Tecumseh Leadership

[Nell Barreto]

Tecumseh conceived of an alliance of all remaining native people, from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico, from the prairies of the Midwest to the swamplands of Florida. All Indian people would set aside their ancestral rivalries and unite into a single movement to defend their culture, their homelands, and their very lives.

Providing spiritual impetus for Tecumseh's movement was the teaching of his younger brother, known as Tenskwatawa, The Open Door, or The Prophet. In 1808, the Shawnee brothers established a new capital on the banks of the Wabash and Tippecanoe rivers, while Tecumseh traveled extensively in an effort to build his alliance.

In the summer of 1811 Tecumseh traveled south to meet with the Creek, Chickasaw, and Choctaw people. The Shawnee leader had promised a sign of his power, and as he arrived in Alabama a huge comet appeared, brightening the skies and fading after his departure. Then, shortly after he left for Prophetstown, a series of violent earthquakes arched out of their epicenter in southeastern Missouri to destroy lives and property throughout the midwest and south. In the minds of the Creek and many others, Tecumseh had made good on his promises.

Meanwhile, growing tensions between the U.S. and Great Britain exploded into war. Tecumseh saw the War of 1812 as his final opportunity to construct an independent Indian nation. He journeyed to Canada in July of 1812 and forged an alliance with the British. General Isaac Brock placed Tecumseh in command of all Native American forces with the understanding that, should the British and Indians be victorious, the Old Northwest would comprise an independent Indian nation under British protection.

Despite a number of victories, this partnership turned fatal on October 5, 1813, at the Battle of the Thames River. Outnumbered three-to-one by General William Henry Harrison's army, the Indian and British forces were overwhelmed, without fortifications, and ultimately doomed.

Tecumseh's vision of a unified American Indian homeland was never fully realized. Within 35 years of Tecumseh's death at Moraviantown, many Native nations east of the Mississippi River were forcibly relocated. But today the great Tecumseh is still revered for his intelligence, leadership, and military skills, and he is honored throughout North America.

Tecumseh was born in what is now Ohio at a time when the far-flung Shawnees were reuniting in their Ohio Country homeland. During his childhood, the Shawnees lost territory to the expanding American colonies in a series of border conflicts. Tecumseh's father was killed in battle against American colonists in 1774. Tecumseh was thereafter mentored by his older brother Cheeseekau, a noted war chief who died fighting Americans in 1792. As a young war leader, Tecumseh joined Shawnee Chief Blue Jacket's armed struggle against further American encroachment, which ended in defeat at the Battle of Fallen Timbers in 1794 and with the loss of most of Ohio in the 1795 Treaty of Greenville.

In 1805, Tecumseh's younger brother Tenskwatawa, who came to be known as the Shawnee Prophet, founded a religious movement that called upon Native Americans to reject European influences and return to a more traditional lifestyle. In 1808, Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa established Prophetstown, a village in present-day Indiana, that grew into a large, multi-tribal community. Tecumseh traveled constantly, spreading the Prophet's message and eclipsing his brother in prominence. Tecumseh proclaimed that Native Americans owned their lands in common and urged tribes not to cede more territory unless all agreed. His message alarmed American leaders as well as Native leaders who sought accommodation with the United States. In 1811, when Tecumseh was in the South recruiting allies, Americans under William Henry Harrison defeated Tenskwatawa at the Battle of Tippecanoe and destroyed Prophetstown.

In the War of 1812, Tecumseh joined his cause with the British, recruited warriors, and helped capture Detroit in August 1812. The following year he led an unsuccessful campaign against the United States in Ohio and Indiana. When U.S. naval forces took control of Lake Erie in 1813, Tecumseh reluctantly retreated with the British into Upper Canada, where American forces engaged them at the Battle of the Thames on October 5, 1813, in which Tecumseh was killed. His death caused his confederacy to collapse. The lands he had fought to defend were eventually ceded to the U.S. government. His legacy as one of the most celebrated Native Americans in history grew in the years after his death, although details of his life have often been obscured by mythology.

The Shawnee pronunciation of his name has traditionally been rendered by non-Shawnee sources as "Tecumth".[6][note 3] He was born into the Panther clan of the Kispoko division of the Shawnee tribe. Like most Shawnees, his name indicated his clan: translations of his name from the Shawnee language include "I Cross the Way", and "Shooting Star", references to a meteor associated with the Panther clan.[6]

Later stories claimed that Tecumseh was named after a shooting star that appeared at his birth, although his father and most of his siblings, as members of the Panther clan, were named after the same meteor.[8][9][note 4]

Tecumseh was likely born in the Shawnee town of Chillicothe, in the Scioto River valley, near present-day Chillicothe, Ohio, or in a nearby Kispoko village.[11][note 5] Tecumseh's father, Puckeshinwau, was a Shawnee war chief of the Kispoko division.[13] Tecumseh's mother, Methoataaskee, probably belonged to the Pekowi division and the Turtle clan, although some traditions maintain that she was Muscogee. His mother may have been a blood relative of William Weatherford.[13] Tecumseh was the fifth of eight children.[14] His parents met and married in what is now Alabama, where many Shawnees had settled after being driven out of the Ohio Country by the Iroquois in the 17th-century Beaver Wars. Around 1759, Puckeshinwau and Methoataaskee moved to the Ohio Country as part of a Shawnee effort to reunite in their traditional homeland.[15]

In 1763, the British Empire laid claim to the Ohio Country following its victory in the French and Indian War. That year, Cheeseekau took part in Pontiac's War, a pan-tribal effort to counter British control of the region.[16][17] Tecumseh was born in the peaceful decade after Pontiac's War, a time when Puckeshinwau likely became the chief of the Kispoko town on the Scioto.[18] In a 1768 treaty, the Iroquois ceded land south of the Ohio River (including present-day Kentucky) to the British, a region the Shawnee and other tribes used for hunting. Shawnees attempted to organize further resistance against colonial occupation of the region, culminating in the 1774 Battle of Point Pleasant, in which Puckeshinwau was killed. After the battle, Shawnees ceded Kentucky to the colonists.[19][20]

When the American Revolutionary War between the British and their American colonies began in 1775, many Shawnees allied themselves with the British, raiding into Kentucky with the aim of driving out American settlers.[21] Tecumseh, too young to fight, was among those forced to relocate in the face of American counterraids. In 1777, his family moved from the Scioto River to a Kispoko town on the Mad River, near present-day Springfield, Ohio.[22] General George Rogers Clark, commander of the Kentucky militia, led a major expedition into Shawnee territory in 1780. Tecumseh may have witnessed the ensuing Battle of Piqua on August 8. After the Shawnees retreated, Clark burned their villages and crops. The Shawnees relocated to the northwest, along the Great Miami River, but Clark returned in 1782 and destroyed those villages as well, forcing the Shawnees to retreat further north, near present-day Bellefontaine, Ohio.[23]

After the American Revolutionary War ended in 1783, the United States claimed the lands north of the Ohio River by right of conquest; Britain had renounced its claims to the area in the Treaty of Paris. In response, Indians convened a great intertribal conference at Lower Sandusky in the summer of 1783. Speakers, most notably Joseph Brant of the Mohawk, argued that Indians must unite to hold onto their lands. They put forth a doctrine that Indian lands were held in common by all tribes, and so no further land should be ceded to the United States without the consent of all the tribes. This idea made a strong impression on Tecumseh, just fifteen years old when he attended the conference. As an adult, he would become such a well-known advocate of this policy that some mistakenly thought it had originated with him.[24] The United States, however, insisted on dealing with the tribes individually, getting each to sign separate land treaties. In January 1786, Moluntha, civil chief of the Mekoche Shawnee division, signed the Treaty of Fort Finney, surrendering most of Ohio to the Americans.[25] Later that year, Moluntha was murdered by a Kentucky militiaman, initiating a new border war.[26]

Tecumseh, now about eighteen years old, became a warrior under the tutelage of his older brother Cheeseekau, who emerged as a noted war chief.[27][28] Tecumseh participated in attacks on flatboats traveling down the Ohio River, carrying waves of immigrants into lands the Shawnees had lost. He was disturbed by the sight of prisoners being cruelly treated by the Shawnees, an early indication of his lifelong aversion to torture and cruelty, for which he would later be celebrated.[29][30] In 1788, Tecumseh, Cheeseekau and their family moved westward, relocating near Cape Girardeau, Missouri. They hoped to be free of American settlers, only to find colonists moving there as well, so they did not stay long.[31]

In late 1789 or early 1790, Tecumseh traveled south with Cheeseekau to live with the Chickamauga Cherokees near Lookout Mountain in what is now Tennessee. Some Shawnees already lived among the Chickamaugas, who were fierce opponents of U.S. expansion. Cheeseekau led about forty Shawnees in raids against colonists; Tecumseh was presumably among them.[32] During his nearly two years among the Chickamaugas, Tecumseh probably had a daughter with a Cherokee woman; the relationship was brief, and the child remained with her mother.[33]

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