In the same way, I did not believe that either Blennerhassett or Burr was guilty of being “Henry Burlingame IV,” whether or not that fellow in his latter guises was my sire.

Drawing on what I’d learnt from Consuelo to pose as a fellow agent of the Spanish minister to the U. States, I had enlisted Wilkinson to scotch their plan, not altogether on Tecumseh’s behalf (tho anything but the Mexican enterprise would have meant more encroachment on Indian lands) but principally to thwart two people who — separately or together! — might be H.B. IV. It was my intention to keep an occasional eye on both, especially on Burr, who it pleased me to report had at no time penetrated my disguise. Finally, at 18 my taskmaster was more desirable than before, & would she marry me?

She would be happy to, your mother replied, with Tecumseh’s consent. What had been his judgment of me?

I confest I had been too proud to seek him out & ask it, tho I’d heard his praises sung from Buffalo to New Orleans. A pity, Andrée said, since on the strength of her descriptions of me to Tecumseh during his recentest visit to Castines Hundred, he seem’d favorably inclined to the match. He had agreed in principle, she declared, that a war betwixt the British & the “Seventeen Fires” (as he call’d the U. States) would serve the interests of the Indians if the British won. They had proposed to him already the establishment of an arm’d Indian free state extending south from the Great Lakes. But he had seconded also my caution that events have energies of their own, and he worried that a U. States victory in such a war would be the end of Indian sovereignty. Even more he approved any plan to divide the Union, so long as it did not involve the formation of new white nations on Indian lands, as had Aaron Burr’s. Non-literate himself, Tecumseh was particularly imprest with my reported ability to counterfeit letters & other documents, so important in the white men’s commerce with one another. He had inquired of Andrée whether that talent might be put to use to disunite the Seventeen Fires whilst he tried to unite with his oratory the nations of the Indians.

And why, I ask’d, had Tecumseh paid this call on her? Because, she replied, his younger brother’s assumption in 1805 of the role of prophet & visionary, following upon Tecumseh’s own revival of Pontiac’s plan for an Indian confederacy, had put him troubledly in mind of Pontiac’s association with the Delaware Prophet, whose “vision” he knew to have been influenced by the 1st Andrée Castine. Tecumseh was uneasy about this reenactment; he trusted his brother’s loyalty, but not his judgment; he wanted, Andrée believed, both to reassure himself that she would not be another “Angélique Cuillerier,” & at the same time to learn whether she had any suggestions for improving his brother’s “vision” in the way the first Andrée had improved the Delaware Prophet’s. Your mother tactfully responded that her only vision was of Tecumseh at the head of an Indian empire rivalling that of the Aztecs or the Incas. Then she made the practical suggestion that the Prophet establish a religious center at some strategic location convenient to the principal nations of the confederacy — say, at the confluence of the Wabash & the Tippecanoe in the Indiana territory — to give the proposed union a physical headquarters like that of the Seventeen Fires in Washington. An “official” seat of authority, she maintain’d, might help to counter the Americans’ practice of making treaties to their own advantage with disaffected groups of Indians or self-styled chiefs. And the establishment of an Indian Mecca or Vatican, with the Wabash prophet at its head, would also help distinguish & fix him as the religious leader of the confederacy, & keep him out of Tecumseh’s hair in political & military matters. Tecumseh had thot this an inspired idea, thankt her happily, & urged her to send her intended to him.

For so she now declared me, in recompense for my work against the western empire of Burr, Blennerhassett, & General Wilkinson. But if I would have her to wife, I must complete two further tasks, one as it were for Tecumseh & the other as it might seem against him, for herself. She had learnt from her father’s friends in the Canadian Governor-General’s office that that worthy, Sir James Craig, was much pleased with a series of newspaper articles lately publisht by one John Henry of Vermont, attacking the republican form of government in general & the Republican administration in Washington in particular. Craig wanted to know whether this Henry could be hired to agitate in the Federalist press for the secession of New York & New England after the 1808 elections, when another Virginian was expected to follow Jefferson in the President’s House. Andrée had proposed me as one who could not only make that ascertainment, but supply Henry with appropriate copy, if necessary, to publish under his name. Her Quebec associate had offer’d to provide me with expense money & a stipend for this not very difficult assignment, which would serve also as my initiation into the British-Canadian secret service.

The 2nd task was more delicate. Governor Harrison of Indiana was negotiating with minor chiefs of the Delawares, Kickapoos, Miamis, & others of Pontiac’s old confederates to sell some 3,000,000 acres of their prime common hunting territory along the Wabash, for an absurdly small sum. Tecumseh opposed such a sale at any price; had even threaten’d to kill the potential signatories of Harrison’s treaty. My task was to suggest to him that his cause might better be served by permitting the treaty to be sign’d over his protests (but not by the Shawnees) & then enlisting the fierce Lake Erie Wyandots, who so far had held aloof from his confederacy, to aid him in punishing the “degenerate village chiefs” who sign’d it. The action would appeal to the Wyandots; their enlistment would impress the Potawatomis & other reluctant tribes; the elimination of those defectors amongst the minor chiefs would strengthen the Indian alliance & serve as a warning against further such treaties. It would also serve to introduce me to the Indians, whom I did not yet truly know… & to Tecumseh.

I observed to my young fiancée that she was ordering the deaths of some half-dozen human beings. She replied that they were cynical, drunken traitors who would trade their birthright & their people for a barrel of whiskey. If she could, she would perform the executions herself, with pleasure.

The 1st task was both easy & agreeable: it fetcht me in 1808 to Montreal & across the St. Lawrence into Vermont, where I readily enlisted the ambitious & erratic Mr. Henry — a former greengrocer, newspaper publisher, & artillery captain — to go down to Boston & test the air there for secession. I provided him with a simple cipher & instructions for transmitting his reports to the Governor-General’s office. Then, after Madison’s election & inauguration, I went to Boston myself to retrieve the man from the taverns & brothels where he claim’d to be keeping his finger on the pulse of public sentiment, and scolded him for providing “us” with no more than we could read more cheaply in the Boston newspapers: e.g., that the Federalists would oppose any move against Britain and, if Madison yielded to the western war-hawks, would perhaps attempt to set up a Congress of Federalist States in Boston or Hartford & remain neutral. I myself predicted (& still predict) against their actual secession, but felt the question to be of slight importance: there was enough pro-British, anti-French, & especially anti-Republican sentiment amongst the Yankees to guarantee a steady illegal sale of supplies from New York & New England to British forces in Canada. If the war goes successfully for Britain in that theater, annexation of those states to Canada should be negotiable without great difficulty. Whilst in Boston I draughted a few sample letters for Henry to cipher & transmit as his own. It did not trouble me that the man was of no consequence as a spy, for I saw already to what better use his letters could be put. I instructed him to keep copies, for the purpose of documenting his service to the British Foreign Office, and let him back to his tarts & ale.