Tescumseh



Tecumseh (March 1768 – October 5, 1813), also known as Tecumtha or Tekamthi, was aNative 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 what the British-American colonists called the Ohio country during the American Revolutionary War and the Northwest Indian War, where he was constantly exposed to warfare.[1]

After difficult years as a young man who suffered alcoholism, his younger brother Tenskwatawabecame a religious leader. Known as "The Prophet", he advocated a return of the Shawnee and other American Indians to their ancestral lifestyle and rejection of the colonists and Americans. He attracted a large following among Indians who had already suffered major epidemics and dispossession of their lands. With Americans continuing to encroach on Indian territory after the British ceded the Ohio Valley to the new United States, the Shawnee moved further into the northwest and in 1808 settled Prophetstown in present-day Indiana. Tecumseh met with Indiana Governor William Henry Harrison to demand the recission of land purchase treaties the US had forced on the Shawnee and other tribes. With a vision of establishing an independent American Indian nation east of the Mississippi, Tecumseh worked to recruit tribes to the confederacy from the southern United States.[1] While he was traveling, Tenskwatawa went to war with confederacy warriors although much outnumbered by an attack by Harrison and his forces, and was defeated in the 1811 Battle of Tippecanoe.

During the War of 1812, Tecumseh and his confederacy allied with the British in Canada and helped in the capture of Fort Detroit. They sought British support for continuing to defend their lands against the Americans. Harrison led a much larger counter assault and invaded Canada. The British faded away before his forces, but Tecumseh and the outnumbered Shawnee Confederacy fought on. Tecumseh was killed in the Battle of the Thames. Tecumseh has become an icon and heroic figure in American Indian and Canadian history; he is remembered as a hero by many Canadians for his defense of the country.