s, it was plain
that a strict espionage would have to be maintained over the proceedings
at the Prophet's Town, and especially over the Prophet himself. The
heart of this priest was filled with plots of assassination and murder.
Grosble, an old Indian friend of the Governor, informed him that the
Prophet had at one time planned a wholesale slaughter at Vincennes, and
that it had been arranged that the Prophet should enter the Governor's
house with ten or twelve of his followers and slay him. To the Prophet
may be attributed most of the horse-stealing expeditions, the insults to
messengers and agents, and the plans for the murder of the older Indian
chiefs. While Tecumseh either countenanced these transactions, or else
was unable to control them, he seems, with strange sagacity for a
savage, to have at all times realized that the assassination of
Harrison, the stealing of a few horses, or the slaughter of a few white
men on the border, would really never accomplish anything save to
intensify the feeling between the races. While never comprehending the
great forces of civilization and of the government which he was
resisting, he seems to have steadily kept in mind that a handful of
naked savages at the Prophet's Town would avail him nothing; that in
order to effectively strike he must have back of him a substantial body
of warriors recruited from all the confederated tribes, well victualled,
armed and equipped, and equal in number to the armies of his adversary.
He knew the Indian character well enough to know that they would never
long resist a superior force. If he could keep his rash and impulsive
brother in leash long enough to form a permanent and powerful league,
then he had hopes of ultimate success. But there was the great danger,
in fact, the very peril that finally engulfed him. The Prophet with that
fatal egotism of the fanatic, vainly imagined that he was more than a
match for the Governor, and in the absence of his brother, let his
vindictive hate and malice destroy the last dream of empire.

In the latter part of the month of June, Harrison sent Dubois and
Brouillette to the Prophet's Town to take note of what was going on.
They reported that while the tribes of the Mississinewa, the Weas and
Kickapoos were living in expectation of trouble, that there was no
immediate danger, as the defection of the tribes at the St. Joseph had
upset the plans of the brothers. Dubois requested the Prophet to state
the ground