secured a solid peace, which was signed August 3, 1795, by all the western tribes. The Wild Hunter had failed in his defense; in the trial of strength he had proved the weaker; and the English who had encouraged him failed to succor him in the hour of need. He now comprehended his destiny and bowed before it. Goods were distributed among the tribes to the value of $20,000, and about $10,000 worth were to be delivered to them annually thereafter. The State of Ohio was mostly ceded, absolutely, to the whites, and the territory west to the Mississippi and north to the upper lakes secured to the Indians, with the reserve of various locations for forts.

The white man permitted the Indian to roam over his own hunting grounds in bitterness of heart, anticipating the speedy approach of the time when he must "move on," because they would be wanted by the civilized race. In his feeling it was a bitter lot, but humanity has been immensely enriched by his dispossession. By this time the Cherokees were so outnumbered by dense settlements immediately on their borders that they renounced a hopeless contest. The Ohio tribes had frequently the satisfaction of defeating their foes, and acquired a vast amount of property for those times; but the Cherokees had been constantly defeated since 1758, when they destroyed Fort Loudon, and there was no encouragement to continue hostilities.

Tennessee, Kentucky and Ohio became states in the Union, Indiana became a territory, and, after a time, Illinois. The Indians looked on with silent rage. It was past help and hope unless they had other forces than their own. They had valiantly contested every foot of ground in the West; but the more they slaughtered, captured and tortured at the stake, the more rapidly did this flood of civilization which they hated rise and threaten to overwhelm them. "Like the grass

of the prairie, like the leaves of the forest," said they to the whites in their picturesque language, "you spring up everywhere." The vigor of the new stock crowded out the native plant.

CHAPTER VII.

TECUMSEH AND HIS ALLIES.

The Indian had reason to wonder, for in the year 1795the year in which they were obliged to consent to the alienation of all the lands the whites wanted north of the Ohiotwenty thousand emigrants passed down the river to seek permanent homes on what the tribes considered their own lands; and by the close of the century many more people had emigrated to the Valley than there were individuals in all the wild tribes of North America. Simple astonishment and a sense of helplessness kept them quiet; a peace of fifteen years permitted the more accessible parts of the southern and eastern Valley to fill up with a population almost as large as all the colonies contained when they declared their independence, and this population had laid broad, deep and most satisfactory foundations for a great future.

New England, Pennsylvania, Virginia and North Carolina came, so to speak, bodily to the West. They formed, here and there, large communities and considerable towns, for the time fairly homogeneous, and bearing all the characteristics of the people of the states from which they had emigrated. They soon commenced a new development, but, for the present, it was simply the East set down in the West, with all its institutions, its thrift and the intelligence and ambition which the shock of the War of Independence had awakened in a race rich in undeveloped capacities. This fifteen years was the utter doom of the red man's future as a hunter in the Valley, but he was unable to see its full import. So large an idea there was no room in his mind to receive.

Tecumseh was born to rule his people, and, like Philip of Mount Hope and Pontiac, he had the breadth, the power and

the enthusiasm of a genius. But no genius can afford to dispense with a broad and true education, which gives clearness and exactness to thought and distinguishes between the visions of the imagination and the severe realities of life. Tecumseh had been often in communication with the whites in his early life; but he was a genuine Indian. Civilized life did not attract him; there was nothing he found desirable in the prosperous comfort of the settlements, for it was to be obtained only as the reward of a labor and drudgery that were abhorrent to the soul of the free Child of the Woods. He was ambitious and found no opening for his aspirations among the whites. He fancied that the weakness of the Indian was caused by his accepting the aids of civilization; that if he returned to primitive habits, excluded the white trader and his demoralizing wares, primitive virtues would return, and that his race would be able to resist the progress of the whites.

Associating his brother, the Prophet, who was a famous Indian "Medicine," with himself, he appealed to the superstitions of his race, urged, by eloquent speeches and example, a return to ancient simplicity and self-dependence and labored, like King Philip and Pontiac, to unite all the tribes, north and south, in a general confederacy against the settlers. He resolved that no more lands should be sold to the whites, and secretly visited the tribes, using all his own eloquence and the arts of his brother to organize a strong confederacy in the apper Valley, from 1806 to 1811. Great Britain had not yet lost all hope of recovering her former colonies, and still courted the good will of the Indian tribes around the Great Lakes, as well as of the French inhabitants of Canada. Tecumseh was in communication with them and was aware of the approaching war, and he prepared to strike a terrible blow when it should break out.

He was of the Shawnee tribe, who have been called the Arabs of the Wilderness. They were originally from the

THE PLANS OF TECUMSEH, NORTH AND SOUTH.

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South, from which they had been driven by the combined enmity of the Chickasaws and the Cherokees. Tecumseh visited the southern tribes, just before the outbreak of the war, and urged his views with all the force and fire of Indian oratory. The Chickasaws declined to enter into his plans, but the Creeks lent a more willing ear. The renown of the Shawnees, who were among the most warlike tribes in the Valley, and had been prominent in all the old wars against the whites, was known to them. With some difficulty he persuaded the Creeks to unite with him. For nearly eighty years they had been in relations, for the most part of friendly trade, with the English, and some of their chiefs resisted the proposal and refused to take part in it. Tecumseh assured them that when he returned North he would "stamp his foot. and the whole continent would tremble." He visited all the tribes as far as Florida and prepared such a vengeance against. the whites in the South as had, nearly three hundred years before, come so near being the utter destruction of De Soto at Maubila.

Tecumseh felt England behind him and knew that the war between Great Britain and the American Republic was about to be declared. When that conflict should commence he would "stamp his foot" metaphorically, and his southern allies would attribute the outbreak to his mystical power. He had already confronted Gen. Wm. H. Harrison, Governor of Indiana Territory, in a council held August, 1810, and refused assent to a treaty, on which the Governor insisted, for the sale of more land required for settlement, and believed himself strong enough to defy the power of the whites. He was, however, sufficiently politic to defer the commencement of open war until all should be ready to strike a decisive blow that should "shake the continent." His brother was not as prudent, and precipitated the war before his return from the South, and before a sufficiently large force had been collected to make sure of victory. Governor Harrison, comprehending

the danger, had obtained some government troops and called out the militia of the territory in order to strike a decisive blow in season. To the great indignation of Tecumseh, his brother attacked this force instead of temporizing and waiting till success could reasonably be expected.

This was the battle of Tippecanoe, and was fought November 7, 1811, seven months before the declaration of war against England by the United States Government. The Prophet was beaten, his forces scattered, his own prestige, and that of Tecumseh, with the confederacy they had been at so much pains to organize, were lost. The grand blow that was to have been so fatal was turned aside and resolved into an ordinary series of attacks on weak outposts, scattered settlers and small bands of whites. Tecumseh, still hoping to retrieve the mistake through the success of the British forces when the war should begin, retired to Canada, collected his Indian allies in that region, and waited.

War was declared June 19, 1812, and hostilities soon commenced in the neighborhood of Detroit. July 17, a British and Indian force captured Mackinaw; General Hull, after commencing an invasion of Upper Canada, retreated, without good reason, to Detroit; and a party he sent out to meet reinforcements was ambushed by Tecumseh and cut to pieces. Tecumseh joined the British commander in a demonstration against Detroit, which so intimidated General Hull that he surrendered that place and all the forces under his command, without resistance, August 16, 1812. The Indians further west watched their chances, one of which occurred at Chicago August 15. The garrison had been ordered by General Hull to evacuate Fort Dearborn, located at the mouth of Chicago River. After having marched out they were attacked by the Indians. The party attacked contained about eighty soldiers, a trader with his employes, and a number of women and children. Between fifty and sixty, including two women and twelve children, were massacred, and the remainder made