170 INDIANA HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS 



in that battle, and hear him, while the tears rolled down 

 his furrowed cheeks, depict the unhappy result of that 

 day to the red man. — The eulogies that he bestowed upon 

 the character of the commanding General, would put to 

 blush the detractions of some savages who were but 

 papooses at that time. It was to this Indian, also, that 

 many of the incidents of the fallowing tale are owing. — 

 Let the savage detractors of savage character, blush when 

 they attempt to picture the Indian character as void of 

 the finer feelings of human nature — or else let them 

 boldly assert that this tale is naught but fiction. But 

 to the matter. 



Just before the march of "the army," as the small 

 command of General Harrison was then termed, from the 

 old port of Vincennes, on the Wabash, to the memorable 

 field of Tippecanoe, there arrived at that port two of the 

 adventuresome seekers of fortune, from that great nurs- 

 ery of western emigrants, New England. 



Abel Atwater, was born on she banks of the Connecti- 

 cut, and although then scarcely thirty years of age, had 

 already worn the weeds of widowhood. A lovely and 

 interesting wife had left him one son, and a mournful 

 and melancholy heart. Circumstances attended her death 

 that made her loss much more poignant than it otherwise 

 would have been to him. It was before the general appli- 

 cation of the invention of those great machines, which it 

 now seems as though they were intended by some evil 

 genii, as great destroyers of the human race. War, 

 pestilence, and famine, have sunk to insignificance, when 

 compared to modern steamboats. At this time the only 

 conveyance through Long Island Sound was by "packet," 

 which depended upon that fickle mistress of their move- 

 ments, the wind. 



At the earnest request of Atwater, his wife and child 

 took passage in one of those to visit her friends in New- 

 York, and to transact some important business for him, 

 as, by an accident, he was rendered unable at that time 

 to leave home. Off the mouth of Connecticut river, the 



