Colonel Richard England, commanding officer at His Majesty’s Fort Detroit, was a vision of military power in his long red coat, white lace ruffled shirt, and long, black, highly polished boots, with a sword belt wrapped around his slim, athletic waist. Blue Jacket suspected that was exactly the image he intended to convey in this his first meeting with the leadership of his traditional allies, the Shawnee, in his long fight against what had become his traditional enemy, the Americans.
The colonel’s old friend, the British Indian Agent for Upper Canada Alexander McKee, stood with him. Blue Jacket knew that McKee was, like himself, a turncoat American, and that McKee had been so disgusted by American colonial policy toward the Indians of the Ohio River drainage that in 1778 he defected to the British. McKee, who had been a friend to Pucksinwah, was fluent in Shawnee and married to a Shawnee. He could be trusted. It was he who had set up this meeting between the new commander and himself, Catahecassa, and Tecumseh.
For Blue Jacket and the Shawnee, this meeting was about one simple question: Could they count on British support against the latest American army being sent to crush them?
“General Anthony Wayne—his nom de guerre is ‘Mad Anthony,’ you know,” Colonel England intoned in a high, almost squeaky voice, seemingly odd coming from a man so tall and well proportioned. England’s face took on a distant look for a moment. “Yes, I know him. During the Revolution, we held this ‘impregnable’ little fort up on a cliff called Stony Point. I say impregnable cautiously because one night, almost moonless, Wayne and no more than two hundred of his men climbed that cliff. They carried muskets but they didn’t fire them, you know. Just put bayonets on them and climbed. Took us by surprise. Also took almost five hundred of us prisoner.” His words and self-deprecating smile let slip that he admired Wayne’s audacity. “He is very good, you know. Perhaps the best the Americans have. But I’d heard he became a farmer in Georgia. Either he failed at that or duty has called him again.” England’s laugh came out as a giggle. “He is an odd combination of skills, you know. He prepares well and slowly, but when he attacks he is audacious. That’s where the ‘Mad Anthony’ comes from, you know. When he comes, he will be well planned and prepared and then he will come in a rush.”
“And when this madman attacks, where will the British be?” Blue Jacket asked in English, the words halting, belying the fact that he was speaking in his native tongue.
“Ever has King George, your Great Father, been a friend to the Shawnee.” England paced slowly before the fireplace that was built into the wall behind his desk, his high nasal tone seeming to echo off the stone chimney and mantel. “And your Great Father continues to be, you know.” England stopped pacing, looked directly at each of the three before he spoke again. “I have been instructed to give you such aid as you need and I am able.”
McKee spoke softly in Shawnee, translating England’s words for the benefit of Catahecassa. When McKee finished, Catahecassa spoke directly to England, staring unblinking, his thin hatchet-like face immobile, as McKee translated. “We need supplies, guns, and ammunition, and we need your red-coated troops.” It was the most direct statement Blue Jacket had ever heard Catahecassa make.
England said nothing for a full minute, watching smoke from the poorly drafting chimney play in the firelight. “You will have supplies, guns, and ammunition, but there are issues regarding our regular troops. Just eleven years ago your Great Father signed a treaty of peace with the Thirteen Fires. Sending our regular troops against their regular troops would be an act of war, and one I cannot commit without direct order. An order which, in the end, would have to come from the Great Father himself. But there are other things I can do.”
After McKee translated, Blue Jacket addressed the Indian agent. “I talk with the Colonel in English.” He then said, “You continue to translate, Alexander. Catahecassa can speak anytime if I’ve forgotten anything.”
When McKee translated, Catahecassa said nothing.
“Colonel, what can you do for us?” Blue Jacket said.
England stared out the glass window from his office with its view onto Fort Detroit’s parade ground. “Many things, Blue Jacket. Many things. You see those non-uniformed troops drilling on the parade ground?” He nodded toward the window. “They are not my troops but local militia. They fight just as well in war paint and feathers as they do in boots and flannel shirts.” The colonel smiled, but the Shawnee faces remained impassive.
“And I can defend you,” England added.
“How?” Blue Jacket asked.
“I cannot send troops to you, but you can come to me if you need me.” England looked at them, but none spoke or gave a look of understanding so England continued. “The year you fought St. Clair, Sir John Graves Simcoe, the lieutenant governor of Upper Canada, built a fort at the falls on the Maumee, Fort Miami.”
They all knew it and indicated so without speaking.
“If you are willing to let Wayne come to you and pick a place near there to fight him, I have been authorized to put extra troops and more guns at that fort. Not only can we support you from there, but if required you can come back under the cover of those guns. That is not sending our regulars to fight America’s regulars, you see. That is simply offering protection to our friends.”
It took half a minute for McKee to catch up in translation, but when he was done the scowl disappeared from Catahecassa’s face.
* * * *
The three rode slowly south along the Maumee River, the summer day so lovely that even old Catahecassa seemed in good spirits. They had just passed the falls on the Maumee with Fort Miami still visible behind them. It was Catahecassa who spoke what was on all their minds. “If we are to accept the colonel’s offer of protection, should it be required, we will have to pick a place near here to fight Wayne.”
“It is an easy decision for me,” Blue Jacket responded. “I would hope we don’t have to fall back to the protection of British guns, but staying this far north makes it much easier for them to get us both supplies and the militia England promised. And while we hear Wayne is better than St. Clair or Harmar, we will probably be weaker.”
“How?” asked Tecumseh.
“I think you know the answer, Brother. The western Potawatomi under your friend Chaubenee will stay with us, but I think their northern villages will not. And I fear the Chippewa are weary of war as well.”
There was silence. Tecumseh held his face up to the sun, enjoying the warmth before he again addressed Blue Jacket. “In the last six years, you have destroyed both armies the Thirteen Fires have sent against us. You did not merely defeat them, you destroyed them. But it is as our brother Chiksika said, ‘When one white is killed, three or four others step up to take his place.’ I understand why they are weary, but we, and they, have one simple choice: fight and win, or cease to exist as a people. We must convince them.”
Blue Jacket nodded his head in agreement. “And bringing the fight north makes it easier not only for the British to help but for the northern Potawatomi and the Chippewa to join.” Then he stopped his horse entirely, and when Catahecassa did the same, Blue Jacket stared directly into the old man’s close-set hunter’s eyes. “So, yes, Catahecassa, my decision as war chief is easy. Fighting here has advantages. It increases our chance of winning. But that is just a military answer. Your decision is much harder. Will we, for the sake of that advantage, open every Shawnee village from the Spaylaywitheepi to here, including Kekionga, to Wayne’s predations?”
Catahecassa turned his eyes away from Blue Jacket and nudged his horse forward. He did not speak but simply rode south across the grassland that spread out for the next three miles. They rode in silence, waiting for Catahecassa to wrestle with what may well have been the most consequential decision of his life. As they approached the place where the trail entered a small forest, they could see that many full-grown hardwoods had been thrown down, as though stepped on by giants from the sky.
Just before they entered the foreboding dark of the destroyed forest, Catahecassa stopped and turned to face both men. “Blue Jacket, you and your lieutenants prepare for war. I will start the work of moving all our villages and families north to Detroit or across the river into Canada. My heart and my mind tell me that if Wayne defeats us, the Shawnee are finished as a force to stop the Americans. If we do not win again, this land”—the old chief gestured with his arm swung in a wide circle—“will be American and the Shawnee will either become Americans or perish from the face of the earth. This last time I will fight and give you whatever you say you need to win. This last time.” Then he turned again and entered the darkness.
It took them no more than ten minutes to ride through the forest before the land once again opened into prairie. Blue Jacket stopped and looked back. The others followed his gaze. “Wayne will come with cannon, and they will fire those deadly shells that open into dozens of musket balls. I think these fallen timbers will provide great concealment if not much cover for our warriors against such weapons. This is where I will fight Mad Anthony Wayne’s army.”
* * * *
A few weeks later, two thousand Indians lay hidden among the half-mile-wide section of fallen timbers. A mile in front of them, the flags of the Shemanese army waved proudly in the early morning breeze. They were coming. Blue Jacket stood with his long brass telescope, a gift of Richard England, propped across the trunk of one of the downed trees. He studied the disposition of the forty-six hundred soldiers he knew General Wayne commanded. His scouts had watched them for a month as they slowly and with great caution made their way up from Cincinnati. Wayne’s army had always kept out scouts and flankers; each evening of the march they had constructed a strong redoubt around their encampment; when they stopped for more than a day’s rest, they always constructed a fort of some kind. They had never given Blue Jacket an opportunity to surprise them, but he had learned the exact makeup of Wayne’s army. He had twenty-two hundred regulars, sixteen hundred volunteers on foot, and eight hundred mounted Kentuckian volunteers in his force. He also had cannons.
Wayne would come today, and they knew it. Blue Jacket’s army had fasted for the last two days, knowing when the enemy would arrive. What he now wanted to know was how Wayne would come at him. But he could see nothing in his telescope that gave a clue. Wayne’s entire army stood spread out, regiment by regiment, across the grass in front of him. The guns were in the center and the cavalry was massed on Wayne’s left, but none showed any signs of movement.
He handed the scope to Tecumseh. “Tell me what you see.”
Tecumseh lay the telescope on the log in front of him and scanned Wayne’s front. He started his scan on his right and saw eight hundred horsemen, but not one was mounted. Next were regiments of twenty-two hundred regulars lined up as though for a parade, but none at attention or even moving. They just seemed to be standing and talking. And then there he was. It had to be Wayne, a short and somewhat stubby man with a brilliant and beautiful uniform topped with an antique tricornered hat set so low that it almost covered his right eye.
Standing next to Wayne was a young, slim officer with a face so long and thin it made Catahecassa’s look full. The nose was razor thin, its length accentuated by a forehead very high in one so young. The instant Tecumseh saw him, he shivered so hard he lost his grip on the telescope and dropped it.
“You all right?”
Before he answered Tecumseh reached to his throat and gripped his opawaka. He held it firmly for a moment while Blue Jacket stared at him before he recovered the telescope. “I’m fine,” he intoned very softly.
Pointing the telescope back to Wayne, Tecumseh got his second shock of the day. Standing next to the young lieutenant with the high forehead and the tomahawk-thin face stood his nephew, Spemica Lawba. He handed the glass back to Blue Jacket. “I do not believe they will come today.”
“Why not?” Blue Jacket asked.
“Johnny Logan is with them. He will have told them our habit of fasting for two days before combat. I’m also guessing, shrewd as we hear Wayne is, he will hold us in place to let us starve—weaken a day or two.”
* * * *
In the predawn hours of the next day, McKee brought aid to Blue Jacket and his army. On the grass behind the fallen timbers he had set up a dozen long tables, and on each were cauldrons of thin hot soup made mostly of beef broth as well as mugs of whiskey. “A gift from Colonel England,” he said. “The soup is thin enough it won’t foul your gut but will fill you and give you strength.” And with a smile he added, “So will the whiskey.”
The triplets—Tensk, Kumskaka, Sauwaseekau—had all come to Fallen Timbers and were with Tecumseh on Blue Jacket’s right flank. In the stark black of predawn Blue Jacket had awakened all three and directed them. “The British have brought hot soup and whiskey and are passing it out. You’ll find them through the trees behind us, about a quarter of a mile. McKee is right. We need strength. Wayne has tried to trick us into weakness. Broth will provide it without much risk. Go now but be back before the sky in the east is grey.”
The three scrambled up from their places and scurried off in the dark.
Tecumseh shouted behind them, “Tensk, easy on the whiskey!”
Thirty minutes later Kumskaka and Sauwaseekau were back, awake and stronger.
“Where is your brother?” Blue Jacket, standing next to Tecumseh, demanded.
“He stayed for just one more whiskey,” Kumskaka responded. He kept his head down, not willing to meet the look in either of his older brothers’ eyes.
Tecumseh did not like it, but this was not the time for family discord. Tensk would be here either sober or drunk. They would deal with that problem then.
Blue Jacket had words of direction for the other two. “Wayne will come today. I think he will come as soon as there is enough light for his marksmen to see. And he will fire his cannons before that. When the cannonading starts, stay low and behind these trees. They will fire the shells that open into dozens of musket balls. The trees will offer cover for that. Only when it stops will his soldiers come. So as soon as the cannons stop, come to someplace where you can see his soldiers coming and can shoot them. Do you understand?”
Sauwaseekau looked boldly at his older brother. “Do not fear for us. We will make our names mentioned by the Shawnee today.”
Blue Jacket was warmed by the boldness of the shyest and most reclusive of his brothers. “One last thing. You two fight together today. Never far apart. And do not—do not I repeat—stop to scalp your victims. You can get their hair later. To stop on a battlefield is to make an easy target of yourself. Move. Be a difficult target.” With that he tousled the hair of each and went off to duties larger than his family.
The cannonade started at five thirty, but they were wrong. Wayne was not firing grapeshot. He was firing solid shot—iron balls six fingers in diameter. They did not spread out like grapeshot, but they did penetrate the fallen trees to turn cover into mere concealment. The trees offered Blue Jacket’s warriors no protection. And it wasn’t just the cannon balls that were lethal. As the trees were struck, the splinters that flew from the dead, dried trees became lances that penetrated flesh with ease.
The bombardment stopped by full light. As soon as it did, Wayne’s mounted Kentuckians came whooping and screaming onto Blue Jacket’s right—the flank he had directed Tecumseh to lead. Blue Jacket was certain that Tecumseh’s warriors knew what to do. But he watched this first action closely just the same. Each of Tecumseh’s warriors lay behind a log or stood behind a tree but all to the front, none deep in the woods. They did not rush out. They calmly took aim at a rider or horse coming toward them. Only when the target was within one hundred yards did they fire. The first blast was a bit too soon, the targets a bit too far, eyes not yet adjusted to the light, and fingers still stiff from the night’s cold. Of the onrushing eight hundred, only a few riders were knocked off their horses and a few more horses went down. All the Indians had fired at once, and by the time they reloaded, the charging cavalry was less than fifty yards distant. More went down with the second blast, and the frightened horsemen seemed to rein in. The speed of the rush slowed almost to a stop, and horses, both with riders and without, started to mill in aimless circles.
A war cry was whooped, followed instantly by others, and the Indians rushed from cover to slaughter their directionless prey. Slowly the cavalry got sense of their dilemma and stopped milling and started running back the way they’d come, with five hundred Indians led by Tecumseh in terrible pursuit. All of the Indians on the right wing were racing onto the morning prairie with Tecumseh and the fastest warriors almost on the slowest of the horsemen.
And then Tecumseh seemed to see it. The woods that covered Wayne’s left flank, his right, were alive with uniformed soldiers whose fire would cut them all down in the open. “GO BACK,” he screamed loud enough to be heard over the racing hooves and hearts. “It is a trap.” And he turned on his heels, screaming, and raced back to the cover of the fallen timber, pushing all his warriors before him.
Blue Jacket could see it was either the slowness of Wayne’s soldiers to close the trap or the quickness of Tecumseh’s thought that saved the Indians from disaster. They only lost five. All of them had either been wounded as Wayne’s cavalry feigned retreat or twisted an ankle in the chase—injuries that made them too slow to return and so they did not. But there was no disaster. Only the fizzle of Wayne’s first ploy of the day.
And now Wayne’s strategy became his tactical might. His army came on—straight at Blue Jacket. Having no big guns to sweep the field, Blue Jacket’s two thousand Indians used instead steady fire with their muskets to pick off the advancing infantry. The soldiers did not run forward as the Indians would have. They marched in formed regimental lines. As one soldier dropped, the man behind would step forward. And they kept coming all across Blue Jacket’s front, the Indians in cover reducing their numbers as they did.
When the lead regiments got within thirty yards of the fallen timbers they finally dropped formation and started to run straight toward their opponents. They fired once and did not stop to reload. They had bayonets fixed and came straight in one screaming, charging mass. Two thousand Indians each got off one last shot and then switched to hand weapons. All along the front, the overwhelming mass of soldiers slowly pushed forward, the Indians in slow, steady retreat. Blue Jacket’s warriors became more frantic as they neared the end of the wood. If they were pushed out of the cover of the fallen timbers, they would be open targets on the prairie.
With only one hundred yards of cover left, Blue Jacket sent runners to the leaders on his left and right. “Retreat now and swiftly! We will run under the guns of Fort Miami.”
* * * *
Blue Jacket’s move across the three miles of prairie took less than an hour. He was constantly last ensuring the covering fire of an orderly retreat. He could see Tecumseh moving slowly as well, his head moving constantly in search. Blue Jacket presumed it was a constant search for their brothers. Not once did he see any of the triplets. He’d not seen Tensk since he went for soup and whiskey and not seen Sauwaseekau or Kumskaka since the battle started. Blue Jacket arrived at Fort Miami to find almost one thousand warriors and some fifty Canadian militia dressed as Indian, milling before the closed gates. Blue Jacket saw Chaubenee pounding on the gate with the flat of his palm, demanding to be let in. He forced his way through the crowd and stood next to Chaubenee’s wide shoulders.
“Will they not let you in?” Blue Jacket demanded of him.
Despite the chaos and conditions, Chaubenee could not help but smile. “Bastards have the bolt thrown and seem unwilling to open up.”
“Hoist me up,” Blue Jacket commanded. “I want to stand on your shoulders.”
Chaubenee grabbed him around the waist and pressed him upward almost as though lifting a doll.
“Brothers,” he screamed at the top of his lungs, perched precariously atop his big friend. “Be silent so I can talk to the British and get these gates open.”
The men grew quiet, and Blue Jacket moved his feet around Chaubenee’s huge shoulders to turn facing the fort. Chaubenee seemed indifferent to the load.
Blue Jacket looked straight up at the British redcoat staring down from the fighting platform above the gate. “Who is in charge here?”
In a rich brogue the redcoat responded, “Aye, t’would be Major William Campbell.”
“Get him. Tell him I have orders from Colonel England.”
The florid Irish face disappeared and Blue Jacket hopped down. Tecumseh had pushed through the crowd and was now standing beside him.
At that moment an aperture about six fingers square and at eye height opened in the gate. The face behind it showed nothing but narrow brown eyes and enough of a face to suggest the speaker was of unyielding temperament. The two men stood less than three feet apart but divided by eight fingers of log and a universe of society.
“Are you Major Campbell?”
“I am.”
“I am Blue Jacket. I speak for the British allies who stand before you. Colonel England has offered us aid and promised us the protection of the fort should we need it. We do.”
“I have no order to let you in.”
“Colonel England committed to it.”
“I have only one order from Colonel England in this regard. I am ordered to ‘safeguard the integrity of the fort.’ Allowing in one thousand warriors, being pursued by the army of a nation with which my country is not at war, will not, in my opinion, promote fulfillment of that order.”
And then as an afterthought the Major added, “You may stand in the shelter of my guns if you wish. I will not fire on you. But neither will I fire on whatever force pursues you.”
The aperture slid closed.
* * * *
Blue Jacket sat, face cradled in his palms, next to Tecumseh. Chaubenee huddled on the other side of a small fire, small enough that the flame would not give away their location. They were somber as were the other one hundred men in the grove.
“What will happen now?” Chaubenee asked without looking up.
“Wayne controls everything from the river to the Lakes. But we will fight.” Tecumseh’s face showed a determination that had not left him. “We must. We have no choice.”
Blue Jacket raised his face from his hands and looked into his younger brother’s eyes.
“Your eyes, Brother, are full of pain and sadness. We have won before and we will win again.”
“Tecumseh, neither you nor I have that decision to make. And we both heard Catahecassa say this was his last fight.”
Tecumseh’s eyes glowed angry energy. “He is an old man and very tired. There is fight left in us.”
Blue Jacket shook his head slowly. “He is an old man and tired who speaks for the Shawnee nation.”
There was a muted shout on the far side off the grove and both looked up. In the dark they could see horsemen riding in at a pace that suggested both horses and riders were worn to exhaustion.
“That is Wasegoboah’s mare.” Blue Jacket, weary as he was, still rose in one fluid motion and walked toward the riders. “Come, Wasegoboah, we have meat and whiskey. Sit with us.”
The exhausted leader slid off his horse and threw his arms around Blue Jacket, almost weeping. “I am so sorry about your brothers,” he said.
Blue Jacket pulled back and straight up, startled. “What about them?”
“You don’t know?”
“Know what?”
“Sauwaseekau and Kumskaka are dead.”
“How?” Blue Jacket almost stammered.
“Bravely, facing their enemies. It was before the dawn, during the cannonading. They were sheltered together behind the same tree. A cannonball hit the trunk. It shattered in splinters. I don’t think either felt a thing.”
Blue Jacket turned, defeat showing in his posture for the first time, and shuffled back to his fire. “Sauwaseekau and Kumskaka are dead.”
“And what of Tensk?” Chaubenee asked.
“I know nothing of him.”
Tecumseh sat motionless, speechless and stunned, so Chaubenee took the lead. “Sit down, Blue Jacket, and join your brother in sorrow.”
The war chief did and they all sat in silence. It was ten minutes before anyone spoke and then it was Tecumseh.
Looking at Blue Jacket, he asked, “Wayne had a young lieutenant with him. Man with a hatchet face and balding early. Do you know his name?”
“Yes, I do. It is Harrison. William Henry Harrison. Why do you ask?”
“Because he is a deadlier enemy than Wayne.”
“How can you know that, Tecumseh?” Chaubenee asked.
Tecumseh looked up and with a small, sad smile on his face said, “Remember, my brother, I have sight.”
There was a shuffling step at the edge of the fire and all three looked up. It was Tensk.
“Where have you been, Brother?” Blue Jacket asked.
“Drunk.”