Tecumseh was the last great leader of the Indian race and perhaps the finest embodiment of all its better qualities.  Like Pontiac, fifty years before, but in a nobler way, he tried to unite the Indians against the exterminating American advance.  He was apparently on the eve of forming his Indian alliance when he returned home to find that his brother the Prophet had just been defeated at Tippecanoe.  The defeat itself was no great thing.  But it came precisely at a time when it could exert most influence on the unstable Indian character and be most effective in breaking up the alliance of the tribes.  Tecumseh, divining this at once, lost no time in vain regrets, but joined the British next year at Amherstburg.  He came with only thirty followers.  But stray warriors kept on arriving; and many of the bolder spirits joined him when war became imminent.  At the time of Brock’s arrival there were a thousand effective Indians under arms.  Their arming was only authorized at the last minute; for Brock’s dispatch to Prevost shows how strictly neutral the Canadian government had been throughout the recent troubles between the Indians and Americans.  He mentions that the chiefs at Amherstburg had long been trying to obtain the muskets and ammunition ’which for years had been withheld, agreeably to the instructions received from Sir James Craig, and since repeated by Your Excellency.’

Precisely at noon Brock took his stand beneath a giant oak at Amherstburg surrounded by his officers.  Before him sat Tecumseh.  Behind Tecumseh sat the chiefs; and behind the chiefs a thousand Indians in their war-paint.  Brock then stepped forward to address them.  Erect, alert, broad-shouldered, and magnificently tall; blue-eyed, fair-haired, with frank and handsome countenance; he looked every inch the champion of a great and righteous cause.  He said the Long Knives had come to take away the land from both the Indians and the British whites, and that now he would not be content merely to repulse them, but would follow and beat them on their own side of the Detroit.  After the pause that was usual on grave occasions, Tecumseh rose and answered for all his followers.  He stood there the ideal of an Indian chief:  tall, stately, and commanding; yet tense, lithe, observant, and always ready for his spring.  He the tiger, Brock the lion; and both unflinchingly at bay.

Next morning, August 15, an early start was made for Sandwich, some twelve miles north, where a five-gun battery was waiting to be unmasked against Detroit across the river.  Arrived at Sandwich, Brock immediately sent across his aide-de-camp, Colonel Macdonell, with a letter summoning Hull to surrender.  Hull wrote back to say he was prepared to stand his ground.  Brock at once unmasked his battery and made ready to attack next day.  With the men on detachment Hull still had a total of twenty-five hundred.  Brock had only fifteen hundred, including the Provincial Marine.  But Hull’s men were losing what