University of Virginia Library

46. CHAPTER XLVI.

At the end of a week's visit we left Sugartown for Tippecanoe:
but with a very diminished party. It consisted
of one young lady only, the two young gentlemen, myself,
and other four, horses. The lady, Miss Charille, lived
twenty-five miles to the north, and within ten miles of
Tippecanoe. The young fellows accompanied out of gallantry,
and to visit with me the field.

Being in a hurry, I shall not say how, in fording and
swimming Sweet Creek, my head became dizzy, till my
horse seemed to rush side ways up the stream—and how,
spite of all practice and contrary resolutions, I felt sick and
let down my limbs into the water, while Mr. B., who came
to see us safe over, kept crying out, “Stick to your horse—
don't look at the water—look at the bank!” Nor shall I
tell how, in crossing a prairie, we saw, oh! I don't know
how many deer!—nor how we started up prairie fowls,
hens and roosters, and wished we had guns!—yes, and
saw prairie wolves too, a cantering from us over the plain!
And I shall not narrate how, in crossing one wet prairie,
we were decoyed by some pretty, rich, green grass, into a
morass!—and how Miss Charille's horse stuck fast, and
struggling, pitched her into the mire!—and how she was
more scared than hurt, and worse muddied than either! I
should like to tell about the tall grass in places, but I hasten
to say, that early in the evening we arrived at Mr. Charille's;
that we were cordially received; that we got supper in due

season, and then went to bed in western style, all in one
room: the beds here nearly touching in places, but ingeniously
separated by extemporary curtains of frocks and
petticoats, and on a side of my bed, by two pairs of modest
and respectable corduroy breeches. Fastidious folks, that
smell at essences and flourish perfumed cambric, I know
would have laid awake, curling their noses at the articles,
but sensible ones in such cases go quietly to sleep; while
men of genius are even captivated with the romance.

`Romance!—what, a curtain of corduroy thinging-bobs?'

Yes, corduroy breeches modestly hung as wall between
ladies and gentlemen, reposing amid the solemn vastness
of a prairie! If that is not romance, pray what is? To
sleep alone in a plastered chamber, with a lock on the
door, blinds to the windows, wash-stand, toilette, and so
on, is very comfortable—very civilized—but surely not very
romantic. And if strangeness is a constituent of romance,
could any fix and fixtures be contrived stranger than ours?

However, like a sensible body, I went soon and quietly
to sleep, and was quickly in spirit lost in the land of shadows
and dreams: and having a fine capacity for dreaming,
I had many visions, till at last came one of my pet dreams
—a winged dream! Then, lifted on pinions fastened some
where about me, I went sailing in the air over the wide
expanse of the meadow world; then, careering in a black
tempest and hurricane, far above the bowing and crashing
trees of the forest—and then suddenly descending near a
mighty swollen river, I was deprived in some mysterious
way of the wings! Here I lay stretched on a bed, while
the form of that venerable quadruped, my dear nameless old
friend, a little larger than life, backed up and became harnessed
to the foot of the couch, and the dwarf pony began
with his hinder parts to push against the head-board, and I
was just a-launching into the waters, when down dropped
both the steeds, and commenced to snort with so tremendous

a tempest of noise as to wake me! I rubbed my eyes and
smiled—but is it possible?—hark!—am I still dreaming?
What is that beyond the corduroys in the adjoining bed?
Dear, oh dear! can that be Dr. Charille snoring?

During the week spent at Mr. Blank's his lady had once
said to me,—

“Mr. Carlton, you will not sleep any at Dr. Charille's.”

“Not sleep any—why?”

“His snoring will keep you awake.”

“Never fear—I can sleep in a thunder storm.”

“So I thought. But when lately he visited here, he
insisting on sleeping alone in the passage, which we not
permitting, when his snoring began, sure enough, as he
himself pleasantly predicted, nobody else could sleep.”

This conversation now recurred, when that amazing
snoring formed and then destroyed my dream! What a
relief, if young Mr. Frank and I, who slept together, could
have laughed! One might have ventured, indeed, with
impunity, during any paroxysm of snoring, if one could
have quit when it subsided; for the most honest cachination
must have been unheard in the uproar of the Doctor's
nasal trumpetings.

How shall we so write as to give any correct idea of the
performance? Pitiful, indeed, it began, like a puppy's
whine; but directly its tone passed into an abrupt, snappish,
mischievous, and wicked snort; and then into a frightful
tornado of windy sleep; after which, in a few minutes, it
subsided, and suddenly ceased, as if the doctor had made a
successful snap and swallowed it! If this description be
not satisfactory, I hope the reader will send for Robert
Dale Owen, who, knowing how to represent morals and
circumstances by diagrams, may succeed in the same way
at setting forth snoring; but such is beyond our power.

The doctor evidently worked by the job, from his earnestness
and haste: and certainly he did do, in any five

minutes of a paroxysm, vastly more and better than all of us
combined could have done the whole night. Happily any
sound, regularly repeated, becomes a lullaby; and hence
he that had snored me awake, snored me asleep again; but
never can I forget that amazing, startling, and exhilatory
nasal solo! That nose could have done snoring parts in a
somnambula, and would have roused up the drowsy hearers
better than the clash of brass instruments!

After an ealy breakfast, the two youngsters and myself set
off on horse-back for Tippecanoe; intending, as the field
was only ten miles, to return, if possible, in the evening to
Dr. Charille's.

The day was favorable, and our path led usually through
prairies, where awe is felt at the grandeur of the wild
plains stretching away, sometimes with undulations, but
oftener with unbroken smoothness, to meet the dim horizon.
Yet one is frequently surprised and delighted there, with
views of picturesque meadows, fringed with thickets intervening,
and separating the primitive pasturages as in the
golden age! The green and flowery meads seemed made
for flocks and herds: and imagination easily created, under
the shade of trees, shepherds and shepherdesses, with
crooks and sylvan reeds! It heard the sound of pipes!—
the very tones of thrilling and strange voices!

Then we seemed to approach a country of modern farms,
where the gopher hills resembled hay-cocks awaiting the
wagon! and countless wild plums laden with rich and fragrant
fruit recalled the Eastern orchards! Alas! our inconsistency!
then I, who a while since looked with rapture
to the sun-set and longed for the West, now looked to
the sun-rise and sighed for the East—the far East! And
why not? There was the home of my orphan boyhood!
there had I revelled, and without care, in the generous toils
of the harvest!—the binding of sheaves!—the raking of

hay!—the hay-mow!—the stack-yard! There had I snared
rabbits—trapped muskrats—found hens' nests—laid up
walnuts and shell-barks! Ay! there had I fished with pinhooks,
and caught in a little, dark, modest brook, more
roach and gudgeon than the fellow with his store hook with
a barbed point! And then the sliding down hills of ice on
our own home-made sleds!—and upsetting!—and rolling
to the bottom! Yes! yes! after all, those were the halcyon
days! And so for a time how keen that morning the
pangs of a desolate heart as I realized the immense solitudes
around me!

We had been directed to cross the river at a new town,
which, on reaching, was found to contain one log-house
half finished, and one tent belonging to a Canadian Frenchman,
and some Indians. And yet, before we left the New
Purchase, this Sproutsburgh had become a village to be
seen from a distance, and not many years after contained
fourteen retail stores!—a specimen of our wholesale growth
in the West. But to me an object of great interest was a
tall young Indian, dressed in a composite mode, partly barbarian,
partly civilized. His pantaloons were of blue cloth,
and he wore a roundabout of the same; while his small
feet were tastefully clad with sumptuously wrought moccasins,
and his head encircled with a woollen or ram-beaver
hat, banded with a broad tin belt, and garnished with a
cockade! He was seemingly about eighteen years old;
and by way of favour he consented to ferry us over the
water. And now, reader, here hast thou a fair token that
this work is true as—most history; and not more extravagant
than our puerile school histories for beginners:[12] I
resist the temptation of having ourselves skiffed over in a

bark canoe! For, alas! we crossed in an ugly scow, and
it moved by a pole!

Yet was it nothing, as I held my horse, to look on that
half reclaimed son of the forest, while he urged our rude
flat-boat across the tumultuating waters of a river with an
Indian name—Wabash! and we on our way to an Indian
battle field—Tippecanoe!

On the far bank we galloped into one of many narrow
traces along the river, and running through mazy thickets
of undergrowth; and shortly, spite of our many directions
and cautions, quite as bepuzzling as the paths themselves,
we were lost; having followed some deer or turkey trail
till it miraculously disappeared, the animal being there
used to jump off, or the bird to fly up! Then, and on
like occasions, we put in towards the river, and when in
sight or hearing of its waters, sometimes without, and sometimes
with a “blind path,” we kept up stream the best we
could. A blind path has that name because it tries the
eyes and often requires spectacles to find it; or because
one is in constant jeopardy of having the eyes blinded or
struck out by unceremonious limbs, bushes, branches, and
sprays.

Recent high water had formed many extemporary lagoons,
beyous and quagmires, which forced us often away
from the river bank, that we might get round these sullen
and melancholy lakes; although, after all our extra riding,
we commonly appeared to have gone farther and fared
worse; and hence, at last, we crossed wherever the impediment
first offered. Once a muddy ravine presented
itself; and as the difficulty seemed less than usual, we began
our crossing with little or no circumspection,—and
yet it was, truly, a most dangerous morass! Happily, we
entered a few yards below the worst spot, and had creatures
used to floundering through beds of treacherous and
almost bottomless mire.

I had small space to notice my comrades, for my noble
and spirited animal, finding in an instant the want of a solid
spot, by instinct exerted her entire strength in a succession
of leaps so sudden and violent as soon to displace the rider
from the saddle; and when she gained terra firma, that
rider was on her neck instead of back. A leap more would
have freed her neck of the incumbrance, and our author would
have either sunk or have done his own floundering. He
stuck to the neck, not by skill, but for want of sufficient
time to fall off! Having now opportunity to look round,
we saw one young gentleman wiping the mud from his
eyes, nose, ears, and mouth—proof that all his senses had
been open; and the other we saw stand, indeed, but very
much like a man that had dismounted hastily and not altogether
purposely,—he was on all fours! The three horses
were sorely panting and trembling; while the bosom of the
quagmire was regaining its placidity after the late unusual
agitation, and in a few moments had become calm and deceitful
as policy itself when for the people it has sacrificed
its friends!

And yet, where we had crossed, the mire after all was
not so rery deep—it did not, we were told, average more
than five feet! But, two rods above and one below, the
quaggery required a pole to touch its bottom some fifteen
feet long! And this we ascertained by trial, and also from
the squatter, at whose cabin we halted a moment, just one
mile below—the Field.

Our windings, however, brought us to a sight mournful
and solemn—a coffin in which rested an Indian babe!
This rude coffin was supported in the crotch of a large
tree, and secured from being displaced by the wind, being
only a rough trough dug out with a tomahawk, and in which
was deposited the little one, and having another similar
trough bound down over the body with strips of papaw.

Sad seemed the dreamless sleep of the poor innocent so

separate from the graves of its fathers and the children of
its people! Mournful the voice of leaves whispering over
the dead in that sacred tree! The rattling of naked
branches there in the hoarse winds of winter!—how desolate!
And yet if one after death could lie amid thick and
spicy ever-green branches near the dear friends left—instead
of being locked in the damp vault! or trodden like
clay in the deep, deep grave!

But would that be rebellion against the sentence “dust
thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return?”—then let our
bodies be laid in the silence and the dark till the morning
and the life! See! what woodland is that yonder? That
advanced like the apex of a triangle; and yet as we now
approach nearer and nearer, is rising up and has become an
elevated plain? That is Tippecanoe!

Yes! this is Tippecanoe, as it stood some twelve years
after the battle!—Tippecanoe in its primitive and sacred wilderness!
unscathed by the axe, unshorn by the scythe, unmarked
by roads, unfenced! We are standing and walking
among the slain warriors! Can it be that I am he, who but
yesterday was roused from sleep to aid in “setting up the
declaration of war against Great Britain,” to appear as an
extra sheet? and who, each subsequent week, thrilled as
I “composed” in the “iron stick” accounts of battles by
land and fights at sea?—in the days of Maxwell rollers and
Ramage presses!—and hardy pressmen in paper aprons
and cloth trousers!—long before the invasion of petticoats
and check aprons!

Oh! ye men and boys of ink and long primer! how our
spirits were stirred to phrensy and swelled with burnings
and longings after fame!—while, like trumpeters calling to
battle, we scattered forth our papers that woke up the souls
of men! Then I heard of Harrison and Tippecanoe; and
dreamed even by day of a majestic soldier seated on his
charger, and his drawn sword flashing its lightnings, and

his voice swelling over the din of battle like the blast of the
clarion!—and of painted warriors, like demons, rushing with
the knife and tomahawk upon the white tents away, away off
somewhere in the unknown wilds,—of “shout, and groan,
and sabre-stroke, and death-shots falling thick and fast as
lightning from the mountain cloud!”—And do I stand, and
without a dream look on—Tippecanoe?

Even so!—for see, here mouldering are trunks of trees
that formed the hasty rampart!—here the scars and seams
in the trees torn by balls!—ay! here in this narrow circle
are skeletons of, let me count again, yes, of fourteen war-horses!
But where the riders? Here, under this beech
—see, the record in the bark!—we stand on the earth over
the dead—“rider and horse—friend—foe—in one red burial
blent!”

What is this?—the iron band of a musket! See! I
have found a rusty bayonet! Was it ever wet with blood?
Perhaps it belonged to the brave soul about whom the
squatter gave us the following anecdote:

“A party of United States regulars were stationed there,
and with strict orders for none to leave ranks. An Indian
crawled behind this large log—its pretty rotten now you
see—and here loading and firing he killed four or five of
us; while we daresn't quit ranks and kill him. But one
of our chaps said to the nearest officer—`Leftenint! for
Heaven's sake—gimme leaf to kill that red devil ahind the
log—I'll be in ranks agin in a minute!' `My brave fellow'—said
the officer, `I darn't give you leave—I musn't
see you go.' And with that he walked off akeepin his
back towards us; and, when he turned and got back, our soldier
was in ranks; but, gentlemen, his bagnit was bloody,
and a deep groan from behind this here old log, told the
officer that the bagnit had silenced the rifle and avenged
the fall of our messmates and comrades.”

If the reader imagine a strip of woodland, triangular in

form, its point or apex jutting a kind of promontory into the
prairie whose long grass undulates like the waving of an inland
sea; if on one side of this woody isle, he imagines a
streamlet about fifteen feet below and stealing along through
the grass; and on the other side, here, a mile, and there,
two miles across the prairie, other woodlands hiding in
their darkness the Wabash; and if he imagines that river,
at intervals gleaming in the meadow, like illuminated parts
merely of the grass-lake, he may picture for himself something
like Tippecanoe in the simplicity of “uncurled”[13]
nature, and before it was marred and desecrated by man's
transformations!

The first intimation of the coming battle, as our squatter
who was in it, said, was from the waving grass. A sentinel
hid that night in the darkness of the wood, was gazing
in a kind of dreamy watchfulness over the prairie, admiring,
as many times before, the beauteous waving of its hazy
bosom. But never had it seemed so strangely agitated;
—a narrow and strong current was setting rapidly towards
his post; and yet no violent wind to give the stream that
direction! He became first, curious— soon, suspicious.
Still nothing like danger appeared—no voice,—no sound
of footsteps,—no whisper! Yet rapidly and steadily onward
sets the current—its first ripples are breaking at his
feet! He awakes all his senses;—but discovers nothing
—he strains his eyes over the top of the bending grass—
and then, happy thought! he kneels on the earth and looks
intently below that grass! Then, indeed, he saw, not a
wind moved current—but Indian warriors in a stooping posture
and stealing noiseless towards his post—a fatal and
treacherous under current in that waving grass!

The sentinel springing to his feet cried out, “Who comes
there?”

“Pottawatamie!”—the answer, as an Indian leaped with
a yell from the grass, and almost in contact with the soldier—and

then, fell back with a death scream as the ball
of the sentinel's piece entered the warrior's heart, and gave
thus the signal for combat!

Our men may have slumbered; for it was a time of
treaty and truce—but it was in armour they lay, and with
ready weapons in their bands; and it was to this precaution
of their general, we owed the speedy defeat of the Indians;
although not before they had killed about seventy
of our little army. No one can properly describe the horrors
of that night attack—at least, I shall not attempt it.
It required the coolness and deliberation, and at the same
time, the almost reckless daring and chivalric behaviour
of the commander and his noble officers and associates, to
foil such a foe, and at such a time; even with the loss of
so many brave men of their small number. That the foe
was defeated and driven off is proof enough to Western
men—(if not to Eastern politicians who do battles on paper
plains)—that all was anticipated and done by Harrison
that was necessary. It would not become a work like this,
which inexperienced folks may not think is quite as true as
other histories, to meddle with the history of an honest
President; but the writer knows, and on the best authority,
that General Harrison did that night all that a wise, brave,
and benevolent soldier ought to do or could do; and among
other things, that his person was exposed in the fiercest
and bloodiest fights where balls repeatedly passed through
his clothes and his cap.

There was, however, one in the battle so generous, so
chivalric, so kind, and yet so eccentric, that his life would
make a volume of truth more exciting than fiction—the
celebrated Joseph Hamilton Davies, familiarly and kindly
called in the West, Joe Daris. A lawyer by profession,
he was eminent in all pertaining to his science and art;
but pre-eminent in the adjustment of land claims. An
anecdote about him on this point appeared in the newspapers

some years since; it deserves a more imperishable
record in a work destined to be read and preserved in so
many families—maybe!

A person, served with an ejectment, and fearing from
the length of his adversary's purse, that he must be unjustly
deprived of his lands, came from a great distance to solicit
the aid of Davies. He succeeded in his application, and
was dismissed with an assurance that, in due season, the
lawyer would appear for his client and prevent his being
dispossessed.

The arena of contest was, as has been intimated, distant;
and hence Davies was in person a stranger to the
members of that court, or so imperfectly known that an uncanonical
dress would be an effectual concealment. His
client's case being duly called, matters by the opposite
party were set in such a light that a verdict from the jury,
and a decision from the bench, in favour of the plaintiff
seemed inevitable; yet, for form's sake, the defendant must
be heard.

The poor client had relied so entirely on Davies, and
had felt so certain of being secured in his possessions, as
to have neglected to obtain any other legal aid—and still,
at this critical moment when he was to be summoned for
his defence—Davies had not arrived! Nay!—while earnestly
straining his eyes, the client was even rudely jostled
by a rough chap in hunting shirt and leather breeches, who
carrying a heavy rifle in his hand and with a racoon-skin
cap slouched over his face, kept squeezing very impudentdently
even among the laughing and good natured lawyers
inside the bar; where, to everybody's diversion, he appropriated
to himself a seat with the most simple and awkward
naivete possible; but what diversion was all this to our
client looking round in despair for his lawyer! And then
when the judge asked who appeared for the defendant,
what amazement must have mingled with the client's despair
when at the call up rose that rude hunter and replied:

“I do, please your honour!”

“You!”—replied his honor—“who are you, sir?”

“Joseph Hamilton Davies, please your honor!”

And now, after that heavy rifle was slowly placed in a
snug corner of the bar, and that skin cap was removed from
the head, plain enough was it that the noble face, no longer
concealed, was his; the talented, the philanthropic, the
eccentric Joe Davis. Never before had so much law been
cased in a hunting shirt and buckskins; and never before
nor since, was, or has been, a difficult cause in such a guise
pleaded so triumphantly: for the entire superstructure of
the opposite argument was completely subverted and a
verdict and decision, in proper time, rendered for the defendant,
when to all appearance it had been virtually made,
if not formally declared, for his antagonist.

Alas! noble heart! and here is thy very grave! Yes,
“J. H. D.” is here in the bark—my finger is in the rude
graving!—and now at the root of the tree I am seated
making my notes! The last the squatter ever saw of Joe
Davies alive, was when his grey horse was plunging in
the furious charge down this hill—when the sentinel, already
named, had fired and called “to arms!” And the
next day our guide helped to lay Davies in this grave; and
saw his name transferred to the living monument here sheltering
and fanning his sepulchre!

We lingered at Tippecanoe till the latest possible moment!—there
was, in the wildness of the battle-field—in
my intimate acquaintance with some of its actors—in the
living trees, scarred and hacked with bullet and hatchet,
and marked with names of the dead—in the wind so sad
and melancholy—something so like embodied trances, that
I wandered the field all over, here standing on a grave,
there resting on a decaying bulwark; now counting the
scars of trees, now the skeleton heads of horses; finding

in one spot a remnant of some iron weapon, in another, the
bones of a slain soldier dragged, perhaps, by wild beasts
from his shallow grave!—till my young comrades insisted
on our return if we expected to reach our friend's house
before the darkness of night.

Having, accordingly, deposited in my valisse a few relics
and mementos, we rode down the hill into the prairie, at
the spot poor Davies was seen descending and leading a
charge; and over the very ground where the grassy current
had betrayed the dangerous under-tide of painted foes.
Hence we crossed over to the town whence the Indians
issued for the attack, and where the wily prophet himself
remained in safety, concocting charms against the white
man's weapons! After this, we turned down the Wabash,
keeping our eyes ever directed towards the mournful island
of wood, till at last we doubled its cape, and lost sight of
Tippecanoe for ever!

That field, however, and its hero of North Bend are immortal.

BATTLE OF TIPPECANOE.