the cattle and
hogs of the white people, he would fix up everything with the
President, on his return.

So in August of 1811 he left, taking twenty warriors. With the
fire-brand of tongue and the burning mystery of his presence he kindled
the nations of the South. He spoke in the name of the Great Prophet.
He urged them all to join as one people and dam back the white wave
that was seeking to swallow them.

He told them that the Prophet had stationed a "lamp" in the sky, to
watch them for him--and sure enough, a comet flamed in the horizon. To
a Creek chief in Alabama he said:

"You do not mean to fight. I know the reason. You do not believe that
the Great Spirit has sent me. You shall know. I go from here to
Detroit; when I arrive there I will stamp on the ground with my foot
and shake down all your houses."

In December occurred an earthquake which destroyed New Madrid town on
the Mississippi in southern Missouri, and was felt widely. The ground
under the Creek nation trembled. The Creeks covered their heads and
cried aloud:

"Tecumseh has got to Detroit!"

That was so. In December Tecumseh really had got to Detroit. But he
had stamped his foot before time, and he had not made the earth to
tremble. He had stamped in wrath not at the Creeks, but at his own
people.

[Illustration: An Indian brave. Courtesy of The Field Museum.]

When he had left for the North he was ready to strike, at any moment,
with five thousand warriors of North, South and West. When he arrived
home, he found that his plans were shattered like a bubble; he had no
Prophet, and the former Prophet had no town!

CHAPTER XIII

BRIGADIER GENERAL TECUMSEH (1812-1813)

THE RISE AND FALL OF A STAR

In Vincennes, the white chief, Governor William Henry Harrison, had
grown tired of the insults and defiance from the Prophet. He took nine
hundred regulars and rangers, to visit the Prophet's Town, himself, and
see what was what.

He camped within a mile of the sacred place, on a timber island of the
marshy prairie seven miles north-east of the present city of Lafayette,
Indiana. During the darkness and early daylight of November 7, this
1811, he was attacked by the Prophet's warriors. He roundly whipped
them in the hot battle of Tippecanoe.

The Prophet had brewed a kettle of magic, by which (he proclaimed to
his warriors) he had made one half of the American army dead, and the
other half crazy. During the attack he sa