Then the “Prophet” said to the red men, Stop drinking “fire-water,"[4] and you will have strength to kill off the “pale-faces” and get your land back again.  When you have killed them off, I will bless the earth.  I will make pumpkins[5] grow to be as big as wigwams, and the corn shall be so large that one ear will be enough for a dinner for a dozen hungry Indians.  The Indians liked to hear these things; they wanted to taste those pumpkins and that corn, and so they got ready to fight.

[Footnote 2:  Tecumseh (Te-kum’seh).]

[Footnote 3:  Prophet (prof’et):  one who tells what will happen in the future.]

[Footnote 4:  Fire-water:  the Indian name for whiskey.]

[Footnote 5:  Pumpkins (pump’kins).]

203.  Who William Henry Harrison was; the march to Tippecanoe; the “Prophet’s” sacred beans; the battle of Tippecanoe.—­At this time William Henry Harrison[6] was governor of Indiana territory.  He had fought under General Wayne[7] in his war with the Indians in Ohio.  Everybody knew Governor Harrison’s courage, and the Indians all respected him; but he tried in vain to prevent the Indians from going to war.  The “Prophet” urged them on at the north, and Tecumseh had gone south to persuade the Indians there to join the northern tribes.

[Illustration:  GOVERNOR HARRISON TALKING WITH THE “PROPHET.”]

Governor Harrison saw that a battle must soon be fought; so he started with his soldiers to meet the Indians.  He marched to the Tippecanoe River, and there he stopped.

While Harrison’s men were asleep in the woods, the “Prophet” told the Indians not to wait, but to attack the soldiers at once.  In his hand he held up a string of beans.  These beans, said he to the Indians, are sacred.[8] Come and touch them, and you are safe; no white man’s bullet can hit you.  The Indians hurried up in crowds to touch the wonderful beans.

Now, said the “Prophet,” let each one take his hatchet in one hand and his gun in the other, and creep through the tall grass till he gets to the edge of the woods.  The soldiers lie there fast asleep; when you get close to them, spring up and at them like a wild-cat at a rabbit.

The Indians started to do this, but a soldier on guard saw the tall grass moving as though a great snake was gliding through it.  He fired his gun at the moving grass; with a yell up sprang the whole band of Indians, and rushed forward:  in a moment the battle began.

Harrison won the victory.  He not only killed many of the Indians, but he marched against their village, set fire to it, and burned it to ashes.

[Illustration:  THE BATTLE OF TIPPECANOE.]

After that the Indians in that part of the country would not listen to the “Prophet.”  They said, He is a liar; his beans didn’t save us.

The battle of Tippecanoe did much good, because it prevented the Indian tribes from uniting and beginning a great war all through the west.  Governor Harrison received high praise for what he had done, and was made a general in the United States army.