st league that, working like one nation, should some day rule
the country. His messengers traveled widely, bearing his instructions.
He asserted that he spoke directly from the Great Spirit.

His brother, Tecumseh or Shooting Star, aided him. Open Door counseled
peace until the Indians had grown strong by right living. Shooting
Star planned for war, as soon as the league had been formed. The
United States Government knew the schemes of both, and tried to stop
the work. The two brothers refused to obey. Governor William Henry
Harrison, of Indiana Territory, struck first.

He marched from Vincennes and destroyed the town of the Prophet. The
second war with Great Britain, the War of 1812, was about to break, and
Tecumseh went to Canada and joined the British.[1]

A great many Indians enlisted under their red general, Tecumseh. The
Potawatomis, Miamis, Ottawas, Winnebagos, Kickapoos, the Sioux of
present Minnesota and the Sacs of the Rock River at the Mississippi in
Illinois, seized the hatchet and followed him. In the south the Red
Sticks war party of the Creeks arose. And on the new frontier of the
northwest, from the Ohio to the Mississippi, the American settlers
again felt keen alarm.

Tecumseh's star sank, and he with it, at the battle of the Thames,
October 5, 1813, when General William Henry Harrison and his three
thousand crushed the two thousand British and Indians. The red army
was shattered; the chiefs and warriors hastened home as fast as they
could, by secret trails; some pretended that they had not dropped their
blankets in war, others foraged against the settlements, to get what
plunder they might while the whites were fighting.

The Government and the settlers had erected a number of small
blockhouses north of the Ohio, through Indiana and Illinois, to keep
the Indians off, if possible. One block-house had been located in Bond
County, half-way down southwestern Illinois, or about eight miles south
of present Greenville.

In the summer of 1814 First Lieutenant Nathaniel Jurney and a dozen
United States Rangers were stationed here, upon the broad Illinois
prairie dotted with timber and cut by streams. Lieutenant Jurney had
been captain in the Illinois Rangers raised for service upon the
frontier; but a year ago he had been appointed first lieutenant in the
Government Rangers, of the army.

The Indians to be feared hereabouts were roving Sacs, Potawatomis and
Winnebagos from the north; yes,