Tecumseh

Tecumseh attempted to unite the Native peoples of North America into a single confederacy and died fighting for the British. Born in the Ohio country around 1768, probably Shawnee on both sides, he lost his father at Point Pleasant in 1774 and a brother at Fallen Timbers in 1794, and grew up during the continuous warfare that accompanied American expansion across the Ohio. He refused to sign the Treaty of Greenville in 1795, which ceded most of Ohio. His argument was legal as much as military: that the land belonged to all Native peoples in common, that no individual tribe or chief could sell any part of it, and that every cession made on that basis was therefore void. He denounced the Treaty of Fort Wayne of 1809, in which William Henry Harrison bought some three million acres from a handful of leaders. He travelled thousands of miles between 1808 and 1811 — to the Great Lakes, the Missouri, the Creek and Choctaw of the south — arguing for a confederacy, and was an orator of acknowledged power even to his enemies. His brother Tenskwatawa, the Prophet, supplied the religious revival that drew followers to their settlement at Prophetstown. While Tecumseh was in the south in November 1811, Tenskwatawa attacked Harrison at Tippecanoe against instructions and was defeated, and the town was burned. He allied with Britain in 1812, was made a brigadier general, and helped take Detroit. He was killed at the Thames in Upper Canada in October 1813, and his confederacy died with him.

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