Tecumseh monologue (Act 2) — Tecumseh : a Drama

Comrades, and faithful warriors of our race! Ye who defeated Hartnar and St Clair, And made their hosts a winter's feast for wolves! I call on you to follow me again, Not now for war, but as forearmed for fight. As ever in the past so is it still: Our sacred treaties are infringed and torn; Laughed out of sanctity, and spurned away; Used by the Long-Knife's slave to light his fire, Or turned to kites by thoughtless boys, whose wrists Anchor their fathers' lies in front of heaven. And now we're asked to Council at Vincennes; To bend to lawless ravage of our lands, To treacherous bargains, contracts false, wherein One side is bound, the other loose as air! Where are those villains of our race and blood Who signed the treaties that unseat us here; That rob us of rich plains and forests wide; And which, consented to, will drive us hence To stage our lodges in the Northern Lakes, In penalties of hunger worse than death? Where are they? that we may confront them now With your wronged sires, your mothers, wives and babes, And, wringing from their false and slavish lips Confession of their baseness, brand with shame The traitor hands which sign us to our graves.