The Washburn times. [volume] (Washburn, Wis.) 1896-1976, 1917-01-18


he was governor of the Indiana terri
tory. At thirty, master Of an empire
of 15O,O00,000 acres, ruler over prov
ince twice as large as England and
Ireland, larger indeed, than all of
France.
Within the ten years following his
appointment as governor, the negotia-
tor, with absolute power, of treaties
| which added to the new nation fifty
millions of acres, domain large as
England and Scotland combined. At
thirty-One, holding in his hand for five
| months the destinies of a tract of
100000 square miles, an imperial
province greater than any other one
man ever controlled in the history Of
the United States, before or since
Opposed to him the great protago-
mist of the tragic drama of the savage,
TecumSeh. Ruler of five Indian tribes,
master mind of the great Indian con-
federacy of another score of tribes.
| Chief Of 5000 warriors, ranging over
100000 miles of territory.
Harrison had policed the same terri
tory with exactly twenty backwoods-
men. Twenty men to guard an empire.
They threaded their ways through
the wilderness from st. Louis to De
troit. They reported to him at Vim
cenneS.
On this enormous. stage the curtain
is about to be lifted on the titanic duel
| of the West.
The group of men, lolling in the
! shadows by the Jefferson house, began
to speak of the latest dispatches from
the East. News had just come that
the younger Wellesley had driven Mas
| Sena'S French columns off the field of
FuenteS-de-Onoro, adding to the lau-
relS gained at Talavera and BusacO.
| Napoleon was beginning to wonder
at this Englishman. The Little Corpo-
raj himself was snarling at the Rus
sian bear; the White Gar was dis
obeying his commands to starve the
trade of England by closing the ports
of the Continent. England, driven to
| desperation, was Selling American sea-
men On the preteXt that they were
Englishmen, and forcing them to serve
against the French; and still the gov
eminent at Washington kept up it's
endless attempts to stop these insults
by words, words, words.
The little group of Westerners I'M
der the stars of the wilderness felt
themselves hOpelessly remote from Me
world of leadership; their affairs
seemed petty and narrow. David Lar
renee alone, gazing silently over the
broad prairies, misty under the newly
risen moon, and remembering the
crowded cities of his native England,
suddenly saw how great prize the
ample lands would be to her and saw
as in vision of what mighty stature
were these backwOodsmen who held
the land for America.
The feeling of apprehension which
had been growing all summer seemed
to have reached an uncomfortable pitch.
1t was inevitable that something should
happen.
In the skies of early September a
comet cleaned, miraculous portent.
But nothing happened.
| The men and women continued their
speculations as to Tecumseh's where
| abouts and intentions. They invented
| new theories each hour and every
| other hour they turned old theories
over and over till they were thread
bare and people got tired of hearing
| them. The children ran up and down
| the lanes in the twilight, playing at
Indians until their mothers called
them indoors with q shudder at the
thought of the nearness of the Turk
ing savages who might turn those
shrieks of pretended fear into shrieks
of actual terror.
There seemed to be nothing to do
but wait.
But at noon on the seventeenth of
! September, serene and cloudless day,
lanes of Vincennes, pausing carelessly
to glance up at an eagle soaring into
the face of the sun, uttered an ejacu-
lation. A piece had been bitten out
of the suns edge, he thought. Little
by little the dark shadow gnawed its
way into the blazing disk, and the
people stopped their tasks to gaze up
ward at the growing eclipse. The
simpler French inhabitants chartered
in an agitation which was as nothing,
however, compared with the dismay of
the squalid Piankeshaw Indians, who
dragged on their harmless, wretched
existence in the village of tepees on
| the edge of town. By three o'clock
only ring of light was visible, the
center of the sun being obscured by
n smoky disk which cast the earth into
twilight darkness. The Indian vii
layers cast themselves upon the
ground in abject fright, and sacrificed
[ their dogs alive to appease the angry
Manitou.
Half-blind Elkskatawa, Prophet, had
received the answer to his prayer.
And Tecumseh, the Crouching Cougar,
was far tG the south.
/ CHAPTER XII.