Tecumseh
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For other uses, see Tecumseh (disambiguation).
| Tecumseh | |
|---|---|
A romanticized depiction of Tecumseh from c.1915
| |
| Born | March 1768 On the Scioto River, near the present-day city of Chillicothe, Ohio (location uncertain, seeEarly life) |
| Died | October 5, 1813 (aged 45) Moravian of the Thames (in modern-day Chatham-Kent,Ontario) |
| Resting place | Walpole Island, Canada |
| Nationality | Shawnee |
| Other names | Tecumtha, Tekamthi |
| Known for | |
| Parent(s) | Puckshinwa, Methoataske |
Tecumseh /tᵻˈkʌmsə, tᵻˈkʌmsi/ tə-kum-sə, tə-kum-see (March 1768 – October 5, 1813) was a Native American leader of the Shawnee and a large tribal confederacy (known as Tecumseh's Confederacy) which opposed the United States during Tecumseh's War and became an ally of Britain in the War of 1812.
Tecumseh grew up in the Ohio Country during the American Revolutionary War and the Northwest Indian War, where he was constantly exposed to warfare.[1] With Americans continuing to move west after the British ceded the Ohio Valley to the new United States in 1783, the Shawnee moved farther northwest. In 1808, they settled Prophetstown in present-day Indiana. With a vision of establishing an independent Native American nation east of the Mississippi under British protection, Tecumseh worked to recruit additional tribes to the confederacy from the southern United States.[1]
During the War of 1812, Tecumseh's confederacy allied with the British and helped in the capture of Fort Detroit. Prior to the raid, Chief Tecumseh delivered a powerful speech upon a rock that is preserved to this day at Fort Malden. After the U.S. Navy took control of Lake Erie in 1813, the Native Americans and British retreated. American forces caught them at the Battle of the Thames, and killed Tecumseh in October 1813. With his death, his confederation disintegrated, and the Native Americans had to move west again, yet Tecumseh became an iconic folk hero in American, Aboriginal and Canadian history.[2]
Contents
[hide]Family background[edit]
Tecumseh's father was named Puckshinwa (in Shawnee, Puckeshinwau, meaning "Alights from Flying", "Something that drops" or "I light from flying", also known as Puckeshinwa, Pucksinwah, Pukshinwa, Pukeesheno, Pekishinoah, Pooksehnwe and other variations), a minor Shawnee war chief of the Kispoko ("Dancing Tail" or "Panther") band and the Panther Clan of the tribe. According to some sources, Puckshinwa's father was Muscogee (Creek) and his mother was Shawnee. Either because his father died when he was young, or because among the Creeks a husband lives with his wife's family, Puckshinwa was considered a Shawnee.[3] According to John Sugden, however, "the truth about Puckeshinwau's ancestry must remain a mystery", and he reports further period testimonies[4] stating that the Kispoko chief "was reputed to have had a British father (presumably a trader)".[5]
Tecumseh's mother was Methotaske (in Shawnee, Methoataaskee, meaning "[One who] Lays Eggs in the Sand" or "A turtle laying eggs in the sand", also known as Methoataske, Meetheetashe, Methotase and Methoatase), Puckshinwa's second wife. She is believed to have been Shawnee through her father and her mother, possibly of the Pekowi band and the Turtle Clan. Some traditions hold that she was Creek, because she had lived among that tribe prior to marriage; some hold that she was Cherokee, having died in old age living among that tribe; still others hold that she was a white captive, as family stories claim that Puckshinwa had been married to a white captive.[3] Tecumseh's great-great grandfather on his mother's side,Straight Tail Meaurroway Opessa, was a prominent Chief of the Pekowi and the Turtle Clan.
Shawnee lineage was recorded paternally, which made Tecumseh a member of the Kispoko.
At the time Tecumseh's parents married, their tribe was living somewhere near modern Tuscaloosa, Alabama. The tribe had lived in that region alongside the Creek tribe since being driven from their homes in the Ohio River Valley by the Iroquois (based in New York and Pennsylvania) during the 17th-century Beaver Wars.[6]
About 1759, the Pekowi band decided to move west into the Ohio Country. Not wanting to force his wife to choose between him and her family, Puckshinwa decided to travel north with her. The Pekowi founded the settlement of Chillicothe where Tecumseh was likely born. During the 1760s, Puckshinwa took part in the French and Indian War.
Early life[edit]
Tecumseh (in Shawnee, Tekoomsē, meaning "Shooting Star" or "Panther Across The Sky", also known as Tecumtha or Tekamthi) was born about March 1768. Popular tradition locates his birthplace in Old Chillicothe[7] (the present-day Oldtown area of Xenia Township, Greene County, Ohio, about 12 miles (19 km) east of Dayton). As the Shawnee did not settle in Old Chillicothe until 1774, however, Sugden comes to the conclusion that Tecumseh was almost certainly born either in a different "Chillicothe" (in Shawnee, Chalahgawtha)[8] set up along theScioto River, near the present-day city of Chillicothe, Ohio, or in another village the Kispoko had erected not far away, along a small tributary stream of the same river, where his family moved just before or not long after his birth.[9]
During Tecumseh's boyhood, white frontiersmen slew his father Pucksinwah at the Battle of Point Pleasant during Lord Dunmore’s War in 1774. The frontiersmen had crossed onto Indian land in violation of a recent treaty. Tecumseh resolved to become a warrior like his father and to be "a fire spreading over the hill and valley, consuming the race of dark souls".[10]
At age 15, after the American Revolutionary War ended in 1783, Tecumseh joined a band of Shawnee who aimed to stop the white invasion of their lands by attacking settlers' flatboatstraveling down the Ohio River from Pennsylvania. In time, Tecumseh came to lead his own band of warriors. For a while, these Indian raids became so effective that river traffic virtually ceased.[10]
Frontier conflicts[edit]
The Shawnee were military allies with the British during the American Revolutionary War and repeatedly battled the Americans. Following his father's death, his family moved back to Chief Blackfish's nearby village of Chillicothe. The town was destroyed in 1779 by Kentucky militia in reprisal for Blackfish's attack on Boonesburough.[11] His family fled to another nearby Kispoko village, but this was destroyed in 1780 by forces under the command of George Rogers Clark. The family moved a third time to the village of Sanding Stone. That village was attacked by Clark in November 1782, and the family moved to a new Shawnee settlement near modern Bellefontaine, Ohio.[12]
Violence continued on the American frontier after the Revolution as the Northwest Indian War. A large tribal confederacy, known as the Wabash Confederacy, which included all the major tribes of Ohio and the Illinois Country, formed to repel the American settlers from the region.[13] As the war between the confederacy and the Americans grew, Tecumseh became a warrior and took an active part fighting along with his older brother Chiksika, an important war leader who essentially raised Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa after their parents' early deaths. Their older sister, Tecumapese, was also very important to their upbringing.
In early 1789, Tecumseh traveled south with Chiksika to live among, and fight alongside, the Chickamauga faction of the Cherokee. Accompanied by twelve Shawnee warriors, they stayed atRunning Water (in Marion County, Tennessee), where Chiksika's wife and daughter lived. There Tecumseh met Dragging Canoe, a famous leader who was leading a resistance movement against U.S. expansion. Chiksika[14] was killed while leading a raid, and Tecumseh assumed leadership of the small Shawnee band, and subsequent Chickamauga raiding parties.
Tecumseh returned to Ohio in late 1790. Afterward, Tecumseh took part in several battles, including that of the 1794 Fallen Timbers. The Indians were defeated by the Americans, which ended the Northwestern Indian Wars in favor of the Americans.[15] Despite this loss, Tecumseh refused to sign the Treaty of Greenville, in which the Indians ceded great portions of their Northwest territory in exchange for goods valued at $20,000.[16][17]
Tenskwatawa[edit]
Tecumseh eventually settled in what is now Greenville, Ohio, the home of his younger brother, Lalawethika ("He Makes A Loud Noise") who later took the new name of Tenskwatawa ("The Open Door"). After difficult years as a young man who suffered from alcoholism, Tenskwatawa became a religious leader. Known as "The Shawnee 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.
In 1805, Tenskwatawa led a religious revival following a series of witch-hunts following an outbreak of smallpox among the Shawnee. His beliefs were based on the earlier teachings of the Lenape prophets, Scattamek and Neolin, who predicted a coming apocalypse that would destroy the European-American settlers.[18]
Tenskwatawa urged Native Americans to reject the ways of the Europeans: to give up firearms, liquor, European style clothing, to pay traders only half the value of their debts, and to refrain from ceding any more lands to the United States. The teachings led to rising tensions between the settlers and his followers. Opposing Tenskwatawa was the Shawnee leader Black Hoof, who was working to maintain a peaceful relationship with the United States.[18]
The earliest record of Tecumseh's interaction with the Americans was in 1807, when the US Indian agent William Wells met with Blue Jacket and other Shawnee leaders in Greenville to determine their intentions after the recent murder of a settler. Tecumseh was among those who spoke with Wells and assured him that his band of Shawnee intended to remain at peace and wanted only to follow the will of the Great Spirit and his prophet. According to Wells's report, Tecumseh told him that the Prophet intended to move with his followers deeper into the frontier and away from American settlements.[19]
By 1808, due to increasing tensions with the encroaching settlers, Black Hoof demanded that Tenskwatawa and his followers leave the area. Tecumseh was among the leaders of the group, and helped decide to move further northwest and establish the village of Prophetstown near the confluence of the Wabash and Tippecanoe rivers (near present-day Battle Ground, Indiana). The site was in Miami tribe territory, and their Chief Little Turtle warned the group not to settle there. Despite the threat, the Shawnee moved into the region and the Miami left them alone. According to his brother's later account, Tecumseh was already contemplating a pan-tribal confederacy to counter American expansion into Indian-held lands. He was considered a natural and charismatic leader.[20]
Tenskwatawa's religious teachings became more widely known, as did his predictions on the coming doom of the Americans. His teachings attracted numerous members of other tribes to Prophetstown; they formed the basis of a sizeable confederacy of tribes in the southwestern Great Lakes region. Tecumseh emerged as the primary leader of this confederation, although it had started with warriors attracted by the religious appeal of his younger brother. Relatively few in confederacy were Shawnee; the confederacy was made up primarily of other tribes.[18][21]
Tenskwatawa precipitated the battle of Tippecanoe when he was overcome by his power and defied Tecumseh's orders to evacuate if Harrison approached the village. He instead pretended to have a vision and spoke to the tribes "in the voice of Moneto", their god, to attack as the white men could not hurt them, no one could die or would feel harm. The "loss" of this skirmish brought an end to the Prophet, as he was disowned, and to the great plan by Tecumseh, as many tribes lost faith.[22]
Tecumseh's War[edit]
Main article: Tecumseh's War
 Portraits of Pushmataha (left) and Tecumseh (right).
"These white Americans... give us fair exchange, their cloth, their guns, their tools, implements, and other things which the Choctaws need but do not make.... So in marked contrast with the experience of the Shawnee, it will be seen that the whites and Indians in this section are living on friendly and mutually beneficial terms." — Pushmataha, 1811[23]
"Where today are the Pequot? Where are the Narragansett, the Mochican, the Pocanet, and other powerful tribes of our people? They have vanished before the avarice and oppression of the white man.... Sleep not longer, O Choctaws and Chickasaws.... Will not the bones of our dead be plowed up, and their graves turned into plowed fields?" — Tecumseh, 1811[24] |
The two principal adversaries in the conflict, Tecumseh and William Henry Harrison (elected ninth US president in 1840, died in April the following year), had both been junior participants in the Battle of Fallen Timbers at the end of the Northwest Indian War in 1794. Tecumseh was not among the signers of the Treaty of Greenville that had ended the war and ceded much of present-day Ohio, long inhabited by the Shawnee and other Native Americans, to the United States. However, many Indian leaders in the region accepted the Greenville terms, and for the next ten years pan-tribal resistance to American hegemonyfaded.
After the Treaty of Greenville, most of the Ohio Shawnee settled at the Shawnee village of Wapakoneta on the Auglaize River, where they were led by Black Hoof, a senior chief who had signed the treaty. Little Turtle, a War Chief of the Miamis, who had also participated in the earlier war and signed the Greenville Treaty, lived in his village on the Eel River. Both Black Hoof and Little Turtle urged cultural adaptation and accommodation with the United States.
The tribes of the region participated in several treaties including the Treaty of Grouseland and the Treaty of Vincennes that gave and recognized American possession of most of southern Indiana. The treaties resulted in an easing of tensions by allowing settlers into Indiana and appeasing the Indians with reimbursement for the lands the settlers were squatting on.
Rising tensions[edit]
Main article: Tecumseh's War § Rising tensions
In September 1809, William Henry Harrison, governor of the newly formed Indiana Territory, negotiated the Treaty of Fort Wayne in which a delegation of Indians ceded 3 million acres (12,000 km2) of Native American lands to the United States. The treaty negotiations were questionable as they were unauthorized by the President and thus the United States government, and involved what some historians compared to bribery, offering large subsidies to the tribes and their chiefs, and the liberal distribution of liquor before the negotiations.[25]
Tecumseh's opposition to the treaty marked his emergence as a prominent leader. Although Tecumseh and the Shawnee had no claim on the land sold, he was alarmed by the massive sale as many of the followers in Prophetstown were Piankeshaw, Kickapoo, and Wea, who were the primary inhabitants of the land. Tecumseh revived an idea advocated in previous years by the Shawnee leader Blue Jacket and the Mohawk leader Joseph Brant, which stated that Indian land was owned in common by all.[26]
Not ready to confront the United States directly, Tecumseh's primary adversaries were initially the Indian leaders who had signed the treaty. An impressive orator, Tecumseh began to travel widely, urging warriors to abandon accommodationist chiefs and to join him in resistance of the treaty.[27] Tecumseh insisted that the Fort Wayne treaty was illegal; he asked Harrison to nullify it, and warned that Americans should not attempt to settle on the lands sold in the treaty. Tecumseh is quoted as saying, "No tribe has the right to sell [land], even to each other, much less to strangers.... Sell a country!? Why not sell the air, the great sea, as well as the earth? Didn't the Great Spirit make them all for the use of his children?" And, "....the only way to stop this evil [loss of land] is for the red man to unite in claiming a common and equal right in the land, as it was first, and should be now, for it was never divided.":[28]
Confrontation[edit]
Main article: Tecumseh's War § Confrontation at Grouseland
Tecumseh met with Indiana Governor William Henry Harrison to demand the rescission of land purchase treaties the US had forced on the Shawnee and other tribes. Harrison refused.
In August 1810, Tecumseh led four hundred armed warriors from Prophetstown to confront Harrison at his Vincennes home, Grouseland. Their appearance startled the townspeople, and the situation quickly became dangerous when Harrison rejected Tecumseh's demand and argued that individual tribes could have relations with the United States, and that Tecumseh's interference was unwelcome by the tribes of the area. Tecumseh launched an impassioned rebuttal against Harrison:[29]
Tecumseh began inciting the warriors to kill Harrison, who responded by pulling his sword. The small garrison defending the town quickly moved to protect Harrison. Potawatomi Chief Winnemac arose and countered Tecumseh's arguments to the group, and urged the warriors to leave in peace. As they left, Tecumseh informed Harrison that unless he rescinded the treaty, he would seek an alliance with the British.[31]
In 1811, Tecumseh again met with Harrison at his home after being summoned following the murder of settlers on the frontier. Tecumseh told Harrison that the Shawnee and their Native American brothers wanted to remain at peace with the United States but these differences had to be resolved. The meeting had just a merely tentative character and both parties probably inferred from it that war was unavoidable.
Tecumseh's pan-Indian campaign[edit]
 | This section contains too many or too-lengthy quotations for an encyclopedic entry. (August 2012) |
Following the meeting Tecumseh traveled south, on a mission to recruit allies among the Five Civilized Tribes. The war speech he delivered to the Muscogee (Creek) at Tuckaubatchee, in October 1811, has been so reported by General Samuel Dale, who was present at the meeting:
Here is also, however, the text of quite a different-toned speech which Tecumseh allegedly delivered to a band of Osages on his way back home in 1811. It was reported by John Dunn Hunter, an Anglo-American whose parents had been killed by the Kickapoos, and who had been later raised among the Osages:[34]
Despite Tecumseh's efforts, most of the southern nations rejected his appeals, and particularly Choctaw Chief Pushmataha, who stood fast and insisted upon adhering to the terms of the peace treaties that had been signed with the U.S. Government.[37] However, a faction among the Creeks, who came to be known as the Red Sticks, answered his call to arms, leading to the Creek War.[31]
A comet appeared in March 1811. The Shawnee leader Tecumseh, whose name meant "shooting star", told the Creeks that the comet signaled his coming. Tecumseh's confederacy and allies took it as an omen of good luck. McKenney reported that Tecumseh claimed he would prove that the Great Spirit had sent him to the Creeks by giving the tribes a sign.
Battle of Tippecanoe[edit]
Main article: Battle of Tippecanoe
Having heard from intelligence that Tecumseh was far away, Governor Harrison sent the following report to the Department of War: "[Tecumseh] is now upon the last round to put a finishing stroke upon his work. I hope, however, before his return that that part of the work which he considered complete will be demolished and even its foundation rooted up." [38]Accordingly, Governor Harrison moved from Vincennes on September 26, 1811, with about 1,000 men in fighting trim, and marched on Tippecanoe. On November 6, 1811, Harrison's army arrived outside Prophetstown. The Prophet sent a messenger to meet with Harrison and requested a meeting be held the next day to negotiate. Harrison encamped his army on a nearby hill, and during the early dawn hours of November 7, the confederacy launched a sneak attack on his camp. In the Battle of Tippecanoe, Harrison's men held their ground, and the Indians withdrew from the village after the battle. The victorious Americans burned the town and returned to Vincennes.[39]
The Battle of Tippecanoe was a severe blow for Tenskwatawa, who lost both prestige and the confidence of his brother. Although it was a significant setback, Tecumseh began to secretly rebuild his alliance upon his return. The Americans soon after went to war with the British in the War of 1812, and Tecumseh's War became a part of that struggle.[39]
On December 16, 1811, the New Madrid earthquake shook the South and the Midwest. While the interpretation of this event varied from tribe to tribe, one consensus was universally accepted: the powerful earthquake had to have meant something. For many tribes it meant that Tecumseh and the Prophet must be supported.[40]
War of 1812[edit]
See also: War of 1812
Siege of Detroit[edit]
See also: Siege of Detroit
Tecumseh rallied his confederacy and allied his forces with the British army invading the Northwest Territory from Upper Canada. He joined British Major-General Sir Isaac Brock in the Siege of Detroit, helping to force the city's surrender in August 1812. At one point in the battle, as Brock advanced to a point just out of range of Detroit's guns, Tecumseh had his approximately four hundred warriors parade out from a nearby wood and circle back around to repeat the maneuver, making it appear that there were many more warriors under his command than was actually the case.Brigadier General William Hull, the fort commander, surrendered in fear of a massacre. This decision later led Hull to a court-martial. The victory was of a great strategic value to the British allies.[41]
The next British commander in the region, Major-General Henry Procter, wanted to honor Tecumseh for his help at the Siege of Detroit. He gave Tecumseh a sash, while offering him the rank of brigadier general in the British army. Tecumseh refused the commission and gave the sash away.[42]
The victory at Detroit was reversed a little over a year later. Commodore Perry's victory on Lake Erie late in the summer of 1813 cut the British supply lines. Along with William Henry Harrison's successful defense of Fort Meigs, which created a staging area for the recapture of Fort Detroit, the British found themselves in an indefensible position and had to withdraw from the city. They burned all public buildings in Detroit and retreated into Upper Canada along the Thames Valley. Tecumseh sought continued British support in order to defend tribal lands against the Americans. However, a much reinforced Harrison led an invasion of Canada.
Siege of Fort Meigs[edit]
 | This section may not properly summarize its corresponding main article. |
Main article: Siege of Fort Meigs
In spring of the next year, British forces under Procter and Indians led by Tecumseh attacked U.S. territory and besieged Fort Meigs, finally without success. During the siege, Native American warriors began killing American prisoners, until Tecumseh arrived. He is said to have shouted at Procter, asking why he had not stopped the massacre before. This event is thought to be a major reason why Tecumseh later became a hero also in the United States, a "noble savage."[43]
Battle of the Thames[edit]
See also: Battle of the Thames
Procter did not have the same working relationship with Tecumseh as his predecessor Brock, and the two disagreed over tactics. Procter favored withdrawing into Canada and avoiding battle while the Americans suffered from the winter. Tecumseh was more eager to launch a decisive action to defeat the American army and allow his men to retake their homes in the northwest.[44] Meanwhile, Harrison pursued the retreating British and allied tribes. When Procter's forces failed to appear at Chatham, Ontario (although he had promised Tecumseh that he would make a stand against the Americans there), Tecumseh reluctantly moved his men to meet up with Procter near Moraviantown. He informed Procter that he would withdraw no farther. He told Procter that if the British wanted his continued help then an action needed to be fought, and that they should await Harrison's army there. The despairing speech Tecumseh delivered before Procter, bitterly hinting at his weakness, concluded with these foreseeing words.
On October 5, 1813, the Americans attacked and won a victory over the British and Native Americans at the Battle of the Thames, near Moraviantown. Tecumseh was killed, and shortly after the battle, most tribes of his confederacy surrendered to Harrison at Detroit.[47] As to the actual circumstances surrounding Tecumseh’s death, "the Americans claimed that [he] was killed by Colonel Richard Johnson during a cavalry charge. But the Wyandott historian Peter D. Clarke wrote, after talking with Indians who had fought in the battle:"[48]
The death of Tecumseh is examined in great depth in the book, Tecumseh's Last Stand by John Sugden (1985, U. Oklahoma Press), where an entire chapter is devoted to the subject. The question is, was it in the best interest of those giving testimony to credit Johnson for taking Tecumseh's life? It seems as if this claim would have, and did, greatly enhanced his political career. Sugden, despite his exhaustive study, could not come to the conclusion that Johnson truly was the person who killed Tecumseh. Furthermore, he could not find enough evidence to firmly claim that Tecumseh's body was defiled. Some Indian accounts indicated that his body was removed before this could have taken place (both whites and Indians engaged in this practice).[clarification needed][citation needed]
Another name has been mentioned, William Whitley. Though by some accounts Sugden places him there as already killed, some credit Whitley. The most recent discovery of evidence to this end is found in the 1929 autobiography of Whitley descendant James A. Drain Sr., Single Handed[50]
Oral history from Saugeen First Nation, recorded by Dr. Edwin Seaborn in the 1930s, recounts Tecumseh's death this way.[51]
In 1836, Johnson was elected vice-president; his campaign used the slogan Rumpsey Dumpsey, Rumpsey Dumpsey, Colonel Johnson killed Tecumseh (see Election of 1836).
Consequences for Native Americans[edit]
Tecumseh's death and the defeat of the British-Native American alliance was a decisive blow to the Native American front. It had larger implications during negotiations for the Treaty of Ghent. During the treaty process, the British called for the United States to return lands in Ohio, Indiana and Michigan to Native Americans. The British strategy for decades had been to create a buffer state to block American expansion. The Americans refused to consider a buffer state and the proposal was dropped.[52] Although article IX of the treaty included provisions to restore to Natives "all possessions, rights and privileges which they may have enjoyed, or been entitled to in 1811", the provisions were unenforceable.[53]
Legacy[edit]
Words[edit]
 | Wikiquote has quotations related to: Tecumseh |
Noted by Indian, American and English colleagues, allies and enemies as an inspiring orator, Tecumseh left these words to live by:
He rallied many tribes to his alliance by his attacks on white people:
Memorials[edit]
Canada[edit]
Tecumseh is honored in Canada as a hero and military commander who played a major role in Canada's successful repulsion of an American invasion in the War of 1812, which, among other things, eventually led to Canada's nationhood in 1867 with the British North America Act. Among the tributes, Tecumseh is ranked 37th inThe Greatest Canadian list. The Canadian naval reserve unit HMCS Tecumseh is based in Calgary, Alberta. TheRoyal Canadian Mint released a two dollar coin on June 18, 2012 and will release four quarters, celebrating theBicentennial of the War of 1812. The second quarter in the series, was released in November 2012 and features Tecumseh.[56]
The Ontario Heritage Foundation & Kent Military Reenactment Society erected a plaque in Tecumseh Park, 50 William Street North, Chatham, Ontario, reading: "On this site, Tecumseh, a Shawnee Chief, who was an ally of the British during the war of 1812, fought against American forces on October 4, 1813. Tecumseh was born in 1768 and became an important organizer of native resistance to the spread of white settlement in North America. The day after the fighting here, he was killed in the Battle of Thames near Moraviantown. Tecumseh park was named to commemorate strong will and determination."[57]
He is also honored by a massive portrait which hangs in the Royal Canadian Military Institute. The unveiling of the work, commissioned under the patronage of Kathryn Langley Hope and Trisha Langley, took place at the Toronto-based RCMI on October 29, 2008.[58]
A replica of the War of 1812 warship HMS Tecumseh was built in 1994 and displayed in Penetanguishene, Ontario near the raised wreck of the original HMS Tecumseh. The original HMS Tecumseh was built in 1815 to be used in defense against the Americans. First on Lake Erie, she moved to Lake Huron in 1817. She sank in Penetanguishene harbor in 1828, and was raised in 1953.[59]
U.S. Military[edit]
The United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, has Tecumseh Court, which is located outside Bancroft Hall's front entrance, and features a bust of Tecumseh. The bust is often decorated to celebrate special days. The bust was originally meant to represent Tamanend, an Indian chief from the 17th century who was known as a lover of peace and friendship, but the Academy's midshipmen preferred the warrior Tecumseh, and have referred to the statue by his name.[60]
Four ships of the United States Navy have been named USS Tecumseh.
- The first USS Tecumseh (1863), was a Canonicus-class monitor, commissioned on 19 April 1864. It was lost with almost all hands on 5 August, at the Battle of Mobile Bay.
- The second USS Tecumseh (YT-24), was a tugboat, originally named Edward Luckenbach, purchased by the Navy in 1898 and renamed. She served off and on until she was struck from the Navy list ca. 1945.
- The third USS Tecumseh (YT-273), was a Pessacus-class tugboat, commissioned in 1943 and struck from service in 1975.
- The fourth USS Tecumseh (SSBN-628), was a James Madison-class ballistic missile submarine, commissioned in 1964 and struck in 1993.
Persons' names[edit]
Union Civil War general William Tecumseh Sherman, was given the name Tecumseh because "my father...had caught a fancy for the great chief of the Shawnees."[61] Another Civil War general, Napoleon Jackson Tecumseh Dana, also bore the name of the Shawnee leader (evolutionary biologist and cognitive scientist W. Tecumseh Fitch was named after the general, and thus only indirectly for the chief).
Towns' and buildings' names[edit]
A number of towns have been named in honor of Tecumseh, including those in the states of Kansas, Michigan, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and the province ofOntario, as well as the town and township of New Tecumseth, Ontario and Mount Tecumseh in New Hampshire.
Schools named in honor of Tecumseh include, in the United States: Tecumseh Junior – Senior High in Hart Township, Warrick County, just outside Lynnville, Indiana.[citation needed] Lafayette Tecumseh Junior High in Lafayette, Indiana.[citation needed] Tecumseh-Harrison Elementary[62] in Vincennes, Indiana.[citation needed]Tecumseh Acres Elementary, Tecumseh Middle and Tecumseh High in Tecumseh, Michigan.[63] Tecumseh Elementary in Farmingville, New York.[citation needed]Tecumseh Elementary in Jamesville, New York.[citation needed] Tecumseh Middle and Tecumseh High in Bethel Township, Clark County near New Carlisle, Ohio and their district, the Tecumseh Local School District.[citation needed] Tecumseh Elementary in Xenia Township, Greene County near Xenia, Ohio.[citation needed] Tecumseh Middle[64]and Tecumseh High in Tecumseh, Oklahoma. And in Canada: Tecumseh Elementary[65] in Vancouver. Tecumseh Public[66] in Burlington, Ontario. Tecumseh Senior Public[67] in Scarborough, Ontario.[citation needed]
Depictions[edit]
Benson Lossing's engraved portrait of Tecumseh, in his 1868 The Pictorial Fieldbook of the War of 1812(p. 283),[68][69] was based on a sketch done from life in 1808. Lossing altered the original by putting Tecumseh in a British uniform, under the mistaken (but widespread) belief that Tecumseh had been a British general.[70] This depiction is unusual in that it includes a nose ring, popular among the Shawnee at the time, but typically omitted in idealized depictions.[71] On the other hand, the artist quotes Captain J. B. Glegg as follows: "Three small silver crosses or coronets were suspended from the lower cartilage of his aquiline nose[...]".[69][72] (Tecumseh's brother"The Prophet" is depicted with a nose ring in Lossing's book[73]—as well as by George Catlin.) Apart from Tecumseh's "gala dress" (at a celebration of the Surrender of Detroit) Lossing referred to, also his face may not be rendered faithfully—no fully authenticated portrait of the Shawnee leader exists.[70] In general, many known portraits and sculptures have been made decades after Tecumseh's death, by artists who did not know how Tecumseh actually had looked like.
Numerous depictions show how Colonel Richard Johnson, leading a cavalry attack of the Battle of the Thames, shot Tecumseh—see above for doubts (it has been reported that an Indian rose his tomahawk against Johnson and was shot by the latter, while some reports deny that this Indian was Tecumseh). These depictions range from a book illustration to a section of the frieze of the rotunda of the United States Capitol.
Sculptures[edit]
In Canada, the Royal Ontario Museum exhibits a bust of Tecumseh created by Hamilton MacCarthy in 1896.
German sculptor Ferdinand Pettrich (1798–1872) studied under the neo-classicist Danish sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen in Rome and moved to the United States in 1835. He was especially impressed by the Indians. He modelled The Dying Tecumseh ca. 1837–1846; it was finished 1856 in marbleand copper alloy. First it was shown at the U.S. Capitol, where a stereoscopic photograph was taken of it in the later 1860s; in 1916 it was transferred to the Smithsonian American Art Museum.[74]
In recent years, Peter Wolf Toth has created the Trail of the Whispering Giants, a series of sculptures honoring Native Americans. He donated one work devoted to Tecumseh to the City of Vincennes, which was Indiana's capital in the years around 1810, where Tecumseh confronted governor William Henry Harrison, and in the area of which Tecumseh's war then happened and the War of 1812 started. In the same U.S. state, in Lafayette, Tecumseh appears along with the Marquis de Lafayette and Harrison in a pediment on the Tippecanoe County Courthouse (1882).[75]
Tecumseh in popular culture[edit]
Art and other media[edit]
- A twelve part comic book version of the Card novel. The cover of one of the issues of the comic book series was a copy of a painting of Tecumseh by John Buxton, which had been commissioned by the Heritage Center of Clark County, Ohio.[76]
- The outdoor drama Tecumseh![77] is performed near Chillicothe, Ohio, and was written by novelist/historian,Allan W. Eckert.[78]
- Tecumseh was a featured character in The Battle of Tippecanoe Outdoor Drama held in Battle Ground, IN in the Summers of 1989 and 1990.[79]
Film[edit]
- The poem "Live Your Life", allegedly composed by Tecumseh (but also ascribed to some of the Wabasha chiefs, Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse andWovoka)[80] was featured in the closing moments of the 2012 film Act of Valor.
- Tecumseh (played by a Serbian actor Gojko Mitić) appears as the primary character in the 1972 East German Red Western motion picture,Tecumseh.[81]
- Actor Michael Greyeyes portrayed Tecumseh in the 2009 documentary film We Shall Remain.
- Tecumseh (played by Canadian actor, Lorne Cardinal) is featured in the documentary Canada: A People's History.
Literature[edit]
- Ann Rinaldi's 1997 novel, The Second Bend in the River, depicts a fictionalized version of a romance between Tecumseh and Rebecca Galloway.[82]
- Orson Scott Card's novel, Red Prophet, featured Tecumseh (named Ta-Kumsaw).
- Mimi Malenšek's 1959 Slovene historical novel, Tecumseh: Indijanska kronika (Ljubljana, 303 pp.).
- James Alexander Thom's historical novel, Panther in the Sky, is a novelized biography of Tecumseh.
- Fritz Steuben Tecumseh-Reihe, Franckh'sche Verlagshandlung, Stuttgart 1930-1939.
- Allan W. Eckert's "Winning of America" series, volumes The Frontiersman, Wilderness Empire, The Conquerors, The Wilderness War, Gateway to Empire, Twilight of Empire and A Sorrow in Our Heart: The Life of Tecumseh.
- In Blood of Tyrants, the eight novel of Naomi Novik's Temeraire series, Tecumseh is revealed to be the President of the United States in 1813, having defeated Alexander Hamilton, suggesting that Indians are much more accepted in U.S. society in that alternative history.
Television[edit]
- A life-size statue of Tecumseh is featured in the sitcom Cheers.[83]
- Insurance company executive Randall tries to quote Tecumseh in the Mad Men season six episode, "The Flood".[84] In greeting Roger Sterling and the SCDP creative team hello and goodbye, Randall raises his hand in a stereotyped Native American gesture associated with "How"; this gesture is also a military greeting.[85]
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