the Americans. He served so faithfully against
them that the king made him brigadier general, and Tecumseh tried to
fight according to the laws of civilized warfare. At the attack on
Fort Meigs in Wood County, he stopped, at the risk of his own life, the
massacre of the American prisoners, and he bade the British commandant,
who declared that the Indians could not be controlled, go and put on
petticoats. An American who saw him at this time says, "This
celebrated chief was a noble, dignified personage. His face was finely
proportioned, his nose inclined to be aquiline, and his eye displayed
none of that savage and ferocious triumph common to the other Indians on
that occasion."

Tecumseh with his Indians witnessed the battle of Lake Erie at
Put-in-Bay, where Perry defeated the English fleet, and he was not
deceived by the pretense of General Proctor that the Americans were
beaten and the English ships were merely putting in there for repairs.
Proctor was then preparing to retreat into Canada from Detroit, and
Tecumseh demanded to be heard in the name of the Indians. He had some
very bitter words to say: "The war before this our British father gave
the hatchet to his red children.... In that war our father was thrown
upon his back by the Americans, and our father took them by the hand
without our knowledge, and we are afraid our father will do so again at
this time.... Our ships have gone away, and we are much astonished to
see our father tying up everything and preparing to run away.... We
are sorry to see our father doing so without seeing the enemy. We must
compare our father's conduct to a fat dog that carries his tail on his
back, and when affrighted drops it between his legs and runs off.

"Father, you have got the arms and ammunition which our great father
sent for his children. If you have an idea of going away, give them to
us, and you may go and welcome. Our lives are in the hands of the Great
Spirit. We are determined to defend our lands, and if it be his will, we
wish to leave our bones upon them."

But the British retreated, and the Indians had to follow them into
Canada. There in the battle of the Thames the Americans defeated them
and their savage allies with great slaughter, and Tecumseh, whose
war-cry had been heard above the tumult of the onset, was among the
slain. He is supposed to have been killed by a pistol shot fired by
Colonel Richard M. Johnson of Kentucky, and it is said that the body
of thi