Book changed view of landscape

Sometimes, a book can change the landscape.

That’s what happened to me this winter.

Like most of you, I grew up in this slice of eastern Indiana and western Ohio.

Like most of you, I made school and scout trips to the stockade at Fort Recovery as a kid.

Like most of you, I heard the tales of Mad Anthony Wayne, of St. Clair’s defeat and of our pioneer ancestors.

I even remember a trip — as a Cub Scout — to see the little stone monument south of Portland where the treaty line — the line from the Treaty of Greenville — intersects with what is now U.S. 27.

But I didn’t really understand it all.

And I’m only just beginning to, thanks to a book.

It’s called “Tecumseh and the Prophet.”

I received it for Christmas from my daughter Sally and her husband Ben, who is a social studies teacher. It had been on my “wish list” after I read an extended review in a magazine.

As I write this, I still have one more chapter to go. Tecumseh is dead. But I have not yet read about the Prophet’s fate. I’ve intentionally slowed down in my reading because a part of me doesn’t want the book to end.

In part, that’s because the book keeps telling me things I never knew.

Things like:

•The Shawnee we know as the Prophet, brother of Tecumseh, was pretty much a drunk, prattling, self-absorbed idiot until he had what was apparently a cataleptic seizure. When he came to after a couple of days — just before his remains were being laid to rest — he preached a new Indian gospel of sobriety and peace.

•William Henry Harrison, governor of the Indiana Territory, hated the British, believed Indiana should be a slave-owning state and cheated Indian tribes out of thousands of acres of land after getting their chiefs drunk on hundreds of gallons of whiskey so they would sign the Treaty of Fort Wayne.

•Not long after the Treaty of Greenville was signed, the white settler population south and east of the treaty line numbered a couple of hundred thousand, while the Indian population north and west of the line numbered about 6,000.

And that’s just a sampling.

As I read, I kept looking at the landscape around us.

It was more wooded then. Fields had not yet been cleared to anything approaching the extent they are today.

Travel was mostly by water and trails. They were the highways, particularly the rivers and streams.

And the landscape was empty.

North and west of the Treaty Line — that one marked by a stone boundary south of Portland — it was mostly Indian country.

And it was dark. Very dark.

For the past several years, I’ve talked with Jay County third graders when they stop by to see the vintage Haynes automobile at the Community Resource Center.

One of the things I always try to stress is the darkness.

No electricity. No streetlights. Nothing but the occasional candle or kerosene lamp.

Wooded, dark and empty. That’s the landscape Tecumseh and his somewhat crazy brother and their followers were dealing with.

That, of course, is the same landscape that white settlers were dealing with as the young republic kept expanding at its seams.

On the one side, you had a burgeoning agrarian culture, looking to tame the wilderness.

On the other side, you had a culture built around hunting and harmony with that same wilderness.

Conflict was inevitable, and it was brutal.

And it happened here. In our backyards.

Tecumseh roamed here. The young American republic flexed its muscles here.

Their stories, their dreams, their failures, their brutality, their humanity, their genius and their stupidity are all worth remembering today.

Sometimes a book can change your landscape.