The character of Tecumseh appears so fully in the course he pursued, as to require but brief comment. While the Prophet resorted without hesitation to all the wiles of Indian cunning and stratagem, for effecting his own purposes, and for thwarting those of his opponents, his course was as manly and dignified as it was prompt. He was certainly under no obligation to disclose his schemes, and yet he appears never to have taken much pains to conceal them. We know that he was suspected, and accused, of having actively engaged in inducing general hostility, as well as instigating particular outrages among the frontier tribes, for several years before much was actually known of him. This may have been the case, and it may not; the evidence amounts to nothing, and the suspicion and accusation alluded to, like the offences themselves, are very easily accounted for upon other and obvious grounds. There is no necessity, then, of going at length into the history of the Western country for the last half century, to point out the real grounds of complaint and the real provocations to hostility, which Tecumseh, or his brother, or any other Indian of information and reflection, might have alleged on the part of the tribes, against the American Government or the American people. This would be justifying what we do not admit. It is sufficient to observe that quite enough had occurred, to furnish plausible pretexts for all that the Chieftain is known to have done or attempted to do. Governor Harrison stated in his annual message, for 1809, to the Indiana Legislature, that owing to defects in the Federal law, "every person has been allowed to trade with the Indians that pleases; _which proves a source of numberless abuses,_ of mischievous effect both to them and ourselves." Two years before, we find an opinion advanced by the same excellent authority on a similar occasion, that "the utmost efforts to induce them (the Indians) to take up arms would be unavailing, _if one only, of the many persons who have committed murders on their people, could be brought to punishment._" To illustrate the truth of this remark, we may mention the murder of a Creek Indian at Vincennes, early in 1810, and of course subsequently to the particular transactions alluded to in the message. He was shot by a white man, an Italian trader, upon the pretext that the Indian, who was intoxicated, had shown a disposition to do him some injury. The Governor discharged _his_ duty by causing the Italian to be arrested and tried; but, in the language of our informant, "as in too many other cases, acquittal was the consequence." [FN] We are farther told, that about the same time, two Indians were wounded by a white man, at a few miles distance from Vincennes. The occurrence of circumstances of this nature is said to have been a source of great embarrassment and vexation to Governor Harrison; but in this case, he could only send out,--not a constable for the aggressor, for that course