So it happened that as early as the summer of 1810 war was imminent in the Wabash and Maumee valleys, and perhaps only British influence delayed it. British interests imperatively required that Tecumthe’s confederacy should be made strong, and should not be wrecked prematurely in an unequal war. From Malden, opposite Detroit, the British traders loaded the American Indians with gifts and weapons; urged Tecumthe to widen his confederacy, to unite all the tribes, but not to begin war till he received the signal from Canada. All this was duly reported at Washington.[76] On the other hand, Harrison sent for Tecumthe; and August 12, 1810, the Indian chief came for a conference to Vincennes. Indians and whites, in considerable numbers, armed and alert, fearing treachery on both sides, witnessed the interview. Tecumthe took, as his right, the position he felt himself to occupy as the most powerful American then living,--who, a warrior himself, with five thousand warriors behind him, held in one hand an alliance with Great Britain, in the other an alliance with the Indians of the southwest. Representatives of the Wyandots, Kickapoos, Pottawatomies, Ottawas, and Winnebagoes announced the adhesion of their tribes to the Shawanee Confederacy and the election of Tecumthe as their chief. In this character he avowed to Harrison, in the broadest and boldest language, the scope of his policy:[77]-- “Brother, since the peace was made in 1795 you have killed some of the Shawanee, Winnebagoes, Delawares, and Miamis, and you have taken our land from us; and I do not see how we can remain at peace with you if you continue to do so.... You try to force the red people to do some injury; it is you that are pushing them on to do mischief. You endeavor to make distinctions; you wish to prevent the Indians from doing as we wish them,--from uniting and considering their land as the common property of the whole. You take tribes aside and advise them not to come into this measure.... The reason, I tell you, is this: You want, by your distinctions of Indian tribes, in allotting to each a particular tract of land, to make them to war with each other. You never see an Indian come and endeavor to make the white people do so. You are continually driving the red people; and at last you will drive them into the great lake, where they cannot either stand or work.