Tecumseh and the Shawnee Prophet. I N this work we have related for the benefit of the general reader one of the most romantic passages in American history. We have especially sought to interest young people in the history of the country through the curiosity that everybody feels about aboriginal life and exciting adventure. It would defeat the purpose of the book to cumber it with foot-notes and references to authorities.
A large number of works, including many scarce and out of the way books, have been consulted, but we have not often thought it necessary to refer by name to an original authority, even when most closely following his lead. A list of the chief works on the various branches of our subject has been inserted at the close, for the benefit of those who may wish to study the matter further.
S INCE the savages on this continent were known to civilized men, the Indian race has produced on more splendid genius than Tecumseh. He had courage and fortitude in common with most Indians, but to these he added an imagination capable of seeking the largest results, a practical wisdom that laid hold upon the readiest means of achieving his ends, and an energy rarely equaled by any commander.
To this we must add the knowledge of human nature, the tact to command, the art to persuade, and the skill to mold men as he desired.
He sought to unite the Indians into one vast confederacy or empire, and, putting himself at their head, to stay the progress of the whites. He was defeated, but that defeat was the result of the inherent superiority of civilization to savagery. Had his gifts been exercised in a more opportune field, he would no doubt have proven himself one of the great leaders of men. And even in his mistaken patriotism and foregone defeat, he showed himself a shrewd diplomatist, a great commander, a persuasive orator, a statesman, and a man of indomitable patience, brilliant courage, and wonderful page: 14 power of gaining and holding the allegiance of his followers.
He came of one of the most energetic and war-like of the Indian tribes. The Shawnees have always been a restless, people, more adventurous than any other Indians. They belong to that family of Indian nations known as the Algonquin. This family was the most numerous of all the Indian races, and spoke a language not very different in the different tribes. The tribes which the whites first encountered in Virginia and in Massachusetts spoke dialects of this Algonquin speech.
To this stock belong the Six Nations of Canada, the Chippewas or Ojibbeways of Wisconsin and Minnesota, celebrated in Longfellow's Hiawatha, the Crees of British America, the Mohegans, the Delawares, the Kickapoos, the Illinois, the Ottawas, the Sacs and Foxes, and many other tribes well known in the history of the settlement of the country.
The Algonquin people are supposed to have constituted half the population east of the Mississippi at the time of the settlement of the country, and to have numbered not less than ninety thousand.
The language of the Algonquin Indians is very complex, and to the ears of those who speak languages like our own it seems to be a very strange speech. Words are joined to words, and still other page: 15 words are added to express various meanings, as to time, place, person acting, person acted upon, and so forth. One of the most curious things in the Algonquin languages is that the words take on various forms, not with reference to male and female, but with reference to a division of things into superior and inferior.
In some of the dialects, all, or nearly all, animate beings are superior, while inanimate objects are put into another gender, so to speak. But in one, at least, of the Algonquin tongues, the division is more remarkable—God, the spirits or angels, and men, are accounted sup; women and all lower creatures are another "gender. The Algonquin is very stately and suited to oratory, but not well suited to light and familiar speech.
It has many delicate and rhetorical turns. When a Chippewa wishes to say that a man is dead, he merely remarks that "they have put the sand upon him. Tecumseh after his death becomes "Tecumseh-c-bun. The history of the Shawnees, even after the settlement of America, is wrapped in obscurity. They page: 16 moved about so incessantly, and were so often divided in their migrations, that we are unable to track the various divisions. Some are of the opinion that the Eries, who are said to have been destroyed by the Iroquois in very carly times, were none others than the Shawnees before their wanderings began.
Certain it is that when we first hear of them in early documents, they seem to be divided, wandering, and of uncertain habitation.
We hear of a war which was being waged against them by the Iroquois at the time of Captain John Smith's arrival in America in They were at that time located to the west of the Susquehanna, and on its banks. De Laet mentions them as on the Delaware in They are also said to have been located at the South, and to have come from near Lake Erie.
We can only reconcile these conflicting accounts by supposing them to have already divided into several bands, some of which were in motion, for other authorities place their seat, in the latter part of the seventeenth century, in the basin of the Cumberland River in Kentucky. Later they are found on the Wabash, where Tecumseh long afterward made a new settlement, and in they are spoken of as removing from the Mississippi to South Carolina.
The Swanee or Suwanee River, in Florida, derives its name from a party of Shawnees who had come from north of the Ohio. Yet another page: 17 authority speaks of a tribe of Shawnees that had been wandering for four years in the wilderness, and who were then returning to the country of the Creeks.
From all of which we gather that the Shawnees were in the earliest times what they proved to be later—a people of restless energy, without fixed unity or local habitation, very energetic and war-like, breaking into small bands and reuniting again. Colden, in , said that "the Shawnees were the most restless of all the Indians," and that "one tribe had quite gone down to New Spain," or Florida.
One thing that impresses us is the uselessness of tradition among savages. The historic sense is not developed in uneducated people, and fact soon gets strangely mixed with fiction in all annals of races not yet civilized. Some authors have quoted from speeches of the Shawnees to show what their traditions of the creation are, but an Indian orator gets up his account of the creation for the purpose of carrying his point at the moment, and his story is no doubt quite as fresh to those of his own tribe who may be present as to any others.
It is inferred that the Shawnees were present at that first beneficent treaty of peace and friendship negotiated by William Penn in But there is no assurance of this fact, for to Penn and his associates but just arrived, all Indians were simply Indians, page: 18 and the treaty makes no mention of their nation or names.
It is quite probable that the Indian languages were at that early day so imperfectly understood that the treaty itself was apprehended by the savages more in its peaceful import than in its details. The presence of the Shawnees is inferred from the fact that in Penn's later council with the Indians in , we find Wapatha, a chief of the Shawnees, expressly mentioned as representing his people; and in , in conference with the whites, the Shawnees are said to have exhibited a copy of the first treaty, though the two treaties of Penn may have been confounded.
About , nearly seventy families of Shawnees, with the consent of the government of Pennsylvania, removed from Carolina and settled on the Susquehanna. They perhaps found remaining there that portion of their tribe which was contending with the Iroquois in the time of John Smith, unless the Iroquois succeeded in quite driving them out.
And these from Carolina may have been some who had been expelled in the wars in which they were almost always engaged, returning again to an old home. He relates that one of the tribes had a woman among page: 19 the chiefs. He answered that some women were wiser than some men—a proposition not difficult even for white people to accept. This "ancient, grave woman" spoke much in council and gave her influence heartily in favor of the missionaries, so that good Thomas Chalkley adds that "the poor Indians, and in particular some of the young men and women, were under a solid exercise and concern of mind.
As early as there were Shawnees in the West, allied with the Miamis, and yet we afterward hear of Southern Shawnees expelled from Georgia emigrating to the West, and building a village at the mouth of the Wabash. They applied to the Delawares, who gave them territory in the valley of the Wyoming, whither part of them removed.
In , the famous Count Zinzendorf, the leader of the Moravians, had a very curious adventure with these Indians. He went to Wyoming determined to try to introduce Christianity among them. He was not page: 20 well received; the Indians suspected him of seeking their lands, and some of them determined to assassinate him privately. He sat in his tent at night, with a small fire to keep him warm. The heat of the fire had warmed into activity a rattlesnake, that stretched itself across his leg the better to feel the fire, but the pious Count was too deeply engaged in meditation to observe the reptile.
The Indians raised the blanket which served as door to his tent, but seeing the venerable missionary sitting wrapped in devout reflections and peacefully unconscious of the presence of the snake, they were seized with superstitious terror.
They hurriedly returned to their village and told their associates that the old man was under the special protection of the Great Spirit, for they had found him with only a blanket for a door, and had seen a large rattlesnake crawl over him without doing him any harm. When the war between England and France broke out in it involved the English colonies in America in a struggle with the French in Canada and the West, and the Shawnees on the Ohio took part with the French.
But those residing in Pennsylvania rejected all solicitations to join them; the influence of Penn's treaties and Count Zinzendorf's missionary labors had rendered them friendly towards the whites. About this time occurred the curious "grasshopper quarrel," which, beginning in a contest between children, ended in the expulsion of the Shawnees from the Wyoming Valley. There seems to have grown up a gradual estrangement between the Delawares and Shawnees, which was fanned to a flame by a most trivial circumstance.
The women of the two tribes were gathering berries by the riverside, when some of the Shawnee children fell into a wrangle with the Delaware children over the possession of a grasshopper. The mothers took sides with their children, the Delaware women maintaining that, though a Shawnee child had caught the grasshopper, it was caught on the side of the river belonging to the Delawares, hence the Delaware children were entitled to it.
From such arguments they came to blows; upon which the Shawnee women were speedily driven to their canoes by the superior numbers of their angry assailants. On their return, the Shawnee hunters, influenced by the angry complaints of the squaws, prepared to avenge the insult, but found the Delawares ready to meet them. The battle began while the Shawnees were crossing the river, and lasted afterward until many of the Delawares and full half of the Shawnees were killed.
Soon after this the latter abandoned the Wyoming and settled with those Shawnee tribes that had remained in the valley of page: 22 the Ohio. It was here, in their villages on the Miami, the Scioto, and the Mad River, that they became involved in the savage conflict that raged so long between the Indians and the white settlers, in which border warfare Tecumseh was cradled, educated, and spent his life.
The Shawnees were at one time divided into twelve bands or tribes, but the number gradually declined to four.
Besides these bands there is another division, running through all the Algonquin tribes, into what are called "totems," the word being a corruption of "dodaim," a family mark.
Each totem has some name, usually of an animal; and it is said that no man could marry a person of his own totem. The present remnant of the once powerful Shawnees is very small, many of them having become absorbed by intermarriage with the whites no doubt. Others may have mixed with the Indian tribes, but the strength of this once powerful people has been wasted in the almost ceaseless wars in which they have been engaged, against the whites and against other Indian nations.
They have ever been eager to take the sword, and they have perished by the sword. The Shawnees were accustomed to boast of their superiority to the other tribes, and their haughty pride has had much to do with their conflicts and their destruction.
He made the Shawnees before any other of the human race. They sprang from his brain. He gave them all the knowledge he himself possessed, and placed them upon the great island America , and all the other red people descended from the Shawnees. After he had made the Shawnees he made the French and English out of his breast, the Dutch out of his feet, and the Long Knives Americans out of his hands. All these inferior races of men he made white, and placed them beyond the stinking lake the Atlantic Ocean.
This arrogant pride and war-like ferocity made the Shawnees one of the most formidable of all the tribes with which the white settlers had to contend in the Ohio Valley. They slew old and young, male and female, without pity and without remorse. They rejoiced in battle and carnage, in deception, stratagem, and faithlessness. But in judging them we must not forget that they were savage.
Their whole education made them what they were; and in too many instances the white men, in the bitter struggles of "the dark and bloody ground," easily forgot their civilization, and fell into the cruelty, bad faith, and revengefulness of savages. Tecumseh had the pride, the energy, and the fortitude of his race. In intellect and humanity he was page: 24 superior to them, but all their fierce antipathies were in him.
He confessed that he could not see a white man without feeling the flesh of his face creep. He was a savage, patriotically believing in savage life, but he was none the less one of the very ablest men that savage life has produced. T HERE are always curious contradictions in the accounts of an event that reach us only through the traditions of Indians and frontier men. Tecumseh was born, according to some accounts, in , and according to others, in , some say near Chillicothe, though Tecumseh is reported to have said that his birth occurred near the old Indian village of Piqua.
There is a story that he and his brother, the Prophet, were twins, and even that a third brother was born at the same time; though according to one account the Prophet and a twin brother were some years younger than Tecumseh. It seems more likely that the earlier date——was that of Tecumseh's, and the later——the date of the Prophet's birth, who was perhaps a twin. There is likewise a great contradictoriness in the accounts given of the family history.
It would be easy to believe, from Tecumseh's superior mind, that page: 26 there was white blood in his family. There is, however, pretty good evidence that the family was of pure Shawnee extraction. The assertions of some, that he had both Anglo-Saxon and Creek blood in his veins, seem to be entirely founded on a boast of Lauliwasikau, the Prophet, who excelled more in bragging than he did in battle, and who was more voluble than truthful.
The story is interesting to us as a small novel of the Prophet's own invention, rather than for any probable historical basis. His paternal grandfather, according to this incredible tale, was a Creek Indian, who, with other Indians, went to one of the Southern cities, either Savannah or Charleston, to hold a council with the English governor. The governor's daughter was present at some of her father's interviews with the Indians.
She had previously conceived a violent admiration for the Indian character, of which she took this opportunity to inform the governor. This most obliging of fathers inquired of the Indians in council, next morning, which of them was the most expert hunter. Tecumseh's grandfather, then a handsome young man, sitting modestly in a retired part of the room, was pointed out to him.
The governor, on finding that his daughter was really desirous of marrying an Indian, directed her attention, in council the following day, to this young Creek warrior, page: 27 and she promptly fell in love with him. The chiefs were informed of the young lady's attachment. It seemed to them incredible, at first, but finding that the governor was in earnest, they advised the young Creek to accept this piece of fortune, to which he seems to have made no objection.
He was immediately taken to another apartment, where a train of black servants disrobed him of his Indian costume, washed him, and presented him with a new suit of European clothes, after which the marriage ceremony was performed. It is customary with the Indians to bathe a man on adopting him among them, and this may be what suggested the soap and water part of the story to the Prophet's mind, though one cannot but think it possible that he appreciated the necessity for washing an Indian before presenting him to a lady.
The young warrior did not return home with the other Indians at the close of the council, but remained with his romantic wife. He amused himself with hunting, in which he was very successful, usually taking two black servants with him to bring back his large quantities of game. The Prophet's father, Puckeshinwau, was a son of this marriage, and at his birth the governor made great rejoicing, causing thirty guns to be fired. This boy, who was permitted to visit the Indians, was given by them his name, page: 28 which means "something that drops.
This is the Prophet's tale; but an account which is more credible state that Tecumseh's father, Puckeshinwau, was a full Indian belonging to the Kiscopoke, while his mother was of the Turtle tribe of the Shawnee nation. His mother's name was Methoataske, and means "a turtle laying eggs in the sand.
The parents of Tecumseh removed with others of their tribe, under the lead of the great chief Black-hoof, from the South to the valley of the Ohio, about the middle of the eighteenth century.
They established themselves at first on the Scioto and afterwards on the banks of the Mad River, one of the tributaries of the Great Miami. Puckeshinwau was not a chief by birth, but he rose to that rank, and was killed in the battle of Kanawha in After her husband's death, Methoataske, who is spoken of as a respectable woman, returned to the South, where she lived to an advanced age among the Cherokee Indians.
Though the Prophet is known by several names, Tecumseh never had but the one, which means "a shooting star. The life of an Indian child is pre-eminently one of hardship.
Then he must endure the long periods of famine which come from the vicissitudes and improvidence of an Indian hunter's life. Like other Indian boys who take to the water from the time they are babies, Tecumseh, no doubt, enjoyed swimming in the Mad and Miami Rivers during the warm summer days. His first toy was probably a bow and arrow, and he learned to hunt as naturally as to swim.
There were seven children in this remarkable Indian family, five of whom were people of more or less distinction. Tecumseh's eldest brother. Checseekau, is said to have taken great pains in the education of the fatherless boy. This is rather remarkable, if it be true, for there is usually little that can be called direct education among the Indians. We must remember that the only honorable occupations for an Indian man are hunting and warfare; all else is work for squaws.
Of course, Tecumseh's education was mainly in the arts of the soldier and the hunter, but Cheeseekau is said not only to have labored to make Tecumseh a great warrior, but also to have taught him a love for truth, a contempt for everything mean and sordid, and the practice of those cardinal Indian virtues, courage in battle and fortitude page: 30 in suffering. If Checseckau attempted the education of his other brother, the Prophet, in any of these particulars, he must have failed signally, for he possessed neither truth nor courage.
His pastimes, like those of Napoleon, were generally in the sham battlefield. He was the leader of his companions in all their sports, and was accustomed to divide them into parties, one of which he always headed, for the purpose of fighting mimic battles, in which he usually distinguished himself by his activity, strength, and skill.
His dexterity in the use of the bow and arrow exceeded that of all the other Indian boys of his tribe, by whom he was loved and respected, and over whom he exercised unbounded influence. He was generally surrounded by a set of companions who were ready to stand or fall by his side. It seems very likely that he displayed in his youth that skill in hunting and war, and above all the great powers of leadership, which marked him so strongly in after life.
That Tecumseh was capable of strong affection is shown by his regard for his only sister, Menewaula-koosee, or Tecumapease, the name by which she is better known, and which was doubtless given to her page: 31 later in life, according to Indian usage, to signify her relationship to the great Tecumseh.
She was "sensible, kind hearted, and uniformly exemplary in her conduct," and must have been a person of commanding character, for she is said to have exercised a remarkable influence over the females of her tribe. She was married to a brave called Wasegoboah, or Stand Firm. Tecumapease was a great favorite with her brother Tecumseh up to the time of his death. He is said to have treated her always with respect, making her many valuable presents.
In considering the influences which surrounded the boyhood of Tecumseh, we must not forget the stories told around the Indian camp-fires of the daily events of the time; and it will be necessary to recall here what these events were.
When he was very young the war of the American Revolution began. Living in the Far West of those days, he was not so entirely removed from the Revolutionary War as not to feel some influence from it. Great Britain, remote from her rebellious colonies, was engaged in war with France at the same time. She carried on the war on this continent at great disadvantage, and it was the policy of the mother country to use the savages to harass the Americans.
That Tecumseh listened well to all he heard of current events is shown in his after life, when he evinced page: 32 a considerable knowledge of the past differences between the United States and England. The news which came to the hearing of the boy Tecumseh, as fresh as that which comes to us in our newspapers to-day, consisted of accounts of perpetual skirmishings, scalpings, and fightings. The successive and exciting events of border warfare, in which the Indians were very successful during Tecumseh's early childhood, entered into his education.
His patriotic feelings were all enlisted on the side of the Indians, who were opposing themselves to the ever-increasing stream of immigration which poured over the Alleghanies during the last twenty-five years of the eighteenth century, and which became a flood during the first decade of the nineteenth.
Tecumseh was not more than six years old when his father was killed, and his family were several times sufferers from the war between the whites and Indians.
During all his childhood this fierce border war was waging. Between and , it was estimated that fifteen hundred men, women and children were slain or taken captive by the Indians upon the waters of the Ohio. The loss was also undoubtedly great on the Indian side, and the whites were often ready to learn from the Indians lessons of inhuman cruelty and torture. Tecumseh's childhood was thus rocked in the page: 33 cradle of the Indian wars of the Revolutionary period, and by all the strength of early impressions and training he learned to love war, to regard the English as allies, to hate the Americans, and to oppose himself to the tide of immigration west of the Alleghanies.
Doubtless the boy Tecumseh, sitting by the camp-fire and listening to the stories of this savage war and to reminiscences of the "good old times" when the whites had not come among them with guns and strong drink and the superfluous wants of civilization, laid in his boyish mind the foundation for his great plan, in the strong conviction that the whites had no right to leave the home on the sea-shore, which the Indians had allowed them, and to encroach still further upon the wilderness.
He seems to have stored up carefully all that he heard of broken treaties and injuries inflicted on the Indians by their neighbors. He certainly was well versed in all facts of this kind, though he naturally did not take the same pains to remember also the instances of perfidy on his own side.
A BOUT the time of Tecumseh's birth , the Shawnee and Delaware nations concluded a peace with the Cherokees, a Southern nation of Indians, and remained at peace with both whites and Indians until The cause of disturbance which sent them on the war-path with the whites in this year was the murder of Indians by lawless white men in retaliation for the stealing of horses, without regard to whether the Indians killed were the offenders or not.
The settlers along the frontier, feeling sure that the Indians would avenge the death of their friends, prepared for defence, and sent an express to the Assembly of the colony of Virginia, then in session, asking for assistance. Hostilities were begun by the celebrated Mingo chief, Logan, whose pathetic speech is familiar to every school-boy. He had always been friendly to the whites, but, Indian-like, now destroyed several settlers' families indiscriminately in retaliation for the murder of his own relatives.
The Earl of Dunmore, at that time governor of Virginia, page: 35 raised several regiments west of the Blue Ridge, which he placed under the command of General Andrew Lewis, with instructions to proceed to the mouth of the Great Kanawha River, where he was to be joined by Lord Dunmore at the head of forces raised in the interior.
General Lewis, after a march of nineteen days through one hundred and sixty-five miles of wilderness, reached the mouth of the Kanawha.
Here he waited several days expecting the arrival of Dunmore. He at length dispatched scouts overland to Pittsburg to see if anything could be heard of the governor. Before the scouts returned, an express arrived from Lord Dunmore, informing Lewis that he had changed his plan and intended to march directly against the Indian towns on the Scioto.
General Lewis, though not altogether pleased with this change of plan, was preparing, early the next morning, to obey the orders of the governor, when he learned that a large body of Indians, which "covered four acres of ground," was close at hand.
When Lewis, who was a man of remarkable coolness, received this intelligence, he lighted his pipe and ordered out two detachments to meet the enemy, one to march to the right, some distance from page: 36 the Ohio, and the other to proceed along its bank. About a mile from camp they met the Indians under Cornstalk, by whom the two detachments were almost simultaneously attacked, it being now about sunrise.
The commanders of both these detachments being in full uniform were soon severely wounded, one of them mortally. The troops having been reinforced from the reserve, the battle was waged stubbornly all day long, and it is ranked among "the most memorable and well contested that has been fought on this continent. They succeeded in carrying away their wounded and throwing most of their dead into the Ohio, according to their universal practice of concealing their slain in battle, whenever possible.
There were many celebrated chiefs present at this battle, among whom were Logan, Red Eagle, Elenipsico, and Cornstalk, who is styled "chief sachem of the Shawnees and leader of the northern confederacy. In battle he fought with great bravery, being the loudest-voiced and most conspicuous in encouraging the Indians. When their lines began to waver he was page: 37 among them in a moment, crying, "Be strong!
It was during this day's battle that Tecumseh's father, the chief Puckeshinwau, was killed. His eldest son, Cheeseekau, fought at his side. Toward the latter part of the day, the Indian forces, having been attacked in the rear by the Virginians, began a slow and orderly retreat, conducted by Cornstalk, the Indians advancing and falling back alternately, and fighting stubbornly all the way.
At length as night came on the savages disappeared in the darkness. After the battle they recrossed the Ohio and marched to the valley of the Scioto. Here a council of war was held to determine future movements. Cornstalk rose in council and made this speech: "What shall we do now? The Long Knives a name by which the Indians called the whites because of their swords are coming upon us by two routes.
Shall we turn out and fight them? Then Cornstalk, striking his tomahawk into the war-post standing in the midst of the council, said with great vehemence: "Since you are not inclined to page: 38 fight, I will go and make peace. Governor Dunmore had marched to within a few miles of the camp, where he was met by messengers from the Indians suing for peace. He sent an express to General Lewis, who had crossed the Ohio and was marching for the Shawnee towns on the Scioto, ordering him to retreat across the river.
The general and his forces were so anxious to continue the campaign and avenge the blood of their companions, that they disregarded the governor's order and continued their march until Lord Dunmore met them in person and repeated his command emphatically. Cornstalk was one of those able Indians of whom the Shawnees had more than their proportion. He was the earnest friend of the Moravian missions among the Indians, and always encouraged any effort which tended toward the moral and physical betterment of his people.
He was also spoken of very highly as an orator. When the treaty was concluded between the Indians and Dunmore, Cornstalk made a speech which showed his patriotism and sense of justice. He described the wrongs his people had suffered from the colonists, and contrasted the condition of his nation before their intercourse with the whites, with their degraded and miserable state at that time.
This treaty with Governor Dunmore did not bring a lasting peace. New difficulties were ever arising. Cornstalk's friendship for the whites, and his desire to avoid the disastrous effects of a war on his own people, led him to his death. In , two years after the beginning of the Revolutionary War, an offensive alliance was formed among the Indians against Western Virginia. Cornstalk opposed this with all his influence, but in vain. He determined to give warning to the whites, in hope of thus preventing the war he so much dreaded for his people.
He went secretly to the fort at Point Pleasant, accompanied by Red Hawk, who was also friendly to the whites, and another Indian. After fully explaining all to the commander, he frankly said, in speaking of the state of feeling among the Shawnees: "The current sets so strongly against the Americans, in consequence of the agency of the British, that they will float with it, I fear, in spite of all my exertions. The commander, Captain Arbuckle, in violation page: 40 of all good faith, detained the chiefs as hostages.
While they were there the officers in the fort held many conversations with Cornstalk, and were much surprised at his intelligence. He seemed to take pleasure in giving them descriptions of his country. One day as he was drawing a rude map on the floor by way of illustration, a call was heard from the opposite shore, which he knew to be the voice of his favorite son Elenipsico, a fine young Indian, who was prominent in the battle at Kanawha.
Elenipsico, at his father's request, crossed the river and joined him at the fort, where they greeted each other very affectionately. Soon after two men belonging to the fort went out hunting, and one of them having been killed by some Indians, the regiment to which he belonged rushed madly in to kill the captives at the fort in revenge, believing Eleuipsico to have brought with him the Indians who killed their friend.
Cornstalk and his companions were warned by the interpreter's wife, who had been a captive among the Indians and felt an affection for them. Elenipsico denied having anything to do with it, and seemed much agitated, but his father encouraged him, saying, "If the Great Spirit has sent you here to be killed, you ought to die like a man. T HE expedition of Colonel Clark against the British posts in the West illustrates so well the general character of the West at that time, and the Western methods of warfare, and is withal a story so full of interest, that we give it briefly here.
It has also certain relations to the life of Tecumseh, in so far as it shows the early conflict between the United States and Great Britain on this ground.
During the Revolutionary War the British were in possession of many posts on the frontier, among which was Kaskaskia, near the junction of the Kaskaskia River with the Mississippi, in what is now the State of Illinois. This place was originally a French post, founded in , but it had been surrendered to the British at the time of the fall of Canada and the consequent overthrow of the French power in America, and from this point the British authorities during the Revolution furnished the Indians with the supplies which enabled them to harry the American frontier.
In , one of the first expeditions beyond the Ohio was sent out from Virginia against Kaskaskia. This expedition was placed under the command of Colonel George Rogers Clark, a man of great courage, immense energy, and incredible powers of endurance.
He had, besides, a peculiar talent for Indian warfare. Indians seldom fight in the open battlefield. Their great strength lies in surprises. They make sudden movements and plan ambuscades with great craft. A lack of attention to these peculiarities of a savage foe caused Braddock's defeat and many other disasters. But the skillful frontier man, in all border skirmishes, adopted the Indian methods. In nearly all frontier conflicts the number of men killed and wounded was small. Men were scarce, and craft took the place of force.
Many of the expeditions sent from the East after that of Colonel Clark, were disastrous failures, from the fact that the large forces of regulars would march into the country, allowing the wary Indians time to prepare traps into which the troops would blindly march only to be cut to pieces. The object of Clark's expedition was kept a profound secret. A regiment was authorized to be raised for the protection of the Western frontier, and the confidence in Colonel Clark was so great that no trouble was found in raising three hundred men without delay.
This little force made a wilderness journey of more than a thousand miles. They crossed the mountains of the Monongahela and descended by water to the Falls of the Ohio. Here they were met by some Kentucky volunteers; for no conflict, great or small, took place on the Western frontier in which the war-like Kentuckians did not have a part. The expeditionary force then proceeded down the Ohio to a point about sixty miles above its mouth, where they hid their boats to prevent their being discovered by the Indians.
Clark's little army was now one hundred and thirty miles from Kaskaskia, and the country to be traversed—what is now Southern Illinois—was, in its wild state, almost impassable.
Through this low prairie, covered with a dense vegetation, the brave colonel marched at the head of his men, his rifle on his shoulder and his provisions on his back. They waded through or crossed by the quickest means available the numerous streams and morasses on their route.
They marched two days after their provisions were exhausted, and arrived before the fortifications of Kaskaskia in the night. The long march had been accomplished without alarming either the English or the Indians; no one had suspected his coming. Clark halted, formed his men, and delivered a short and pointed speech, of which the substance was that "the town was to page: 44 be taken at all events. The Shawnee are notable for the fact that children undertook vision quests before puberty, much younger than children of other Native American tribes.
The Shawnee practiced a livelihood that was a combination of farming, hunting, and gathering. Traditionally, the women farmed maize, beans, squash, and pumpkins and gathered wild staples such as nuts and berries. The Shawnee men hunted throughout the year for deer, bear, pheasants, and other animals. The Shawnee, like other tribes, were very adept at finding uses for all parts of the animals that they hunted. In the summer, the Shawnee lived communally in semi-permanent villages comprised of longhouses that used saplings for the framing covered by bark or animal skins as walls.
There was usually one msikamelwi , or council house, that was very large with wide doorways and windows that was used for religious and political proceedings and as a village safe house when the tribe was under attack. In the fall and winter, however, Shawnee men set off on hunting expeditions while Shawnee women set off on gathering expeditions.
During this time, they constructed and lived in much smaller, less permanent longhouses that each only housed a few people. References: 1. Page of the Encyclopedia of Ohio Indians, v. The Shawnee have had a long history of trying to avoid conflict with both other tribes and settlers alike. They originally were known to have settled in the Ohio Valley, but most were expelled by a neighboring Iroquois tribe in the s due to a land skirmish.
They scattered into four groups settling around the country. They began to trade with French settlers, but British allied tribes soon descended upon them and put an end to the business. The Iroquois, the French, and the British all claimed the land the Shawnee declared to be home. The Shawnee began to slowly migrate more towards Pennsylvania, which made the French happy as they were quite set on making an alliance against the British and opening more trade with the Shawnee people.
When they finally received an opportunity, the French were quick to use force to try and push the British back; Shawnee were appalled by this and had no interest in fighting for either side. The Iroquois, given a form of authority to communicate between the British and a large number of tribes including the Shawnee , decided to sign a treaty giving their lands to the British in exchange for protection from the French. Presumably, this was unknown to the other tribes; when the French and Indian war came about, the Ohio tribes were willing to fight at first.
However, when they discovered the Iroquois had given their land to the British, they became distrustful- the Iroquois tribe had misused their power, and the British were merely out to take their lands! Tecumseh was seeking allies in the southern part of the United States. Although Tecumseh had asked his brother not to attack the Americans in his absence, the Prophet did attack.
When Tecumseh returned, Prophetstown no longer existed. The natives had abandoned it, and Harrison had then destroyed it.
Many of his followers, hungry and defeated, returned to their former villages. They were unwilling to assist Tecumseh in forming his confederation. Tecumseh did try to recreate his confederacy, but he had only limited success.
Tecumseh's quest formally ended in , with his death at the Battle of the Thames in the War of Toggle navigation. Jump to: navigation , search. Portrait of the Shawnee military and political leader Tecumseh, ca.
He worked with his brother Tenskwatawa, known as 'The Prophet,' to unite American Indian tribes in the Northwest Territory to defend themselves against white settlers.
Tecumseh explained his views in a letter to William Henry Harrison in Sell a country!
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