashepaho himself had put his mark on the paper. The United States has two chances: the first, on the ground; the second, when the paper is sent to Washington.

Later it was found that Pashepaho and the others had signed away all the Sac and Fox lands east of the Mississippi River! That was how the treaty might be made to read. The payment for many millions of acres was $2,234.54 down, in goods, and $1,000 a year, in other goods.

But there was one pleasing clause. As long as the United States held the land, the Sacs and Foxes might live and hunt there. Any white men who tried to come in were to be arrested and put off.

At any rate, although Black-hawk raged and said that the treaty was a false treaty, it stood. The United States officials who had signed it were men of honest names, and considered that they had acted fairly. But Black-hawk never admitted that.

The United States was to erect a trading post, up the Mississippi, for the convenience of the Sacs and Foxes. In 1808 soldiers appeared above the mouth of the Des Moines River, on the west side of the Mississippi, in southeastern Iowa, and began to build.

This turned out to be not a trading post but a fort, named Fort Belle Vue, and afterward, Fort Madison.

The Sacs and Foxes, and their allies, the Potawatomis and Winnebagos, planned to destroy it, and made attacks.

Black-hawk was sore at the Americans. He listened to the words of Tecumseh and the Prophet, accepted the presents of the British agents who came to see him, and with two hundred warriors marched to help the British in the War of 1812. The British traders had been more generous with the Indians than the American traders. Now the British father at the Lakes saluted him as "General Black-hawk."

Only Black-hawk's band went. All the other Sacs and Foxes paid attention to the talk of Keokuk, the Watchful Fox, who was the Sac peace chief.

Like the great Cornstalk, he said to the people that if they were bound to go to war, they should first put all the women and children "into the long sleep, for we enter upon a trail that has no turn."

He was called a coward by the Black-hawk band; but the other Sacs and Foxes stayed where they were.

"General" Black-hawk fought beside General Tecumseh. He asserted that he was in the big battle when Tecumseh was killed. When he found that the Indians had nothing to gain in the war, he came home. He had done wrong to go at all.

Then he learned that a young man whom he had adopted as a son had been murdered, while hunting, by bad whites. They had seized him, tied him, killed him and scalped him. The young man had not been to war, and Black-hawk could see no reason for the killing. So he set forth in revenge, and fought a battle with the United States Rangers.

He remained unfriendly. It all dated back to the year 1804, and the treaty signed by Pashepaho, by which the Sacs had lost their country.

They loved this country. They especially loved Rock Island, in the Mississippi—where today is located a Government arsenal.

It was indeed a beautiful island for them. It bore grapes and nuts, and they called it their garden. In a cave there, a kind spirit dwelt, who blessed the land of the Indians. The spirit had white wings, like a swan. But in 1816 the United States built Fort Armstrong right on top of the cave, and the good spirit flew away, never to come back. The guns of the fort frightened it.

Black-hawk himself had another favorite spot, upon a bluff overlooking the Mississippi River and his village of Saukenuk. Here he liked to sit. It is still known as Black-hawk's Watch Tower.

After Fort Armstrong was built, and the United States was again at peace with the other white nations, settlers commenced to edge into this Sac country of western Illinois. Although by another treaty, which Black-hawk himself had signed, the treaty of 1804 was re-pledged by the Sacs and Foxes, this all was United States land, and no settlers had any rights to it.

The Indians were unable to put the settlers off, and trouble arose. Once Black-hawk was taken, in the forest, by settlers who accused him of shooting their hogs; they tore his gun from him, and beat him with sticks.

This was such a disgrace to him, that he painted a black mark on his face, and wore the mark for almost ten years. Only a scalp could wipe it off.

The white trespassers kept coming in. They respected nothing. They even built fences around the corn fields of the principal Sac village, at the mouth of Rock River; they ploughed up the grave-yard there; they took possession of Black-hawk's own lodge; and when in the spring of 1828 the Black-hawk people came back from their winter hunt, they found that forty of their lodges had been burned.

Up to this time none of the land had been put on the market by the United States. But the Indian agent was trying to persuade the Sacs to move across the Mississippi, into Iowa. That was for their own good. The white settlers were using whiskey and every other means, to get the upper hand.

Chief Keokuk agreed with the agent. He was not of the rank of Black-hawk and the Thunder clan, but he had fought the Sioux, and was of great courage and keen mind and silver tongue. He was an orator; Black-hawk was a warrior.

So the Sacs split. Keokuk—a stout, heavy-faced man—took his Sacs across into the country of the Foxes. Black-hawk's band said they would be shamed if they gave up their village and the graves of their fathers.

Black-hawk visited some white "chiefs" (judges) who were on Rock Island. He made complaint. He said that he wore a black mark on his face; but that if he tried to avenge the black mark, by striking a white man, then the white men would call it war. He said that the Sacs dared not resent having their lodges burned and their corn fields fenced and their women beaten, and the graves of their fathers ploughed up.

"Why do you not tell the President?"

"He is too far off. He cannot hear my voice."

"Why do you not write a letter to him?"

"It would be written by white men, who would say that we told lies. Our Great Father would rather believe a white man, than an Indian."

The two judges said that they were sorry for the Sacs, but could do nothing.

Now in 1829 the settlers were so anxious to keep the Sac lands at the mouth of the Rock River, that the Government put these on the market. This would dispose of Black-hawk's people, for they would have no village. Whether the other lands were sold, did not matter.

It was done while Black-hawk and his men and women were hunting. On their return to plant their crops, they learned that their village and grave-yard had been sold to the whites—the most of whom were already there.

So the white people had won out. They in turn asked protection, of the Government, from "General Black-hawk" and his band. The Government listened, and ten companies of regular troops were sent to Rock Island in a steamboat, to remove the Sacs, "dead or alive," to the west side of the Mississippi.

A council was held with Black-hawk at Fort Armstrong, on Rock Island. Black-hawk rose to speak. He said that the Sacs never had sold their lands; it had been a mistake, and that they were bound to keep their village.

"Who is this Black-hawk?" retorted General Edmund P. Gaines, the commander of the troops. "Is he a chief? By what right does he appear in council?"

Black-hawk wrapped his blanket around him and strode angrily out of the council room. But the next morning he made answer.

"My father, you asked yesterday, who is Black-hawk? Why does he sit among the chiefs? I will tell you who I am. I am a Sac, my father was a Sac—I am a warrior and so was my father. Ask these young men, who have followed me to battle, and they will tell you who Black-hawk is. Provoke our people to war, and you will learn who Black-hawk is."

More troops were called, until there were twenty-five hundred. But seeing so many soldiers marching, Black-hawk took all his people and camped across the Mississippi, under a white flag.

After this Black-hawk was required to sign another treaty, which made him say that he had tried to enlist the Potawatomis, Winnebagos and Kickapoos in a war against the United States. It did not mention the fact that for a dozen and more years the whites had been warring upon him by seizing his lands and ploughing his fields and burning his lodges.

The paper also set him down below the other chiefs, who had left their lands. It set him below Keokuk, and the Fox chiefs—and this hurt him deeply. All the Sacs and Foxes laughed at the idea of Keokuk, and his lowly clan, being placed above Black-hawk and the Thunder clan.

In these years of trouble, the Black-hawk band had killed or abused no white settlers. The so-called "war," on their part, had been a war of words and fences. Now they soon were to take up the hatchet.

They had been expelled over the river in this year 1831 too late for planting crops. The white settlers declined to share with them, from the fields at the village of Saukenuk. One night some of the Sacs crossed "to steal roasting-ears from their own fields," as they said. They were shot at by the settlers, and driven off.

This made more bad feeling.

Black-hawk had sent his head warrior, Nah-po-pe, or Soup, up to Canada, to ask council from the British "father" there. He had been "General Black-hawk" in the British army, and thought that he deserved help.

But the United States and Great Britain had been at peace many years. The British father told Nahpope that if the Sacs never had sold their land, of course they had a right to live upon it. That was all.

On the way back, Nahpope stopped to see Wa-bo-kie-shiek, or White Cloud, who was half Sac and half Winnebago, and a great medicine-man or prophet. He had a village at his Prophet's Town, thirty-five miles up the Rock River, in Illinois.

White Cloud pretended to rival the Open Door of the Shawnees. He fell into a trance, and cut several capers, and spoke a message from the Great Spirit. Let Black-hawk go to war. The Great Spirit would arouse the Winnebagos and the Potawatomis and the British, and the Americans would be driven away! White Cloud said this out of his own heart, which was black toward the Americans.

He invited Black-hawk to visit him and the Winnebagos and the Potawatomis, raise a summer crop and talk with the Great Spirit.

Much rejoiced, Nahpope hastened to tell the news to his chief. When Keokuk heard it, he advised Black-hawk to stay at home. The prophet White Cloud was a mischief maker and a liar.

Black-hawk was inclined to listen, and to wait until he was more certain of the other nations who might join with him. But the young men of his band were hot. Unless he did something, Keokuk would appear to be stronger than he. His people looked to him to get back their village and their grave-yard. The black mark on his face had not been wiped off.

None of Keokuk's Sacs or the Foxes would help him. So in April of 1832 he took his men and their families and started up the river from Fort Madison, Iowa, for Rock River. The warriors were on horses, the women and children in canoes.

By the last treaty that he had signed, Black-hawk had promised not to cross to the east side of the Mississippi without the permission of the United States. Now he said that he was going up the Rock River, to the country of the Winnebagos, his friends, to visit among them and plant corn and beans.

On the way up the Rock River he was ordered back, by word from General Henry Atkinson, commander at Fort Armstrong.

Black-hawk replied that he had a right to travel peacefully, the same as white persons. He was going to the Winnebago country, for the summer.

The general sent another word, that if Black-hawk did not turn around, soldiers would make him turn around.

Black-hawk replied that he was at peace and would stay at peace unless the soldiers attacked him. He told his men not to fire first.

Pretty soon he met some Winnebagos and Potawatomis. They said that their nations never had sent him any message talking war. They wished no trouble with the United States. Wabokieshiek had lied.

So Black-hawk decided to give his guests a dog-feast, and then return home. He was an old man of sixty-five, and he was too weak to fight alone. He was getting tired.

He had made camp one hundred miles up the Rock River, near Kishwaukee, a few miles below present Rockford, Illinois. By this time, early in May, all Illinois was alarmed; the regulars and militia were on his trail. They gathered at Dixon, about forty miles down the river from his camp.

Major Isaac Stillman took two hundred and seventy-five mounted militia, to scout for Black-hawk. They arrived at Sycamore Creek, within eight miles of him, and did not see his camp. But Black-hawk knew that they were there.

He sent out three young men with a white flag, to bring the American chiefs to the camp, for a council; then they would all go down-river together. He sent out five young men to follow the three, and see what happened.

Only three of the five came back. The three with the white flag had been taken prisoners, and the soldiers had chased the others and shot two.

Black-hawk prepared for war. He had but forty men with him; the rest were out hunting. Presently here came all the white soldiers, galloping and yelling, to ride over him. They were foolish—they seemed to think that the Sacs would run.

But Black-hawk was old in war. He laid an ambush—his forty warriors waited, and fired a volley, and charged with the tomahawk and knife, and away scurried the soldiers like frightened deer.

They fled without stopping forty miles to Dixon's Ferry. They reported that they had been attacked by fifteen hundred savages. They left all their camp stuff. Fourteen soldiers had been killed—but no Indians, except those sent by Black-hawk to treat for peace.

"Stillman's Run," the battle was called.

Black-hawk sat down to smoke a pipe to the Great Spirit, and give thanks. Two of the flag-of-truce party came in. They had escaped. The third young man had been shot while in the soldiers' camp.

The Black-hawk band took the blankets and provisions left in the soldiers' camp, and proceeded to war in earnest. Of what use was a white flag? They sent away their families. Some Winnebagos, hearing of the great victory, enlisted.

Now Black-hawk was much feared. General Atkinson fortified his regulars and militia, at Dixon's Ferry. More volunteers were called for, by the governor of Illinois. The Secretary of War at Washington ordered one thousand additional regulars to the scene, and directed General Winfield Scott himself, the commander of the United States army in the East, to lead the campaign.

For a little war against a few Indians there were many famous names on the white man's roll. Among the regulars were General Scott, later the commander in the war with Mexico; Colonel Zachary Taylor, who had defended Fort Harrison from Tecumseh—and probably Black-hawk—in the war of 1812, and who was to be President; Lieutenant Jefferson Davis, who became president of the Confederate States; Lieutenant Albert Sydney Johnston, who became a Confederate general; Lieutenant Robert Anderson, who commanded Fort Sumter in 1861; and among the volunteers was Captain Abraham Lincoln.

Black-hawk had about five hundred braves, mainly Sacs and Foxes, with a few Winnebagos and Potawatomis; but when twenty-five hundred soldiers were chasing him through the settlements, he stood little show.

After several skirmishes, and one or two bad defeats, his people were eating horse-flesh and bark and roots. To save them, he planned to go down the Wisconsin River, in southwestern Wisconsin, and cross the Mississippi.

He put his women and children and the old men on rafts and in canoes. They started—but soldiers fired into them, from the banks, killed some and drove the rest into the forest. Many died there, from hunger.

Black-hawk and his warriors, and other women and children, had cut across by land. When they came to the mouth of the Bad Axe River, at the Mississippi above the Wisconsin, the armed steamboat Warrior met them. Sioux were upon the western bank.

Black-hawk decided to surrender. He again raised the white flag, and called out to the captain of the Warrior that he wished a boat sent to him, so that he might go aboard and talk peace.

Perhaps the Winnebago interpreter on the Warrior did not translate the words right. At any rate, the captain of the Warrior asserted that Black-hawk was only trying to decoy him into ambush. He waited fifteen minutes, to give the Indian women and children that much time to hide; then he opened on the white flag with canister and musketry. The first cannon shot "laid out three." In all, he killed twenty-three.

Black-hawk fought back, but he could not do very much against a steamboat in the river.

So he had been unable to surrender, or to cross the Mississippi. His people were frightened, and sick with hunger and wounds. The next morning, August 2, he was working hard to get them ready to cross, when General Atkinson's main army, of four hundred regulars and nine hundred militia, fell upon him at the mouth of the Bad Axe.

The Indian women plunged into the Mississippi, with their babes on their backs—some of them caught hold of horses' tails, to be towed faster; but the steamboat Warrior was waiting, sharp-shooters on shore espied them, and only a few escaped, into the hands of the Sioux.

In two hours Black-hawk lost two hundred people, men and women both; the white army lost twenty-seven in killed and wounded.

This finished Black-hawk. He got away, but spies were on his trail, and in a few weeks two Winnebago traitors captured him when he gave himself up at Fort Crawford, Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin.

He expected to die. He had turned his medicine-bag over to the Winnebago chief at the village of La Crosse, Wisconsin—and he never got it back.

He made a speech to the Indian agent, General Joseph Street, at Prairie du Chien. He said:

You have taken me prisoner with all my warriors. I am much grieved, for I expected to hold out much longer and give you more trouble before I surrendered. I tried hard to bring you into ambush, but your last general understands Indian fighting.

I fought hard, but your guns were well aimed. The bullets flew like bees in the air, and whizzed by our ears like wind through the trees in winter. My warriors fell around me; I saw my evil day at hand. The sun rose dim on us in the morning, and at night it sank in a dark cloud, and looked like a ball of fire.

That was the last sun that shone on Black-hawk. His heart is dead. He is now a prisoner to the white men; they will do with him as they wish. But he can stand torture and is not afraid of death. He is no coward. Black-hawk is an Indian.

He has done nothing for which an Indian ought to be ashamed. He has fought for his people, against the white men, who have come year after year to cheat him and take away his lands.

You know the cause of our making war. It is known to all white men. They ought to be ashamed of it. The white men despise the Indians and drive them from their homes.

An Indian who is as bad as the white men could not live in our nation; he would be put to death and be eaten up by the wolves. The white men are poor teachers; they shake us by the hand, to make us drunk, and fool us. We told them to let us alone, but they followed us.

Things were growing worse. There were no deer in the forests; the springs were drying up and our women and children had no food. The spirits of our fathers arose and spoke to us, to avenge our wrongs, or die.

Black-hawk is satisfied. He will go to the land of spirits, content. He has done his duty. His father will meet him there and praise him.

He is a true Indian and disdains to cry like a woman. He does not care for himself. He cares for his nation. They will suffer. His country-men will not be scalped; the white men poison the heart. In a few years the Indians will be like the white men, and nobody can trust them. They will need many officers to keep them in order.

Goodby, my nation. Black-hawk tried to save you. He drank the blood of some of the whites. He has been stopped. He can do no more.

After this, Black-hawk had little authority among the Sacs and Foxes. They respected him, but they looked only to Keokuk for orders and advice. Keokuk was made rich by the United States, as reward; he gave out the goods and monies; he ruled, for he had followed the peace trail.

The Black-hawk prisoners were put in charge of Lieutenant Jefferson Davis, at Fort Crawford. Then they were sent down by steamboat to Jefferson Barracks, at St. Louis.

There were Black-hawk, his two sons—Nah-se-us-kuk or Whirling Thunder, and Wa-saw-me-saw or Roaring Thunder; White Cloud, the false prophet; Nahpope, the head brave; Ioway, Pam-a-ho or Swimmer, No-kuk-qua or Bear's-fat, Pa-she-pa-ho or Little Stabber; and others.

They were forced to wear ball and chain.

"Had I taken the White Beaver [who was General Atkinson] prisoner, I would not have treated a brave war chief in this manner," complained Black-hawk.

Keokuk, the successful, was kind and tried to get the prisoners freed. But they were sent on to Washington, to see the President. President Andrew Jackson understood Indians, and Black-hawk was pleased with him.

"I am a man; you are another," he greeted, as he grasped President Jackson's hand.

"We did not expect to conquer the whites," he explained. "They had too many houses, too many men. I took up the hatchet to avenge the injuries to my people. Had I not done so, they would have said, 'Black-hawk is a woman. He is too old to be a chief. He is no Sac.'"

From the last of April until June 4 the Black-hawk party was kept in Fortress Monroe, Virginia. Then the Indians were started home. They were given a long tour, to show them the power of the United States.

They stopped at Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, Albany, Buffalo and Detroit. The white people crowded to see the famous Black-hawk and to hear him speak. He received valuable presents. He was treated like a chief indeed, and his heart was touched.

When he arrived at Fort Armstrong again, on Rock Island, where he was to be freed, his heart had somewhat failed. The village of Saukenuk had long ago been leveled in ashes; he returned, a chief without a people.

Keokuk came, to attend this council, and to receive him back into the nation. Keokuk arrived riding grandly in two canoes lashed side by side; a canopy over him and his wives with him, and medals on his breast.

That was rather different from ball and chain, and old Black-hawk's head sank upon his chest. He felt as bitter as Logan the Mingo had felt.

Before he finally settled down in a lodge built near Iowaville on the lower Des Moines River, Iowa, he made other trips through the East. Keokuk went, also—but it was "General Black-hawk" for whom the people clamored.

He died on October 3, 1838, at his home. His last speech was made at a Fourth of July banquet, at Fort Madison, Iowa, where he was a guest of honor.

"Rock River was a beautiful country. I liked my towns, my corn-fields, and the home of my people. I fought for it. It is now yours; keep it as we did. It will bear you good crops.

"I once was a great warrior. I am now poor. Keokuk put me down, but do not blame him. I am old. I have looked upon the Mississippi since I was a child. I love the Great River. I look upon it now. I shake hands with you, and I hope you are my friends."

These were some of his words.

He was seventy-one when he died; a spare, wrinkled old man with sharp, fiery face and flashing eye. He picked out his grave—at a place about half a mile from his cabin, where, he said, he had led his Sacs in a great battle with the Iowas.

All his people, and the neighboring whites, mourned him. He was buried sitting up, clad in the uniform given him at Washington, by the Secretary of War. He wore three medals, from President Jackson, ex-President John Quincy Adams, and the City of Boston. Between his knees was placed a cane presented to him by Henry Clay, the statesman; at his right side was placed a sword presented to him by President Jackson.

All his best things were buried with him. They included tobacco, food and moccasins, to last him on a three days' journey to spirit land.

The grave was covered by a board roof. A United States flag, and a post with his name and age and deeds, were erected over him. A picket fence twelve feet high was built around the grave.

He left an old wife—the only wife that he had ever taken. He thought a great deal of her. He rarely drank whiskey, he fought it among his people; he was opposed to torture; he had treated prisoners kindly; he had waged war in defense, as he believed, of his own country; and altogether he had been a good man in his Indian way.

His bones were dug up by a white doctor, and strung on a wire to decorate an office in Illinois. Black-hawk's sons did not like this, and had the bones brought back. They were stored in the historical collection at Burlington, where in 1855 a fire burned them.

Black-hawk probably did not care what became of his old bones. He was done with them. The white race had over-flowed the land that he loved, and the bones of his fathers, and he had ceased fighting.



CHAPTER XVI

THE BIRD-WOMAN GUIDE (1805-1806)

SACAGAWEA HELPS THE WHITE MEN

This is the story of one slight little Indian woman, aged sixteen, who opened the trail across the continent, for the march of the United States flag.

When in March, 1804, the United States took over that French Province of Louisiana which extended from the upper Mississippi River west to the Rocky Mountains, a multitude of Indians changed white fathers.

These Western Indians were much different from the Eastern Indians. They were long-hair Indians, and horse Indians, accustomed to the rough buffalo chase, and a wide range over vast treeless spaces.

To learn about them and their country, in May, 1804, there started up the Missouri River, by boats from St. Louis, the famed Government exploring party commanded by Captain Meriwether Lewis and Captain William Clark.

It was an army expedition: twenty-three enlisted men, a hunter, a squad of boatmen, Captain Clark's black servant York, and a squad of other soldiers for an escort part of the way. In all, forty-three, under the two captains.

Their orders were, to ascend the Missouri River to its head; and, if possible, to cross the mountains and travel westward still, to the Columbia River and its mouth at the Pacific Ocean of the Oregon country.

No white man knew what lay before them, for no white man ever had made the trip. The trail was a trail in the dark.

This fall they had gone safely as far as the hewn-timber towns of the Mandan Indians, in central North Dakota; here they wintered, and met the little Bird-woman.

Her Indian name was Sa-ca-ga-we-a, from two Minnetaree words meaning "bird" and "woman." But she was not a Minnetaree, who were a division of the Sioux nation, living in North Dakota near the Mandans. She was a Sho-sho-ni, or Snake, woman, from the distant Rocky Mountains, and had been captured by the Minnetarees. Between the Minnetarees of the plains and the Snakes of the mountains there was always war.

Now at only sixteen years of age she was the wife of Toussaint Chaboneau, a leather-faced, leather-clad French-Canadian trader living with the Mandans. He had bought her from the Minnetarees—and how much he paid in trade is not stated, but she was the daughter of a chief and rated a good squaw. Toussaint had another wife; he needed a younger one. Therefore he bought Sacagawea, to mend his moccasins and greet him with a smile for his heart and warm water for his tired feet. His old wife had grown rather cross and grunty.

Chaboneau was engaged as interpreter, this winter, and moved over to the white camp. Sacagawea proved to be such a cheerful, willing little woman that the captains and the men made much of her. And when, in February, a tiny boy arrived to her and Toussaint, there was much delight.

A baby in the camp helped to break the long dull spell of forty-below-zero weather, when two suns shone feebly through the ice-crystaled air.

A thousand miles it was, yet, to the Rocky or Shining Mountains, by the river trail. In the Mandan towns, and in the American camp, Sacagawea was the only person who ever had been as far as those mountains. They were the home of her people, but nearly three years had passed since she had been taken captive by the Minnetarees.

Could she still speak the Snake tongue? Certainly! Did she remember the trail to the country of the Snakes? Yes! Was there a way across the mountains? Yes! Beyond some great falls in the Missouri there was a gate, by which the Shoshonis came out of the mountains to hunt the buffalo on the plains. It was there that she had been captured by the Minnetarees. Would the Snakes be friendly to the white men? Yes, unless they were frightened by the white men. Would she like to go back to her own people? Yes! Yes!

That was great luck for Sacagawea, but it was greater luck for the two captains. In the spring they broke camp, and taking Chaboneau as interpreter in case that the hostile Minnetarees were met, and little Sacagawea to spy out the land of the Snakes, and littlest Toussaint, the baby, as a peace sign to all tribes, with a picked party of thirty-one the two captains started on, up the swollen Missouri.

They made no mistake, in the Bird-woman. Of course she was used to roughing it; that was the life of an Indian woman—to do the hard work for the men, in camp and on the trail. But Sacagawea early showed great good sense.

Her husband Chaboneau almost capsized their canoe, by his clumsiness. She neither shrieked nor jumped; but calmly reaching out from it, with her baby tightly held, she gathered in the floating articles. She saved stuff of much value, and the captains praised her.

"She's a better man than her husband," asserted the admiring soldiers.

After hard travel, fighting the swift current, the strong winds, storms of rain and sleet, and monster grizzly bears, the expedition arrived at the Great Falls, as the Bird-woman had promised.

She had ridden and waded and trudged, like the rest. She had carried her baby on her back, and had built the fires for her husband, and cooked his meals, and kept right along with the men, and had not complained nor lagged.

At the Great Falls she was not so certain of the best route. This was a strange country to her, although she had known that the Falls were here. The Shining Mountains were in sight; the land of the Shoshonis lay yonder, to the southwest. All right.

The captains chose what seemed to be the best route by water, and headed on, to the southwest. Sacagawea gazed anxiously, right, left, and before. Her heart was troubled. She not only much desired to find her people, for herself, but she desired to help the great captains. "The fate of the whole party" depended upon her—and she was just a slight little Indian woman!

The Snakes did not come down, by this way. It was too far north; it was the haunts of their enemies the Blackfeet and the Minnetarees, of whom they were deathly afraid. They were a timid mountain folk, poorly armed to fight the Sioux, who had obtained guns from traders down the Missouri.

After a time the river narrowed still more, and between rough banks poured out from a canyon of high cliffs, black at their base and creamy yellow above.

"The Gate of the Mountains, ain't it?" passed the hopeful word. Sacagawea agreed. She had heard of this very "gate," where the river burst into the first plains.

"When we come to the place where the river splits into three parts, that is Shoshoni country—my people will be there."

On forged the boats, poled and hauled and rowed, while the men's soggy moccasins rotted into pieces, and the mosquitoes bit fiercely. The two captains explored by land. Hunting was forbidden, lest the reports of the guns alarm the Snakes.

Abandoned Indian camp-sites were found, but the big-horn sheep peered curiously down from the tops of the cliffs along the river, and that was not a good sign. The game was too tame.

Captain Clark the Red Head took the advance, by land, to look for the Indians. Captain Lewis, the young Long Knife Chief, commanded the boats. Small United States flags were erected in the bows of each, as a peace signal.

The boats reached an open place, where the river did indeed split into several branches.

"The Three Forks," nodded Sacagawea, brightly. "These are the Three Forks. We are on the right trail to the land of my people. Now I know."

The party proceeded at top speed. The southwest fork seemed to be the best, for boating. The stream shallowed. At the next camp Sacagawea was more excited.

"She say here in dis spot is where de Snake camp was surprise' by de Minnetaree, five years ago, an' chase' into de timber," announced Drouillard the hunter. "De Minnetaree keel four warrior an' capture four boy an' all de women. She was capture' here, herself."

Hurrah! the trail was getting warm. The canoes had to be hauled by tow-lines, with Sacagawea proudly riding in one of them and helping to fend off with a pole. She had not been here since she was a girl of eleven or twelve, but she caught more landmarks.

"Dat is w'at ze Snake call ze Beaver's Head," proclaimed Chaboneau, whose feet had given out. "Ze Snake spen' deir summer 'cross ze mountains jes' ze odder side. She t'ink we sure to meet some on dis side, to hunt ze boof'lo. Mebbe furder up one leetle way."

Captain Lewis took three men and struck out, to find an Indian trail and follow it into the mountains.

"I'll not come back until I've met with the Snakes," he asserted.

He was gone a long time. The shallow river, full of rapids and shoals, curved and forked and steadily shrank. But although Sacagawea eagerly peered, and murmured to herself, no Indians appeared.

The water was icy cold, from the snow range. This was middle August, in extreme southwestern Montana (a high country). The nights were cold, too. Game grew scarce. Three thousand miles had been logged off, from St. Louis. Unless the company could get guides and horses from the Snakes, and travel rapidly, they would be stuck, for the winter—likely enough starve; at any rate be forced to quit.

By August 16 Captain Lewis had not returned. Captain Clark set out afoot, with Sacagawea and Chaboneau, to walk across country. The Snakes simply must be found.