Not to speak irreverently, but to use language
that must be familiar to all, the well-meaning missionary wished to
be in at the death.
Corporal Flint, too, had great faith in Peter. It was a part of the
scheme of the savage to make this straight for-ward soldier an
instrument in placing many scalps in hit power; and though he had
designed from the first to execute his bloody office on the corporal
himself, he did not intend to do so until he had made the most of
him as a stool-pigeon. Here were four more pale-faces thrown in his
power, principally by means of the confidence he had awakened in the
minds of the missionary and the soldier; and that same confidence
might be made instrumental in adding still more to the number. Peter
was a sagacious, even a far-seeing savage, but he labored under the
curse of ignorance. Had his information been of a more extended
nature, he would have seen the utter fallacy of his project to
destroy the pale-faces altogether, and most probably would have
abandoned it.
It is a singular fact that, while such men as Tecumseh, his brother
the Prophet, and Peter, were looking forward to the downfall of the
republic on the side of the forest, so many, who ought to have been
better informed on such a subject, were anxiously expecting, nay
confidently predicting it, from beyond the Atlantic.
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