General Proctor now proposed to the Indians to remove their women and children to McGee’s, opposite the river Rouge, where they would be furnished with their winter’s clothing and the necessary supplies of food.  To this proposition, Tecumseh yielded a reluctant assent; doubting, as he did, the truth of the statement.  When they were about to start, he observed to young Jim Blue-Jacket, “we are now going to follow the British, and I feel well assured, that we shall never return.”  When they arrived at McGee’s, Tecumseh found that there were no stores provided for them, as had been represented.  Proctor made excuses; and again pledged himself to the Indians, that if they would go with him to the Thames, they would there find an abundance of every thing needful to supply their wants; besides a reinforcement of British troops, and a fort ready for their reception.[A]

[Footnote A:  Anthony Shane.]

The retreat was continued towards the Thames.  On the second of October, when the army had reached Dalson’s farm, Proctor and Tecumseh, attended by a small guard, returned to examine the ground at a place called Chatham, where a deep, unfordable creek falls into the Thames.  They were riding together in a gig, and after making the necessary examination, the ground was approved of; and general Proctor remarked, upon that spot they would either defeat general Harrison or there lay their bones.  With this determination Tecumseh was highly pleased, and said, “it was a good place, and when he should look at the two streams, they would remind him of the Wabash and the Tippecanoe.”  Perhaps no better position could have been chosen for meeting the American army than this place presented.  The allied force of British and Indians, had they made a stand upon it, would have been protected in front by a deep unfordable stream, while their right flank would have been covered by the Thames, and their left by a swamp.  But general Proctor changed his mind; and leaving Tecumseh with a body of Indians to defend the passage of the stream, moved forward with the main army.  Tecumseh made a prompt and judicious arrangement of his forces; but it is said that his Indians, in the skirmish which ensued, did not sustain their previous reputation as warriors.  It is probable, however, that their leader did not intend to make any decided resistance to the American troops at this point, not being willing that general Proctor and his army should escape a meeting with the enemy.  In this action Tecumseh was slightly wounded in the arm by a ball.  General Harrison, in his official report of this affair, says: