Tecumseh

Tecumseh (1768–1813), Native American leader.Born to a Creek mother and Shawnee father at Old Piqua, a Shawnee village on the Mad River in Ohio, Tecumseh was raised by an older sister and grew to manhood during the border warfare of the Revolutionary Era. He served as a scout for the war party that defeated Arthur St. Clair's army in 1791, and in 1794 he fought at both Fort Recovery and Fallen Timbers. He refused, however, to sign the Treaty of Greenville (1795), which ceded most Indian lands in Ohio to the United States.

In 1805–1806, Tecumseh's younger brother, Tenskwatawa, or the Shawnee Prophet, experienced a series of visions and predicted a solar eclipse. The Prophet then emerged as a holy man who led a multi‐tribal religious revitalization movement that spread to tribes throughout the Great Lakes region. In 1808, Tecumseh and the Prophet established Prophetstown, a village near the juncture of the Wabash and Tippecanoe Rivers in Indiana, and Tecumseh traveled to the midwestern tribes, transforming his brother's religious movement into a political confederacy. During 1811, Tecumseh visited the Creeks, Choctaws, and Chickasaws, but in November, while Tecumseh was in the South, William Henry Harrison and an American army attacked and destroyed Prophetstown, after defeating the Prophet at the Battle of Tippecanoe.

Early in 1812, Tecumseh returned to Indiana and began to rebuild his confederacy. He journeyed to Canada, where he sought British assistance. When the War of 1812 erupted, Tecumseh and his allies aided the British in the capture of Detroit and in the unsuccessful campaigns against Fort Meigs and Fort Stephenson, in northern Ohio. In 1813, when American forces invaded Canada, Tecumseh urged the British to stand and fight, but he was killed on 5 October at the Battle of the Thames, when the British army fled from the Americans.

Tecumseh was highly respected during his lifetime; both the British and the Americans admired his bravery and leadership ability. After his death he emerged as an American folk hero, his exploits embellished by myth and legend. Modern Native Americans remember him as a great leader dedicated to his people and to the defense of their homeland.
See also Early Republic, Era of the; Expansionism; Indian History and Culture: From 1800 to 1900; Indian Wars.

Bibliography

R. David Edmunds , Tecumseh and the Quest for Indian Leadership, 1984.
Gregory Evans Dowd , A Spirited Resistance: The North American Indian Struggle for Unity, 1745–1815, 1992.

R. David Edmunds