INTRODUCTION.



T     HE Battle of Tippecanoe has been supposed by some
      to have been the result of the ambition of General
Harrison for military glory. Others have thought that it
was caused by the depredations of the Indians upon the
life and property of the white settlers in the Indiana
Territory. Yet others have believed that it was nothing
more nor less than the traditional and the inevitable result
of the contact of civilization with barbarism.
   While- all of these as well as other causes may have
had their share in this battle, there was one supreme and
controlling cause which brought the white man and the
red man together in mortal conflict on the banks of the
Tippecanoe. That cause was a struggle for the land on
which the battle was fought, and for the adjacent and the
far-away lands of the Indians. It was as essentially a
conflict for the soil as ever existed between the Indians
and the French, the Indians and the Spanish, the Indians
and the British, or the Indians and the Americans. While