CHAPTER XXIV.

Trouble with the Indians-Tecumseh's League-General Harrison-Battles with the Indians-The British treat with them-Death of Tecumseh.

JOHN Bull seems to have had enough of "Sam," after the surrender of Cornwallis, to stay his stomach for the present. That portly gentleman would appear now to have come to the conclusion, that he had counted rather much upon the respect due to age, plethora, and gout, and to have become rapidly more philosophical, and more reasonable in his views, as to his own, and the rights of others. The future conqueror of Napoleon had been soundly thrashed by a big baby, to be sure, but what of that?—many a kind, but uxorious father had been conquered by big babies before, through the excess of his parental feeling-and where was the shame? It was all human nature, to say the most of it. Babies will be fractious, and fathers will be fond. And the more John reasoned, and philosophised, the more reasonable and philosophical he became, of course-until finally the bright idea illuminated his brain, through the fumy fog of after-dinner Port, and cigar, that it might be well to let the poor "youngling" up, since he had beaten him with sufficient severity for this, his first fall, and hoped, in the gracious serenity of his more contemplative and propitious mood, that the rude, but willful, though not contumacious boy, might still have some elements of submission and reformation in him. John grinned with a grim smile, as he hitched up the already nearly bursting waistband, which heaved with the throes of beef, plum-pudding, and paternal sentiment. Ha! ha! ha! the wild, young dog! I'll let him up now, but may be the 365

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And

next time, I have occasion to lay my hand upon him, his mother won't know him, when I'm done with him!

But as Mrs. Bull was not present, to say whether she thought it likely she would, this important historical problem must remain through all time a solemn mystery, to be solved by some transcendental historian of the Bancroft order, in some remote era of the "spiritual" regime, which is now so rapidly approaching.

Certainly John Bull proved himself in earnest in the apostolic threat of the "laying on of hands," some short time afterward as we shall see--and we shall see, too, the result.

But "Sam," fortunately, was of the philosophic temperament too, by inheritance, no doubt and remained very meekly contented with the drubbing he had received, and a little unimportant concession of liberty to do as he pleased hereafter. To be sure he found himself with an empty treasury, a plundered, ravaged continent, a half-rebellious people at his disposal, but managed with a remarkable placidity, through the easy temperament for which he is noted, to reconcile himself-with what John Bull would have called a vainglorious contemplation of the manifold trophies of two entire captured armies, and the paltry pittance, for which he was obviously indebted to paternal magnanimity, of a perpetual fief to lands, demense rents, etc., to which he naturally considered himself, in all humility, somewhat entitled, by virtue of "Squatter Sovereignty." To be sure, "Sam" had never been a tailor, except in the Eve and Adam sense, or the "Rough and Ready"—and therefore, could not be strictly considered a "squatter." As it was, we proceeded very meekly to organize a government, and weld a constitution, the iron hinges of which have as yet successfully resisted the shock of all elemental forces, which have been brought combined against it.

This achievement, though, no doubt, owing to the inspiration of filial gratitude, solely, and the sentiment of thankfulness for his full release, through the gracious and benign magnanimity of his new-found and portly sire-for we had thought "Sam" the child of the elements solely-nevertheless placed him in a position among the nations of the earth,

which caused Old Empire to verily stare at the Young Mon⚫strosity.

The Federal Constitution organized, America an independdent nation of the earth, and Washington inaugurated as president, we must leave the intervening period to other histories, and make a long stride to that of the war of 1812 with Tecumseh.

The pressure of Bonaparte's commercial system, not confined to the civilized world, was felt even by the wild tribes of the North American forests. The price of furs, in consequence of their exclusion from the Continent of Europe, their chief market, had sunk so low that the Indian hunters found their means of purchase from the traders greatly curtailed. The rapid extension of settlements north of the Ohio had not only occasioned an alarming diminution of game, but, in the facilities afforded for the introduction of whisky, had inflicted a still greater evil on the Indians. Among those tribes, Delawares, Shawanese, Wyandots, Miamis, and, further to the northwest, Ottowas, Potawatomies, Kickapoos, Winnebagoes, and Chippewas, a remarkable influence had of late been established by two twin brothers of the Shawanese tribe, who possessed between them all the qualities held in greatest esteem by the Indians. Tecumseh was an orator and a warrior, active, intrepid, crafty, and unscrupulous. His brother, commonly known as The Prophet, was not only an orator, but a "medicine man" of the highest pretensions, claiming to hold direct intercourse with the Great Spirit, and to possess miraculous powers. He announced himself as specially sent, and instructed to require of the red men, as a first step toward a return to their ancient prosperity, to renounce all those innovations borrowed from the whites, more especially the use of whisky, which had made them the slaves of the traders. But these denunciations were not limited to the vices borrowed from the white men; they were equally levelled at those approaches to civilization, and those new religious opinions, which the agents of the government on the one hand, and a few missionaries on the other, had been laboring to introduce.

Separating himself from his own tribe, which was slow, at first, in recognizing his mission, the Prophet had established (1806) a village of his own at Greenville, near the western