William Henry Harrison was the boy of a moneyed Virginia granger . He train in the classics , was hardened as a U.S. Army officer and concisely served as theninth president of the United States . He regard his keen challenger the Shawnee loss leader Tecumseh , calling him " one of those uncommon genius , which jump up on occasion to produce revolutions and overturn the set up order of things . "
view that for a second : A white man of privilege , charged withstealing the land of Native Americansin the name of a nascent but overwhelmingly powerful country — and killing any " wolf " in his way of life — praise the humanity who would mail his warriors against him .
That gushing esteem explicate how Tecumseh became a legend in his fourth dimension , among both friends and foes . It ’s a fable worth examining now , more than 200 years after his death , as America grudgingly front a long overdue reckoning with its treatment ofNative Americansand other people of color .
" Most biographer , it seems to me , pass into one of two categories . They either flow in love with their subject , or the more they interpret about him , the more they spell about him , they ca n’t stand him , " says historiographer R. David Edmunds , the author of 1984 ’s " Tecumseh and the Quest for Indian Leadership , " and a Professor Emeritus in account at the University of Texas at Dallas . " I would reason mine may be somewhere in the eye . But you still ca n’t really deal out with Tecumseh , I think — most of us — without walking away thinking , ' This world is really something special . ' "
The Early Life of Tecumseh
Born in 1768 in present - sidereal day Ohio , Tecumseh grew up in war . His father was kill in 1774 endeavor to beat back encroachingcolonistsfrom Virginia . A few year by and by , in the AmericanRevolutionary War — before Tecumseh was 10 long time old — the Shawnee and other aboriginal American bands sided with the British against the ever - intruding American personnel .
Tecumseh may have pick up his first battle in 1780 , before the remainder of the Revolution , and took part in many more in the decades to come . In 1785 , a war for the Northwest Territory — what is now cognise approximately as the commonwealth of Ohio , Indiana , Illinois , Michigan , Minnesota and Wisconsin — between Native Americans and the new Americans began . Not long into that extended campaign , Tecumseh , in a group that let in many tribes including the Shawnee and Cherokee , faced a turning point in his life while attacking barge carrying merchandise along the Ohio River .
The raids on the boats turned brutal , with the American Indians torturing and , sometimes , burning their prisoners alert . Tecumseh , though , stood up to his Native American buddy and denounced the wildness . From " Tecumseh : A life story , " in which biographer John Sugden quotesStephen Ruddell ’s memoirsof his time spent with Tecumseh :
" If Americans could have designed an Indian in ' the baronial wolf ' image , " Edmunds says , " it would have been Tecumseh . "
Coming of Age
Tecumseh distinguished himself in fight over the years , but he was perhaps best known , and most admired , for draw different tribes together in a so - call Indian federation . Beginning in the other 1800s , he and his comrade , Tenskwatawa , known as The Prophet , organized a group of thousands of Native Americans from several kin , eventually side with the British against the Americans in theWar of 1812 .
The Prophet provide a spiritual side to the movement , while Tecumseh added a political sharpness . Tecumseh was recognise as an outstanding rhetorician , able-bodied to call up his far - flung force , negotiate a tricky alliance with the British , and to endure up to the always increase need of the white humans .
He had mixed success in enlisting folk into his confederacy . Some Shawnee , in fact , did not side with him . But Tecumseh ’s content was always the same .
" The real job that tribal the great unwashed had in dealing with the Americans was that they come near their answer to the American invasion on a tribal basis . Tecumseh was a serviceman who said , ' We have to fall together and stand together . If we do n’t , they ’re going to pick us off flake by act by scrap , ' which was true , " Edmunds suppose . " ' We have to stand and say that land ownership is a aboriginal American phenomenon , not a tribal phenomenon . It ’s not Shawnee land , it ’s not Cherokee land , it ’s not Creek land , it ’s not Delaware earth . We all own it . Together . ' "
That subject matter , though , did not sit well with the U.S. " Their policy was , essentially , just pick aside with it until there was nothing leave , " Edmunds says . " So that content was very horrendous to American politicians in the early 19th 100 . "
The Tecumseh Legacy
During the War of 1812 , Tecumseh and his warriors joined British and Canadian force in repelling Americans in theSiege of Detroit . The menace of Tecumseh and his fellow tribesmen was enough to scare an aging American commander into surrendering Fort Detroit and its 2,500 soldier without a guess fired .
later on , Tecumseh and his men struck at fort within the U.S. , terrorise settler in this still - new area of the American frontier . But by September 1813 , the Americans had regrouped , retake Detroit and forced the Brits and Tecumseh ’s ring north and eastern United States . The Americans were led by Harrison , who through the years had held at leasttwo typeface - to - face negotiations with Tecumseh .
Whenthe Battle of Thamesbroke out in southwestern Ontario , Canada , Oct. 5 of that class , the low stripe of British speedily retreated — their alliance with the Native Americans never was a solid one — leave Tecumseh and his few hundred warriors to face Harrison and the Americans alone . Overwhelmed , Tecumseh was vote out ; by who was never unmortgaged , and what go on to his body is also a mystery . His forces quickly take flight upon news of his dying . Ironically , despite his attempt at unifying Native American tribe , more Shawnee campaign with the Americans in that struggle than fought at Tecumseh ’s side .
After Tecumseh ’s death , the great pan - Amerindic confederacy presently disbanded . And the notion of Native Americans joining together in the font of an unrelenting rape on their land died , too .
But what one military personnel accomplished in keep the pipe dream alive did not .
" Tecumseh , in my opinion , is the most remarkable Native American leader in American history , " Edmunds says . " He is a man of grapheme ; he is a adult male devote to his people . He is a man far ahead of his clock time in thinking . He is a homo admired by both his friends and his enemies .
" He ’s a man whose death add together to his mystique . As he passes out of liveliness , he passes into myth . He ’s a singular , noteworthy individual . "
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