How the Glory of His Race Figured in His Setting.

The following day was the fifth of October, 1813, whose sun beheld the memorable Battle of the Thames, when, for the last time in the regions of the North, the Lion and the Eagle met in fight.

The final retreat had begun at Fort Malden, a strongly fortified post on the shores of Lake St. Clair, at the mouth of the Thames, where an effectual stand might have been made against the farther advance of the now victorious Americans. Such was the opinion of Tecumseh, and on learning that his white ally had resolved to destroy and abandon the fort to the intent of withdrawing still farther, even to the central regions of Canada, he had boldly opposed the movement as unnecessary, and being unheeded, had scornfully denounced it to his ally's very face as unwarrior-like, dishonorable, contemptible. Had the civilized general hearkened to the savage leader, the result of the war in that quarter, if not more successful to the British cause, would certainly have been far less dishonorable to the British name. During the retreat, the heroic sachem had earnestly and repeatedly recommended a sudden and determined face-about on their pursuers, and only the night before the decisive battle he had urged a backward movement, that, under screen of the darkness, they might surprise the sleeping enemy in his camp, and overpower him before any combined resistance could be made. But all in vain. His white ally was but a fat poltroon—"a big, fat, cowardly dog," to use Tecumseh's own comparison, "that carries his tail curled fiercely over his back till danger threatens, then drops it between his legs and slinks away."

Throughout the war, this Proctor had displayed far more enterprise and address as a plunderer than as a fighter, and now his sole end and aim was the conveying of his precious booty and his precious body as speedily as possible to some place of security before he should be overtaken. But by means of this very booty with which in his greediness he had overloaded himself, and the keeping of which he had far more at heart than the maintaining of his own or his country's honor, he was fated in the end to overwhelm himself with ruin and disgrace, since, by the unwieldy clog thus laid upon his movements, he had doubled his risk of being overtaken; and, with such a general, to be overtaken is to be defeated; and to be defeated, ruined.

At last, after having pursued his heavy, blundering flight far up the Thames to a place called Willow Marsh, near Moravian Town, and finding that the American van was pressing close upon his rear, the British general was prevailed upon by Tecumseh and his own officers to face about and give the enemy battle. His ground was well chosen. Parallel with the river and separated from it by a narrow strip of firm land, over which ran the beaten route, there lay a swamp of considerable extent which, besides being densely covered with other wet land growth, was thickly sprinkled over with willows, whence its name, "Willow Marsh." Across this isthmus Proctor hastily threw his regiment of about nine hundred regulars, while Tecumseh, with his brigade of about two thousand warriors, ambushed himself in the fastness of the swamp. On this occasion, as had he, indeed, on every other occasion of the kind, the Indian leader displayed a degree of generalship which stands without parallel in the annals of savage warfare. Pivoting his brigade on the right of the English regiment, he stretched it out in a long line, inclined curvingly forward, with the intent of suddenly unmasking and swinging it round upon the enemy's flank, should he in a body attempt to force the passage of the isthmus.

About the middle of the afternoon the Americans came marching up in full force and in orderly array. Inferring at once, from the features of the ground and from the little that was visible of the enemy, what the English and Indian line of battle must be, General Harrison promptly determined upon his plan of attack. The Kentucky regiment of mounted riflemen, one thousand strong, commanded by Colonel Johnson, he ordered to open the engagement by falling upon the Indian brigade where he knew it must be lying concealed in the swamp. His two companies of United States regulars, with a regiment of volunteer infantry, he sent forward to make a charge on the British regulars where, with their muskets and bayonets gleaming in the yellow autumn sunlight, they were seen extended in a long scarlet line from river to swamp. The general himself would hold a reserve of fifteen hundred men with which to coÖperate as occasion should direct.

The Americans advanced to the attack with great spirit, and were received with equal spirit by the Indian wing of the enemy, and with a steady concert of action unprecedented in Indian warfare. But hardly had the Kentuckians sent forth their first volley when Proctor, too tender of his precious body even to strike a single blow for his precious booty, to say nothing of his precious honor, turned his back square on the foe and, followed by a small escort of horse, galloped ingloriously from the field, never drawing bridle till he had gained the shelter of Fort Chatham, many miles farther up the Thames. Thus hastily deserted by their general, the regulars, who otherwise had doubtless behaved with the wonted gallantry of brave Englishmen, threw down their arms with scarcely a show of resistance and begged for quarter. The white wing of the enemy thus lopped off at the first blow, the two regiments—the only part of the American army actually engaged in the contest—now concentrated upon the red wing, where it still lay concealed within its swampy covert. Up to this moment the Kentucky regiment of mounted riflemen had made several ineffectual attempts to dislodge and drive the Indians from their stronghold, of whom nothing as yet had been seen but a long, curved line of rifle-smoke which, curling upward from among the willows and hovering in small blue clouds above the heads of the ambushed savages, served to trace their order of array.

Meanwhile, the clarion voice of the Indian leader had been heard, in tones of encouragement, exhortation, and command to his unseen warriors, rising high and clear above the din of battle. Now, on a sudden, it rang out stern, abrupt, imperious, like the voice of a trumpet sounding a desperate charge.

When he found himself deserted by his white ally—the strong hand under which he and his people had trusted to return to the land of their fathers—then did the heroic sachem feel that he was fighting the last battle of a hopeless cause. But too proud to survive a failure so vast—the blasted hopes of his life, the ruined schemes of his ambition—he determined to die then and there, and die, too, such a death as should shed over the very failure an undying glory. To this intent he would order a general charge, disdaining the further shelter of his stronghold and meeting the enemy in the open field. True, such a movement would be utterly at variance with the usages of Indian warfare. True, also, the enemy to be charged was flushed with present success, not to mention his being the stronger and made audacious from having been the pursuer in the chase just ended. But such a movement, from the fact of its being without example and without hope, would make his skill as a leader the more apparent, his death as a warrior the more certain and glorious. Yes, he would order a general charge.

Then, to the amazement of the Americans, the heretofore invisible foe burst suddenly forth from his ambush, and now, in a long, well-ordered line, was coming impetuously on to meet them un-Indian-like in the open field. Headed by their intrepid leader, on they came amain, brandishing their tomahawks and war-clubs and filling the woods with their appalling yells and war-whoops. But now, well out of the bushy skirts of the swamp and able to look about them, they discovered what before their chief had designedly concealed from them—that the English regulars had all been captured, and that they were no longer supported by their white allies. The lengthened array of dusky warriors was observed to pause, to falter, then, at the next discharge of bullets sent point-blank at them, to break in pieces, dissolving at once into a mere disorderly rabble. All order lost, lost was all mutual confidence and all courage. Back, with a howl of disappointment and dismay, they quailed from before the advancing foe, and as suddenly as they had appeared, vanished again in the somber shadows of the marsh.

Hastily rallying about three hundred of his bravest followers, conspicuous among whom towered the gigantic bulk of Black Thunder, and inspiring them to heroism by his own example, again was Tecumseh pressing impetuously forward, his tomahawk brandished aloft and his trumpetlike voice still ringing high and clear above the rude uproar; nor paused he till with terrible energy he had hewn his way into the thick of the enemy's ranks. Now, with tomahawk uplifted, he had planted himself directly confronting Colonel Johnson, who, mounted on a white horse, was pressing forward, though desperately wounded, to encounter the Indian chief, his pistol already leveled. The next instant, and all in that self-same instant, the white horse dropped dead under his wounded rider, the pistol went off, a terrible cry was heard, a wild leap into the air was seen, and hushed was the clarion voice of command. The red warriors paused, gazed wildly about them, as were they listening to catch their leader's voice; then, hearing it no more, with a howl of dismay and despair, which found an echo in a howl as drear from their fellows crouched in the swamp, they turned and fled. The Battle of the Thames was over. The might of the Shemanols had prevailed, the blood-red banner of the English Manakee had been laid in the dust, and the ambushed army of the red man broken and scattered. The heroic, the high-minded, the hapless Tecumseh was fallen.

Throughout the action, though he had gallantly headed his company in every charge, Captain Reynolds had not fired a single shot, lest, by some unhappy chance, Kumshakah, the preserver of his life, might fall by his hand. When the battle was over and he had assisted in bearing his wounded colonel to camp, he hunted up Burl and, bidding him follow, returned in the course of an hour to the battle-ground, to look once more on his face who at sunset had said, "Let him sleep; Wahcoudah's will be done." He had repeated to his old servant what their deliverer had told them of himself. But having taken in the evidence of his own senses and already drawn therefrom his own unalterable conclusions, Big Black Burl could not be made to understand how a man who looked like Kumshakah, talked like Kumshakah, acted like Kumshakah, called himself Kumshakah, could be any other than the Kumshakah whom he had met as a foe, entertained as a guest, parted with as a friend, and ever afterward loved as a brother. Such was his conviction then, and such it remained through life.

On reaching the spot where he had seen the hero fall, Reynolds found a number of his brother soldiers already gathered there, and still others coming up, all eager either for the first time to behold or to get a nearer view of the renowned Indian chieftain. With the dead of both friend and foe strewn thick around him, there he lay, his handsome face still lighted up with a glorious and triumphant smile, as if the magnanimous soul that so long had animated those noble features had, in rising, stamped it there to tell his enemies that, though fallen, he had fallen and conquered. Beside him, and in striking contrast with his symmetrical and stately figure, his pleasing and majestic aspect, lay extended the huge bulk and scowled the terrible visage of Black Thunder.

"Pore, pore Kumshy!" exclaimed Burl, in a pitying voice.

"Yes, poor Kumshakah, and poor Tecumseh, too!" rejoined his master, with solemn and profound emotion.

"What's dat you say, Mars'er Bushie?" inquired Burl quickly and with a puzzled look.

Slowly young Reynolds repeated what he had said, and then added: "What we now see before us, Burl, is all that is left of the great Tecumseh!"

Had this specter of the slain chief risen suddenly from his body and stood confronting him, the effect on the mind of Big Black Burl could hardly have been more startling than that caused by this revelation. Three huge backward strides he made, then motionless stood for many moments, one foot a step behind the other, his hands uplifted and outspread, his eyes wide open, staring fixedly with mingled amazement, incredulity, and awe, at the lifeless body before him.

In his younger days, when the passion for martial glory burned strong within him, the Fighting Nigger, as we have seen, had been in the habit, when blowing his own trumpet, of running his warlike exploits into the fabulous and impossible—not from any direct design of deceiving his hearers, but merely that he might make his theme as interesting and wonderful to them as it was to himself; but that the honor of meeting and overcoming in battle so renowned a warrior as Tecumseh, of whom the world in which he lived, the great wild West, was so full, should ever have been his, seemed to Mish-mugwa more fabulous than even his own fables, and to which all his other achievements, granting them to have been as prodigious as he was wont to boast them, dwarf into unmentionable insignificance in comparison. The reader must not fail to bear in mind that, just here, we are viewing Tecumseh through the eyes of Burlman Reynolds.

At length, having taken in the evidence of his sight, but as if still needing that of his touch to set his doubts at rest and convince him that what he saw there was in verity a bodily form, Burl stole cautiously up again and softly laid his hand on the breast of the fallen hero. No sooner had he done so than with a warm, tender rush came thronging back into his memory all those recollections which, stretching their bright train from that glorious first of June to that beautiful Sabbath in the wilderness, he had ever viewed as being the happiest of his life. But when, linked with these, came back to his mind the thrilling events of yesterday, suddenly and to the surprise of all present, excepting his young master, the huge creature, with that liveliness of feeling peculiar to his race, burst into a blubbering explosion of tender, pitying, grateful feeling, and cried like a child.

"Pore, pore Kumshy! De good Lord hab pity on yo' soul an' gib you a mansion, ef it's only a wigwam, somewhar in his kingdom. You's a pore heathen, we know, but shorely somewhar in his kingdom he'll make room fur de like uf you." And with this simple oration over Tecumseh's body, Big Black Burl turned weeping away and followed his sorrowing master from the field, the stoniness and blindness of Calvinism gone from his creed forever.

That night, long after the somber autumn sun had set, and the somber autumn moon had risen, and the victorious foe had laid him down to sleep in his distant tent, silent as the shadows through which they glided, they returned to the battle-ground, the red warriors of the wilderness, to pay the last tribute of respect to their fallen chieftain. Beside a fallen oak that lay along the verge of the marsh—there, on the spot where he had made his last stand for the wild people, the wild land, the wild independence he had loved more than his life—they dug a grave, and in it laid the mortal remains of the immortal Tecumseh. Then they went their way, their wild hearts breaking with grief and despair, and he was left to that solitude of silence and shadow which, like a hallowing spell inspiring reverence and awe in the minds of the living, ever lingers round the resting-places of the illustrious dead. But for many a year thereafter they made it their wont to return thither, as on pilgrimage to a holy shrine, once more to look with reverent eyes on the green mound where he lay, and with reverent hands keep back the willows and wild roses growing too thick around it, that, unshadowed, it might be ever open to the loving, pitying light of the setting sun.

Thus he died, this Indian Hannibal; thus he set, this Glory of his Race. Let him sleep! Wahcoudah's will be done! Rule, great Wahcoudah!

The End.