As an officially recognized American Indian tribe, our people are dedicated to preserving the language, culture, traditions, and heritage of our ancestors and our relations who were forcefully removed to the west and to the north as far as Oklahoma.
With inexhaustible energy, Tecumseh began to form an Indian
confederation to resist white pressure. He made long journeys in a vast
territory, from the Ozarks to New York
and from Iowa to Florida, gaining recruits (particularly among the
tribes of the Creek Confederacy, to which his mother’s tribe belonged).
The tide of settlers had pushed game from the Indians’ hunting grounds,
and, as a result, the Indian economy had broken down.
In 1811, while Tecumseh was in the South, William Henry Harrison, governor of the Indiana Territory, marched up the Wabash River
and camped near the brothers’ settlement. The Prophet unwisely attacked
Harrison’s camp and was so decisively defeated in the ensuing Battle of Tippecanoe that his followers dispersed, and he, having lost his prestige, fled to Canada and ceased to be a factor in Tecumseh’s plans.
Seeing the approach of war (the War of 1812)
between the Americans and British, Tecumseh assembled his followers and
joined the British forces at Fort Malden on the Canadian side of the Detroit River. There he brought together perhaps the most formidable
force ever commanded by a North American Indian, an accomplishment that
was a decisive factor in the capture of Detroit and of 2,500 U.S.
soldiers (1812).
TecumsehTecumseh (left) meeting with a British officer near the Detroit River.The Story of Tecumseh, by Norman S. Gurd, 1912
Fired with the promise of triumph after the fall of Detroit, Tecumseh
departed on another long journey to arouse the tribes, which resulted
in the uprising of the Alabama Creeks in response to his oratory, though
the Chickasaws, Choctaws, and Cherokees rebuffed him. He returned north
and joined the British general Henry A. Procter in his invasion of Ohio. Together they besieged Fort Meigs, held by William Henry Harrison, on the Maumee River
above Toledo, where by a stratagem Tecumseh intercepted and destroyed a
brigade of Kentuckians under Colonel William Dudley that had been
coming to Harrison’s relief. He and Procter failed to capture the fort,
however, and were put on the defensive by Oliver Hazard Perry’s decisive victory over the British fleet on Lake Erie
(September 10, 1813). Harrison thereupon invaded Canada. Tecumseh with
his Indians reluctantly accompanied the retiring British, whom Harrison
pursued to the Thames River, in present-day southern Ontario. There, on
October 5, 1813, the British and Indians were routed, and Harrison won
control of the Northwest. Tecumseh, directing most of the fighting, was
killed. His body was carried from the field and buried secretly in a
grave that has never been discovered. Nor has it ever been determined
who killed Tecumseh. Tecumseh’s death marked the end of Indian
resistance in the Ohio River valley and in most of the lower Midwest and
South, and soon thereafter the depleted tribes were transported beyond
the Mississippi River.
Thames, Battle of theBattle of the Thames (1813), in which Tecumseh (centre right) was killed.Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (Digital file no. cph 3b52018
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