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Strong Wolf sent several other warriors to the settler’s houses that had been built on Potawatomis soil. He had instructed them to hold those white people as prisoners. He would come, as chief of his people, to each cabin, and set the law down himself. He would personally see that they left, and if they dared not to, it would be up to him to decide what their fate might be.
But he had smugly known that the show of force on the part of the Potawatomis should frighten the whites into fleeing.
Strong Wolf held onto his rifle and rode up to the men and women who had been harvesting corn until they had caught sight of the Potawatomis warriors.
They now cowered together, their eyes filled with fright, as Strong Wolf drew rein before them.
“You are illegally on land of the Potawatomis,” he said, his voice tight with anger. “Why do you think you have the right to harvest corn that was planted by someone besides yourselves?”
“This land belongs to whomever squats on it,” a bulbous-nosed, middle-aged man said as he stepped forth in bib overalls, his face bronzed by the wind and sun. “Now git!”
“You speak bravely, yet your voice reveals the fear behind the words that you speak,” Strong Wolf said, his lips tugging into a tight smile.
Strong Wolf shifted his gaze to the two women and the children clinging to their skirts.
Then he turned cold eyes back to the man whom had seemingly appointed himself the spokesman.
“If you value the lives of these women and children, you will turn your eyes and voice from me, gather them protectively within your arms, and usher them from land that belongs to the Potawatomis by treaty!” Strong Wolf said with force, chuckling when the man obviously understood now that Strong Wolf meant business.
Slowly the man stepped back away from Strong Wolf, through the rows of stalks of corn, his eyes wide.
“I am chief of my people and whatever I choose to do with you, will be done,” Strong Wolf threatened as he edged his horse closer with each of the man’s steps backward. “Had I not been gone to guide the rest of my people to this land that is now ours, I would have been here to stop you from building your lodges and taking the land as though it was yours. You would have not cut down that first tree, and you would have not taken our first ear of corn.”
Strong Wolf continued to hound the man as he edged his horse still closer while the man stumbled and clawed his way back to his family. “This chief is here to stay, and I will make sure that once you are gone, you will not return,” he growled. “Take your families. Run. And do not look back at your lodges. I will take care of that for you. I will burn them and all of your possessions to the ground.”
When the man paled and gasped, Strong Wolf smiled slowly again. “Now do you see why it would have been best had you heeded the warnings of my warriors when they first came to you and told you that you were trespassing? At that time you could have saved all but your houses when you left,” he said somberly. “Now you lose everything but yourselves and the steeds that carry you away.”
“Please don’t. . . .” the man pleaded. “It has taken a lifetime to build up our possessions into something worthwhile. Please let us get them before we leave.”
“It has taken the Potawatomis a lifetime to gain respect from the whites, and still we do not have it. Why should this Potawatomis chief be generous to you who would again take from us what is ours?” Strong Wolf said, raising his rifle threateningly into the air.
“No!” Strong Wolf then shouted. “Nothing but your skin and bones and your steeds will be saved. Feel blessed for even that, for at this moment I feel vengeance inside my heart more than I have ever felt it before in my life. It sickens me to think that you, just because you are white, feel that you can take from us, whose skin is red. You have been misguided in that logic, white man. Now leave! And do not go to the fort with your complaints. I soon will be there myself to tell them what happened here today. You are thieves. Do you wish to be hanged over this land that was not yours?”
“No, I . . . we . . . don’t wish anything now but to be able to go on our way, alive,” the man stammered. He turned and ran to his children and swept one up in each of his arms. He shouted at his wife to follow him. The other man and woman and children also ran off in a panic.
Strong Wolf’s heart ached to know that he had been placed in the position to treat people so unfairly, for he knew that he should have allowed them to take their possessions.
But lessons must be taught so that these white people might not try to repeat their thievery elsewhere.
He rode slowly behind the people, his warriors fol
lowing him. When he reached their small plots of land, where they had built neat cabins side by side, Strong Wolf stopped and waited for them to leave.
After they were gone, he gestured toward the cabins with his rifle. “Burn them to the ground!” he shouted as he looked over his shoulder at his warriors.
He sat glumly quiet in his saddle until the cabins were only smoldering ashes, then rode on to the next squatter’s land and again supervised the burning of the lodge, until all of the whites were gone, and all of their lodges were destroyed.
“It is done except for facing the colonel at Fort Leavenworth!” Strong Wolf shouted, again waving his rifle in the air. “Let us go and introduce ourselves to him in the right way!”
His warriors whooping and hollering on all sides of him. Strong Wolf rode off toward the fort.
Just before arriving, he drew his reins tight and wheeled himself around to face his men. “Place your rifles in their gun boots,” he said somberly. “We must arrive at the fort with dignity. We also do not wish to enter the fort’s gates with war cries on our breath! We must remember, at all costs, that the young colonel sees us as peacemakers. We must make him understand why the settlers’ homes were destroyed, and why they were forced from our land!”
His men nodded. Then they rode onward.
When they reached the fort, there was a commotion of activity, for the soldiers had seen the fires in the distance and were prepared to go and see what had caused them.
Strong Wolf and his men blocked the gate so the soldiers could not leave.
