Tecumseh and Brock

by James Laxer

  Back in Upper Canada for the last months of 1811, Brock took up the final posts of his life: commander of British forces in the province and head of the provincial government. As he began this ultimate chapter in his career, Brock brooded long and hard about the military strategy to be pursued in the likely event of war with the United States. His strategic conception differed from that of the other British military commanders in the Canadas, because he understood that an effective alliance with native peoples would hold the key to the defence of Upper Canada’s western reaches. That idea would be central to his triumphs in the last months of his life.

  * * *

  ** The Batavian Republic was proclaimed in 1795, as a consequence of a popular revolution in the Netherlands, with the armed support of revolutionary France. It later became a vassal state of the French Republic, as it was at the time of the British assault in which Brock was involved. Later still, the French Empire of Napoleon Bonaparte dominated the Batavian Republic. In June 1806, the Kingdom of Holland succeeded the republic when Napoleon coerced the Dutch into accepting his brother Louis as their monarch.

  †† Brock was to work out how to transport Alfred from Quebec to Fort George. Historians disagree about whether Brock ever had Alfred shipped to him. Some believe that the horse did arrive at Fort George, and that on the day Brock was killed he rode Alfred, who also died that day. In any case, there is a small monument to Alfred at Queenston, near the spot where Brock died.

  Chapter 5

  Showdown

  WHILE BROCK PREPARED the Canadas for hostilities against the Americans, U.S. state representatives, very much in tune with the expansionist War Hawks in the capital, were busy making land-transfer deals with a host of native tribes. The most important of these representatives was future president William Henry Harrison. Born in 1773 into a prominent political family in Virginia, Harrison arrived in the Indiana Territory at the age of twenty-seven, having been appointed its first governor. In January 1801, he took up residence in Vincennes, the capital of the newly established territory. Harrison was a military man — he had fought at the Battle of Fallen Timbers — but also an ambitious politician who forged close relations with land speculators.

  Between 1802 and 1805, encouraged by President Jefferson,1 Harrison used bribery, intimidation, subterfuge, and whiskey to extract seven treaties from a number of tribes, including the Delawares, Miamis, Weas, Piankeshaws, Eel Rivers, Potawatomis, Kickapoos, Shawnees, Kaskaskias, Sacs, and Foxes. These treaties purported to give the United States legal title to vast tracts of land in present-day Indiana, sections of Missouri, Wisconsin, and most of Illinois. The U.S. government paid two cents an acre for these dubiously acquired lands. In addition, Harrison strove to attract enough settlers that the Indiana Territory could qualify for statehood.2 By 1809, he had overseen the development and execution of a total of thirteen treaties, through which the United States acquired 240,000 square kilometres of land from native peoples.

  Harrison’s efforts in the Indiana Territory complemented those of the War Hawks in Congress. As a consequence, the United States found itself on the brink of two wars that would soon become one: a war against the native peoples led by Tecumseh and a war with Great Britain.

  In August 1810, Tecumseh met face to face with William Henry Harrison at a council convened in Vincennes, located in present-day Knox County, Indiana. The Shawnee chief — who had become the leader of a growing native confederacy, travelling far and wide to unite members of disparate tribes — was in Vincennes to express his fury at the land-transfer deals.

  Accompanied by an escort of forty warriors, Tecumseh objected to Harrison’s plan to hold the meeting under the portico of his house, where seats had been set up in preparation. Through an interpreter, he told the Indiana governor that he preferred to meet in a nearby grove of trees. When Harrison said that he had no problem with the alternative site but no seats were in place there, the Shawnee chief replied that that posed no difficulty, since native people preferred to repose upon the bosom of their mother. After benches and chairs were set up for the U.S. representatives, the meeting began with Tecumseh and his warriors seated on the ground.3

  Tecumseh rose dramatically to his feet and opened the talks with a lengthy objection to the treaties Harrison had negotiated with native peoples in recent years. But the treaty that infuriated him the most, the one that had driven him to confront Harrison, was the Treaty of Fort Wayne, through which Harrison had acquired twelve thousand square kilometres of land from representatives of the Delaware, Eel River, and Potawatomi tribes, later joined by the Kicka-poos and the Weas. As a consequence, the United States secured its hold on southern Indiana. The native leaders who signed the treaty received annuities and the paltry sum of 5,250 dollars’ worth of goods.4

  Tecumseh regarded the Treaty of Fort Wayne as theft, pure and simple, the extortion of land from weak chiefs overwhelmed by the growing poverty of their peoples as game grew scarce. The treaty was the last straw for the Shawnee leader.

  In his speech, Tecumseh spelled out the principle to which he and his warriors and their allies adhered — that the native peoples formed one nation and that he would resist any cession of land unless the transfer was agreed to by all the tribes. He stated that he was determined not to allow the village chiefs to make deals such as the Treaty of Fort Wayne and that, in the future, power would be invested in the war chiefs, who would act for all of the native peoples.

  The Shawnee chief recounted the history of the relationship between the Americans and the native peoples. He said the Americans had driven the natives from the seacoast and now threatened to push them from the lakes. He declared that he was unalterably resolved to take a stand, warning that he would resolutely oppose any further intrusion of settlers on native lands. He reviewed the numerous aggressions perpetrated by Americans against native peoples from the beginning of the American Revolutionary War to the present day.5

  According to one report, the Shawnee chief declared, “You have taken our land from us, and I do not see how we can remain at peace if you continue to do so. You endeavour to make distinctions. You wish to prevent the Indians doing as we wish them — to unite, and let them consider their lands as the common property of the whole . . . in future we are prepared to punish those chiefs who may come forward to propose to sell the land . . . If the land is not restored to us you will see, when we return to our homes, how it will be settled. We shall have a great council, at which all the tribes will be present . . . We will see what will be done to those chiefs that did sell the land to you . . . I am not alone in this determination . . . I tell you because I am authorized by all the tribes to do so. I am the head of them all.

  “Brother, do not believe that I came here to get presents from you. If you offer us any, we will not take. By taking goods from you, you will hereafter say that with them you purchased another piece of land from us . . . Should you not return the land, it will occasion us to call a great council that will meet at the Huron village, where the council-fire [preparatory to a meeting] has already been lighted, at which those who sold the lands shall be called, and shall suffer for their conduct.

  “As we intend to hold our council at the Huron village, that is near the British, we may probably make them a visit. Should they offer us any presents of goods, we will not take them but should they offer us powder and the tomahawk, we will take the powder and refuse the tomahawk.”6

  Following Tecumseh’s blunt challenge to the Treaty of Fort Wayne and the treaties that had come before, Harrison stood up and issued a forthright reply. He denied the Shawnee chief’s contention that the native tribes constituted one nation, having a common property in the lands. If the Great Spirit had intended the native peoples to make up one nation, he would not have given them different tongues. He said that Tecumseh had no business challenging the United States and the treaties.

  Partway through the translati
on of the governor’s speech, Tecumseh leapt up and began to speak in menacing tones. Harrison did not understand what was being said, but one of his officers who understood Shawnee warned, “Those fellows intend mischief; you had better bring up the guard.” Tecumseh’s followers sprang to their feet, brandishing their tomahawks. Harrison drew a short sword that he kept at his side. For a few moments, the tense standoff continued. An army captain drew a dagger, and a native chief friendly to the Indiana governor cocked his pistol. When guards ran up and seemed about to fire, Harrison ordered them to stand down. He demanded that the translator convey to him the meaning of Tecumseh’s remarks. When he learned that the Shawnee chief had charged that everything the governor had said was false and that he and the Seventeen Fires — in 1803 Ohio had become the seventeenth state — had cheated the native peoples, Harrison told Tecumseh that he would not continue the meeting. Since Tecumseh had come to Vincennes under the protection of a council fire, he could depart in safety, but Harrison made it clear that Tecumseh and those accompanying him must leave the village at once.7

  That evening, back at his camp, Tecumseh decided that he had gone too far. The following morning he sent a message to the governor, requesting an opportunity to explain his conduct at the council, and declared that he had no intention of attacking Harrison. On the understanding that the two sides would have the same number of armed companions present, the governor agreed to another session.

  Restrained in tone when the council resumed, Tecumseh stuck to his position and firmly reiterated that he and his followers were determined to insist on the boundaries that had been in place before the signing of the treaties. Adding to the force of his position was the presence of chiefs from the Wyandots, Kickapoos, Potawatomis, Ottawas, and Winnebagoes. They spoke in succession, making it clear that they had entered the confederacy and supported the principles set out by Tecumseh.

  Harrison concluded the conference by saying that he would inform President James Madison of the claims being made by Tecumseh and his supporters on the land issue. But he warned that the U.S. government would never back away from the principles on which it had negotiated the Treaty of Fort Wayne. The United States would sustain its ownership of the lands it had acquired, if necessary by resort to the sword, he warned.8

  The next day, Harrison made a further effort to sound out Tecumseh. Accompanied only by his interpreter, he visited the Shawnee chief’s camp and was cordially received. During his lengthy conversation with the governor, Tecumseh explained the purpose of his native confederacy, an informal alliance of leaders and tribes, and set out the terms for a peaceful resolution with the United States. He compared the U.S. land purchases to a mighty water that was ready to overflow his people; the confederacy he was establishing would stop any individual tribe from selling land without the consent of the others, he explained, and it was the dam that would resist this mighty water.

  Testing the possibilities of a deal with the Americans, Tecumseh said he would be drawn into war with the United States only reluctantly. If the governor could convince the president to give up the lands that had been purchased in the recent treaties, and would agree never to negotiate another treaty without the consent of all the tribes, Tecumseh would become the faithful ally of the Americans. He would, he pledged, assist the U.S. in the war he knew was soon coming with Great Britain. He said he would rather be the ally of the Seventeen Fires, but warned that if the Americans did not go along with his request he would have no choice but to side with the British. The hostility between the British and the Americans was no secret, and Tecumseh was adept at playing on the tensions between the two powers to seek a deal that would be beneficial to the confederacy.

  When Harrison responded that he would present the confederacy’s case to the president but that there was little probability of his conditions being met, Tecumseh replied with more sorrow than anger. “As the great chief is to determine the matter,” he said, “I hope the Great Spirit will put sense enough into his head to induce him to give up this land: it is true, he is so far off he will not be injured by the war; he may sit still in his town and drink his wine, whilst you and I will have to fight it out.”9

  Following his meeting with Tecumseh, even Harrison could not help being impressed by the mettle of his foe. In a letter to the War Department in which he referred to Tecumseh as “one of those uncommon geniuses,” he went on to say, “If it were not for the vicinity of the United States, he would, perhaps, be the founder of an empire that would rival in glory Mexico or Peru. No difficulties deter him. His activity and industry supply the want of letters. For four years he has been in constant motion. You see him today on the Wabash and in a short time hear of him on the shores of Lake Erie or Michigan, or on the banks of the Mississippi and wherever he goes he makes an impression favourable to his purposes.”10 And in an earlier letter to U.S. Secretary of War William Eustis, Harrison compared Tecumseh with other native leaders who had pursued the goal of a union of native peoples: “Tecumseh has taken for his model the celebrated Pontiac, and I am persuaded he will bear a favorable comparison, in every respect, with that far famed warrior.”11

  Harrison understood that Tecumseh followed in the footsteps of others in undertaking the task of uniting the diverse peoples of the continent to make common cause against the westward tide of white settlement. The project that engaged all of Tecumseh’s energies was the construction of a native confederacy to stand up to the Americans along a vast front — one that arced across the continent from the upper Great Lakes through the Indiana Territory, the Ohio Valley, and upstate New York, down the Mississippi, and along the boundary of white settlement in the South, all the way to Florida.

  He faced the challenge of fashioning a defensive military alliance capable of putting men in the field along a perimeter thousands of kilometres long. Divisions of language and culture, traditions of self-reliance and jealously guarded independence, and inter-tribal antagonisms stood in his path. He showed at Vincennes that he knew the tricks of the enemy. The Americans were masters of bribery, assimilation, and sowing seeds of division among the native peoples. When necessary they used force, at times on a genocidal scale, as they were to do again in the years to come. They also sent in missionaries to convert natives to Christianity. As a result, the native peoples had been swept off almost all their land. Reduced to poor farmers, toiling on a fraction of the territory they had once held, they were shorn of their former freedom and way of life.

  At Vincennes, Tecumseh made it clear that if the United States did not change its policies on the issue of native land, there would be war. And in the event of war, he warned, he would accept gunpowder from the British.

  Tecumseh had not really expected a deal with Harrison, and he did not get one. The prospect of peace with the United States was closed at Vincennes.

  In October 1810, Tecumseh turned to the British at Fort Malden, in the southwestern corner of Upper Canada. Constructed between 1797 and 1799, Fort Malden was the most important British military post on Lake Erie. Prior to the implementation of Jay’s Treaty between Britain and the United States in 1796, which required the British to evacuate all forts located on American soil, the main British post had been at Detroit. Fort Malden was located at the site of the present-day town of Amherstburg, Ontario, a few kilometres south of Windsor. From the fort, the Indian Department maintained contact with native tribes that were friendly to the British. These tribes were vitally important to the defence of Upper Canada against a potential American assault. Fort Malden was also key to the protection of the crucial Amherstburg Naval Yard, where the British built and equipped ships to expand their fleet on Lake Erie.12

  Arriving at the fort in mid-November 1810, accompanied by 134 men, 28 women, and 8 children of Shawnee, Potawatomi, Ottawa, Winnebago, and Sac descent, Tecumseh announced in a speech to British officers and officials that he wanted to rekindle their former alliance. At Fort Malden two years prior, Tecumseh
had been unwilling to commit himself to backing the British side in an armed struggle with the United States. This time, he told the British that he expected war and his goal was to have the British on side. “We sit at or near the borders where the contest will begin,” he said. At the very least, he wanted supplies from the British. He had brought an old wampum belt, which signified the former native alliance with the British. During the meeting, he asked all those in attendance to touch the belt.

  Then he said, “Father, intend proceeding toward the Mid Day [the south], and expect before next autumn and before I visit you again that the business will be done. I request, Father, that you will be charitable to our king’s [old men], women and children. The young men can more easily provide for themselves than they.”13

  The British wanted to keep Tecumseh on side in case hostilities with the United States erupted into armed conflict, but they did not want to be blamed by the Americans for a war between the native confederacy and the U.S. On November 25, 1810, Sir James Craig, who had not been present at Fort Malden, sent a message to the British chargé d’affaires in Washington telling him to alert the American government that the native confederacy was planning for war. On February 2, 1811, Craig again expressed his anxiety about a native attack on the Americans in a letter to Francis Gore, Upper Canada’s lieutenant-governor, stressing that British policy was to urge the native peoples against war with the U.S. The message should be, he told Gore, that although the British would remain friends to the native confederacy, Tecumseh should not expect aid if his people went to war against the Americans.14 The British, as Tecumseh already believed, were not to be trusted as allies in a war against the United States, unless it was their war as well.