Call for Change: The Medicine Way of American Indian History, Ethos, and Reality

4. The Second Dimension of Interacting Indian-White Relations

65 4 The Second Dimension of Interacting Indian-White Relations More than two hundred years ago two brothers stood at a place near what is presently Battle Ground, Indiana. Along the Wabash River, lined by towering oaks, maples, tulip trees, hackberries, sycamores, and elms, they discussed their troubled fate. Their decision became their stand against the encroaching white settlers. The younger brother Tenskwatawa, the Shawnee Prophet, stood nearby. Here, at what the Indians called Prophetstown, Tecumseh, the older of the two brothers, said: It is true I am Shawnee. My forefathers were warriors. Their son is a warrior. From them I only take my existence; from my tribe I take nothing. I am the maker of my own fortune; and oh! That I could make that of my red people, and of my country, as great as the conceptions of my mind, when I think of the Spirit that rules the universe. I would not then come to Governor [William Henry] Harrison, to ask him to tear the treaty, and to obliterate the landmark; but I would say to him, Sir, you have liberty to return to your own country. The being within, communing with past ages, tells me, that once, nor until lately, there was no white man on this continent. That it then all belonged to red men, children of the same parents, placed on it by the Great Spirit that made them, to keep it, to traverse it, to enjoy its productions , and to fill it with the same race. Once a happy race. Since made miserable by the white people, who are never content, but 66 Interacting Indian-White Relations always encroaching. The way, and the only way to check and stop this evil, is, for all the red men to unite in claiming a common and equal right in the land, as it was at first, and should be yet; for it never was divided, but belongs to all, for the use of each. That no party has a right to sell, even to each other, much less to strangers; those who want all, and will not do with less. The white people have no right to take the land from the Indians , because they had it first; it is theirs. They may sell, but all must join.”1 Indians and non-Indians see things differently, thus creating a binary model for a proposed Indian-white equation.2 This difference helped to provoke one of the greatest battles in American Indian history—the Battle of Tippecanoe, also called the Battle of Prophetstown . On November 7, 1811, power met power; the Medicine Way of Indians was pitted against the white desire for land. Along the Wabash River following a steamy green humid summer stood the many lodges of the Shawnees and their allied nations among the tall oaks and maples and heavy underbrush. Fall gave way as winter approached , with sturdy oaks dropping their acorns; leaves of yellow, light red, deep red, and orange covered the ground. The serene place encountered death as night ended and blood permeated the sandy brown earth. The predawn mist gripped the landscape in a steady cold a little above freezing. The two opposing sides of conflicting beliefs and distinct worldviews clashed on the battlefield. The end of the story is well known. William Henry Harrison marched his soldiers toward Prophetstown when Tecumseh was away recruiting more warriors. As Harrison camped nearby, eager warriors attacked prematurely. In a little over two hours Harrison defeated the Shawnee Prophet and the warriors. The warriors retreated to the Prophetstown but could not hold it, and Harrison ordered his men to burn it to the ground. Present scholarship on Indian history tends to focus on the interaction between Indians and whites. Unfortunately almost all of these relations have been in war, but there were interludes of trade, conversion to Christianity, boarding school experiences, fighting side Interacting Indian-White Relations 67 by side in World Wars I and II, and intermarriages in which Indians and white Americans shared common ground in the Second Dimension of the Indian-white paradigm. These interactions typify the interchanges between Indians and the white mainstream—the hyphen or “shared experience” of Indian-white relations history. This shared experience presents a new reality of the Indian consciousness and subconsciousness and the white man’s consciousness. In theory they are equal partners in making history together, although their versions differ. Insightful...