The pacific councils of Red Jacket were of little avail. The warlike
agitation was continued. The retreat of the Prophet on the banks of the
Wabash, became not less noted for warlike exercises, than for its
religious harangues. The minds of the Indians were already ripe for an
outbreak, whenever a sufficient pretext should offer. The visit of
Tecumseh at Vincennes in the summer of 1810, with three hundred well armed
warriors, and his haughty and insulting bearing toward Governor Harrison,
indicated clearly, the hostile spirit that was rife among them.
Not long after this, the report came that a thousand warriors awaited his
command, in and about the Prophet's town. So large a horde of Indians
together, without the means of support, and practicing themselves in the
arts of war, were viewed with suspicion. Charity must have been blind, to
have supposed they were assembled merely for the purpose of devotion.
Frequent plundering, midnight arson, and occasional massacres in frontier
settlements, proclaimed the fact, that hostilities had already commenced,
and that our people in this region needed protection.
The Indians were greatly encouraged in their warlike feeling, by the
intercourse they constantly maintained with the British Indian Department.
The British Fur Company also by her traders, had correspondence with the
leading men of all these Western and North-western tribes, and this
intercourse resulted in holding the Indians more firmly, in alliance with
the English.
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