ner, interpreter
for the Delawares, on a search for stolen horses, he found the Prophet
safely ensconced in his chosen position, with a following of thirty or
forty Shawnees, and about ninety others, consisting of Potawatomi,
Chippewas, Ottawas and Winnebagoes.

The location selected was certainly ideal. "By a short portage the
Indians could go by canoe to Lake Erie or Lake Michigan, or by the
Wabash reach all the vast system of watercourses to the north and west.
It was only twenty-four hours' journey by canoe, at a favorable stage of
water, down stream to Vincennes, the capital of the white man's
territory;" the British post at Malden was only a few days distant. As
to the Indian tribes, the Prophet's Town was almost centrally located in
the Miami confederacy; to the north as far as the post of Chicago and
Lake Michigan extended the realm of the Potawatomi; on the Vermilion
below, and to the west of the main stream, lay the villages of the
Kickapoos, whose hardy warriors, second only to the Wyandots, had
accepted the new faith; the Sacs and Foxes, the Winnebagoes, Ottawas,
Chippewas and Wyandots, were all within easy reach, and secret embassies
and negotiations might be carried on without much fear of detection.

The brothers now resolved to pursue the following course--to wean their
followers entirely away from the use of whiskey, which was fast
destroying their military efficiency; to teach them, if possible, the
ways of labor, so that they might raise corn and other products of the
earth, and thus supply their magazines against a time of war; to dupe
the Governor into the belief that their mission was one of peace, and
undertaken solely for the moral uplift and betterment of the tribes--in
the meantime, by the constant practice of religious ceremonies and
rites, to work on the superstition of the warriors; win them, if need
be, from the chieftains who might counsel peace, and by a series of
warlike sports and exercises, hold together the young bucks and train
them for the inevitable conflict between the races.

What strange mysticism did the Prophet practice to make the Indians of
the Wabash "abandon whiskey, discard textile clothing, return to skins,
throw away their witch-bags, kill their dogs, and abandon the white
man's ways, even to giving up flint and steel for making fires?" That he
had gained fame and ascendency among the neighboring tribes since the
episode of the eclipse in 1806, is testified to by the