His charisma was enticing and he was able to gather many of the tribes together to negotiate for Indian land with the settlers. They worked together in building a defense force to protect their land from those that would attempt to take it from them. The Shawnee territory was being taken over by the settlers who were flooding into America. Despite treaties and promises, the Indians were being evicted from their ancestral homes.
The American encroachment on the Native Americans began with hostilities in the area east of Virginia, which was home to the Cherokee Indians. However, the settlers moved west and seized land owned by the Indians in the Ohio River valley.
One thing that really helped shape the life of Tecumseh was his brother Tenskwatawa, the Prophet. Most of Tecumseh's life was spent trying to make a gathering of tribes a reality.
He set up a center of government and political power in Tippecanoe. Tippecanoe became not only a center for Indian confederacy, but also a training center for the Indian warriors. The settlers grew concerned about the power that Tecumseh was amassing around himself and his cause. They looked to the US government to deal with the problem. Seeing so many Indians together worried the governor of the Indiana Territory, William Henry Harrison , so he sent an army to Prophetstown.
When he came back, he found the town destroyed and he gave up his vision of a confederacy with the settlers. Under the climate of expansion into the western part of the country, Tecumseh felt there could be no trust with the white man who did not care for being honest and true in their dealings, but only about gaining land for themselves.
Following the destruction of Tippecanoe, Tecumseh and his warriors joined the forces with the British during the War of in hopes that they would return the land to the Indians if they won. Tecumseh was the first Indian to serve at the rank of General in the British Army. Tecumseh fought as a Brigadier General during the War and when the British were defeated and turned tail to Canada, Tecumseh begged them not to give up the fight.
At the start of the Battle of the Thames in , the British retreated and left the Indians to fight on their own. Finding no aid in their leadership, Tecumseh and his men decided to fight the Americans without the help of the British. Tecumseh died in battle at Chatham, Ontario. They had been forced to leave Tecumseh's body on the field. They had carried him off, either mortally wounded or dead, and buried him in a secret place that whites would never find.
As for the Americans, none of those who first overran Tecumseh's position were acquainted with him. But they found an impressive-looking dead Indian who they were convinced was Tecumseh. Some cut strips of skin from this body, later tanning them for razor strops and leather souvenirs.
When people arrived who did know him, some said the battered corpse was indeed Tecumseh's. Others said it was not. Even Harrison could not positively identify it. Nevertheless a number of Americans were to claim that they had personally vanquished the Shawnee leader. Most prominent was Richard Johnson, a Kentucky politician who fought at the Thames as a cavalry commander. Whether or not he was indeed "The Man Who Killed Tecumseh," a great many of his constituents believed he was. Senate and then, in , to the Vice Presidency.
Frederick Pettrich began work on The Dying Tecumseh in , doubtless much influenced by these political happenings. This was certainly the case with John Dorival, who in painted the immensely popular Battle of the Thames.
In the foreground of an extremely busy battle scene, Johnson and Tecumseh are engaged in hand-to-hand combat. The former brandishes a pistol, sports a dragoon's tall stovepipe hat adorned with an ostrich plume and sits astride a splendid white charger.
Tecumseh, on foot, appears to be about seven feet tall, overtopping Johnson's rearing horse. He wears a flowing headdress fabricated from the plumage of at least four or five eagles. Lithographic prints of Dorival's work were purchased and widely distributed by managers of Johnson's Vice Presidential campaign. Other paintings of this battle, quite similar in heroic detail and inaccuracy, came to decorate many a 19th-century barbershop and barroom.
For reasons of obvious self-interest the conquerors of Tecumseh eulogized him first as a "red Hannibal-Napoleon" and then as a man of preternatural sagacity, courage and honor. Typically, the Indiana Centinel, published in Vincennes, editorialized: "Every schoolboy in the Union now knows that Tecumseh was a great man.
His greatness was his own, unassisted by science or education. As a statesman, warrior and patriot, we shall not look on his like again. Towns, businesses and children — William Tecumseh Sherman, for one — were named for him. In my own youth, growing up in southern Michigan 30 miles to the west of the village of Tecumseh, it was still widely believed that his was the face that appeared on the "Indian Head" penny.
I later learned that the model for this coin was the daughter of a U. Don Cherry. Joe Thornton. Laura Secord. Louis Riel. Scott Thompson.
Sir Arthur William Currie. Steve Nash. Terry Fox. Tommy Douglas.
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