The sachem looked far forth toward the regions of the rising sun, and there beheld the civilized and powerful white man, whose star of empire was leading him onward in his resistless progress toward the mighty rivers and the boundless plains of the far West--the land of the future. The powerful stranger laid his hand upon the woody hills, and they smoked; he set his foot upon the grassy plains, and they withered. He lifted the hand of violence against the red sons of the forest, and they fled; he breathed upon them, and they became diseased, corrupt, and feeble; he sowed the seeds of strife among them, and straightway they fell to wrangling and warring one with another, more fiercely than ever before; he stretched his long arm over their heads and thrust his terrible sword into the heart of their wilderness, now here, now there, saying: "This pleasant valley is mine, here will I make my dwelling-place; this fertile plain is mine, it shall yield me riches; this broad river is mine, it shall be a highway between my great towns. Then, westward, red man, farther westward; nor think of rest, while you have the setting sun and this fair land before you!" Still onward and westward the white man held his ever-widening, overwhelming course. A little while and the red man should not have in all the green earth where to lay his weary head and say: "This is my home--here dwelt my fathers before me, and here they be buried; here with them shall I rest when my race is run." The sachem saw all this, and his mighty spirit was stirred within him. "The Shemanols,"[1] said the sachem to his people, "have united their seventeen great fires[2] into one, and the union has made them strong and happy. We must profit by the example. I will go forth among the tribes of red men, and by the help of the Great Spirit unite them into one people; make of them a dam to stay the flow of this mighty water, lest it utterly sweep away our forest and cast us like driftwood, broken and scattered, on the far-off shores beneath the setting sun. We have warned the white stranger to come no farther, but have spoken to the winds that hear not; we have entreated him to come no farther, but have prayed to the rocks that feel not. Then, let him come. I see his warriors in the east, in the south, in the north, and in numbers like the leaves of the forest when rolling and rustling before the blasts of autumn. Shall the sachem of the Shawnees tremble? Shall they say he hated the foe of his race and feared him? I too have my warriors, strong and brave and true; and many a forest and mountain and plain, left us by our fathers, have we still behind us and around us. Then let us stand up like men and defend them. Or, if fall we must, at least then here, where lie our fathers, let us leave our bones to cry out against the destroyer of our race, and our dust to poison the air his children shall breathe. If such must be our fate, it is well. Wahcoudah's will be done!"