Pierre Berton's War of 1812 (17 page)

The Bloodless Victory

 … unless Detroit and
Michilimackinac be both in
our possession at the
commencement of hostilities
,
not only Amherstburg but
most probably the whole
country, must be evacuated
as far as Kingston
.

—Isaac Brock, February, 1812.

THE WISCONSIN-FOX PORTAGE
, Illinois Territory, June 18, 1812.

On the very day that war is declared, Brock’s courier catches up at last with the Red-Haired Man, Robert Dickson. The courier’s name is Francis Rheaume; he and a companion have logged two thousand miles scouring the plains and valleys seeking their man. At Fort Dearborn (Chicago), their quest was almost aborted when the American military commander, Captain Nathan Heald, sniffing
treachery, had them arrested and searched. Heald found nothing; the two men had hidden Brock’s letters in the soles of their moccasins. So here they are at last, after three months of travel, standing on the height of land (and also on Brock’s letters) where the water in the little streams trickles in two directions—some toward the Gulf of Mexico, the rest north to the Great Lakes.

Dickson reads Brock’s message, scrawls an immediate reply. He has, he writes, between two hundred and fifty and three hundred of his “friends” available and would have more but for a hard winter with “an unparalleled scarcity of provisions.” His friends are ready to march. He will lead them immediately to the British post at St. Joseph’s Island and expects to arrive on the thirtieth of the month.

With his report, Dickson encloses copies of speeches by three of the chiefs who will accompany him. They leave no doubt about the Indians’ sympathies: “We live by our English Traders who have always assisted us, and never more so, than this last year, at the risk of
their lives, and we are at all times ready to listen to them on account of the friendship they have always shown us.”

The Wiscosin-Fox Portage

The Prophet’s message has also penetrated this lonely land: “We have always found our English father the protector of our women and children, but we have for some time past been amused by the songs of the bad Birds from the lower part of the River—they were not songs of truth, and this day we rejoice again in hearing the voice of our English Father, who never deceives us, and we are certain never will.” So speaks Wabasha of the Sioux. The others echo his sentiments.

The Indians will follow Dickson anywhere. Here in this land of chiefs and sub-chiefs he is the real chief—their friend, their protector, and in this last harsh winter their saviour. When he arrived the previous August from St. Joseph’s Island with his cargo of winter supplies, he found them starving. A disastrous drought had withered their crops and driven away the game. Dickson beggared himself to save his people, distributing all his provisions—ten thousand dollars’ worth—among the tribes. He did this out of patriotism as well as humanity, for he knew that American agents were moving about the country, doing their best to influence the Indians. He assumes American hostility toward Britain, but fortunately, as he tells Brock, he is “possessed of the means of frustrating their intentions.”

He is a man of commanding presence, a massive and genial six-footer with a flaming shock of red hair and a ruddy face to match. Everybody likes him, for there is an easy sociability about Dickson, a dignity, a sense of honour and principle. Men of every colour trust him. He is of a different breed from Elliott, McKee, and Girty. Highly literate, he is also humane. He has tried to teach the Indians not to kill and scalp when they can take prisoners; the greatest warriors, Dickson tells his people, are those who save their captives rather than destroy them. The infrequent explorers who cross the empty continent are attracted by Dickson. Zebulon Pike, the young army officer who has given his name to the famous peak, writes of his open, frank manner and his encyclopaedic knowledge of the country. Another, William Powell, reports that the Indians reverence and worship Dickson, who is “generous to a fault.”

What is he doing out here in this lonely land? Living often in great squalor, existing for weeks on wild rice, corn, and pemmican or sometimes on nothing but melted snow, going for months without hearing his native tongue, trudging for miles on snowshoes or struggling over long portages with back-breaking loads, he is a man never at rest, like the Cut Head Yanktonais, the roving Sioux with whom he travels, knowing no real home but moving ceaselessly along his string of trading posts like a trapper tending a trapline.

His two brothers, who have also emigrated from Dumfriesshire, prefer the civilized life. One is a rising barrister and future politician at Niagara, the other a well-to-do merchant and militia colonel at Queenston. But Robert Dickson has spent twenty years in Indian country. Why? Certainly not for profit, for he has little money; the fur trade is a risky business. Nor for glory, for there is no glory. For power? He could have more in the white man’s world. The answer seems to be that he is here, like so many of his countrymen, for the adventure of the frontier, the risks, the dangers, the excitement, and now, perhaps, because after two decades these are his people and this wild, untravelled country is his home. Who else but Dickson has trekked alone across that immense tract—larger than an American state—that lies west of the Mississippi between the Des Moines and the Missouri? He is a man of extraordinary energy and endurance; nowhere else, perhaps, can he feel fulfilled. In the Canadian Northwest, beyond the Great Lakes and the great bay, there are others like him, living among the Indians, exploring the land. Most are Scotsmen.

Dickson likes the Indians for themselves. He is faithful to his Indian wife, prides himself that he is educating his half-Indian children, is angered by the treatment his people receive from American frontiersmen who see the Indian as a dangerous animal to be exterminated. Added to these grievances against the Americans are the strictures enforced against British traders who still insist on flying the Union Jack over American territory. To evade the recent Non-Importation Act, by which the Americans have tried to prevent British traders from bringing goods into the United
States, Dickson has been forced to become a smuggler. So incensed was he over this outrage that he knocked down the customs officer at Michilimackinac who tried to make him pay duty on his trade goods. His patriotism needs no fuelling. He is more than delighted to aid his countrymen.

He loses no time. This very day he dispatches a reply to Brock and sends it to Fort Amherstburg with thirty Menominee warriors. Then, with 130 Sioux, Winnebago, and Menominee, he sets off for St. Joseph’s Island at the western entrance to Lake Huron, arriving as promised on the dot of June 30.

St. Joseph’s Island, in the words of a young ensign exiled there for satirizing the lieutenant-governor, is “the military Siberia of Upper Canada.” It is so remote that its garrison has trouble getting supplies and pay. Quarters are primitive. Rain, snow, and wind pour through the gaps between the blockhouse logs. The troops have shivered all winter for want of greatcoats. They turn out on parade wearing a short covering tailored from blankets intended for the Indians. These blanket coats are not named for St. Joseph’s but acquire the phonetic name of the American fortress, forty miles away. As Mackinac or “Mackinaw” coats, created out of necessity, they are destined to become fashionable.

St. Joseph’s unpopularity is understandable. Officers almost on arrival begin to think about requesting a transfer. For the troops, the only way out is through desertion. There have been several attempts: in April, 1805, twelve men took off in the garrison’s boat; in March, 1810, two privates of the 100th Regiment attempted to escape on foot. Their pursuers found them, one half-dead of cold (he eventually lost both legs), the other a corpse. An investigation uncovered a plan for a mutiny involving a quarter of the garrison.

The fort’s commander, Captain Charles Roberts, a twenty-year veteran of the British Army in India and Ceylon, has been in charge since September, 1811. He has, in effect, been pensioned off for garrison duty along with the newly formed 10th Royal Veteran Battalion, a new idea of Brock’s for making use of men too old to fight. Brock has been too optimistic about the value of these
veterans. In Roberts’s words, they are “so debilitated and worn down by unconquerable drunkenness that neither fear of punishment, the love of fame or the honour of their Country can animate them to extraordinary exertions.” There are only forty-four of them defending a crumbling blockhouse armed with four ancient and nearly useless six-pound cannon. Roberts himself is experienced, incisive, and eager for action, but he is also mortally ill with a “great debility of the stomach and the bowels.”

It is the Indians, then, and the clerks and voyageurs of the North West Company who will form the spearhead of the attack on Michilimackinac. In addition to the members of Dickson’s native force, already chafing for action, there are the neighbouring Ottawa and Chippewa tribesmen under John Askin, Jr., a member of the sprawling Askin family, whose patriarch, John, Sr., lives at Sandwich across the river from Detroit. Askin, whose mother is an Ottawa, is interpreter and keeper of the Indian stores at St. Joseph’s. His people have blown hot and cold on the subject of war with the Americans. There was a time after the
Chesapeake
incident, when Tecumseh and the Prophet were rallying the tribes, when they were filled with ardour for the old way of life. Sixty, to Askin’s astonishment, even refused a gift of rum. But now that ardour has cooled; no one can keep the Indians in a state of animation for long. That is Roberts’s problem as the days move on without word from Brock. Dickson’s men are becoming restless, but the attack on Mackinac cannot begin without a specific order. If there is going to be a war at all, Roberts wishes it would begin at once.

BALTIMORE, MARYLAND
, June 18, 1812. John Jacob Astor is hurrying toward Washington, his ample rump rising and falling as he posts his horse. He has come in haste from New York to try to stop the damnfool war. No doubt he feels he has the clout to do just that, but here in Baltimore he learns that he is too late. The war is on—a war that Astor needs as much as he needs a case of smallpox.

He is not a pacifist, merely a businessman. His South West Company straddles the border, the first of the multinational corporations. He has a fortune in trade goods tied up at St. Joseph’s on the Canadian side, another fortune in furs at Mackinac on the American side. What will become of these investments? It has apparently not occurred to Astor that the country might actually go to war. As late as February he wrote, in his semi-literate style: “We are happey in the hope of Peace and have not the Smalest Idia of a war with england.” He is neither pro-British nor anti-British, merely pro-business, pro-profit. He has been in Canada the past winter, tendering successfully on government bills of specie to support the British army, too preoccupied to sense what is coming. Only at the last moment, as the debates in Congress grow shrill, does he become uneasy and so decides to put his personal prestige on the line and gallop out of New York to reason with the politicians. But now, with war declared, the best he can do is to try to mend his imperilled fortunes.