In an instant the army was in line, the campfires were extinguished, and the governor mounted his horse and proceeded to the point of attack.  Several companies had taken their places in the line within forty seconds after the report of the first gun, and in two minutes the whole army was ready for action; a fact as creditable to their own activity and bravery, as to the skill and energy of their officers.  The battle soon became general, and was maintained on both sides with signal and even desperate valor.  The Indians advanced or retreated by the aid of a rattling noise, made with deer hoofs, and persevered in their treacherous attack with an apparent determination to conquer or die on the spot.  The battle raged with unabated fury and mutual slaughter until daylight, when a gallant and successful charge by the troops drove the enemy into the swamp, and put an end to the conflict.

Prior to the assault, the prophet had given his followers assurance, that, in the coming contest, the Great Spirit would render the arms of the Americans unavailing; that their bullets would fall harmless at the feet of the Indians; that the latter should have light in abundance, while the former would be involved in thick darkness.  Availing himself of the privilege conferred by his peculiar office, and, perhaps, unwilling in his own person to test the rival powers of a sham prophecy and a real American bullet, he prudently took a position on an adjacent eminence; and, when the action began, he entered upon the performance of certain mystic rites, at the same time singing a war song.  Soon after the engagement commenced, he was informed that his men were falling.  He told them to fight on, it would soon be as he predicted; and then in, wilder and louder strains, his inspiring battle song was heard commingling with the sharp crack of the rifle and the shrill war-whoop of his brave but deluded followers.  Some of the Indians who were in the conflict, subsequently informed the agent at Fort Wayne, that there were more than a thousand warriors in the battle, and that the number of wounded was unusually great.  In the precipitation of their retreat, they left thirty-eight on the field.  Some were buried during the engagement in their town.  Others no doubt subsequently died of their wounds.  Drake places their number in killed at not less than fifty.

Of the whites, thirty-five were killed in the action, and twenty-five died subsequently.  The total number of killed and wounded was one hundred and eighty-eight,—­probably as great and possibly greater than the loss of the Indians.  Among the slain were Colonel Abraham Owen and Major Joseph Hamilton Davies of Kentucky.

Though the battle of Tippecanoe, considered as a conflict from the losses on each side, would to-day be regarded only as a skirmish, yet it had a great moral influence in restraining the savages in the northwest, and, but for the meddling of the British agents, a permanent peace with the Indians could have been established.