Having with unsoldierly dispatch cleared his red skirts of the disputed
territory, grown at least too hot for comfort, this Proctor--a fat
poltroon--was now in hurried retreat through the forest-wilds of Canada
West, at the head, not the rear, of an army composed of about nine
hundred British regulars and two thousand Indian allies under the
leadership of Tecumseh. On, in swift pursuit, with a stretch of about a
half day's march between, came General Harrison--a gaunt hero--at the
head, not the rear, of an army consisting of two companies of United
States regulars and about three thousand volunteers, nearly all of whom
were tall, stalwart Kentuckians, under the leadership of General Shelby,
the venerable Governor of Kentucky. No Indian allies. In the van of the
pursuing army, at the head of his regiment of mounted riflemen, one
thousand strong, the very flower of green Kentucky's chivalry, rode
Colonel Richard M. Johnson, afterward made Vice-president of the United
States by his grateful countrymen, because--rumpsey-dumpsey--Dick had
killed Tecumseh.
And there in the van, at the head of his company of mounted riflemen,
mounted on a splendid Kentucky bay, and rigged out in his dashing
backwoods uniform, rode Captain Bushrod Reynolds, whom we left
twenty-four years ago in the Paradise a sturdy urchin of nine, and still
a candidate for breeches and boots. Yes, there he rode, a tall, athletic
man, in the prime of his days, frank-faced, clear-eyed, bold-browed, and
with a nose that had gradually ripened from the pug into the Roman, as
he had ripened in years and experience, just as we predicted when
drawing his portrait where he sat on the topmost rail of a scraggy
worm-fence, watching the squirrels and crows. Nor was it true that he
had become a married man and a man of family, and a captain too--all
pretty much as the far-seeing Burl had prophesied at the same early
period.
At present, however, having been married but a year, his family was
small. For, since reaching the stature and years of manhood, Bushrod
Reynolds had spent many years in the great North-west, where as an
Indian-trader he had pushed his fortunes with great energy and success,
yet with clean hands, never in all the time selling or bartering a
single gallon of whisky to the Indians--a virtue quite rare, we fear, in
Indian-traders, and one for which he was highly commended by Tecumseh
himself, who never drank any thing but water. The address, prudence, and
integrity he displayed in this vocation had attracted the notice of
General Harrison, then Governor of the North-west Territory, through
whose influence the young Kentuckian received the appointment of United
States Indian Agent in that quarter. Here again he had acquitted himself
in the same clean-handed manner, never touching a dollar of the money
intrusted to him, saving so far as officially authorized.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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