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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 Monstrosity.

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

border of Ohio, on lands already ceded to the United States. Meanwhile Tecumseh traveled from tribe to tribe, spreading everywhere his brother's fame. While the Prophet's imme diate followers, engrossed in their religious exercises, were often on the verge of starvation, it was reported, and believed at a distance, that he could make pumpkins as big as a wigwam spring out of the ground at a single word, along with stalks of corn, of which a single ear would suffice to feed a dozen men. Denounced by the chiefs of their own and the neighboring tribes as impostors, they retorted by charges of subserviency to the whites, and even of witchcraft, a very terrible accusation among the Indians, under which they procured the death of two or three hostile Delaware Chiefs. It was, however, among the more remote tribes that the greater part of their convicts were obtained; and this, perhaps, was one reason why the Prophet, in the summer of 1808, removed his village to the Tippecanoe, a northern branch of the Upper Wabash, a spot belonging to the Miamis and Delawares, but which he occupied in spite of their opposition. At this new village, disciples and spectators flocking in from all sides, the Prophet continued to celebrate his appointed seasons of fasting and exhortations: religious exercises, which were intermingled with or followed by warlike sports, such as shooting with bows, by which the rifle was to be superseded, and wielding the stone tomahawk or war-club, ancient Indian weapons, before the hatchet was known.

These military exercises, and an alleged secret intercourse with the British traders and agents, had drawn upon the Prophet and his brother the suspicions of Harrison, governor of the Indiana Territory, and superintendent of Indian affairs; but these suspicions were, in a great measure, dispelled by a visit which the Prophet paid to Vincennes, in which he assumed the character of a warm friend of peace, his sole object being, as he declared, to reform the Indians, and especially to put a stop to the use of whisky. Not long after this visit, Harrison held a treaty at Fort Wayne with the Delawares, Potawatomies, Miamis, Kickapoos, Weas, and Eel River Indians, at which, in consideration of annuities amounting to $2350, and of presents in hand to the value of $8200, he obtained a cession of lands extending up the Wabash above Terre Haute, and including the middle waters

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