As for Tecumseh, he returned suddenly from the West to find that despite his commands, the Prophet had permitted a battle. In his rage and disappointment he took his brother, now fallen and disgraced, by the hair and shook him. But no longer was it possible to hold his tribes together. The victory of the United States at Tippecanoe took the ardor for battle and resistance quite out of them. There were hundreds of them, however, who in the war of 1812, which broke out immediately, followed Tecumseh into the British service, in which he was commissioned as a major-general. In that service he was doomed to continued disaster. The English commander. General Proctor, was incompetent and, in all the qualities of real manhood, the inferior of his savage ally. After the battle of Put-in-Bay, on Lake Erie, he started to retreat. Tecumseh protested, and was induced to go on only by the promise that winter supplies would be delivered a few miles up the Thames. It was on this stream that Proctor finally determined to make a stand, but at the outset of the action he, coward-like, retreated with his red coats, leaving the Indians to bear the brunt of the battle. Tecumseh had gone into the fight saying that he would be killed, and his prediction was verified. But how he died no one can say with certainty. No less than four Americans claimed the honor of having killed him. Among the slain, in that time of fierce pursuit and confusion, his body was not even identified. But there it was, on the banks of that quiet Canadian stream, some thirty-five miles from Detroit, that the greatest Indian in statecraft, diplomacy, devotion to his people, and in dignity of thought and intellectual gifts, found his unmarked grave. No one yet has written a biography of him that does full justice to his great abilities and lofty character. But his name is the most familiar of all Indian names, and he is the only Indian after whom Western fathers and mothers have ever named their sons. The late General of the United States Army, William Tecumseh Sherman, bore his name, as have hundreds of other boys born in Ohio, Kentucky, and the great States that roll westward from them. [Signature of the author.] JAMES LAWRENCE (1781-1813) [Illustration: James Lawrence. [TN]]