het, in regard to the land in
question, were made known. A furious clamor was then raised by the
foreign agents among us, and other disaffected persons, against the
policy which had excluded from the treaty this great and influential
character, as he is termed, and the doing so expressly attributed to the
personal ill-will on the part of the negotiator. No such ill-will did in
fact exist. I accuse myself, indeed, of an error in the patronage and
support which I afforded him on his arrival on the Wabash, before his
hostility to the United States had been developed. But on no principle
of propriety or policy could he have been made a party to the treaty.
The personage, called the Prophet, is not a chief of the tribe to which
he belongs, but an outcast from it, rejected and hated by the real
chiefs, the principal of whom was present at the treaty, and not only
disclaimed on the part of his tribe any title to the land ceded, but
used his personal influence with the chiefs of the other tribes to
effect the cession."

The "principal chief" of the Shawnees above alluded to was undoubtedly
Black Hoof, or Catahecassa, who at this time lived in the first town of
that tribe, at Wapakoneta, Ohio. Being near to Fort Wayne he had no
doubt attended the great council at that place. He had been a renowned
warrior, as already shown, and had been present at Braddock's Defeat, at
Point Pleasant, and at St. Clair's disaster, but when Anthony Wayne
conquered the Indians at Fallen Timbers, Black Hoof had given up, and he
had afterwards remained steadfast in his allegiance to the United States
government. When Tecumseh afterwards attempted to form his confederacy,
he met with a firm and steady resistance from Black Hoof, and his
influence was such that no considerable body of the Shawnees ever joined
the Prophet's camp. Black Hoof died in 1831 at the advanced age of one
hundred and ten years, and tradition says that like Moses, "his eye was
not dim; nor his natural force abated." The fact that Black Hoof, who
was of great fame among his tribe, as both orator and statesman, made no
claim to any of the lands sold below the Vermilion, is strong cumulative
proof of the assertion afterwards made by Harrison to Tecumseh, that any
claims of his tribe to the lands on the Wabash were without foundation.

The personal admirers and intimate associates of Harrison, were, of
course, overjoyed. They were no doubt influenced to some extent by the
fact that