Page:Tupper family records - 1835.djvu/210

 APPENDIX F.

��TE-CUM-SEH.

This celebrated aboriginal warrior, whose name occurs in the previous pages, was so conspicuous in the annals of the late Ame- rican war, for his fidelity and devotion to the British cause and for his attachment to Major-General Brock, that we feel it to be a pleasing act of justice to his memory, the more particularly as his talents and labours are so little known and appreciated on this side the Atlantic, not to conclude this volume without appending a brief sketch of his life, and subjoining every particular we have been able to collect descriptive of his conduct and character.

Te-cum-seh, a Shawanee, was born in 17C9 or 1770, about the same year as his " brave brother warrior," Sir Isaac Brock. He may be said to have been inured to war from his childhood, as the Indians, with few exceptions, took part with Great Britain against the Americans in their contest for independence. When that in- dependence was achieved, the Indian nations continued in hostility, alleging that the United States had infringed on their territories ; and, in consequence, the settlers on the western frontier were for several years sadly harassed by their predatory incursions. These were the more terrible because the Indians seldom extended quar- ter to the men, scalping them without distinction, and spared the women and children only for captivity. Abhorrent as this cruel mode of warfare may appear, and different as it is to the more honorable slaughter of civilized enemies, we should not condemn it without remembering the many injuries the Indians had received. They knew from sad experience that they could place no faith in the whites, who had long considered them as legal prey, and too often treated them as the brute animals of the forest. Expelled from the coasts, and dispossessed of their hunting grounds, they had been gradually driven westward until they had too much cause to apprehend that the cupidity of their oppressors would be satisfied only with their utter extermination. " The red men are melting," to borrow the expressive metaphor of a celebrated Miami chief of that day, " like snow before the sun." Indeed it is melancholy to

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