Panther in the Sky Read online

  “Oh, what a man this will be,

  with such a sign as that!”

  In 1768, when Turtle Mother gave birth to a strong baby boy in the heart of the Shawnee nation, a yellow-green shooting star streaked across the heavens. Hard Striker saw the unsoma, the birth sign, and named his son Tecumseh, meaning Panther in the Sky.…

  “A work of such sweep and compassion that it blurs the demarcation between novel and history … Totally admirable.”

  —The Cincinnati Enquirer

  “A brilliant job … Meticulously researched … It is a detailed story of the almost mythical life of [Tecumseh] and that of the Shawnee of his time.”

  —Kansas City Star

  “A spellbinding novel about the life of Tecumseh … The book is almost epic in its scope.… Thom has carefully researched his facts. He has the care of a historian to go with the skills of the seasoned novelist.”

  —The Indianapolis Star

  “Riveting … Historical fiction at its finest.”

  —American Library Association Booklist

  By James Alexander Thom

  Published by The Random House Publishing Group:

  PANTHER IN THE SKY

  LONG KNIFE

  FOLLOW THE RIVER

  FROM SEA TO SHINING SEA

  STAYING OUT OF HELL

  THE CHILDREN OF FIRST MAN

  THE RED HEART

  WARRIOR WOMAN (with Dark Rain)

  SIGN-TALKER

  SAINT PATRICK’S BATTALION

  A Ballantine Book

  Published by The Random House Publishing Group

  Copyright © 1989 by James Alexander Thom

  Maps copyright © 1989 by Anita Karl and James Kemp

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

  Maps based on original research by the author. Inquiries should be addressed care of Ballantine Books.

  BALLANTINE and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  eISBN: 978-0-307-76314-3

  www.ballantinebooks.com

  v3.1

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Acknowledgements

  Map

  Prologue

  Part One Chapter 1 - On the Other Side of the Circle of Time Old Piqua Town March 9, 1768

  Chapter 2 - Kispoko Town, on the Scioto River Spring 1768

  Chapter 3 - Kispoko Town, on the Scioto-Se-Pe January 1771

  Chapter 4 - Kispoko Town Summer 1772

  Chapter 5 - Kispoko Town June 1774

  Chapter 6 - On the Ohio River October 10, 1774

  Chapter 7 - Kispoko Town October 12, 1774

  Chapter 8 - Chillicothe Town October 1775

  Chapter 9 - Near Chillicothe Town October 1777

  Chapter 10 - Chillicothe Town March 19, 1779

  Chapter 11 - Chillicothe Town July 10, 1779

  Chapter 12 - Chillicothe Town Spring 1780

  Chapter 13 - Chillicothe Town Summer 1780

  Chapter 14 - Chillicothe Town Summer 1780

  Chapter 15 - A Village on the Upper Miami-Se-Pe Winter 1780

  Chapter 16 - Blue Licks August 1782

  Chapter 17 - Kekionga Town October 1786

  Chapter 18 - On the Lower O-Hi-O Spring 1788

  Chapter 19 - Maykujay Town Summer 1789

  Part Two Chapter 20 - Kekionga Town November 1790

  Chapter 21 - At the Head of the Maumee-Se-Pe October 1791

  Chapter 22 - On the Upper Maumee-Se-Pe Winter 1792

  Chapter 23 - Fallen Timbers August 19, 1794

  Chapter 24 - On the Whitewater River Spring 1797

  Chapter 25 - White River Mounds, Indiana Territory Spring 1805

  Chapter 26 - Vincennes, Indiana Territory April 1806

  Chapter 27 - Prophet’s Town at Greenville Spring 1807

  Chapter 28 - Near Old Chillicothe July 1809

  Chapter 29 - Fort Wayne, at the Head of the Maumee September 30, 1809

  Chapter 30 - Fort Knox, Above Vincennes August 11, 1810

  Chapter 31 - Vincennes, Indiana Territory November 12, 1810

  Chapter 32 - Indiana Territory April 1811

  Chapter 33 - Vincennes, Indiana Territory September 26, 1811

  Chapter 34 - Tippecanoe November 6, 1811

  Part Three Chapter 35 - Bois Blanc Island, Ontario, Canada Summer 1812

  Chapter 36 - Fallen Timbers, on the Maumee April 25, 1813

  Chapter 37 - Fort Malden, Ontario September 9, 1813

  Chapter 38 - Fort Malden, Ontario September 23, 1813

  Chapter 39 - Moraviantown, Ontario October 5, 1813

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  About the Author

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Without the kindness and wisdom of several present-day Shawnees, I could not have understood the oneness, the comforting inclusion, of tribal life I have portrayed in this book. In the embrace of the Shawnee Nation United Remnant Band of Ohio—descendants of Shawnees who followed Tecumseh to the end in the War of 1812—my heart has melted and my mind has expanded. Members of other bands have given me insights into the patient and forgiving nature of their race, and all have delighted me with the keen sense of humor of a people too long stereotyped as stern and humorless. I cannot put into words the gratitude I owe to Tukemas/Hawk Pope and his wife, Meenjip Tatsii, to Walking Song, Kiji Wapiti, Crow Woman, to Don Rapp (Gay-Nwaw-Piah-Si-Ki) of the Eastern Band, and to many others with whom I have had shorter councils. They have done their best to help me see and understand, and any failure to convey the spirit of their people is my fault, not theirs. I can hardly hope that this book will live up to all their expectations, but they know how I tried. They trusted me because I made it plain to them that my question was “What did it all mean?”

  I am grateful also for the guidance, friendship, and technical information given by many non-Shawnee experts and aficionados, such as Don Ekola, J. Martin West, Harve Hildebrand, Art Two Crows, Pete Rollet, Dr. Mike Pratt, and Richard Day, who have familiarized me with everything from folklore and period weapons to details of dress and battle plans.

  Whenever I begin work on a new book I am reborn into a new world. This time it was more so than ever. Entering the round world of this splendid people, sharing their bittersweet heritage, learning and retelling the story of their beloved leader, has enriched my life.

  James Alexander Thom

  Bloomington, Indiana

  Prologue

  ON THIS SIDE OF THE CIRCLE OF TIME

  THAMES RIVER, ONTARIO

  October 5, 1813

  ONCE AGAIN THE PEOPLE WERE FLEEING ON A ROAD OF hunger.

  Through the foggy autumn woods a brown river flowed westward, and along its south bank the gaunt families slogged eastward. Their voices murmured in a dozen Algonquian tongues, though mostly they were silent, turned inward upon their misery and fear. They numbered more than twenty hundred, women and coughing children and ancients, most afoot, a few on horseback and travois, strung out more than two miles along the mud-clogged road. Their feet slithered and sucked in the cold muck.

  So many times Tecumapese, whose name meant Watcher of the Shooting Star, had fled like this with her people ahead of the armies of the Long Knives. The first time she had been a young woman, not yet a mother. Now she was fifty-five summers of age, and in her own memory this was the seventh flight. It always happened in the autumn. The American armies always drove them out at harvesttime, making them face winter
without food or shelter.

  Cold rain had fallen for six days while the Redcoat army of their allies the British retreated along the lakeshore and then up this river road. The wheels of their cannons and baggage wagons and the hooves of their horses and beef cattle had churned the dirt road into ruts of mud. And now the Indian refugees came following, carrying sodden bundles, their blankets and clothes ragged, drenched, and soiled, their leggings soaked through and clotted with mud. Half were barefoot; the mire had swallowed their moccasins.

  Through the murmur and hush of their slow passage purled the crying of hungry babies, and that was the sound that most tormented Star Watcher.

  The leaves of the big oaks, elms, and beeches all around were gold, the maples and sumacs were vermilion to livid. When a gust of cold wind stirred the fog, showers of rainwater and yellow leaves would come down. It was the time of year when a woman’s heart was meant to be absorbed in the harvest and the yield of the hunt, in corn parching and bean shelling, in acorn gathering and walnut breaking, in drying venison and buffalo meat over smoky fires, in rendering bear oil and tanning hides.

  But the autumn colors were not in the heart now, only in the eyes. The leaves that had fallen had been mashed and trampled into the mud with the blackened old leaves of other years. Once again because of the Long Knives there would be no harvest.

  Star Watcher sat on her mare in the chilly morning air looking back for stragglers as her people stumbled by. Her brother Tecumseh had put upon her the burden of keeping the people together and hurrying them on. Upon the shoulders of their younger brother, the Prophet, he had put the task of leading them to the town of the Jesus Indians, where they might find food and shelter. And upon himself Tecumseh had taken the warrior’s task of defending the rear, of harassing and delaying the Long Knife army like wolf pack around bison herd, to give the helpless ones and the ponderous Redcoat army time to move ahead up the river to a defensible place. With less than a thousand warriors he had slowed the advance of General Harrison’s four thousand Long Knives. But still the Americans came on and were perhaps not more than five miles behind now, and the people could not be allowed to fall behind or sit and rest. But some had strayed aside or fallen down and gotten lost, and one of the lost ones was her own grandnephew.

  Star Watcher was a strong, erect woman whose graying hair hung down her back to her waist in one thick braid. On each russet cheekbone was the thumbprint of red paint with which the Shawnee women of all ages marked their faces. She wore a beaded deerskin dress and leggings, with a damp red woolen English blanket drawn around her shoulders. She was handsome, queenly looking, mother of many: of the children of her own loins, of her little brothers whom her mother had left with her, and of many more whose mothers and fathers had died by the guns and diseases and whiskey of the American white men. And now she was also the mother, as Tecumseh had joked grimly to her yesterday, of all these exhausted and homeless ones, the families of his warriors.

  “Go on, old Grandmother,” she coaxed. “Go on, sister. Hurry on. The town of the Jesus Delawares is near ahead. Hurry on. Be strong!” Her searching gaze fell upon a Peckuwe Shawnee woman she knew. “Sister,” she called. “Have you seen today the little boy of Nehaaeemo?”

  The Peckuwe woman, who was leading a small child with each hand, shook her head, scowling, and called back: “I have my own to take care of on this hard way we go! Am I to look out also for half-bloods whose mother lets them stray?”

  Star Watcher’s dark eyes flashed, and her lips set firm. She kneed her mare and rode as skillfully as a warrior in among the people and halted the horse in the woman’s way, stopping her. She leaned down close to the woman’s startled face. Her breath came in white puffs in the dank air as she spoke, voice quick and low: “Listen to me with all the power of your attention. We speak of a good little boy whose mother goes mad in her head with worry, a woman who has too many children to hold one by each hand like you. Nehaaeemo is of my own blood. Do not speak with a knife tongue of her or of a lost boy. When the road is hard we must say soft words to each other. Did not Our Grandmother Kokomthena, the Creator, give us this as one of the Rules of Living?”

  The woman, now looking at the ground, nodded. “I swallow my bad words.”

  “Weh-sah, good,” said Star Watcher. “Now, go along. I know you are tired and your little ones have short legs, but you must hurry on.”

  “Yes,” said the woman, who now looked up with tears in her eyes. “And I pray the little boy will be found. I shall watch for him with my own eyes.”

  Star Watcher smiled at her and nodded, then turned her mare and rode back among the stragglers, shepherding them. How many had strayed off to lie down and rest? What would happen to them when the Long Knives found them? From nearly thirty years ago she could remember seeing a Kentucky horse soldier with a sword chase and hack seven women who had fallen behind in their flight from Maykujay Town. She gazed back down the river and shuddered with fear and hatred. It was quiet back there now, the frightening quiet the prey listens to when it knows it is being hunted. This quiet was in a way more fearsome than the battle thunder of yesterday, when Tecumseh and his warriors had fought the Americans all morning at the Chatham bridges on the Forks of the river Thames.

  For thirty years her brother had been fighting to save his people’s world, and though this now seemed a hopeless time, so had the many other times when he had turned like a trapped panther and torn his pursuers apart. He had come to be the chief of chiefs, loved and trusted by many peoples, the last free chief, the one who would not sign treaties with the Americans, the one who saw far ahead.

  It was now just as it had been most of her life, the People fleeing, the war chiefs protecting them—except that now they were not in their homeland anymore. Now this river alongside the retreat was not the Scioto-se-pe or the Miami-se-pe, or the Wabash-se-pe or the Maumee-se-pe, those clear green rivers of the Shawnee homelands, but a muddy river with a British name, in a northern land, home of Wyandots, Ottawas, Ojibways, Potawatomies, not of Shawnees.

  Suddenly, above the drone of voices, shouting arose and cries of “Tenskwatawa! Father!” Star Watcher turned and looked upstream and saw her younger brother, the Prophet, riding back toward her from the front of the column. She reined her mare around and stood waiting for him, dreading that he was bringing word of some new trouble ahead.

  Tenskwatawa, whose name meant He-Opens-the-Door, rode close to her, a long cloak draped behind him, his many-colored turban pulled down as usual on the right side to hide his blind eye. The cold, wet weather was making his nostrils leak mucus onto the silver ring in his nose and into his mustache. Open Door was not a good rider, and Star Watcher sighed with fond pity as the great shaman of the Shawnee nation hauled at the reins and conducted a grunting struggle to guide his horse, while people scurried to get out of his way. Everything he did had always been like this. He was a legend of awkwardness. Considering what a blundering fool he was, it was a miracle how much he had done for the People.

  “Sister,” he panted, “we in front saw the smoke from the Jesus town! We are almost there!”

  “Weh-sah! That will give the People strength of heart. But you, brother, you should have ridden ahead into the town, to prepare for us, and sent a rider back to tell me.”

  “Ah … yes.” He squinted his good eye, realizing that he had made a typical error of judgment. Then he said, as if to justify himself, “I came to tell you, Nehaaeemo is in the worst of grief for her little son George. She wails and dirties her face with mourning, and will listen to no word of hope—”

  “Listen!” Star Watcher interrupted him, turning to look toward the rear. People down the road were shouting. Her face brightened when she heard the name they were calling.

  Around a bend far down the road Tecumseh came riding into view surrounded by people on foot and followed by a horde of mounted warriors. She first discerned him at this distance by the great curved white plume in his headdress. Some of the people on the road in fron
t of him were women and gray-hairs. Some children and feeble elders were being helped along, even carried, by warriors. Star Watcher knew what this meant. Tecumseh and his fighting men had been gathering up the stragglers and lost ones as they came along. Star Watcher remembered one of the teachings she had given him over and over when he was a boy growing to warrior’s age: “Always protect the People. That is all a warrior is for.” And he had lived by that.

  Now Tecumseh had seen her, and he raised a hand and called out in his mighty voice that could be heard over multitudes and distances. He rode out from the others and came ahead at a canter on his muddy white horse.

  It was then as he drew closer that Star Watcher saw two things at once, one of which gave her joy, the other terror.

  He held a child on the saddle in front of him: the little lost boy, son of Nehaaeemo.

  But Tecumseh’s face was painted as she had never seen it before, red on one side, black on the other. War and death. She felt a chill pass down from her scalp through her neck and bosom, and her heartbeat quickened, aching. She kicked the mare’s flanks and hurried down the road to meet him. Open Door followed. Many people were shouting, some wailing. When she was close to him she saw the whiteness of his beloved smile, shining through the terrible red and black. How all the People loved this brother of hers and depended upon his strength and vision! But she was bound to him as no one else was. She had been as much mother as sister to him; her very name had been changed at his birth to show that she was a watcher over his life.