Tecumseh und der Prophet

Wirken als Prophet in Greenville

1805 ließ sich Tecumseh, auf Drängen seines jüngeren Bruders Lalawethika (später   Tenskwatawa),  in der Nähe von Greenville nieder. Dort führte Tenskwatawa als Prophet eine religiöse Erneuerungsbewegung an, die auf Distanz zu den US-Amerikanern ging. Diese Bewegung fand auch Anhänger außerhalb ihrer eigenen Siedlung. Die entscheidende Persönlichkeit im Hintergrund war allerdings stets Tecumseh, der sich seines eitlen jüngeren Bruders als „Prophet“ bediente, um den Geisterglauben seiner indianischen Brüder für Zwecke seiner Einigungsbemühungen zu nutzen. (Wikipedia)

Tenskwatawa, auch Elskwatawa (deutsch Die offene Tür), ursprünglich   Lalawethika  (deutsch Die Rassel/Der Lärmmacher), (* 1775; † 1836 im Bundesstaat Kansas) war ein Häuptling und Schamane der Shawnee-Indianer. Er ist der Bruder des bekannten Indianerführers Tecumseh (1768–1813), der versucht hatte, eine indianische Allianz aufzubauen und im Britisch-Amerikanischen Krieg getötet wurde. Tenskwatawa wurde bekannt als „Der Prophet“ bzw. der „Shawnee-Prophet“.^[1][...]  Tenskwatawa wurde zum Prediger und forderte zur Rückkehr zum traditionellen Leben auf. Er verbot seinen Anhängern europäische Nahrung, Kleidung und alle Fabrikprodukte, die Einehe sowie den Genuss von Alkohol. Er initiierte einige Hexenverfolgungen von indianischen Christen und forderte die „Anbetung der Erde“. Dies bewegte seinen Bruder Tecumseh vermutlich zur ältesten belegten Nennung einer „Mutter Erde“ in einer Rede gegenüber weißen Zuhörern 1812.^[2] Die Zahl seiner Anhänger wuchs rasch und er wurde vorübergehend zum indianischen Religionsführer.

Zum Zentrum der Religionsbewegung entwickelte sich die Indianersiedlung Tippecanoe, wo Tenskwatawa lebte. Der Ort wurde, ihm zu Ehren, in Prophetstown umbenannt. Mit der Schlacht von Tippecanoe, im Jahre 1811, verlor Tenskwatawa schlagartig sein Ansehen als Religionsführer und gewann es nie mehr wieder. Das lag nicht nur an der Niederlage der Indianer und der Vertreibung aus Prophetstown, sondern auch an den falschen Voraussagen von Tenskwatawa, beispielsweise seine Weissagung von der Unverwundbarkeit der Indianer in dieser Schlacht. (Wikipedia)

mehr dazu in Glenn Tucker: Tecumseh. Vision of Glory

"The news spread like a grass fire across the prairies, and the story of this miracle spawned a profusion of others. The Prophet made no effort to discourage them but, rather, gave them a boost. Credulous bearers of tall tales related that he was producing ears of corn large enough to feed twelve men. His pumpkins grew as big as wigwams. The Good Spirit would send forth at his bidding storms of hailstones huge as corn mortars, which would fall on the white people and crush them and leave the land to the red folk." Location: 1,905

"[...] he, after four years, would bring about two days of total darkness, during which he would travel as an invisible spirit across the land and call the animals out of the depths of the earth again. He would thus make game as plentiful for the hunt as it had been before the white men came. He would call up the loved ones of the Indians on a resurrection day. Miracles, indeed! Harrison could have them in good measure!" Location: 1,913

"While there was a tendency to ridicule the Prophet’s religious paraphernalia—this string of beans and a straw dummy—and to hold that they disclosed him an impostor, they were the best symbolism he and his followers, in their wretched poverty, could devise. The pitiful dummy, which was kept concealed, was supposed to represent the Prophet’s body, and the beans conveyed something of the idea of rebirth or continuity of existence. The practical purpose of his injunction that the fire must not be permitted to go out in the household is uncertain, but very likely it was twofold. If the fire had to be tended carefully the Indian was not so likely to go off on a war or a drunken orgy. Moreover, it gave him something to do that tied him to the religion and made him think of the Prophet many times a day." Location: 1,922

"Not until many years later, when accounts came to be compiled and examined, were the facts about the remarkable spread of the Prophet’s religion fully known. George Catlin devoted the eight years after 1829 to painting pictures of Indians and visiting their villages beyond the Mississippi. He knew the Prophet and painted a portrait that shows the strong, dominating countenance he retained to the end of his life." Location: 1,926

"How the religion was introduced into a new tribe was described by John Tanner, who lived with the Ojibway, or Chippewa, tribe at the west end and on the northern shore of Lake Superior. Tanner had been captured in 1786, when he was six years old, and lived with the tribe until he was thirty-nine. The Chippewa built a large tabernacle and held an impressive meeting to espouse the doctrine. The dummy figure of a man was brought in under a blanket, guarded by two young Indians. Four strings of moldy beans were carried about the building and held before all present. Each person was supposed to draw one of them gently through his hand—and so take the Prophet’s hand. All who touched the beans [...]" Location: 1,934

"There was less drunkenness among the Chippewa, and for three or four years war was little in their thoughts. The whole aspect of the tribe was changed. Tanner’s account is supported by others showing how the new religion stirred the emotions of the Chippewa and soon dominated the entire Lake Superior area. At the Chippewa capital of Shagawaumikong, now Bayfield,…" Location: 1,939

"What Tecumseh sought had been sought by King Philip and Pontiac. It stirred lost pride and independence in the red men, that they might make a strong stand for their land and liberty. He had learned patience. Through the early years of the nineteenth century he awaited some chance to resume on favorable terms the conflict with the Long Knives if the lands could not be preserved peacefully. Meanwhile the spread of the Prophet’s religion was tending to tighten the bonds [...]"| Location: 1,952

"Moreover, the combination of chief and prophet, of Tecumseh and Tenskwautawa, to guide the Indians through an emergency was in keeping with Indian traditions. Perhaps the pattern was set as far back as the association of Hiawatha and Dekanawida, the warrior and the priest who formed the federation of the Five Nations in the century that witnessed the arrival of Columbus on the shores of the New World." Location: 1,966

"If Wells disturbed Harrison, Harrison did not seriously alarm President Jefferson. Writing to John Adams after his retirement to Monticello, Jefferson gave a summary of the Prophet’s religion that represented official opinion while he was President: The Wabash Prophet is more rogue than fool, if to be a rogue is not the greatest of follies. He rose to notice when I was in the administration and became, of course, a proper subject for me. The inquiry was made with diligence.... I concluded ... that he was a visionary, enveloped in their antiquities, and vainly endeavoring to lead back his brethren to the fancied beatitudes of their golden age. I thought there was little danger of his making many proselytes from the habits and comforts they had learned from the whites, to the hardships and privations of savagism, and no great harm if he did. We let him go, therefore, unmolested.... [...]" Location: 1,974

8—The Purge 

1. THE PROPHET AND THE MORAVIANS COMPETE FOR CONVERTS 

"For Whisky the Prophet had substituted the more virulent intoxicant of power, and the question remained whether he could handle it better. The pride that gave Tecumseh dignity and set him apart as a leader of stature and magnetism became in Tenskwautawa a vanity that exploded in impatience, and, as a next easy step, in cruelty to the unresponsive. He was intolerant of those who might cavil or remain apathetic. Honest he undoubtedly was in his desire to lift the moral standards of his followers, yet he was equally concerned with pampering his own conceit." Location: 1,983

"The Prophet’s excessive desire for recognition constrained him to the exhibitionism and mysticism that stimulated the emotions, aroused enthusiasms and brought great crowds of Indians thronging to Greenville. Tecumseh might not have done so much with his forthright, reasoned oratory. Just how much of the new religion Tecumseh supplied apart from the taboos against white products and methods is relatively unimportant. The important thing is that he used an earnest, worthy and sincere creed in a crusade for a cause he counted imperative. He used the Prophet as a purifying and forging tool." Location: 2,001

"Almost from the beginning the Christian mission at Anderson seemed doomed to an unfortunate end. One reason was that the settlers were ignoring the Greenville Treaty line and biting hungrily into the Indian lands; another, that the Shawnee, among them Tecumseh and the Prophet, were frequenting the neighborhood and, after the Prophet’s reformation, were exerting a much stronger pull on the Indians than the Moravians were. Finally, Governor Harrison was not happy over the prospects of having a permanent Indian settlement at Anderson or, as later developed, at any other place in the Territory and withheld his patronage from this Christian colony to the point where the Moravians believed he was actually hostile." Location: 2,009

"The Moravians agreed that the best of the Prophet’s teachings was the prohibition of firewater. “If only the Indians would follow that injunction!” They noted the Prophet’s exclusive description of God as having a head “half gray and half white, for the remaining part being like an Indian.” "

2. PERSECUTION OF THE CHRISTIAN DELAWARES 

Early in 1806 the Prophet, who was making frequent trips to Indiana from Greenville, where Tecumseh remained, began to tighten down on the Delawares. The most venerable Delaware chief on White River was Teteboxti. He had become the sachem after the death in 1804 of the celebrated Buckongahelos, who had helped destroy St. Clair and then had fallen into ill favor with some of his tribe."  Location: 2,025

"Teteboxti was out making maple sugar in February, but the word passed to the Muncie town that he was really hiding in fear of his life. The Moravian diary entry of February 7, 1806, shows that the old Delaware had turned against the Christian mission and denounced it. That, however, was not sufficient to save him from the Prophet’s wrath. On March 13, 1806, seven Indians with blackened faces went to the Anderson mission, seized a Christian Indian called Brother Joshua and accused him of using poison and sorcery. Teteboxti was then made prisoner, taken to Muncie and put to the fire in order to wring from him a confession of poisoning Indians. The august sachem, more than eighty years old, was advised that if he confessed and gave up his medicine bag he would be pardoned. He agreed and said his medicine bag was under a stone, but it could not be found there. He was strung up between two poles with a fire beneath him. This wrested from him a confession that he had hidden his medicine bag in Brother Joshua’s house." Location: 2,037

"The Prophet reached Muncie on March 15, 1806. A great circle was formed, and the Indians under suspicion of using witchcraft and poison were brought in. The Prophet was supposed to be able to look into a man’s heart as easily as into his face and know whether evil existed. He went through a great many ceremonies and then accused a number of Indians of having poison. Teteboxti was of course judged guilty. Either in order to intimidate the Christian mission or to keep the sight of blood from the Prophet’s eyes, he was taken by ten men to Anderson and hit on the head with a hatchet. While he was still half alive he was tossed into the fire. The hatchetmen then had the effrontery to go to the mission nearby and demand food and tobacco, which the helpless missionaries gave them."  Location: 2,050

"The brutal slaying of the old chiefs and the Christian converts virtually ended the White River mission, though it did not finally shut down until November 1806. Thus in less than a year the Prophet had arrested the trend of the Indians toward Christianity. An old chief, Hackinkpomska, who had been among the first to welcome the Moravians to Indiana and had been accused before the Prophet, escaped to become a whisky dealer and drunkard who no longer counted in the affairs of the Delawares. The whisper went around that he and others had bribed the Prophet with cows and silver. After the spring of 1806 the Delawares were ruled by young men who looked to Tecumseh and his brother for orders. 

3. THE WITCH HUNT MOVES FAR AFIELD 

In its ramifications the Prophet’s purge got entirely out of hand. It resulted in the death of several hundred independent-thinking Indians."  Location: 2,069

"When the Prophet proposed that all hostile chiefs be assembled at a great feast, at which his axmen would fall upon them and kill them, Tecumseh rose in his wrath. This was more than he could stomach. He peremptorily rejected the infamous proposal. The Prophet almost met his end at Tecumseh’s hands. Tecumseh favored more subtle and less sanguinary measures. Gradually he began to work with the young men of the tribes to undermine the authority of the older chiefs, who were “quietly disabled by being reduced to a private capacity.” That was the course followed with the Kickapoo and the Winnebagos and later with others. With tears in his eyes an old Winnebago chief told an American scout that he and the other sachems had been stripped of their power and everything in the tribe was being managed by the warriors.   

9—Sunset Years in Ohio 

1. THE ORATOR CHANGES THE SUBJECT 

As the tide spread across country into Ohio and Indiana and more flatboats came down the river, conditions between the races became more tense and bloodshed was not infrequent. Three white men who were being hospitably entertained by an Indian family murdered every member of it in the night and stole everything valuable." Location: 2,100

"As Tecumseh was unyielding, the commissioners allowed the chief’s party to remain armed, and the council was convened in a field opposite Foo’s tavern. Now the customary peace pipe was passed around and good relations were re-established. After preliminaries, testimony was heard that Myers had indeed been killed by an Indian, and the murderer was demanded. The Crane spoke in conciliatory fashion, emphasizing the friendship between red man and white. An Ottawa chief followed in similar vein. Then it was time for Tecumseh. John Ross, a Clark County resident who attended, remembered him as “remarkable for grace and ease” as he arose and as a “tall, lithe figure of good form and fine, commanding appearance.” When he began to speak, he sharply snapped the entire council forward and held every man alert in his seat, fascinated, aroused, fearful. He was no supplicant, soothing and pleading for some unknown Indian charged with a stealthy murder, but a militant advocate of the rights of the red race. All the outrages and indignities suffered by the Indians seemed to surge through his body and demand requital. His tumult of words held the audience captive for three hours. He discussed the details of every important treaty that had been made between the English-speaking colonies and the Indians throughout the course of time. He amazed his hearers by emphasizing that the whites had violated every one of them. He began with the white settlements at Jamestown and Plymouth, with Powhatan, Samoset and Massasoit, and carried his discourse down to his own day. He cited what each treaty provided and just where each had been violated or utterly ignored. The facts gained from long study and conversations with the older chiefs during his youth and retained by his remarkable memory were now at his ready command as he marshaled his points. The whites were awed by this man’s information, the Indians deeply stirred by his courage and vigor. Said Colonel Hatch, who talked with Kenton and Patterson just after the council meeting: The effect of his bitter, burning words ... was so great on his companions, that the whole three hundred warriors could hardly refrain from springing from their seats. Their eyes flashed, and even the most aged, many of whom were smoking, evinced the greatest excitement. The orator appeared in all the power of a fiery and impassioned speaker and actor. Each moment it seemed as though, under the influence of his overpowering eloquence, they would abruptly leave the council and defiantly return to their homes. When he had finished he stood for a moment proudly facing the whites; then he turned his back on the stand and walked slowly to the outer edge of the circle, where he quietly took his seat among the young men of his escort. He had dominated the meeting with his dynamic personality. His boldness, his candor and above all else his remarkable fund of information on interracial relations were discussed by every white man in Springfield [...]"  Location: 2,157

"Tecumseh was in high anger that Wells had so affronted him as not to appear in person but had sent the half-breed Shane again. The chief launched into a magnificent denunciation of the whites for their injustices and encroachments in an impromptu address which Shane referred to as a “masterpiece of Indian eloquence” delivered with “great vehemence and deep, indignant feeling.” Unfortunately he noted down only a fragment. These lands are ours. No one has a right to remove us, because we were the first owners. The Great Spirit above has appointed this place for us, on which to light our fires, and here we will remain. As to boundaries, the Great Spirit above knows no boundaries, nor will his red people acknowledge any. As he ended, Tecumseh turned to Shane and declared: If my great father, the President of the Seventeen Fires, has anything more to say to me, he must send a man of note as his messenger. I will have no further intercourse with Captain Wells. The Seventeen Fires were, of course, the states of the Union. Wells countered by dispatching alarming messages to Harrison about the large crowds of Indians who were journeying through Fort Wayne to the Prophet’s mission. He estimated at the end of May that 1,500 Indians had “passed and repassed” Fort Wayne, but he did not point out the pertinent fact that their return north identified them as religious pilgrims, not warriors concentrating for an attack. He wrote at the end of August that the Prophet and Tecumseh had 800 “armed men” in Greenville. Indians were always “armed.” Harrison meanwhile, on July 11, 1807, had transmitted his apprehensions to the Secretary of War: “I really fear that this said Prophet is an engine set to work by the British for some bad purpose.” Here Harrison was beginning his conjectures about the British inciting the Indians which later became a conviction and a self-delusion he found confirmed by almost any development." Location: 2,178

3. THE GREAT COUNCIL IS PERSUADED 

Acting Governor Thomas Kirker of Ohio, who succeeded when Tiffin went to the United States Senate, determined to probe into the situation at Greenville and sent two of the state’s most capable citizens to make the investigation. They were Thomas Worthington and Duncan McArthur, both later governors. [...]" Location: 2,213

"John A. Fulton, later Mayor of Chillicothe, gave this eyewitness description: 

The utterance of the speaker was rapid and vehement; his manner bold and commanding; his gestures impassioned, quick and violent, his countenance indicating that there was something more in his mind, struggling for utterance, than he deemed it prudent to express. While he fearlessly denied the validity of these pretended treaties, and openly avowed his intention to resist the further extension of the white settlements upon the Indian lands, he disclaimed all intention of making war upon the United States. 

The result was a conviction on the part of the governor, that no immediate danger was to be apprehended from the Indians, at Greenville and Fort Wayne; and, as a consequence, the militia which had been called into service were ordered to be disbanded, and the chiefs returned to their headquarters. Tecumseh stayed seven days on this last visit to the capital of Ohio. His view of the great number of whites crowding into the Scioto Valley thoroughly convinced him that the Indians could never regain possession of Ohio without British aid. An Indian nation there would be an island in an ocean of white settlements. The Ohio phase of his life was ending. 

4. HARRISON LISTENS TO THE “BAD BIRDS” 

Harrison never went to inspect the Prophet’s mission, as Worthington and McArthur did, but he was free with opinions about it in his correspondence with the War Department. Wells was urging him to use direct measures by such statements as “the British are at the bottom of this business” and “nothing would have a better effect on the minds of the Indians than an immediate show of resentment on our part at their endeavoring to form unfriendly combinations toward us.” Location: 2,228

" [...]in August 1807 Harrison wrote Secretary Dearborn that the British object “no doubt” was to form a general confederacy against the United States. On September 5 he reported: Wells has been endeavoring for some time to get the Impostor removed from Greenville by means of the Delawares and Shawnese but without effect; he has also I believe threatened him with the vengeance of the United States if he continues to Excite disturbances among the Indians. Any disturbances at Greenville to that date existed only in the minds of Harrison and Wells. They were not known to the Ohio officials or the Indians, the two groups more closely concerned." Location: 2,234

"[...] in August wrote to the Shawnee on the Auglaize a blunt letter denouncing the “dark and bloody councils” of the Prophet: My children, this business must be stopped. I will no longer suffer it. You have called in a number of men from the most distant tribes, to listen to a fool who speaks not the words of the Great Spirit, but those of the devil and of the British agents." Location: 2,237

"[...] reply to Harrison came from the Prophet himself in the same month. It charged him with listening to the advice of “bad birds,” but it showed more restraint than Harrison’s outburst. The Prophet undoubtedly spoke the truth when he told Harrison, “I never had a word with the British.” The Indians, he said, “came here themselves to listen and hear the words of the Great Spirit.” Instead of creating disturbances, he purposed to prevent them." Location: 2,251

10—The Recruiter Visits the Tribes 

1. RUMBLINGS OF APPROACHING WAR 

TECUMSEH now came to the conclusion that it was time he offered the other tribes his grand scheme for an Indian confederation. During the later half of 1807 the threat of war between the United States and Great Britain swept along the prairies and alerted to the highest pitch of excitement the pioneers, the Indians and the Canadians across the border." Location: 2,257

"On June 22, 1807, the American frigate Chesapeake, a splendid vessel that should have mounted fifty guns, was caught virtually unarmed off the Virginia capes by the British man-of-war Leopard and forced in humiliation to haul down her colors and surrender some of her seamen to a British impressment squad." Location: 2,263

"For Tecumseh it was the signal to muster the tribes without further procrastination." Location: 2,269

"His first action as war threatened had been to dispatch the Prophet to Malden, the British fort at Amherstburg, Ontario, at the mouth of the Detroit River, where the Indian Department of the government of Upper Canada maintained its offices. His purpose was to feel out the British and ascertain whether hostilities might be imminent. The Prophet was in Detroit at the end of February 1808 with a party of Muskegon Indians and crossed to the Canadian side. In seeking British intervention in the Ohio Valley he was wholly unsuccessful. The acuteness of the crisis had already passed," Location: 2,276

"Tecumseh was resolved to abate to no extent his preparedness measures. The first strategic necessity was to abandon the Greenville mission which had been built so laboriously by the Prophet’s followers, toiling almost daily for three years. What he had held stubbornly he must now abandon voluntarily. The mission was crowded up against the white settlements. Every movement made by the Indians was scrutinized by informers and reported, often with alarming exaggeration, to Governor Harrison. Pilgrims were continually arriving. The mission could not supply the food for such throngs. More ample cornlands would have to be cultivated in some region where the game had not been exhausted. Meat and bread were more urgent needs than the Prophet’s incantations. Harrison remained irked by conditions at Greenville, partly because he had to supply food to the Indians passing Fort Wayne, many of whom otherwise would have starved on their journey, and partly because he wholly distrusted the Prophet’s avowed religious motives. The Indian commissioner for the American government, Charles Jewit, who had negotiated a treaty in 1805 gaining for the whites additional Indian land in northern Ohio, recommended that the situation at Greenville be cleaned up by seizing and imprisoning the Prophet, an arbitrary measure which the Washington government was not yet prepared to sanction."  Location: 2,318

2. TECUMSEH ACQUIRES NEW FRIENDS 

Tecumseh, Caldwell, Wasegoboah, the Prophet and a few attendants, all mounted on ponies, moved as overlords across the central plains, procuring their own food as they traveled, hunting the buffalo and deer, gathering nuts, berries, pawpaws, grapes and wild plums for food, grazing their ponies on the lush native grasses and stopping at friendly villages or returning to the Tippecanoe during the severe periods of winter." Location: 2,325

"After passing across northern Indiana, they came to the Potawatomi villages along the upper Illinois River, where, at the site of the present city of Ottawa, they stopped with the old chief Topinabee. There Tecumseh met one of the closest companions of his adult years, the noble Indian Shabbona. The two had many attributes in common, for Shabbona was a generous, hospitable, compassionate man of frank words and firm integrity. Like Tecumseh, he was temperate in eating and never drank firewater." Location: 2,329

"Gordon S. Hubbard, fur trader who knew Shabbona in his early days, said he was “physically as fine a specimen of man as I ever saw” and possessed “a face expressing great strength of mind and goodness of heart.”  Location: 2,333

"Shabbona in 1808 was thirty-two years old, eight years the junior of Tecumseh." Location: 2,341

"The impact of Tecumseh’s visit was so forceful that although Shabbona lived to the age of eighty-three, no other event of his life approached it in importance. Without hesitation he cast his lot with Tecumseh." Location: 2,344

"Shabbona procured a mount, paid his respects to his old chief and father-in-law, said farewell to his wife and took his place at Tecumseh’s side." Location: 2,359

3 STAUNCH ALLIES FOUND IN THE NORTH 

Tecumseh’s party moved north across Wisconsin to Green Bay, visiting with the Winnebagos and Menominee of northern Wisconsin. Both tribes responded to Tecumseh’s call. The Winnebago head chief Naw Kaw Casomine and the lesser chief Hootshoopkaw, or Four Legs, fell in behind him as regular companions. On Creen Bap the Menominee met in their great council under their old chief Tomah, who introduced Tecumseh as an emissary with a message from the tribes to the southeast. Tecumseh delivered a speech in which he set out frankly, step by step, his experiences with the whites and his calls to the tribes." Location: 2,370

"Shabbona left the party temporarily to return to his home while Tecumseh journeyed across central Illinois to what is now Attica, Indiana, on the east bank of the Wabash. There a great council was held with the Kickapoo chiefs, attended also by representatives of the Potawatomi and Winnebago nations The Kickapoo, an Algonquian tribe originally from the Lake Superior region, were regarded as inferior in battle to the Shawnee and Miami but were nevertheless the most predatory raiders in the whole western country. They were addicted to party actions involving from five to twenty warriors, in which mobility was their main asset. They would move stealthily from their villages and descend suddenly on a peaceful settlement or a remote farmhouse more than a hundred miles away, kill the men, capture the women and children, slaughter and feast on the cattle, carry off all portable property and be scores of miles on their return journey before anyone sounded the alarm. The military expeditions that had been sent from Kentucky to the upper Wabash had touched them but lightly, since their alertness and easy movements allowed them to avoid any enemy that approached in force." Location: 2,393

"A sensation was created throughout the entire western country when the intelligence was passed that the powerful Wyandot had declared in favor of Tecumseh’s confederation despite the unremitting efforts of their venerable chief the Crane to prevent it. This wandering branch of the Iroquois family counted about 4,000 members in northwestern Ohio, southwestern Ontario and the region around Detroit. Tecumseh was accompanied on his visit to the Wyandot by a Shawnee chief, Captain Lewis, [...]" Location: 2,412

"Governor Harrison, who regarded the Wyandot as the most warlike tribe of the entire western country and remarked on their stubborn courage, was woefully disconcerted when he learned that the bulk of the tribe had aligned itself with Tecumseh." Location: 2,420

" [...] on the first of his approaches to the warlike Osage, whom many of the southeastern Indians looked on with dread. On the banks of the Arkansas River the Osage called a tribal council, to which Tecumseh delivered an oration described by one of the hearers as eloquent and fiery, in which he asserted that by “cheating and designing” the whites had taken possession of the fairest Indian lands. The French prisoner De Lome attended and gave a report of the council meeting. Returning toward the Wabash, Tecumseh stopped long enough in southeastern Missouri to check the mad slaughter of many of the outstanding members of his own tribe and of the wandering Delawares in a degeneration of the purge that had been touched off by the fanaticism of the Prophet. At approximately the same time the western tribes were appalled by the assassination of the Wyandot chief Leatherlips, in what was looked on as a flareback of the purge, though it probably resulted from intra-tribal politics rather than from the Prophet’s orders. Leatherlips had signed Wayne’s treaty at Greenville and been outspoken against the Prophet. He was in camp with one other follower on the Scioto River when six Indians led by the Wyandot chief Roundhead from Detroit appeared before him unannounced. They told him he had been charged with witchcraft and had been tried, found guilty and sentenced to death. Where the trial had been held—he had not been invited to it—was not made clear to him. A white man, William Sells, was present and gave an account of the affair to Ottaway Curry, editor of the Ohio newspaper the Hesperian." Location: 2,438

4. DISAPPOINTMENT IN NEW YORK 

Failures to enlist tribes were not infrequent, yet they did not dishearten the persevering leader of the Shawnee. Scarcely had he returned from the region of the Ozark Mountains before he prepared for his mission to the Iroquois League of New York. Successful with most of his kindred Algonquians of the Great Lakes, he entered now into the critical test of his program before the powerful and populous tribes of the Six Nations, age-old enemies of the Shawnee. Like many of his other journeys, the one in the Finger Lake country, where the Iroquois had their seat, was inadequately reported, Location: 2,475

11—Harrison Hungers for Land 

1. THE SCRIBE OF GROUSELAND 

William Henry harrison, governor of Indiana Territory, was a well-intentioned man chosen as the instrument of an aggressive government bent on acquiring acreage at the lowest possible cost. None ever gave more diligent, responsive service. The man’s industry was amazing. He left no detail of any transaction, however minor, unreported to his Washington superiors and often wrote lengthy letters to the governors of neighboring states to keep them informed. Location: 2,514

2. THE CONTEST FOR THE CORNLANDS

Tecumseh and Thomas Jefferson and, in consequence, Tecumseh and Harrison were diametrically opposed in their concepts of the ownership of the Northwestern lands. Jefferson had purchased Louisiana and meant to tie in all of the intervening territory, to which, in his conception, the United States had obtained peremptory rights under the Treaty of 1783 by cession from Great Britain. Jefferson’s program was to fortify the American title by negotiating treaties with the chiefs of the Indian tribes occupying the land and to make payment in lump-sum annuities. He was at heart sympathetic with the Indians but he wanted the land. The governmental representatives invariably looked on the procedure as magnanimous, since the historical way for territory to change hands was for the stronger nation to grab it from the weaker. Location: 2,534

The American government was selling the Northwest land for two dollars an acre and thereby paying off the national debt. The profits were stupendous. For 190,000,000 acres of land purchased by treaties up to 1820 the cost to the government in annuities was $2,500,000, while its profit above that amount and administration costs was $213,000,000. Jefferson, and Madison after him, was an agriculturalist who understood that a nation’s power and wealth spring in large measure from its land. The great future they envisioned for the United States called for full ownership and eventual settlement of the Northwest, and this they intended to see accomplished irrespective of the obstacles that might be posed by a few reluctant tribes. Joseph Brant, more than any other Indian, established, during the period between the end of the Revolution and the adoption of the Constitution, recognition of the fact that the American colonies had not obtained from Great Britain a title to the lands north of the Ohio River that was valid above the title held by the Indians. Brant had gone to England to protest unsuccessfully the transfer of this territory to the United States. Then he protested to the Americans their claim of ownership. The colonies had obtained nothing more than an exclusive right to treat with the Indian occupants. After much negotiation he secured an understanding with the United States which Secretary of War Knox stated in a letter to President Washington, June 15, 1789, in these terms: The Indians, being the prior occupants, possess the right of soil. It cannot be taken from them unless by their free consent, or by right of conquest in case of a just war. To dispossess them on any other principle would be a gross violation of the fundamental laws of nature, and of that distributive justice which is the glory of a nation. This principle was ratified by Congress and affirmed in various Supreme Court decisions. Location: 2,549

the decision of John Marshall in The Cherokee Nation vs. The State of Georgia. It held an Indian tribe to be a separate state subject to treatment as “a distinct political society.” Indian treaties were always submitted to the Senate for ratification. Thus the United States officially acknowledged Tecumseh’s argument that the white government gained no rights over the Indians because of discovery or superior civilization. Location: 2,553

He held that all Indian tribes were sojourners on the land and none was the exclusive owner of any particular tract. The tribes were always shifting, and temporary occupancy involved no conveyance of an exclusive title. Most of the Indians had no conception whatever of the whites’ theory of land ownership. As Tecumseh suggested, land was like the air and water, made for use of all. Even the Indians who sold the lands did not seem to recognize they were abandoning them finally and could no longer enjoy their use. It was easy to put a mark on a piece of paper… Location: 2,562

3. JEFFERSON ENVISIONS INDIAN FARMERS

There is no doubt that Tecumseh was correct when he told the Ohio settlers that all the treaties between the whites and the Indians had been broken by the whites. An Ohio student of the Indians, General Benjamin R. Cowen, has summed up the pitiful record: Through all the colonial times since the first treaty when the Plymouth governor made old Massasoit drunk and stole his land, Indian treaties were made but to be broken, and from the first treaty made by our government, that with the Delawares at Fort Pitt in 1778, when that nation was cajoled into active alliance with the infant republic by the promise of a State organization and a representative in Congress, down to the last treaty with the tribes huddled together on the arid lands of the far West—in all over goo treaties—every one of the number was broken in one or more important particulars by the whites.… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits. Location: 2,573

But the humane Jefferson, while he wanted their lands, wanted them to be farmers. Harrison explained: Your father, the President, wishes you to assemble your scattered warriors and form towns and villages, in situations best adapted for cultivation; he will cause you to be furnished with horses, cattle, hogs and implements of husbandry. Jefferson himself put it this way: When they withdraw themselves to the culture of a small piece of land, they will perceive how useless to them are extensive forests and will be willing to pare them off from time to time in exchange for necessities for their farms and families: Should any tribe be foolhardy enough to take up the hatchet at any time, the seizing of the whole country of that tribe and driving them across the Mississippi as the only condition of peace, would be an example to others and a furtherance of our final consolidation. Location: 2,590

He added the astonishing note of benevolence that in this whole process “it is essential to cultivate their love.... All our liberalities to them proceed from pure humanity only.” His rationalization allowed him to believe he would help the Indians to better lives by dexterously depriving them of their land. Location: 2,602

A closely reasoned address delivered by John Quincy Adams in 1802 was the nearest approach to an ethical justification of the American land policy. Adams held that the Indian right of possession rested on a questionable foundation. He granted that they were entitled to whatever they had annexed to themselves by personal labor. Then he raised this question: ... What is the right of a huntsman to the thousand miles over which he has accidentally ranged in quest of prey? Shall the liberal bounties of Providence to the race of man be monopolized by one or two thousand ...? Shall the exuberant bosom of the common mother, amply adequate to the nourishment of millions, be claimed exclusively by a few hundred of her offspring? ... No, generous philanthropists! Heaven has not been thus inconsistent in the work of its hands. Heaven has not thus placed at irreconcilable strife, its moral laws with its physical creation. Yet it was a bit dangerous even for John Quincy Adams to play the interpreter of Heaven. Under his theory private ownership of large tracts of undeveloped land could never be sanctioned against teeming populations that owned no soil. The few had no land rights against the many. The populous nations might expel the weaker at will. The doctrine degenerated into the law of the jungle—no concept for the guidance of civilized nations. Location: 2,613

[...] between Harrison’s acquisitive course and Tecumseh’s resolute stand was a policy of moderation in which time might have come to the assistance of the Indian. The government would have been compelled to retard if it could, instead of stimulate by sales, the settlement of the western country until the Indian became more accustomed to civilized practices and satisfied with smaller acreage. That is what happened across the border in Canada, where, after the separation of the thirteen colonies, the whites never came into major conflict with the red men. However it may be approached, the Jefferson-Harrison land policy had one main imperative—get the land. Location: 2,626

Tecumseh held, however, that the land was being procured not from its owners but from “village chiefs” who had no authority to speak for the Indian race. He stood on the principle that had been established with the American Congress by Joseph Brant and had now fallen into neglect: negotiations could not be conducted with individual tribes, but must take in all the Indians. It was the principle enunciated by the Wyandot chief the Crane, the white man’s friend, at the Treaty of Greenville: I now tell you, that no one in particular can justly claim this ground; it belongs in common, to us all; no earthly being has exclusive right to it.   

12—The Treaty of Fort Wayne 

1. NOT PLOWMEN BUT HUNTERS 

During most of 1808 and 1809 the Prophet stayed in his Tippecanoe town while Tecumseh ranged through the tribes. Harrison mistakenly looked on the Prophet as the head of the “conspiracy,” adopted him as another correspondent, wrote to him frequently, sent him messengers and eventually entertained him on different occasions in Vincennes. One of the messengers was a Shaker who found the Prophet devout in his beliefs. The Prophet, a plausible and earnest talker, volunteered to make the first visit to Vincennes “to remove the very bad impression you have received against me. “You have promised to assist us,” he said. “I now request you, in behalf of all the red people, to use your exertions to prevent the sale of liquor to us.” Location: 2,648

Jefferson, genuinely desirous of making the Indians good citizens, wrote on the last day of 1808 an earnest letter to Harrison about the liquor traffic, telling of previous efforts to restrict it and asking that Harrison place the matter before the Indiana legislature. The Indians, said Jefferson, were purchasing liquor in the neighboring settlements and carrying it to their own towns. He wanted laws to prohibit this sale by the white settlers. Harrison told the legislature, “So destructive has been the progress of intemperance that whole villages have been swept away.” As his second term drew to a close, Jefferson expressed more frequently his tender sentiments for the Indians and invited their chiefs to Washington in order that he might give them his parting words. He told how he had tried to check the flow of liquor that was so destructive to their welfare, had promoted peace and friendship and looked on them with the same good will that he extended to his own fellow citizens. In addressing the Delawares he reverted to his favorite theme of agriculture and assimilation: Nothing is so easy as to learn to cultivate the earth; all your women understand it; and to make it easier, we are always ready to teach you how to make plows, hoes, and other necessary utensils. If the men will take the labor of the earth from the women, they will learn to spin and weave, and to clothe their families. In this way you will also raise many children. You will double your number every twenty years, and soon fill the land your friends have given you; and your children will never be tempted to sell the spot on which they have been born, raised, have labored, and called their own.... You will mix with us by marriage. Your blood will run in our veins, and will spread with us over this great island. Instead then, my children, of the gloomy prospect you have drawn of your total disappearance from the face of the earth, which is true if you continue to hunt the deer and buffalo and go to war, you see what a brilliant aspect is offered to your future history if you give up war and hunting, adopt the culture of the earth, and raise domestic animals. You see how, from a small family, you may become a great nation, by adopting the course which ... has made us a great nation. Tecumseh’s whole program of resistance was based on his knowledge that the Indians were not plowmen but hunters. Hunting was a pleasure, a play of wits against Nature, whereas procuring food by agriculture was drudgery only a step removed from servitude. Freedom was so essential to the average Indian that he would much rather die than be a slave, and one of the characteristics of the lofty Indian tribes of the Northwest was that they never submitted to enslavement. Location: 2,682

Harrison replied that “Mr. Wells was for having me starve all those which appertained to the Prophet. I did not believe however that was the pilosophy [sic] of the President.” This attitude was in sharp contrast with the British policy, which was to feed the Indians who came to Malden or, preferably, to provide them with ammunition in order that they might do their own hunting. The British method was of course more likely to make friends. Harrison did give a “small supply of food and ammunition” but with the grudging remark that an Indian was more grateful “for having his belly filled than for any other service.” Location: 2,692

In July Eustis sent an order for Harrison to extinguish at a favorable moment the Indian title to the lands east of the Wabash and in November showed a desire to get rough with the Prophet and Tecumseh, although he linked the suggestion in a surprising manner with a peace plea from President Madison: It has indeed occurred to me that the surest means of securing the good behavior from this conspicuous personage and his brother, would be to make them prisoners, but at this time more particularly, it is desirable, that peace with all the Indian tribes should be preserved, and I am instructed by the President to express to your excellency his expectations and confidence that in all your arrangements, this may be considered ... a primary object with you. 

2. HARRISON MELLOWS THEM WITH WINE In compliance with the instructions from Secretary Eustis and in response to his own hearty desire, Governor Harrison left Vincennes on September 1, 1809, for Fort Wayne on a trip of profound significance to the central portion of America. In the succession of events it unloosed it was to cause a direct break with Tecumseh, help to bring on a war between the United States and Great Britain and lead to the near extermination of numerous Indian tribes. Location: 2,745

To discuss this the Miami chiefs waited on the governor that evening. They began by asking that the liquor casks be unlocked for their young men. Harrison tossed his rule overboard and rationed two gallons of whisky to each tribe. Before he went to bed late that night, the Potawatomi chief Winamac called at his tent and told him the Indians would accept his proposition. Winamac thought the governor would sleep better with the information. Nevertheless the wrangling among the tribes and between them and Harrison went on almost interminably. Harrison, in the words of the journal, “mellowed them with wine”—though it was whisky that was in the casks. After that he was able to make headway against the complaints of the Miami, who claimed all of Indiana and were displeased over other tribes’ sharing in the annuities. When the council was reconvened, Harrison had an opportunity to denounce the British in a two-hour speech that attributed to them all the woes of the Indians and charged them with having lured the tribes into earlier wars. Eventually the Treaty of Fort Wayne was prepared and signed in the presence of 1,390 Indians, among them some of Tecumseh’s agents. For several nights there were heavy drinking and some fatal knife play in the Indian camps, while Harrison was riding back to Vincennes with his parchment covered with X marks that transferred from the Indians the title to 3,000,000 acres on the Wabash and White rivers. For the heart of the state of Indiana he paid $10,550 in annuities and cash. At the regular government sales price of two dollars per acre, the deal meant a profit of nearly $6,000,000. A conservative estimate of the present value of the area as agricultural land alone would be close to a billion dollars. Location: 2,758

Harrison wrote to Eustis: The poverty and wretchedness of the Potawatomies made them extremely desirous of a treaty at which they expected to have their most pressing wants relieved.... The compensation given for this cession of lands, altho’ somewhat higher than has been heretofore given in any Treaty I have made with the Indians, is as low as could possibly be made. Then he put in a comment that disclosed he was after profits as well as territory. The Indians, he said, had been advised by the British and some American citizens not to sell their land unless it had been surveyed and a price of two dollars an acre was allowed for it, which was what the government was obtaining on resales. “Their tenaciousness in adhering to this idea was astonishing,” wrote Harrison, “and it required no little pains to get them to abandon it.” Obviously a good deal of “mellowing with wine” was necessary. At Vincennes the territorial officials and the settlers celebrated with a big banquet. Location: 2,775

13—Tecumseh and Harrison Meet 

1. THE TIPPECANOE GAMES BECOME WARLIKE 

Tecumseh's runners, fanning out over the country after the Treaty of Fort Wayne, located him returning to the Wabash from his failure to enlist the Iroquois tribes of the Mohawk Valley. Location: 2,778

Nothing since the burning of his home village by the Long Knives so aroused his fury as Harrison’s show of contempt for him and his tribe. The treaty had been negotiated, as far as he could judge, almost covertly during his absence, in utter disdain of his own Shawnee, one of the most powerful and respected tribes of the Northwest, who had hunted for generations over the Wabash River lands now surrendered to Harrison for a pittance. It was clear to Tecumseh that these lands were owned by the Shawnee as much as by any other tribe. Location: 2,837

2. THE “MOSES OF THE FAMILY” IS DISCOVERED 

In those June days when Tecumseh had been away from the Prophet’s Town he had been making a last determined appeal to the Shawnee who remained on the Auglaize to enlist them against a treaty that affronted the tribe by utterly ignoring it. The council was held at Wapakoneta. Tecumseh’s movements in Ohio were followed closely by John Johnston, the American Indian agent at Piqua, who described them to Harrison. He told the Indians that the white people and the government were deceiving them, and that, for his part, he never would believe them, or put any confidence in them—that he would never be quiet until he had effected his purpose, and that, if he was dead, the cause would not die with him.... All his arguments seemed to be bottomed on the prospect of hostilities against our people. Harrison had sent a conciliatory message to the Shawnee on the Auglaize several months earlier, and they called it to Tecumseh’s attention. Stephen Ruddell translated it to Tecumseh, but the chief snatched it from his hand and threw it into the fire. He was furious that Harrison would communicate with the Shawnee except through him. He declared, “If Governor Harrison were here I would serve him the same way.” Location: 2,861

In early August he announced that Tecumseh would visit him. This brother [Tecumseh] is really the efficient man—the Moses of the family.... He is ... described by all as a bold, active, sensible man daring in the extreme and capable of any undertaking. But if Tecumseh was the efficient “war chief,” he judged the Prophet the principal agitator. He tried to put him on the defensive. He told the Prophet that if he could prove ownership of the Fort Wayne Treaty lands they would be restored and the whole deal rescinded. The letter was a showy gesture, but one not likely to prove costly, for there was no manner in which any Indian tribe might ever prove title except by occupancy, and the Shawnee could claim occupancy only by the hunting rights they had long exercised in common with other tribes over the whole Indiana Territory. Except where they had cornlands in the bottoms, hunting was their type of occupancy. Harrison’s letter was carried by Joseph Barron, his interpreter, a native of Detroit who had come early to the Wabash, with which he was associated through the remainder of his life. Harrison trusted him above all other interpreters, but he was even then losing the confidence of the Indians, who felt that an interpreter should be neutral. When he landed at Tippecanoe, Barron was taken before the Prophet, who was seated on a dais his followers had built him for a throne. Barron’s escort then fell back. “He looked at me for several minutes,” Barron recounted, “without speaking or making any sign of recognition, although he knew me well. At last he spoke, apparently in anger. “‘For what purpose do you come here?’ said he. Brouillette was here; he was a spy. Dubois was here; he was a spy. Now you have come. You, too, are a spy. There is your grave. Look on it!’ “The Prophet then pointed to the ground near where I stood.” Barron had every right to wonder about his fate, knowing that what the Prophet had said about Brouillette and Dubois was true. Hearing the commotion, Tecumseh came out of a hut nearby. From the moment of his appearance he was unmistakably in charge. Barron thought his attitude cold and formal, but he reassured the white man by informing him his life was in no danger and then asked him to state the purpose of his mission. This Barron did by translating Harrison’s letter, the main point of which was to invite the Prophet to visit Washington. Tecumseh interjected that he would himself go to Vincennes to meet Harrison. After the letter had been presented Tecumseh was most deferential and courteous to Barron, manifesting that although he belonged to a tribe which a generation earlier had slaughtered messengers from an enemy, he fully understood the privileged status an envoy should enjoy. He took Barron to his own tent and made a bed for him. Location: 2,885

Tecumseh gave Barron the best meal procurable—the slum stew the Indians customarily ate—and talked with him late into the night, with the openness and frankness that were among the charming aspects of his character. He told Barron he did not intend to make a war but nevertheless said—and this he declared most solemnly—that it would be impossible for him to remain friendly with the United States unless it should abandon its course of extending its settlements further to the north and west and should then recognize that these western lands were the common property of all the tribes. He supplied a good summary of his philosophy, which Barron recorded and reported to Harrison: The Great Spirit said he gave this great island to his red children. He placed the whites on the other side of the big water. They were not contented with their own, but came to take ours from us. They have driven us from the sea to the lakes. We can go no farther. They have taken upon themselves to say this tract belongs to the Miami, this to the Delawares, and so on. But the Great Spirit intended it as the common property of all the tribes, nor can it be sold without the consent of all. Our father tells us we have no business on the Wabash; the land belongs to other tribes. But the Great Spirit ordered us to come here and we shall stay. Although Tecumseh had saved Barron from the wrath of the Prophet, he knew the white man was still in grave danger from the vindictiveness of the squaws. Some of them were under the domination of the Prophet’s wife, whom they recognized as the queen of the Tippecanoe town. Tecumseh had learned of their plot to enter the tent and kill Barron while he slept but did not act to forestall it until he had completed his conversation. He did not care to engage in a controversy with the women who followed the Prophet with great faith and zeal, so he personally escorted Barron away from the village to a wooded ravine near the Wabash River. There he made a wild-turkey call which was answered from a short distance. Two Indians appeared leading Barron’s horse and two others. They mounted with him and served as his guides until Barron was far from the Tippecanoe on his return ride to Vincennes. Location: 2,956

4. “I AM THE MAKER OF MY OWN FORTUNE” 

Harrison and Tecumseh were at last face to face: the Virginia patrician and the unlettered prairie chief; the soldier of distinguished lineage, college-trained, who had become a scholar to escape the insufferable boredom of army life and was applying his best efforts in some of the largest real-estate deals of history; and the red warrior who had learned well by observation and conversation. Tecumseh had come to know that even in the deep forests and wide prairies humaneness and charity could add to the values of living and that a cause worthy to be pursued with all the heart would lose its greatness if it were won by craft or cruelty. Facing a leader of the opposing race, he might wonder if Harrison had learned as much. He began by asking the governor to give him close attention. He entered into a discussion of the French—how they had first discovered the Algonquians, adopted them as children, given them presents expecting nothing in return and had asked for only a small piece of territory to live on. After a time the British and the French had quarreled and, although the British were victorious, the French had promised to think of the Indians as their children and to serve them whenever they could. Through this prologue ran an implication that if the French returned to North America they would be joyfully welcomed by their old and faithful allies. Since the Indians had changed their fathers they had found things different: the British had taken them into war against the Americans and many of their young men had been killed. They had finally buried the tomahawk at Greenville, where their new fathers, the Americans, “told us they would treat us well, not like the British, who merely gave us a small piece of pork each day.” Location: 2,970

You recall the time when the Delawares lived near the Americans, and had confidence in their promises of friendship, and thought they were secure, yet one of the Delaware towns was surprised, and the men, women and children were murdered? These same promises were given to the Shawnee. Location: 2,977

He declared that since the presumed peace had been made the Americans had killed Shawnee, Winnebagos, Miami and Delawares and taken their land. In return for Kickapoo lands the Americans had given the tribe tainted food which killed many, and other gifts caused smallpox, which killed many more. Location: 2,988

From my tribe I take nothing. I am the maker of my own fortune. And oh, that I might make the fortunes of my red people, and of my country, as great as the conceptions of my mind, when I think of the Great Spirit that rules this universe! I would not then come to Governor Harrison and ask him to tear up the treaty and obliterate the landmarks; but I would say to him, “Sir, you have permission to return to your own country.” The being within me, communing with past ages, tells me that once, and until lately, there were no white men on all this island; that it then belonged to the red men, children of the same parents, placed on it by the Great Spirit that made them, to keep it, to traverse it, to enjoy its productions and to fill it with the same race. Once they were a happy race. Now they are made miserable by the white people who are never contented but are always encroaching. Location: 2,995

[...] the only way, to check and to stop this evil is for all the red men to unite in claiming a common and equal right in the land. That is how it was at first, and should be still, for the land never was divided but belongs to all, for the use of every one. No groups among us have a right to sell, even to one another, much less to strangers who want all and will not do with less. At one point he broke into acrid ridicule. “Sell a country!” he exclaimed. “Why not sell the air, the clouds and the great sea, as well as the earth? Did not the Great Spirit make them all for the use of his children?” Tecumseh clearly showed that he looked on himself as the over-all custodian of the rights of the Indians, almost as a chosen instrument of the Great Spirit to speak for his people.

Yellow highlight | Location: 3,010

Now listen to me: If you do not rescind the treaty [of Fort Wayne] it will look as if you wished me to kill all the chiefs who sold you the land. I tell you I am authorized by all the tribes to do so. I am the head of them all. I am a warrior; and all the warriors will meet together in two or three moons from this. Then I will call for those chiefs who sold you the land, and shall know what to do with them. If you do not restore the land, you will have had a hand in killing them. Location: 3,015

He blamed the Treaty of Fort Wayne on the Potawatomi chief Winamac, Harrison’s friend, who was sitting before Tecumseh and whom he denounced violently. “There sits the black dog that makes lies and tells them, to cause white men and red men to hate each other!” In reporting the incident to the War Department two days later, Harrison said: “On Winemac [sic], who was present, he poured a torrent of abuse and threatened him in such a manner that he expecting personal violence recharged his pistol and was prepared to stop the Shawonese insolence forever.” Tecumseh chided Harrison: How can we have confidence in the white people? When Jesus Christ came upon the earth, you killed Him, and nailed Him to a cross. You thought He was dead, but you were mistaken. You have Shakers among you, and you laugh and make light of their worship. Everything I have said to you is the truth.... Location: 3,023

“The States have set the example of forming a union among all the fires—why should they censure the Indians for following it?” Location: 3,035

5. TECUMSEH DENOUNCES HARRISON 

Harrison had been speaking fifteen to twenty minutes before he came to the amount of money he had paid the Indians. He then declared the United States had been just and fair in its dealings. The Shawnee leader had been listening in silence. In his own forthrightness he knew nothing of the language of diplomacy or how one kind of transaction might be made to look like another by a smooth and artful explanation. He had stated his position frankly and demanded frankness in return. In ordinary circumstances he was able to control his deep-seated emotions, but if there was a flaw in his leadership, it was in his disposition to quick anger. The interpreter had given in Shawnee Harrison’s words that the Indians had been fairly treated, but before he could translate them into Potawatomi, Tecumseh was on his feet, shouting violently, “It is false! He lies!” He poured on Harrison a torrent of abuse. Location: 3,047

For an instant a big fight seemed imminent. Then Harrison, incensed by language he now understood to be a direct affront, declared the council adjourned and strode into his house with his party of guests trailing after him. Location: 3,050

Although much was made of Governor Harrison’s courage in confronting bellicose Indians with nothing but his naked blade, the incident was a more striking illustration of the supreme confidence, the unflinching arrogance of Tecumseh. With thirty men armed with tomahawks he had dared to challenge a town filled with white soldiers, many of them mounted and all bearing firearms. He had not yielded an inch or withdrawn a single phrase of his argument. When he was back in his camp his anger, which always cooled quickly, subsided and he was chagrined that he had lost control of himself. Barron called the next morning and found him penitent over his display of temper. He had no wish to give personal offense to Harrison in what was a discussion of principles between two peoples. He sent his apologies by Barron, and Harrison accepted them in such good grace that he came to visit at the Indian camp. Location: 3,057

Tecumseh, now in a waggish mood, sat on a bench with Harrison at the camp and moved so close to him that the governor had to shift his position. Tecumseh did it again, talking all the while about the treaties, until he had crowded Harrison to the end of the bench. Finally, under another pressure, Harrison objected. Tecumseh laughed and asked him how he would enjoy being pushed clear off, just as the Indians were being shoved off their lands by encroaching whites. The United States policy of buying the land was a “mighty water.” It “threatens my people like a high flood ready to burst its bounds and cover them with total ruin. To stop this deluge I am trying to form a dam.... For every sale opens new channels to the approaching inundation, which, in time, will overflow the whole country.”

Yellow highlight | Location: 3,062

The use of a dam as a figure of speech suggests that Tecumseh was not then thinking in terms of an offensive war but merely a defense against further white advances. The council was reconvened on August 22. Tecumseh went into an extended explanation of what he had been told by a white man who came to the Tippecanoe—in substance that many whites opposed the Treaty of Fort Wayne as much as he did; that Harrison would remain in office only two years more and would be succeeded by “a good man who is a true friend of the Indians,” and that the purpose meantime was to drive the Shawnee from their land. Tecumseh had sent some of his own men to the Ohio River to reconnoiter and find out about the land situation. Location: 3,132

14—The British Restrain Tecumseh 

1. GREAT BRITAIN PREFERS A QUIET FRONTIER 

Harrison's belief that the British prodded Tecumseh to rise against the United States had begun with a mere suspicion engendered by the purposeful Indian Agent William Wells. By the end of 1809 it had matured into a solid conviction expressed and reiterated to the War Department, the Indiana legislature and virtually all others to whom he dispatched his prolix outpourings of contentious letters. Location: 3,142

Yet Harrison in all his correspondence did not produce one shred of plausible evidence to show that the British government or any of its representatives urged the Indians to hostilities against the United States or were responsible in any manner for Tecumseh’s drive to form an Indian confederation. Location: 3,148

The British urgently wanted peace on the frontier. The governmental officials in Canada exerted every reasonable precaution and applied every possible pressure on the tribes to preserve it. It was not the British who urged Tecumseh to war, but Tecumseh who urged the British. Location: 3,213

2. TECUMSEH’S FIRST TRIP TO THE BRITISH 

The Treaty of Fort Wayne had driven Tecumseh to new exertions. His work was more determined, more secret and involved more immediate plans. We catch a glimpse of his plotting in the Sandusky region of northern Ohio. Location: 3,230

Tecumseh always had unlimited time in which to develop his theme and marshal his argument. His address at Malden—the first of several he delivered on the spacious parade ground overlooking the beautiful islands of the Detroit River, which now showed their red and brown trappings in the late fall—was regarded throughout Canada as a statement of his determination to go to war with the Long Knives. Attending the council were officers of the tooth Regiment of the British Line—Major Taylor, Captain Gore, Lieutenant Newlan and Ensign Dawson—as well as Elliott and Cameron of the Department of Indian Affairs. The tribes present were delegations of Potawatomi, Ottawa, Winnebagos and Sauk and Foxes. Location: 3,241

Father: I have come here with the intention of informing you that we have not forgotten—we never can forget—what passed between you English ... and our ancestors—and also to let you know our present determination. Father: We had been settled for about five years near Greenville when the Long Knives suspected us of plotting mischief. We moved from there and settled on the Wabash. Father: We have a belt to show you which was given to our chiefs when you laid the French on their backs. Here it is, Father. On one end is your hand; on the other, that of the Red People. Both hands are in white wampum, but the Indian end of the white belt is darker than the other, and in the middle are the hearts of both. Father, our great chiefs had been sitting on this belt ever since, keeping it concealed and running our country. Now the warriors have become the chiefs and have turned their faces toward you, never again to look toward the Americans. We the warriors now manage the affairs of our nation. We sit at the borders, where the contest will begin.