prize to
be secured by the rival claimants. John Bull said, "It is mine, because
I took it from the French;" Brother Jonathan said, "It is mine, because
I took it from the English;" while neither party gave any heed to the
poor Indian, who never ceased saying, "It is mine, because my fathers
gave it to me, and the Great Spirit gave it to my fathers."

A hard, hard necessity must it have been which could have forced the
poor, hunted wanderers of the wilderness to fly for refuge and
protection from the talons and beak of the eagle to the claws and teeth
of the lion. It was but a change, and made with but little hope of its
being for the better. None saw this more clearly, felt it more deeply,
than the sagacious Tecumseh; and his proud spirit groaned under the
humiliating thought that after all he and his warriors were not viewed
as allies having an equal interest in the result of the struggle going
on, but rather as instruments merely, which might be made useful to the
purpose in hand, then dropped. To use his own expression: "They were
but a pack of starved hounds, hallooed upon the Americans by the
English."

Along the Northern lakes and rivers full many a battle had been
fought--on a small scale, it is true, but bloody and ugly enough,
especially to the Americans, who up to this time had usually been the
worsted party. But now the fortunes of war were beginning to turn in our
favor. Perry had won his brilliant little naval victory over the English
fleet on Lake Erie, and had written to the Secretary of the Navy with
Caesar-like conciseness: "We have met the enemy, and they are ours!" By
land, too, the British had been met and beaten back at every point, till
now they were without a foothold on the disputed territory--the
hereditary lands.

But, true to himself, true to the now quite hopeless cause for which he
had labored and fought so long, the magnanimous sachem still kept his
faith with the great father unbroken and inviolable, while the great
father was immensely less concerned that he had failed to restore the
hereditary lands to his red allies than that he had failed to wrest the
disputed territory from his white enemies. So the little English king
went on sipping his dainty wines in his marble palace over yonder on the
other side of the globe, and took no further thought of the great Indian
sachem who was breaking his heart over here in the wilderness of
America, as true to his ally as had he been a Christian