An Unexpected Consequence of moving Brussels from Europe to America during the Campaign of 1815
The citizens of Brussels and the various armies occupying the city were intrigued to learn that they were now situated in a far-away country. Unfortunately they were much occupied in preparing for the coming battle (or in the case of the richer and more frivolous part of the population preparing for the Duchess of Richmond’s ball that evening) and hardly any one had leisure just then to go and discover what the country was like or who its inhabitants were. Consequently for a long time it was unclear where precisely Strange had but Brussels on that June afternoon.
In 1830 a trapper named Pearson Denby was travelling through the Plains country. He was approached by a Lakota chief of his acquaintance, Man-afraid-of-the-Water. Man-afraid-of-the-Water asked if Denby could acquire for him some black lightning balls. Man-afraid-of-the-Water explained that he was intending to make war upon his enemies and had urgent need of the balls. He said that at one time he had had about fifty of the balls and he had always used them sparingly, but now they were all gone. Denby did not understand. He asked if Man-afraid-of-the-Water meant ammunition. No, said Man-afraid-of-the-Water. Like ammunition, but much bigger. He took Denby back to his camp and showed him a brass 5 1/2 inch howitzer made by the Carron Company of Falkirk in Scotland. Denby was astonished and asked how Man-afraid-of-the-Water had acquired the gun in the first place. Man-afraid-of-the-Water explained that in some nearby hills lived a tribe called the Half-Finished People. They had been created very suddenly one summer, but their Creator had only given them one of the skills men needed to live: that of fighting. All other skills they lacked; they did not know how to hunt buffalo or antelope, how to tame horses or how to make houses for themselves. They could not even understand each other since their crazy Creator had given them four or five different languages. But they had had this gun, which they had traded to Man-afraid-of-the-Water in exchange for food.
Intrigued, Deby sought out the tribe of Half-Finished People. At first they seemed like any other tribe, but then Denby noticed that the older men had an oddly European look and some of them spoke English. Some of their customs were the same as the Lakota tribes’ but others seemed to be founded upon European military practice. Their language was like Lakota but contained a great many English, Dutch and German words.
A man called Robert Heath (otherwise Little-man-talks-too-much) told Denby that they had all deserted from several different armies and regiments on the afternoon of 15th June 1815 because a great battle was going to be fought the next day and they had all had a strong presentiment that they would die if they remained. Did Denby know if the Duke of Wellington or Napoleon Buonaparte was now King of France? Denby could not say. “Well, sir,” said Heath, philosophically, “Whichever of ‘em it is, I dare say life goes on just the same for the likes of you and me,”