oomed to defeat. They were
scattered up and down the Wabash, their town was burnt, and the power
of the Western Indians was by this one blow shattered. So complete was
the victory and so far-reaching in its effects, that General Harrison
at once became the popular idol, and the glorification of the battle
of Tippecanoe, a generation later carried him into the Presidential
chair. It was this battle that gave the West to the whites.

As for Tecumseh, he returned suddenly from the West to find that
despite his commands, the Prophet had permitted a battle. In his rage
and disappointment he took his brother, now fallen and disgraced, by
the hair and shook him. But no longer was it possible to hold his
tribes together. The victory of the United States at Tippecanoe took
the ardor for battle and resistance quite out of them. There were
hundreds of them, however, who in the war of 1812, which broke out
immediately, followed Tecumseh into the British service, in which he
was commissioned as a major-general. In that service he was doomed to
continued disaster. The English commander. General Proctor, was
incompetent and, in all the qualities of real manhood, the inferior of
his savage ally. After the battle of Put-in-Bay, on Lake Erie, he
started to retreat. Tecumseh protested, and was induced to go on only
by the promise that winter supplies would be delivered a few miles up
the Thames. It was on this stream that Proctor finally determined to
make a stand, but at the outset of the action he, coward-like,
retreated with his red coats, leaving the Indians to bear the brunt
of the battle. Tecumseh had gone into the fight saying that he would
be killed, and his prediction was verified. But how he died no one can
say with certainty. No less than four Americans claimed the honor of
having killed him. Among the slain, in that time of fierce pursuit and
confusion, his body was not even identified. But there it was, on the
banks of that quiet Canadian stream, some thirty-five miles from
Detroit, that the greatest Indian in statecraft, diplomacy, devotion
to his people, and in dignity of thought and intellectual gifts, found
his unmarked grave. No one yet has written a biography of him that
does full justice to his great abilities and lofty character. But his
name is the most familiar of all Indian names, and he is the only
Indian after whom Western fathers and mothers have ever named their
sons. The late General of the United States Army,