Tecumseh
Tecumseh was a Shawnee chief and warrior who promoted resistance to the expansion of the United States onto Native American lands. A persuasive orator, Tecumseh traveled widely, forming a Native American confederacy and promoting intertribal unity. Even though his efforts to unite Native Americans ended with his death in battle during the War of 1812, he became a folk hero in American, Indigenous, and Canadian popular history.
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 the 1774 Battle of Point Pleasant. Tecumseh was thereafter taught 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 troops led by Richard Mentor Johnson 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.
Early life
Tecumseh was born in Shawnee territory in what is now Ohio between 1764 and 1771. The best evidence suggests a birthdate of March 9, 1768.The Shawnee pronunciation of his name has traditionally been rendered by non-Shawnee sources as "Tecumthé". 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.
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.
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. Tecumseh's father, Puckeshinwau, was a Shawnee war chief of the Kispoko division. 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. Tecumseh was the fifth of eight children. 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.
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. 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. In a 1768 treaty, the Iroquois ceded land south of the Ohio River 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.
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. 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. 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.
From warrior to chief
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, who was 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. 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. Later that year, Moluntha was murdered by a Kentucky militiaman, initiating a new border war.Tecumseh, now about eighteen years old, became a warrior under the tutelage of his older brother Cheeseekau, who emerged as a noted war chief. 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. 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.
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; Historical records indicate that Tecumseh and his brother, Cheeseekau, also known as Shawnee Warrior, lived with the Chickamaugans and participated in multitribal attacks on white settlements with them from 1790 to 1792 According to Tecumseh’s boyhood companion, Stephen Ruddell, captured with his brother, Abraham, as boys in 1780 in Kentucky and raised by the Shawnees, Tecumseh never had more than a one wife at a time. His longest relationship was with a Cherokee woman. They had a daughter who remained with her mother and was living in Arkansas in 1825..
The following century Tecumseh was said to be the grandfather of four or five brave and intelligent Cherokees known as the ‘fair-skinned’ Proctors”,.
In 1791, Tecumseh returned to the Ohio Country to take part in the Northwest Indian War as a minor leader. The Native confederacy that had been formed to fight the war was led by the Shawnee Blue Jacket, and would provide a model for the confederacy Tecumseh created years later. He led a band of eight followers, including his younger brother Lalawéthika, later known as Tenskwatawa. Tecumseh missed fighting in a major Indian victory on November 4 because he was hunting or scouting at the time. The following year he participated in other skirmishes before rejoining Cheeseekau in Tennessee. Tecumseh was with Cheeseekau when he was killed in an unsuccessful attack on Buchanan's Station near Nashville in 1792. Tecumseh probably sought revenge for his brother's death, but the details are unknown. During this time, he was somewhat known as "an eloquent speaker" among Native Americans, and this reputation would follow him for the rest of his life as he grew in prominence.
Tecumseh returned to the Ohio Country at the end of 1792 and fought in several more skirmishes. In 1794, he fought in the Battle of Fallen Timbers, a bitter defeat for the Indians. The Native confederacy fell apart, especially after Blue Jacket agreed to make peace with the Americans. Tecumseh did not attend the signing of the Treaty of Greenville, in which about two-thirds of Ohio and portions of present-day Indiana were ceded to the United States.
By 1796, Tecumseh was both the civil and war chief of a Kispoko band of about 50 warriors and 250 people. His sister Tecumapease was the band's principal female chief. Tecumseh took a wife, Mamate, and had a son, Paukeesaa, born about 1796. Their marriage did not last, and Tecumapease raised Paukeesaa from the age of seven or eight. Tecumseh's band moved to various locations before settling in 1798 close to Delaware Indians, along the White River near present-day Anderson, Indiana, where he lived for the next eight years. He married twice more during this time. His third marriage, to White Wing, lasted until 1807.