Tenskwatawa (1757?-1836)

Source

Shawnee prophet

Assessment . Tenskwatawa is less well known today than his brother Tecumseh, who led the Shawnee people and other western tribes in a series of wars against the United States. Tecumseh may have been the greater political and military leader, but it was actually Tenskwatawa who initiated the resistance to the federal government with his unique religious vision in the early 1800s.

Renewal and Resistance . Tenskwatawa was born around 1775 to a Shawnee father, Puckeshinewa, and a Creek mother, Methoataske. Originally called La-lawethika (the Noisemaker), he was raised among his father’s people but failed to distinguish himself in his youth. His life changed with a spiritual experience in 1805, and he took a new name, Tenskwatawa, “the Open Door,” which signaled the role he began to carve for himself. He felt renewed by a series of revelations he received from the “Master of Life” while being taken up into the spirit world, in accordance with the shamanistic tradition of Shawnee belief. These visions were the basis of a call for renewal to the Shawnee and to other Indian tribes, a call that was the root of one of the deepest revivals of native traditions in the nineteenth century. Tenskwatawa, or, the Prophet, preached at a time of intense westward expansion by white Americans, and his visions were in part a reaction to the pressure the U.S. government was putting on the Shawnee to cede their land. To strengthen the Shawnee in their struggle he spoke out against liquor, which he saw as corrupting the Indians. He likewise tried to strengthen tribal ways by discouraging Shawnee women from marrying whites and urging the Shawnee to abandon everything introduced by whites, even guns. He also called for a return to “pure” Shawnee practices, such as holding all property in common and having the young and strong work for the benefit of the old and weak.

Defeat . Tenskwatawa reached a wide audience, well beyond the Shawnee nation. His spiritual authority seemed confirmed when he successfully predicted a solar eclipse in 1806. His call for native renewal in opposition to white America became a pan-Indian movement stretching from Florida to Saskatchewan. Tenskwatawa’s message had a political effect as well. During these same years Tecumseh was forging a political and military alliance among the tribes of the Ohio River valley to resist white settlement. The Prophet joined his brother in this struggle, and his political goals gradually eclipsed his religious message. But neither Shawnee proved effective at halting the steady loss of Indian lands. Tenskwatawa suffered a serious setback at the Battle of Tippecanoe, Indiana Territory, in November 1811, losing to future president William Henry Harrison, who then burned Tenskwatawa’s village, called Prophetstown. During the War of 1812 Tenskwatawa and his brother sided with the British against the Americans. Tecumseh paid for this alliance with his life, and Tenskwatawa paid with what was left of his reputation as a leader and visionary. In the peace negotiations after the war, the British once again abandoned their allies, and the long process of the displacement of the Indians by white Americans resumed. Tenskwatawa lived for a time in Canada, still preaching a message of renewal, but to a dwindling audience. He died in 1836 among the remaining Shawnee in what is now Kansas.

Source

R. David Edmunds, The Shawnee Prophet (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983).