Tecumseh's warriors soon struck deep into the United States, attacking forts and sending terrified settlers fleeing back toward the Ohio River. Harrison, called back to command U. In the fall of he invaded Ontario. The British general, Henry Procter, retreated in panic. Fighting almost continuously for five days, Tecumseh and warriors screened the British retreat, but on October 5 Harrison caught up with Procter at the Thames River near Moraviantown.
The British general ignominiously fled; after a single American volley all his regular troops surrendered. Tecumseh meanwhile positioned his exhausted men in a patch of swampy woodland and told them he would retreat no farther. Having finished the British, Harrison sent dragoons and infantry into these thickets. After an hour of fierce fighting Tecumseh was killed, or presumably so. At least he was never again seen alive.
For all practical purposes the Indian resistance movement ended in the Northwest. But the process that led to the Dying Tecumseh sculpture had already commenced. The first year of the War of was a humiliating one for the United States. The nation's political and military leaders badly needed a gaudy victory to restore public morale and their own reputations. Not much could be done with the wretched General Procter. But the defeated Indians were another matter. The first battle reports — later embellished in bloody detail — claimed Harrison's brave boys had overcome 3, superb warriors led by the great Tecumseh.
Naturally the public was eager to know which American hero had brought down this mighty Shawnee champion. Satisfying that curiosity was — and still is — complicated by what might be called the habeus corpus problem. Warriors who survived the battle told various stories. They had been forced to leave Tecumseh's body on the field. They had carried him off, either mortally wounded or dead, and buried him in a secret place that whites would never find.
As for the Americans, none of those who first overran Tecumseh's position were acquainted with him. But they found an impressive-looking dead Indian who they were convinced was Tecumseh.
Some cut strips of skin from this body, later tanning them for razor strops and leather souvenirs. When people arrived who did know him, some said the battered corpse was indeed Tecumseh's. Others said it was not. Tecumseh distinguished himself when he charged a group of Americans who had a field piece, cutting loose the horses, and riding off.
The Treaty of Greenville ended this phase of the conflict; though Tecumseh did not approve of the treaty, he was still only a minor chief. Tecumseh led a band of , including some 40—50 warriors, and created an independent village on Buck Creek.
With the inexorable advance of the Americans and the destruction of the hunting grounds the band moved again in the spring of to the west fork of the White River Indiana. At the turn of the century, there were fears for their livelihood, for land, for culture and, most terrifying, for their survival in the face of epidemic diseases to which the people had no immunity.
He began to preach with great emotion and became known as the Prophet. He spoke against the evils of alcohol, dishonesty, slander and particularly against loss of the old traditions.
He predicted that divine intervention would deliver the people if they would purge themselves of White influence. All through and people came to hear the Prophet, who preached racial separation and animosity to Americans, "who grew from the Scum of the great Water when it was troubled by the Evil Spirit.
On 22 June a distant event cast a shadow on Tecumseh's attempts to protect his land. The British in Canada still traded with the First Nations south of the Great Lakes , and distributed presents to them.
The redcoats wanted to secure favour among the First Nations but did not want to be seen by the Americans as inciting them. These fraternizations aroused deep suspicion in the United States, and American officials "eagerly embraced a convenient paranoia," as Tecumseh's biographer John Sugden put it.
With the threat of war, Tecumseh moved his band to the headwaters of the Mississinewa, five kilometres from Tippecanoe. The move was resented by the local Miamis and Delawares.
The impressive new Shawnee village, with houses, was called Prophetstown by the Whites for Tecumseh's brother, who continued preaching and who changed his name to Tenskwatawa , meaning Open Door. In an unknown Tecumseh made his first visit to Canada at Fort Amherstburg later Fort Malden , Upper Canada , in the place of his better-known brother who had been invited by William Claus. He arrived 8 June. Tecumseh was not enthusiastic to take the king by the hand.
He was deeply distrustful of the British. Nevertheless, the two sides met and Tecumseh established himself with the redcoats and raised his standing among the First Nations. He had developed into a fiery orator with a clear message: the First Nations must stand together to save their land and cultures. This treaty vindicated Tecumseh and roused him to a fury. When he returned to talk to the British at Fort Amherstburg in he had changed his attitude.
He was ready for war and to throw in his lot with the British. Tecumseh's task of building an Aboriginal confederacy was enormous given the forbidding geographical distances, the sense of powerlessness of many of the tribes, the jealousy of the older chiefs, tribal rivalries, and communication in different languages.
Even the different Algonquian groups could not understand one another without interpreters. In summer Tecumseh undertook a strenuous journey west to the upper Mississippi, down the Illinois River to Peoria, to present-day Wisconsin, then to Missouri.
In October he set out for Fort Amherstburg , arriving about 12 November. By now he was certain there would be war and asked for supplies. Tecumseh's efforts did not go unnoticed. William Henry Harrison wrote a tribute in "The implicit obedience and respect which the followers of Tecumseh pay to him is really astonishing, and more than any other circumstance bespeaks him one of those uncommon geniuses which spring up occasionally to produce revolutions and overturn the established order of things.
Harrison met Tecumseh at Vincennes in July Tecumseh erred by telling Harrison that he would be absent until spring. In Tecumseh's absence, Harrison moved a force near Prophetstown at the confluence of the Tippecanoe and Wabash Rivers. The Prophet was unable to restrain his warriors and sniping between sentries escalated into a full-scale battle.
The warriors held their own but were forced to withdraw when they ran out of ammunition. Harrison followed the retreat and entered Prophetstown, finding it deserted. His men burned the town and destroyed the food supplies. Tecumseh's absence took him some 5, kilometres and when he returned to Prophetstown he saw the grim reality of the destruction: as he told the British later, "the bodies of my friends laying in the dust, and our villages burnt to the ground, and all our kettles carried off.
It was a devastating blow to the confederacy. On 18 June the United States declared war on Britain. Tecumseh went north to find the British strengthening the defences of Fort Amherstburg and saw an impressive number of soldiers there. Tecumseh brought about warriors from numerous tribes. General William Hull 's American forces occupied Sandwich on 12 July, but the general was fraught with doubt.
On 17 July, far to the north, Captain Charles Roberts forced the surrender of Michilimackinac , which further unnerved Hull. Tecumseh organized an ambush, routing them and inflicting the first casualties suffered by Americans in the War of On 5 August, Tecumseh confronted a far more numerous force south of Brownstown, killing In another attack he surprised Van Horne, killing 20 and wounding The ambushes at Brownstown were remarkable victories and weighed heavily on Hull's fragile frame of mind.
On 9 August , soldier and future writer John Richardson met Tecumseh, whom he was the first to call the real hero of the war.
He described "that ardour of expression in his eye But Tecumseh chose the ground well and signalled the attack. Outgunned, the First Nations and British were forced to retreat and Tecumseh was wounded in the neck. It was an American victory but, as happened so often in this war, there was no follow-up and the blockade of Detroit remained intact.
These incursions against his supply lines continued to disturb General Hull. Tecumseh proved himself as a warrior in these wars, but he was thrust further and further into leadership roles when his younger brother shed his old identity and took the name Tenskwatawa , leader of the Purification movement, a nativist religious sect that explicitly rejected Anglo-American ways of living and opposed white expansion into the continent.
Tecumseh quickly came forward as his ally. The two brothers founded Prophetstown as the center of their community, but Tecumseh soon began to dream of a larger-scale movement. Here, he transitioned from military leader to political idealist and used his oratorial talent to attract volunteers from around Continental North America, regardless of language or tribal origin.
For example, he found some of his most passionate followers among the Muscogee or Creek tribe in modern-day Alabama, whose language was entirely different from Tecumseh's own Algonquian Shawnee. With his encouragement, many Creeks began their own resistance movement called the Red Sticks, and waged their own war against the United States, which gives a sense of the geographic and linguistic divides Tecumseh managed to cross.
Conflict came to a head with the United States government in Traditional leaders of the various tribes in the Great Lakes area had been encouraging peace and assimilation with the Americans, but Tecumseh argued that the U. Why not sell the air, the great sea, as well as the earth? Did not the Great Spirit make them all for the use of his children? How can we have confidence in the white people?
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