"Father, you have got the arms and ammunition which our great father sent to his red children. If you have an idea of going away, give them to us and you may go, and welcome. For us, our lives are in the hands of the Great Spirit. We are determined to defend our lands, and if it be his will, we wish to leave our bones upon them." In spite of Tecumseh's protest, Proctor burned Malden and began a retreat. He pretended from time to time that he would halt and give battle. When the retreat commenced, Tecumseh said, "We are now going to follow the British, and I am sure that we shall never return." At last, on October 5, Proctor was forced to halt and oppose the pursuing Americans in the battle of the Thames. Just before the engagement Tecumseh said to the group of chiefs around him: "Brother warriors, we are about to enter into an engagement, from which I shall never come out--my body will remain on the field of battle." Unbuckling his sword and handing it to a chief, he said, "When my son becomes a noted warrior and able to wield a sword, give this to him." The battle which followed was for a time fiercely contested, and the position selected was well adapted for defense. The Indians, under their indomitable leader, stood their ground longer than the British regulars. Proctor fled, like the coward he was, leaving the great chief and his warriors to receive the brunt of the battle. The flight of the British commander was too rapid for him to be overtaken, though they captured his baggage. With one arm bleeding and almost useless, Tecumseh, too proud to fly, stood his ground, dealing prodigious blows right and left, and inspiring his warriors with his loud commanding war-whoop, which was heard above the din of the battle. Col. Richard M. Johnson and his Kentucky cavalry were ordered to charge the Indians. This they did with such fury that the savage warriors fled; but not until their intrepid leader had received a bullet through his head, which stilled his clarion voice in death. The discussion as to who killed Tecumseh became a singularly heated one in subsequent political campaigns, the chief recommendation for office in that day being skill as an Indian fighter. The friends of Col. Richard M. Johnson, of Kentucky, claimed that _honor_ for their hero when he was a candidate for the Vice-Presidency. This, indeed, constituted one of his chief claims to the suffrage of his party, just as Harrison's victories at Tippecanoe and the Thames elevated him to the Presidency. Johnson himself never made the claim, saying that his assailant was so close upon him that he did not stop to ask him his name before shooting him.