PROPHET. These counsels were your own!
Good in themselves, they are too weak to sway
Our fickle race. I've much improved on them
Since the Great Spirit took me by the hand.

TECUMSEH. Improved! and how? Your mission was to lead
Our erring people back to ancient ways -
Too long o'ergrown - not bloody sacrifice.
They tell me that the prisoners you have ta'en -
Not captives in fair fight, but wanderers
Bewildered in our woods, or such as till
Outlying fields, caught from the peaceful plough -
You cruelly have tortured at the stake.
Nor this the worst! In order to augment
Your gloomy sway you craftily have played
Upon the zeal and frenzy of our tribes,
And, in my absence, hatched a monstrous charge
Of sorcery amongst them, which hath spared
Nor feeble age nor sex. Such horrid deeds
Recoil on us! Old Shataronra's grave
Sends up its ghost, and Tetaboxti's hairs -
White with sad years and counsel - singed by you!
In dreams and nightmares, float on every breeze.
Ambition's madness might stop short of this,
And shall if I have life.

PROPHET. The Great Spirit
Hath urged me, and still urges me to all.
He puts his hand to mine and leads me on.
Do you not hear him whisper even now -
"Thou art the Prophet?" All our followers
Behold in me a greater than yourself,
And worship me, and venture where I lead.

TECUMSEH. Your fancy is the common slip of fools,
Who count the lesser greater being near.
Dupe of your own imposture and designs,
I cannot bind your thoughts! but what you do
Henceforth must be my subject; so take heed,
And stand within my sanction lest you fall.

PROPHET. You are Tecumseh - else you should choke for
this!

[Haughtily crosses the stage and pauses.]

Stay! Let me think! I must not break with him -
'Tis premature. I know his tender part,
And I shall touch it.

[Recrosses the stage.]

Brother, let me ask,
Do you remember how our father fell?

TECUMSEH. Who can forget Kanawha's bloody fray?
He died for home in battle with the whites.

PROPHET. And you remember, too, that boyish morn,
When all our braves were absent on the chase -
That morn when you and I half-dreaming lay
In summer grass, but woke to deadly pain
Of loud-blown bugles ringing through the air.
They came! - a rush of chargers from the woods,
With tramplings, cursings, shoutings manifold,
And headlong onset, fierce with brandished swords,
Of frontier troopers eager for the fight.
Scarce could a lynx have screened itself from sight,
So sudden the attack - yet, trembling there,
We crouched unseen, and saw our little town
Stormed, with vile slaughter of small babe and crone,
And palsied grandsire - you remember it?

TECUMSEH. Remember it! Alas, the echoing
Of that wild havoc lingers in my brain!
O wretched age, and injured motherhood,
And hapless maiden-wreck!

PROPHET. Yet this has been
Our endless history, and it is this
Which crams my very veins with cruelty.
My pulses bound to see those devils fall
Brained to the temples, and their women cast
As offal to the wolf.