Tecumseh

For other uses, see Tecumseh (disambiguation).

Tecumseh
An artist's depiction of Tecumseh, c. 1868.
Born	March 1768 On the Scioto River, near Chillicothe Ohio
Died	(1813-10-05)October 5, 1813 (aged 45) Moravian of the Thames (near modern Chatham–Kent, Ontario)
Nationality	Shawnee
Other names	Tecumtha, Tekamthi
Known for	Tecumseh's War, Tecumseh's Confederacy, War of 1812
Parent(s)	Pucksinwah, Methoataske

Tecumseh (March 1768 – October 5, 1813), also known as Tecumtha or Tekamthi, was a Native American leader of the Shawnee and a large tribal confederacy that opposed the United States during Tecumseh's War and the War of 1812. He grew up in the Ohio country during the American Revolutionary War and the Northwest Indian War, where he was constantly exposed to warfare.

His brother Tenskwatawa was a religious leader who advocated a return to the ancestral lifestyle of the tribes. A large following and a confederacy grew around his prophetic teachings. The Native American independence movement led to strife with settlers on the frontier. The confederacy eventually moved farther into the northwest and settled Prophetstown, Indiana in 1808. Tecumseh confronted Indiana Governor William Henry Harrison to demand that land purchase treaties be rescinded. Tecumseh traveled to the southern United States in an attempt to unite Native American tribes in a confederacy throughout the North American continent. Before he left, he warned his brother against fighting the Americans. His brother ignored him. While Tecumseh was traveling, Tenskwatawa was defeated in the 1811 Battle of Tippecanoe.

During the War of 1812, Tecumseh's confederacy allied with the British in Canada and helped in the capture of Fort Detroit. The Americans, led by Harrison, launched a counter assault and invaded Canada. They killed Tecumseh in the Battle of the Thames, in which they were also victorious over the British. Tecumseh has subsequently become a legendary folk hero. He is remembered by many Canadians for his defense of the country.

Origins

Tecumseh's exact place and date of birth are unknown and all accounts of his early life are based on a memoir dictated by his older brother years after Tecumseh's death. Based on his brother's account, Tecumseh (Tekoomsē: "Shooting Star" or "Panther Across The Sky" ) was born about March 9, 1768, at a village on the Scioto River. John Sudgen believes the place was either Chillicothe or Kispoko Town. His father was Pucksinwah, a minor Shawnee war chief of the Kispoko ("Dancing Tail" or "Panther") branch of the tribe. His mother was named Methoataske and belonged to the Pekowi branch of the tribe. She was Pucksinwah's second wife.

As Shawnee lineage was traced patrilineally, Tecumseh was considered a Kispoko. At the time of his parents' marriage, their tribe was living somewhere near modern Tuscaloosa, Alabama. The people had settled in that region among the Creek tribe nearly 100 years earlier after being driven from their more northerly territory in the late 17th century by the Iroqouis during the Beaver Wars.

About 1759 the Pekowi branch of the tribe decided to move northward into the Ohio Country. Not wanting to force his wife to choose between him or her family, Pucksinwah decided to travel north with her. The Pekowi founded the settlement of Chillicothe, where Tecumseh was likely born. Not long after his birth, the family moved again to the village of Scioto. Tecumseh's father took part in the Seven Years War (also known as the French and Indian War) during the 1760s, and later in Lord Dunmore’s War; he was killed at the Battle of Point Pleasant in 1774.

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Frontier conflicts

Another portrait sometimes identified with Tecumseh, or his son, Paukeesaa.

At least five times between 1774 and 1782, Tecumseh's village was attacked by colonials and later American armies as the Shawnee allied with the British during the American Revolutionary War. Following his father's death, his family moved back to Chief Blackfish's nearby village of Chillicothe. The town was destroyed in 1779 by Kentucky militia in reprisal for Blackfish's attack on Boonesborough. His family fled, and moved to another nearby Kispoko village, but their new home was destroyed the following year by forces under the command of George Rogers Clark. The family moved a third time to the village of Sanding Stone. That village was attacked by Clark in November of 1782, causing them to move again to a new settlement near modern Bellefontaine, Ohio.

Violence continued unabated on the American frontier after the American Revolution as the Northwest Indian War. A large tribal confederacy, known as the Western Confederacy that included all the major tribes of the Ohio and Illinois country, joined together to repel the American settlers from the region. As the war between the confederacy and the Americans grew, Tecumseh became a warrior and took an active part fighting along with his older brother Cheeseekua beginning at age fifteen. Tecumseh participated in several battles, including the 1794 Fallen Timbers, which ended the war in favor of the American settlers.

Tenskwatawa

Tenskwatawa, by George Catlin.

Tecumseh eventually settled in what is now Greenville, Ohio, the home of his younger brother, Lowawluwaysica ("One With Open Mouth") who would later take the new name of Tenskwatawa ("The Open Door"), and achieved widespread fame as "The Shawnee Prophet". In 1805, a religious revival led by Tenskwatawa emerged following a series of witchhunts that ensued following an outbreak of smallpox. His beliefs were based on the earlier teachings the Lenape prophets Scattamek and Neolin who predicted a coming apocalypse that would destroy the settlers moving into what had previously been Native American lands.

Tenskwatawa urged natives to reject the ways of the settlers, give up firearms, liquor, European style clothing, to only pay traders half the value of their debts, and to refrain from ceding any more lands to the United States. The teachings led tensions to rise between the settlers and his followers. Opposing Tenskwatawa was the Shawnee leader Black Hoof, who was working to maintain a peaceful relationship with the United States.

The earliest recording of Tecumseh's interaction with the Americans was in 1807 with Indian agent William Wells who met with Blue Jacket and other Shawnee leaders in Greenville to determine their intentions after the recent murder of a settler. Tecumseh was among those who spoke with Wells and assured him that his band of Shawnee intended to remain at peace and only wanted to follow the will of the Great Spirit and his prophet. According to Wells's report, at the meeting Tecumseh informed him of the Prophet's intention to move with his followers to a new village deeper into the frontier.

By 1808, tensions with the settlers and the Shawnee compelled Black Hoof to demand that Tenskwatawa and his followers leave the area. Tecumseh was among the leaders of the group, and helped decide to move further northwest and establish the village of Prophetstown near the confluence of the Wabash and Tippecanoe Rivers (near present-day Battle Ground, Indiana). The site was in Miami tribe territory, and their War Chief Little Turtle warned the group not to settle there for fear they would disturb the Miami's relations with the American settlers. Despite the threat, they moved into the region and the Miami did not take action against them. According to his brother, Tecumseh was already at that time contemplating a pan-tribal confederacy to counter American expansion into Indian held lands and held an important place in the group.

Tenskwatawa's religious teachings became more widely known as did his predictions on the coming doom of the Americans. His teachings attracted numerous members of other tribes to Prophetstown and formed the basis of a sizable confederacy of tribes in the southwestern great lakes region. Tecumseh eventually emerged as the primary leader of this confederation, though it was built upon a foundation established by the religious appeal of his younger brother. Relatively few in confederacy were Shawnee; although Tecumseh is often portrayed as the leader of the Shawnee, the confederacy was made up primarily of other tribes.

Tecumseh's War

Main article: Tecumseh's War

Depictions of Choctaw Chief Pushmataha (left) and Tecumseh."These white Americans ... give us fair exchange, their cloth, their guns, their tools, implements, and other things which the Choctaws need but do not make ... So in marked contrast with the experience of the Shawnee, it will be seen that the whites and Indians in this section are living on friendly and mutually beneficial terms." Pushmataha, 1811 ---------------------"Where today are the Pequot? Where are the Narragansett, the Mohican, the Pocanet, and other powerful tribes of our people? They have vanished before the avarice and oppression of the white man ... Sleep not longer, O Choctaws and Chickasaws ... Will not the bones of our dead be plowed up, and their graves turned into plowed fields?" Tecumseh, 1811

The two principal adversaries of Tecumseh's War, Tecumseh and William Henry Harrison, had both been junior participants in the Battle of Fallen Timbers at the close of the Northwest Indian War in 1794. Tecumseh was not among the signers of the Treaty of Greenville that had ended the war and ceded much of present-day Ohio, long inhabited by the Shawnee and other Native Americans, to the United States. However, many Indian leaders in the region accepted the Greenville terms, and for the next ten years pan-tribal resistance to American hegemony faded.

After the Treaty of Greenville , most of the Ohio Shawnee settled at the Shawnee village of Wapakoneta on the Auglaize River, where they were led by Black Hoof, a senior chief who had signed the treaty. Little Turtle, a War Chief of the Miamis, who had also participated in the earlier war and signed the Greenville Treaty, lived in his village on the Eel River. Both Black Hoof and Little Turtle urged cultural adaptation and accommodation with the United States.

The tribes of the region participated in several treaties including the Treaty of Grouseland and the Treaty of Vincennes that gave and recognized American possession of most of southern Indiana and western Ohio. The treaties resulted in an easing of tensions by allowing settlers into Indiana and appeasing the Indians with reimbursement for the lands the settlers were squatting on.

Rising tensions

In September 1809, William Henry Harrison, governor of the Indiana Territory, negotiated the Treaty of Fort Wayne in which a delegation of Indians ceded 3 million acres (12,000 km²) of Native American lands to the United States. The treaty negotiations were questionable as they were unauthorized by the President and involved what some historians compared to bribery, offering large subsidies to the tribes and their chiefs, and the liberal distribution of liquor before the negotiations.

Tecumseh's opposition to the treaty marked his emergence as a prominent leader. Although Tecumseh and the Shawnee had no claim on the land sold, he was alarmed by the massive sale as many of the followers in Prophetstown were Piankeshaw, Kickapoo, and Wea; the primary inhabitants of the land. Tecumseh revived an idea advocated in previous years by the Shawnee leader Blue Jacket and the Mohawk leader Joseph Brant, which stated that Indian land was owned in common by all tribes.

Not ready to confront the United States directly, Tecumseh's primary adversaries were initially the Indian leaders who had signed the treaty. An impressive orator, Tecumseh began to travel widely, urging warriors to abandon accommodationist chiefs and to join him in resistance of the treaty. Tecumseh insisted that the Fort Wayne treaty was illegal; he asked Harrison to nullify it, and warned that Americans should not attempt to settle on the lands sold in the treaty. Tecumseh is quoted as saying, "No tribe has the right to sell [land], even to each other, much less to strangers.... Sell a country!? Why not sell the air, the great sea, as well as the earth? Didn't the Great Spirit make them all for the use of his children?" And, "....the only way to stop this evil [loss of land] is for the red man to unite in claiming a common and equal right in the land, as it was first, and should be now, for it was never divided.":

Confrontation

At Vincennes in 1810, Tecumseh loses his temper when William Henry Harrison refuses to rescind the Treaty of Fort Wayne.

In August 1810 Tecumseh led four hundred armed warriors from Prophetstown to confront Harrison at his Vincennes home, Grouseland. Their appearance startled the townspeople, and the situation quickly became dangerous when Harrison rejected Tecumseh's demands and argued that individual tribes could have relations with the United States, and that Tecumseh's interference was unwelcome by the tribes of the area. Tecumseh launched an impassioned rebuttal against Harrison.

(Governor William Harrison), you have the liberty to return to your own country ... you wish to prevent the Indians from doing as we wish them, to unite and let them consider their lands as common property of the whole ... You never see an Indian endeavor to make the white people do this ... Sell a country! 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?

Tecumseh began inciting the warriors to kill Harrison, who responded by pulling his sword. The small garrison defending the town quickly moved to protect Harrison. Potawatomi Chief Winnemac arose and countered Tecumseh's arguments to the group, and urged the warriors to leave in peace. As they left, Tecumseh informed Harrison that unless he rescinded the treaty, he would seek an alliance with the British.

In 1811, Tecumseh again met with Harrison at his home after being summoned following the murder of settlers on the frontier. Tecumseh told Harrison that the Shawnee and their Native American brothers wanted to remain at peace with the United States but these differences had to be resolved. The meeting had just a merely tentative character and both parties probably inferred from it that war was unavoidable.

Tecumseh's pan-Indian campaign

Following the meeting Tecumseh traveled south, on a mission to recruit allies among the Five Civilized Tribes. The war speech he delivered to the Muscogee (Creek) at Tuckaubatchee, in October 1811, has been so reported by General Samuel Dale, who was present at the meeting (but cannot surely be regarded as an impartial observer).

In defiance of the white warriors of Ohio and Kentucky, I have traveled through their settlements, once our favorite hunting grounds. No war-whoop was sounded, but there is blood on our knives. The Pale-faces felt the blow, but knew not whence it came. Accursed be the race that has seized on our country and made women of our warriors. Our fathers, from their tombs, reproach us as slaves and cowards. I hear them now in the wailing winds. The Muscogee was once a mighty people. The Georgians trembled at your war-whoop, and the maidens of my tribe, on the distant lakes, sung the prowess of your warriors and sighed for their embraces. Now your very blood is white; your tomahawks have no edge; your bows and arrows were buried with your fathers. Oh! Muscogees, brethren of my mother, brush from your eyelids the sleep of slavery; once more strike for vengeance; once more for your country. The spirits of the mighty dead complain. Their tears drop from the weeping skies. Let the white race perish. They seize your land; they corrupt your women; they trample on the ashes of your dead! Back, whence they came, upon a trail of blood, they must be driven. Back! back, ay, into the great water whose accursed waves brought them to our shores! Burn their dwellings! Destroy their stock! Slay their wives and children! The Red Man owns the country, and the Pale-faces must never enjoy it. War now! War forever! War upon the living! War upon the dead! Dig their very corpses from the grave. Our country must give no rest to a white man's bones. This is the will of the Great Spirit, revealed to my brother, his familiar, the Prophet of the Lakes. He sends me to you. All the tribes of the north are dancing the war-dance. Two mighty warriors across the seas will send us arms. Tecumseh will soon return to his country. My prophets shall tarry with you. They will stand between you and the bullets of your enemies. When the white men approach you the yawning earth shall swallow them up. Soon shall you see my arm of fire stretched athwart the sky. I will stamp my foot at Tippecanoe, and the very earth shall shake.

— Tecumseh's Speech at Tuckaubatchee, 1811.

Here is also, however, the text of quite a different-toned speech which Tecumseh allegedly delivered to a band of Osages on his way back home in 1811. It was reported by John Dunn Hunter, an Anglo-American whose parents had been killed by the Kickapoos, and who had been later raised among the Osages. The image of Tecumseh which emerges from this speech is very different from that of the Tuckaubatchee orator: here just a fiery patriot is evoked, there a real treacherous and murderous fanatic.

Brothers, we all belong to one family; we are all children of the Great Spirit; we walk in the same path; slake our thirst at the same spring; and now affairs of the greatest concern lead us to smoke the pipe around the same council fire! Brothers, we are friends; we must assist each other to bear our burdens. The blood of many of our fathers and brothers has run like water on the ground, to satisfy the avarice of the white men. We, ourselves, are threatened with a great evil; nothing will pacify them but the destruction of all the red men. Brothers, when the white men first set foot on our grounds, they were hungry; they had no place on which to spread their blankets, or to kindle their fires. They were feeble; they could do nothing for themselves. Our fathers commiserated their distress, and shared freely with them whatever the Great Spirit had given his red children. They gave them food when hungry, medicine when sick, spread skins for them to sleep on, and gave them grounds, that they might hunt and raise corn. Brothers, the white people are like poisonous serpents: when chilled, they are feeble and harmless; but invigorate them with warmth, and they sting their benefactors to death. The white people came among us feeble; and now that we have made them strong, they wish to kill us, or drive us back, as they would wolves and panthers. Brothers, the white men are not friends to the Indians: at first, they only asked for land sufficient for a wigwam; now, nothing will satisfy them but the whole of our hunting grounds, from the rising to the setting sun. Brothers, the white men want more than our hunting grounds; they wish to kill our old men, women, and little ones. Brothers, many winters ago there was no land; the sun did not rise and set; all was darkness. The Great Spirit made all things. He gave the white people a home beyond the great waters. He supplied these grounds with game, and gave them to his red children; and he gave them strength and courage to defend them. Brothers, my people wish for peace; the red men all wish for peace; but where the white people are, there is no peace for them, except it be on the bosom of our mother. Brothers, the white men despise and cheat the Indians; they abuse and insult them; they do not think the red men sufficiently good to live. The red men have borne many and great injuries; they ought to suffer them no longer. My people will not; they are determined on vengeance; they have taken up the tomahawk; they will make it fat with blood; they will drink the blood of the white people. Brothers, my people are brave and numerous; but the white people are too strong for them alone. I wish you to take up the tomahawk with them. If we all unite, we will cause the rivers to stain the great waters with their blood. Brothers, if you do not unite with us, they will first destroy us, and then you will fall an easy prey to them. They have destroyed many nations of red men, because they were not united, because they were not friends to each other. Brothers, the white people send runners amongst us; they wish to make us enemies, that they may sweep over and desolate our hunting grounds, like devastating winds, or rushing waters. Brothers, our Great Father [the King of England] over the great waters is angry with the white people, our enemies. He will send his brave warriors against them; he will send us rifles, and whatever else we want—he is our friend, and we are his children. Brothers, who are the white people that we should fear them? They cannot run fast, and are good marks to shoot at: they are only men; our fathers have killed many of them: we are not squaws, and we will stain the earth red with their blood. Brothers, the Great Spirit is angry with our enemies; he speaks in thunder, and the earth swallows up villages, and drinks up the Mississippi. The great waters will cover their lowlands; their corn cannot grow; and the Great Spirit will sweep those who escape to the hills from the earth with his terrible breath. Brothers, we must be united; we must smoke the same pipe; we must fight each other’s battles; and, more than all, we must love the Great Spirit: he is for us; he will destroy our enemies, and make all his red children happy.

Despite Tecumseh's efforts, anyhow, most of the southern nations rejected his appeals, and particularly Choctaw Chief Pushmataha, who stood fast and insisted upon sticking to the peace treaties that had been signed with the U.S. Government. However, a faction among the Creeks, who came to be known as the Red Sticks, answered his call to arms, leading to the Creek War.

The Great Comet of 1811, as drawn by William Henry Smyth

A comet appeared in March 1811. The Shawnee leader Tecumseh, whose name meant "shooting star", told the Creeks that the comet signaled his coming. Tecumseh's confederacy and allies took it as an omen of good luck. McKenney reported that Tecumseh claimed he would prove that the Great Spirit had sent him to the Creeks by giving the tribes a sign.

Tippecanoe

Main article: Battle of Tippecanoe

The New Madrid Earthquake was interpreted by the Muscogee as a sign to support the Shawnee's resistance.

If Tecumseh, soon after Vincennes’s meeting, got down to preparing for war, Governor Harrison got much further. Having heard from his excellent intelligence that Tecumseh was far away, he sent this report to the Department of War: Tecumseh “is now upon the last round to put a finishing stroke upon his work. I hope, however, before his return that that part of the work which he considered complete will be demolished and even its foundation rooted up.” Accordingly, Governor Harrison moved from Vincennes on September 26, 1811, with about 1,000 men in fighting trim, and marched on Tippecanoe. On November 6, Harrison's army arrived outside Prophetstown. The Prophet sent a messenger to meet with Harrison and requested that a meeting be held the next day to negotiate. Harrison encamped his army on a nearby hill and, during the early dawn hours of November 7, the confederacy launched a sneak attack on his camp. In the subsequent Battle of Tippecanoe, Harrison's men held their ground, and the Indians withdrew from the village after their defeat. The victorious Americans burned the town and returned to Vincennes.

The Battle of Tippecanoe was a severe blow for Tenskwatawa, who lost both prestige and the confidence of his brother. Although it was a significant setback, Tecumseh began to secretly rebuild his alliance upon his return. The Americans soon after went to war with the British in the War of 1812, and Tecumseh's War became a part of that larger struggle.

On December 11, 1811, the New Madrid Earthquake shook the South and the Midwest. The interpretation of this event varied from tribe to tribe. It led some tribes, like the Osage, Creek, and Sauk to increase their support for Tecumseh, believing the event to be a sign that the Prophets predictions were coming to pass. Tribes who had been traditionally unreceptive to Tecumseh's call in the past, like the Delaware and most Shawnee, still failed to rally to his cause.

War of 1812

Detroit frontier

Tecumseh rallied his confederacy and led his forces to join the British army attacking the northwest from Canada. Tecumseh joined British Major-General Sir Isaac Brock in the siege of Detroit, and forced its surrender in August 1812. As Brock advanced to a point just out of range of Detroit's guns, Tecumseh had his approximately four hundred warriors parade from a nearby wood and circle around to repeat the maneuver, making it appear that his army was much larger. The fort commander, Brigadier General William Hull, surrendered in fear of a massacre should he refuse. The victory was of a great strategic value to the invaders.

This victory was reversed a little over a year later as Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry's victory on Lake Erie, late in the summer of 1813, cut British supply lines. Perry's victory also allowed William Henry Harrison, who was defending at Fort Miegs, to cross Lake Erie to threaten Fort Detroit. The British burned all public buildings in Detroit and retreated into Upper Canada along the Thames Valley before they could be captured. Tecumseh and his men followed fighting rearguard actions to slow the American advance.

Battle of the Thames

Death of Tecumseh

The next British commander, Major-General Henry Procter, did not have the same working relationship with Tecumseh as his predecessor and the two disagreed over tactics. Procter favored withdrawing into Canada and avoiding battle while the Americans suffered from the winter. Tecumseh was more eager to launch a decisive action to defeat the American army and allow his men to retake their homes in the northwest. Procter failed to appear at Chatham, Ontario, though he had promised Tecumseh that he would make a stand against the Americans there. Tecumseh moved his men to meet Proctor again and informed him that he would withdraw no farther into Canadian territory, and if the British wanted his continued help then an action had to be fought. The despairing speech Tecumseh delivered before Procter, bitterly hinting at his pusillanimity, concluded with these foreseeing words.

Father, listen!—The Americans have not yet defeated us by land—neither are we sure that they have done so by water— we therefore wish to remain here, and fight our enemy, should they make their appearance... Father!—You have got the arms and the ammunition which our great father [the King of England] sent for his red children. If you have an idea of going away, give them to us. Our lives are in the hands of the Great Spirit. We are determined to defend our lands, and if it be his will, we wish to leave our bones upon them

Harrison and his army crossed into Upper Canada and on October 5, 1813, won a decisive victory over the British and Native Americans at the Battle of the Thames near Moraviantown. Tecumseh was killed, and shortly after the battle, the tribes of his confederacy surrendered to Harrison at Detroit. As to the actual circumstances surrounding Tecumseh’s death, Americans said he had been slain by Colonel Richard Johnson during a cavalry charge. The Wyandot historian Peter D. Clarke, however, after consulting Indians that had taken part in the battle, wrote:

Among the retreating Indians was a Potawatamie brave, who, on perceiving an American officer (supposed to be Colonel Johnson) on horse, close upon him, turned to tomahawk his pursuer, but was shot down by him with his pistol. … The fallen Potawatamie brave was probably taken for Tecumseh by some of Harrison's infantry, and mutilated soon after the battle.
A half-Indian and half-white, named William Caldwell, whilst retreating, after the last encounter, overtook and passed Tecumseh, who was walking along slowly, using his rifle for a staff—when asked by Caldwell if he was wounded, he replied in English, " I am shot "—Caldwell noticed where a rifle bullet had penetrated his breast, through his buckskin hunting coat. His body was found by his friends, where he had laid [sic] down to die, untouched, within the vicinity of the battle ground…
Several of Harrison's army claimed to have killed Tecumseh. "I killed Tecumseh; I have some of his beard" one would say ; "I killed Tecumseh," another would clamour; "I have a piece of his skin to make me a razor strop !" none of these bragadocias [sic] were in the last battle, in which the brave Chief received his mortal wound.

Legacy

Memorials

File:Tecumseh Shawnee Dollar.JPG

Tecumseh commemorative Shawnee Nation dollar

"Tecumseh Stone", Fort Malden National Historic Site

The United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, has Tecumseh Court, which is located outside Bancroft Hall's front entrance, and features a bust of Tecumseh. The bust is often decorated to celebrate special days. The bust was actually originally meant to represent Tamanend, an Indian chief from the 17th century who was known as a lover of peace and friendship, but the Academy's midshipmen preferred the more warlike Tecumseh, and the new name persisted.

The US Navy named four ships USS Tecumseh, the first one as early as 1863. The Canadian naval reserve unit HMCS Tecumseh is based in Calgary, Alberta. Tecumseh is honored in Canada as a hero and military commander who played a major role in Canada's successful repulsion of an American invasion in the War of 1812, which, among other things, eventually led to Canada's nationhood in 1867 with the British North America Act. Among the tributes, Tecumseh is ranked 37th in The Greatest Canadian list. An 1848 drawing of Tecumseh was based on a sketch done from life in 1808. Benson Lossing altered the original by putting Tecumseh in a British uniform, under the mistaken (but widespread) belief that Tecumseh had been a British general. This depiction is unusual in that it includes a nose ring, popular among the Shawnee at the time, but typically omitted in idealized depictions.

He is also honored by a massive portrait which hangs in the Royal Canadian Military Institute. The unveiling of the work, commissioned under the patronage of Kathryn Langley Hope and Trisha Langley, took place at the Toronto-based RCMI on October 29, 2008.

Union Civil War general William Tecumseh Sherman, was given the name Tecumseh because "my father...had caught a fancy for the great chief of the Shawnees." Another Civil War general, Napoleon Jackson Tecumseh Dana, also bore the name of the Shawnee leader. (Evolutionary biologist and cognitive scientist W. Tecumseh Fitch was named after the general, not after Tecumseh.)

Tecumseh in popular culture

Tecumseh (played by a Serbian actor Gojko Mitić) appears as the primary character in the 1972 East German Red Western motion picture, Tecumseh. Ann Rinaldi's 1997 novel The Second Bend in the River depicts a fictionalized version of a romance between Tecumseh and Rebecca Galloway. Later, Orson Scott Card's novel Red Prophet and the twelve part comic book version of the novel, featured Tecumseh (named Ta-Kumsaw in Card's work). The cover of one of the issues of the comic book series was a copy of a painting of Tecumseh by John Buxton, which had been commissioned by the Heritage Center of Clark County, Ohio.

In 1995, the TNT movie titled Tecumseh: The Last Warrior featured Mexican-American actor of Native American descent Jesse Borrego originally of San Antonio, Texas.

In the television series Cheers, the wooden statue of a Native American that stands next to the main entrance of the bar is named "Tecumseh" and is mentioned in the season 8 episode "Bar Wars III: The Return of Tecumseh" as being a good luck charm by head bartender Sam Malone.

Towns Named in Honor of Tecumseh

United States

• Tecumseh, Kansas
• Tecumseh, Michigan
• Tecumseh, Missouri
• Tecumseh, Nebraska
• Tecumseh, Oklahoma
• Mount Tecumseh, New Hampshire

Canada

• Tecumseh, Ontario
• New Tecumseth, Ontario

Schools, Institutions, and Organizations Named in Honor of Tecumseh

High Schools

• Tecumseh High School (Indiana) in Lynnville, Indiana
• Tecumseh High School (Michigan) in Tecumseh, Michigan
• Tecumseh High School (Franklin Furnace, Ohio)
• Tecumseh High School (New Carlisle, Ohio)
• Tecumseh High School (Oklahoma) in Tecumseh, Oklahoma

Elementary Schools

• Tecumseh Public School in London, Ontario
• Tecumseh Elementary School (New York) in Farmingville, New York
• Tecumseh Elementary School in Vancouver, BC

See also

• Battle of Tippecanoe
• Cheeseekau
• Indian Wars
• Junaluska
• Tecumseh's Confederacy
• Tecumseh's Curse
• Tecumseh's War

References

Notes

Bibliography

• Clarke, Peter Dooyentate, Origin and traditional history of the Wyandotts and sketches of other Indian tribes of North America, true traditional stories of Tecumseh and his league, in the years 1811 and 1812. Toronto: Hunter, Rose & Co., 1870 (accessible free of charge in Early Canadiana Online)
• Langguth, A. J. (2006). Union 1812:The Americans Who Fought the Second War of Independence. New York: Simon & Shuster. ISBN 0743226189. {{cite book}}: Check |isbn= value: checksum (help)
• Owens, Robert M. (2007). Mr. Jefferson's Hammer:William Henry Harrison and the Origins of American Indian Policy. Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press. ISBN 9780806138428.
• Sugden, John. Tecumseh: A Life. New York: Holt, 1997.

Further reading

• Dowd, Gregory Evans. A Spirited Resistance: The North American Indian Struggle for Unity, 1745-1815. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992.
• Drake, Benjamin. Life Of Tecumseh And Of His Brother The Prophet; With A Historical Sketch Of The Shawanoe Indians. (Mount Vernon: Rose Press, 2008).
• Eckert, Allan. A Sorrow in Our Hearts: The Life of Tecumseh. New York: Bantam Books, 1992.
• Edmunds, R. David. Tecumseh and the Quest for Indian Leadership. Boston: Little Brown, 1984.
• Gilbert, Bil. God Gave us This Country: Tekamthi and the First American Civil War. New York: Atheneum, 1989.
• Green, James A., "Tecumseh," in Charles F. Horne, ed., Great Men and Famous Women, vol. 2: Soldiers and Sailors, 308. New York: Selmar Hess, 1894.
• Pirtle, Alfred. (1900). The Battle of Tippecanoe. Louisville: John P. Morton & Co./ Library Reprints. p. 158. ISBN 9780722265093. as read to the Filson Club.
• Burr, Samuel Jones. The Life and Times of William Henry Harrison. New York: L. W. Ransom, 1840, pgs. 101 & 102.

External links

• Biography of Shawnee Chief Tecumseh
• Tecumseh biography
• Biography at the Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online
• Canada: A People's History online section on Tecumseh
• Tecumseh: A Brief Biography by Devin Bent
• PBS Video: We Shall Remain: Tecumseh's Vision
• Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
•  Wilson, J. G.; Fiske, J., eds. (1889). Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography. New York: D. Appleton. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
•  Beach, Chandler B., ed. (1914). The New Student's Reference Work. Chicago: F. E. Compton and Co. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)