Pierre Berton's War of 1812 by Pierre Berton Read Free Book Online

will be driven across the Mississippi and the whole of its lands confiscated.
    It all fits neatly with Harrison’s own ambitions, which include statehood for Indiana. To become a state the territory needs a population of at least sixty thousand, and there are fewer than half that number living in small settlements connected by trails cut through the jungle of the forest. To attract more people, Harrison requires the lure of cheap land. The Indians have the land. The Governor must secure it for the settlers, one way or another.
    The blood rises to Harrison’s cheek once more when he recalls how he has been bested by that one-eyed savage known as the Shawnee Prophet. The Prophet has sprung from nowhere and in two years has become more notorious than any other Indian. He seems to have invented a new religion, one tenet of which is the heresy, to the whites, that all Indian lands are held in common and cannot be divided, sold, or bartered away. The ritual includes much mumbo-jumbo—shaking, jerking, and dancing about (derived perhaps from the white sect known as the Shakers, who have helped spark a religious revival on the frontier). It is not confined to any particular tribe—indeed, it has split some tribes—but appears to attract the younger braves who are acting in defiance of their elders. To Harrison, this so-called Prophet is an imposter and a fool who “speaks not the words of the Great Spirit but those of the devil and of the British agents.” Harrison sees British agents everywhere, in every wigwam, behind every bush, plotting and conniving.
    Yet even Harrison must concede that the Prophet is not quite a fool, for on one memorable occasion he has fooled Harrison, who thought to discredit him by demanding that he produce a miracle.
    “Who is this pretended prophet who dares to speak in the name of the Great Creator?” the Governor asked, in a message to the Delaware. “Examine him.… Demand of him some proof … somemiracles.… If he is really a prophet, ask him to cause the sun to stand still, the moon to alter its course, the rivers to cease to flow.… No longer be imposed on by the arts of an imposter.…”
    To which the Prophet replied, blandly, that he would accept the challenge and cause the sun to darken. He even named the date and the time—11:32 in the forenoon of June 16, 1806.
    The story is told and retold. How the Prophet sent word to Indians for leagues around to assemble on June 16; how the day dawned clear; and how, an hour before the appointed time, the Prophet, gowned in flowing robes, stepped from his wigwam into the circle of onlookers and at exactly 11:32 pointed his finger at the sun.
    Slowly the sky darkens; the dark shadow of the moon crosses the solar face; a murmur rises from the assembly. The Prophet waits, then calls out to the Great Spirit to remove his hand from the source of all light. The call is heeded. Pandemonium!
    It is too much. Harrison, the soldier-scholar-statesman, outsmarted by an aborigine who managed to learn in advance the date of a solar eclipse! The long, moody features grow moodier. He will continue to call the Prophet a fool, but he knows that he is up against a force beyond his power to control. “This business must be stopped,” he tells the head men of the Shawnee. “I will no longer suffer it.” But he will have to suffer it, for the chiefs themselves cannot control the Prophet; he has put some of them in fear of their lives. When several of the older Delaware chiefs refused to go along with the new religion, the Prophet had them murdered. His messengers have carried his words to all tribes within a radius of six hundred miles, and the message is always the same: follow me; rid yourself of your old leaders; and (this is Harrison’s real concern) don’t give up the land.
    The Prophet’s land policy collides with Harrison’s ambition. The tall slender governor with the sombre face and the brooding eyes is no frontier bumpkin or upstart party hack