Of the army under governor Harrison, thirty-five were killed in the action, and twenty-five died subsequently of their wounds:  the total number of killed and wounded was one hundred and eighty-eight.  Among the former were the lamented colonel Abraham Owen and major Joseph Hamilton Davies, of Kentucky.

Both officers and men behaved with much coolness and bravery,—­qualities which, in an eminent degree, marked the conduct of governor Harrison throughout the engagement.  The peril to which he was subjected may be inferred from the fact that a ball passed through his stock, slightly bruising his neck; another struck his saddle, and glancing hit his thigh; and a third wounded the horse on which he was riding.

Peace on the frontiers was one of the happy results of this severe and brilliant action.  The tribes which had already joined in the confederacy were dismayed; and those which had remained neutral now decided against it.

CHAPTER X.

Tecumseh returns from the south—­proposes to visit the President, but declines, because not permitted to go to Washington at the head of a party—­attends a council at fort Wayne—­proceeds to Malden and joins the British—­governor Harrison’s letter to the War Department relative to the north-west tribes.

During the two succeeding days, the victorious army remained in camp, for the purpose of burying the dead and taking care of the wounded.  In the mean time, colonel Wells, with the mounted riflemen, visited the Prophet’s town, and found it deserted by all the Indians except one, whose leg had been broken in the action.  The houses were mostly burnt, and the corn around the village destroyed.  On the ninth the army commenced its return to Vincennes, having broken up or committed to the flames all their unnecessary baggage, in order that the wagons might be used for the transportation of the wounded.

The defeated Indians were greatly exasperated with the Prophet:  they reproached him in bitter terms for the calamity he had brought upon them, and accused him of the murder of their friends who had fallen in the action.  It seems, that after pronouncing some incantations over a certain composition, which he had prepared on the night preceding the action, he assured his followers, that by the power of his art, half of the invading army was already dead, and the other half in a state of distraction; and that the Indians would have little to do but rush into their camp, and complete the work of destruction with their tomahawks.  “You are a liar,” said one of the surviving Winnebagoes to him, after the action, “for you told us that the white people were dead or crazy, when they were all in their senses and fought like the devil.”  The Prophet appeared dejected, and sought to excuse himself on the plea that the virtue of his composition had been lost by a circumstance of which he had no knowledge until after the battle was over.  His sacred character, however, was so far forfeited, that the Indians actually bound him with cords, and threatened to put him to death.  After leaving the Prophet’s town, they marched about twenty miles and encamped on the bank of Wild Cat creek.