Pierre Berton's War of 1812 (12 page)

Tippecanoe is unnecessary. It is fought only because Harrison needs it to further his own ambitions. For while the Governor is writing to Washington branding the Prophet as an aggressor (“I can assure you Sir that there is not an Indian … that does not know and acknowledge when asked that he is determined to attack us and wonder at our forbearance”), Tecumseh is warning his brother that he must on no account be goaded into battle.

Harrison means to goad him, but Washington, in the person of Dr. Eustis, the Secretary of War, equivocates. “I have been particularly instructed by the President,” the Secretary writes, “to communicate to your excellency his earnest desire that peace may, if possible, be preserved among the Indians, and that to this end every proper measure be adopted. By this it is not intended … that the banditti under the prophet should not be attacked and vanquished, provided such a measure should be rendered absolutely necessary.”

That is good enough for Harrison. He shores up his position with a series of letters making it clear that such measures
are
absolutely necessary. As soon as Tecumseh is safely out of the way, he informs Eustis that he intends in September to move up to the upper line of the New Purchase (the territory ceded at Fort Wayne) with two companies of regulars, fourteen or fifteen companies of militia, and two troops of dragoons, the latter consisting of about one hundred men. Harrison makes it seem that this is purely a precautionary measure. But “should circumstances render it necessary to break up the Prophet’s establishment by force,” well then, he adds—preparing Eustis for the inevitable—he can easily get more men to fight, as well as plenty of mounted volunteers from Kentucky, where Indian fighting is a glorious tradition.

The volunteers, in fact, flock to Vincennes. The best known is Joseph Daviess, one of Kentucky’s most eloquent lawyers, a brilliant
orator, a popular hero, and a mild eccentric, notorious both for his prosecution of Aaron Burr and for his addiction to colourful and often startling costumes. He has a habit of appearing in court wearing a coonskin cap and deerskin leggings and carrying a hunting rifle. In one memorable appearance before the Supreme Court in Washington (the first for any western lawyer) he turned up in ripped corduroy trousers, a threadbare overcoat, and a pair of dilapidated and muddy shoes, and proceeded to down a quantity of bread and cheese while his opponent tried to marshall his case. Now he is hot to do battle in any capacity under the leadership of his hero, Harrison.

“I make free to tell you,” he declares, “that I have imagined there were two men in the west who had military talents: And you sir, were the first of the two.… I go as a volunteer, leaving to you sir, to dispose of me as you choose.…” He arrives along with some sixty others from his state—former army men and Indian fighters—a commanding figure, thirty-seven years old, resplendent in the uniform of the Kentucky mounted volunteers, the plumes in his hat accentuating his six-foot stature. To one eyewitness, it seems “nothing could be more magnificent. He was the very model of a cavalry officer.… With his tall, muscular form and face of strong masculine beauty, he would have been the pride of any army, and the thunderbolt of a battlefield.”

Harrison and the Indians are moving at cross purposes. On September 25, the Prophet sends off runners from his village on the Tippecanoe with a message of peace for Harrison. At ten o’clock the following morning, the Governor dispatches his troops on his “demonstration of force.” They move up the Wabash in shallow flatboats, the regulars in brass-buttoned tailcoats and stove-pipe hats, the citizen soldiers of the militia in deerskin jackets and bearskin caps. When they reach the disputed territory, they build a blockhouse—Fort Harrison—the eloquent Daviess, now a major, chosen to smash a bottle over the new logs. There is much sickness, especially among the regulars, unused to frontier conditions, forced to wade up the Wabash in their skin-tight pantaloons. Shortly, however, the force is augmented by another two hundred and fifty regular soldiers of
the 4th U.S. Infantry. On October 28 Harrison leaves the new fort and pushes on toward Prophet’s Town at the head of one thousand men—a commanding figure in a fringed calico shirt and a beaver hat into which he has jauntily stuck an ostrich feather.

The Wabash

He moves cautiously, expecting Indians behind every tree, suspicious of ambush. Nothing. At two-thirty on the afternoon of November 6, some dozen miles from his objective, he reaches a small wood, halts, draws up his force in battle order, sends scouts forward. There are Indians just ahead, flitting through the trees, but they will not speak to the interpreters.

Back comes Major Daviess, eager for battle, urging an immediate attack against the insolent savages. Why is Harrison vacillating? Have the troops come this far for nothing? The Governor hesitates, mindful of Washington’s order that he must try for a peaceful settlement; then, with his men murmuring their eagerness, moves on, yielding “to what appeared to be the general wish.” It matters to no one that Prophet’s Town is on land that has never been ceded to the United States.

Three Indians approach. Harrison recognizes one: Chief White Horse, principal counsellor to the Prophet. They are conciliatory. They have been trying to reach Harrison, but the messengers have been looking for him on the south side of the river; Harrison has taken the north bank. He assures them that all he seeks is a proper camping ground and they agree to parley on the morrow.

As the town comes into view, Harrison raises his field glass and through it observes the inhabitants running about in apparent terror and confusion behind a breastwork of logs. After some reconnoitring he camps his army about a mile to the northwest among the leafless oaks on a triangle of ground a few feet above the marshy prairie. Here, in the chill of the night, the men slumber, or try to (some have no blankets), in the warmth of huge fires, their loaded guns beside them, bayonets fixed, their coats covering the musket locks to keep them dry. Harrison has dug no trenches, erected no stakes because, he claims later, he has not enough axes.

What are the Indians thinking and planning? No one knows or will ever know, for most of the accounts of the battle come from white men. Those Indian accounts that do exist are second hand and contradictory, filtered through white reports.

Some things are fairly certain: the Indians, not trusting Harrison, expect him to attack and are determined to strike first; the battle, when it comes, is started accidentally when neither side is prepared; and of the several tribes represented at Prophet’s Town it is the Winnebago and the Potawatomi and not the Shawnee who are the fiercest in wanting to disobey Tecumseh’s orders not to fight.

It is four o’clock, the night still dark and overcast, a light rain rustling the bushes. On the left flank, directly in front of Captain Robert Barton’s infantry company, a shivering picket, Private William Brigham, on his knees, his musket on charge, nervously tries to pierce the gloom. He cannot see farther than three feet. Suddenly—footsteps. Brigham raises his musket and almost shoots his fellow picket, William Brown, who has imprudently left his own post in a state of near terror, certain that Indians are lurking in the bushes ahead. His instinct is to flee at once.

“Brigham,” he whispers, “let us fire and run …”

But Brigham fears a false alarm.

Suddenly something swishes past them. An arrow? Terrified, they turn and dash back toward the camp. Beside them a rifle barks.
Another sentry, Stephen Mars, has fired at something moving in the gloom and also dashed toward safety.

The Battle of Tippecanoe

In Tent No. 1, Sergeant Montgomery Orr springs awake. Somebody has just rushed past, touching the corner of his tent. He jogs his corporal, David Thompson, awake. Something strikes the tent. Thompson leaps up, seizes his gun as four shots ring out accompanied by a high screaming and yelling. The corporal tumbles back upon the sergeant.

“Corporal Thompson, for God’s sake don’t give back!” cries Orr, then realizes he is talking to a dead man. He plunges out of the tent, gets a confused impression of a melee—soldiers and Indians firing at each other, Captain Barton trying vainly to form up his men.

Harrison is pulling on his boots when he hears a cacophony of yells and a burst of musketry. One of his officers and two of his men have already been tomahawked and scalped. He calls for his terrified black servant, George, to bring up his favourite mount—a pale grey mare. The boy cannot find her, so Harrison borrows another officer’s horse—a black one—and rides into confusion. His men, perfect silhouettes in front of the fires, are falling about him. On the left, Barton’s company is already badly mauled. Another has broken. When one of his colonels, mounted on a pale grey mare similar to his missing animal, tumbles to the ground, dead from an Indian
musket ball, Harrison realizes that the Indians have mistaken the dead man for himself. An aide rides out on a similar horse; Harrison shoos him back for a black one.

Harrison moves swiftly to reinforce his shattered flank, rides from point to point trying to control the battle. After it is over he will write a careful account, describing the action as if it were a set piece, reconstructing all the movements, making them sound like parade-ground manoeuvres. But at this moment, with the blackened Indians shrieking, the musket fire deafening, the steam rising from fires quickly doused, the clouds of black gun smoke adding to the general overcast, it is impossible for anyone to tell exactly what is happening.

As in every battle, there are moments of horror and moments of heroism.

The Indians are acting in a most un-Indian-like fashion, responding with considerable discipline to signals made by the rattling of deer horns, firing a volley, retreating out of range to reload, advancing again. As Harrison approaches Captain Spier Spencer’s company of Kentuckians, known as Yellow Jackets, on the right flank, he can hear the veteran Spencer crying, “Close up, men! Steady! Hold the line!” The Indians have mounted a third attack, so fierce that the balls are shredding the bark from the trees. One strikes Spencer in the head. He continues to shout. Another tears into his thigh, and then another. He calls out for help, and two men rush over, raise him up just as another ball penetrates his body, killing him.

Harrison rides up, sees young John Tipton sighting down a barrel.

“Where’s your captain?”

“Dead, sir!”

“Your first-lieutenant?”

“Dead, sir!”

“Your second-lieutenant?”

“Dead, sir!”

“Your ensign?”

“Here, sir!”

Harrison searches about for reinforcements, sees Robb’s militia company faltering, rallies them in support of the Yellow Jackets, braces the flank with a company of regulars. A close friend, Thomas Randolph, falls, mortally wounded. Harrison dismounts, bends over his friend, asks if there is anything he can do. Nothing, gasps Randolph, except to look after his child. Harrison keeps that promise.

The impetuous Major Daviess, in charge of the dragoons, is chafing at the rear. He wants to roar into action, but Harrison is holding him back:

“Tell Major Daviess to be patient, he will have an honourable station before the battle is over.”

Daviess cannot stand the inaction; he presses Harrison again, gets the same reply, continues to nag. At last the Governor gives in:

“Tell Major Daviess he has heard my opinion twice; he may now use his own discretion.”

Daviess has spotted Indians lurking behind some scattered logs seventy-five yards away. Gathering a force of twenty men, he prepares to charge the foe. He has dressed with his customary panache—an unmistakable target, six feet tall, in a white blanket coat that stands out starkly in the gloom. As he leads his men toward the enemy, three balls pierce his body. “I am a dead man,” cries Jo Daviess. His followers carry him to the cover of a sycamore tree as the Indians vanish. He has not long to live. “Unfortunately, the Major’s gallantry determined him to execute the order with a smaller force than was sufficient,” Harrison comments, a little dryly, in his report of the action.