An excellent portrayal of Tecumseh from Native Sun Productions.
This date, October 5, 2013, marks the 200th anniversary of the Battle of the Thames. This forgotten battle of a forgotten war, fought in Ontario, Canada, was a decisive victory for American forces over British regulars and their confederated Indian allies. The victory of the American forces under William Henry Harrison secured forever the Old Northwest Territory of the United States.
Strategic impact aside, the battle is most memorable as marking the death in combat of the Shawnee leader Tecumseh.
Tecumseh is universally regarded as one of the most remarkable figures in the centuries-long Indian resistance to the Euro-American conquest of the continent. He was born in 1768 during a brief lull in the Shawnee’s decades-long war with American setters encroaching into the Ohio Valley. Tradition has it that he was born under the sign of a shooting star, which gave him his name: “Panther Passing Across.”
He grew up in the midst of the savage, bloody struggle that saw the Americans wrest the Kentucky hunting grounds from the Shawnee. Tecumseh made his bones as a warrior during three years (1787-90) with his brother Chiksika in Tennessee, raiding settlements with the militant Chickamauga faction of the Cherokee nation. Chiksika was himself a badass warrior, and he met a warrior’s death during that sojourn. That left Tecumseh the leader of the Shawnee band. He returned to the Ohio Country in 1790 and participated in the campaigns in the Wabash Country that saw a Northwest native confederation defeat one U.S. force, destroy another in St. Clair’s Defeat and final meet defeat at the Battle of the Fallen Timbers in 1794.
As with all great warriors, legends grew around him. Some attribute to him psychic ability, including a prediction of the New Madrid Earthquake of 1811. Fanciful tales of a doomed romance with a white trader’s daughter fed a penchant for romanticizing the “noble savage.”
Unquestionably, Tecumseh was a skilled warrior, an eloquent speaker and a charismatic leader. Recognizing that his people faced an overwhelming deficit in numbers and power, he attempted to consolidate all the tribes of the Old Northwest in a confederacy that could effectively act politically and militarily to preserve Indian independence in a final enclave in the Indiana and Illinois territories.
Tecumseh was assisted in this effort by a revival movement led by his brother Tenskwatawa, known as the Shawnee Prophet. As in dozens of other native revival movements during the age of empire, The Prophet’s movement urged a rejection of Western values and material culture (except for weaponry) and a rejection of the spirit-killing alcohol that was debasing and demoralizing native peoples.
Tecumseh spent much of his adult life on the trail, building a native confederacy. Painting by Robert W. Griffing.
Tecumseh was absent in the South, recruiting for his movement in November 1811 when territorial governor William Henry Harrison led an expeditionary force to neutralize the movement’s headquarters at Prophetstown near the River Tippecanoe.
Tenskwatawa, no military genius, spurred his followers to attack Harrison’s force. While the Indians inflicted heavy casualties in a tough slugging match, they eventually ran low on ammunition and were forced to pull back and abandon Prophetstown, which sorely damaged the cohesion of the confederacy.
Tecumseh was forced to ally with the British when the War of 1812 broke out. At first the alliance worked pretty well. Tecumseh and British General Isaac Brock had great respect for one another. A combination of British/Indian arms and American incompetence led to a series of successes, including the capture of Detroit. Unfortunately for the British and for Tecumseh, Brock was killed by a musketball through the heart at the Battle of Queenston Heights in October 1812.
His successor, Col. Henry Proctor, was nowhere near the man or commander Brock was. While he won the battle of Frenchtown in Michigan, he allowed his native allies to massacre prisoners in what became known as the River Raisin Massacre (Tecumseh was not present for the battle or the massacre).
Fearing retribution from a force led by William Henry Harrison, Proctor retreated into Canada. Tecumseh persuaded him to stand at the River Thames in Ontario, with Tecumseh’s 500 Indians anchoring the British right in a patch of swampy woods.
The hungry and demoralized British regulars fled at the first American charge, made by Kentucky Mounted Riflemen. Tecumseh and his men fought on.
Somewhere in the fighting, Tecumseh fell. While Col. Richard Johnson of the Kentucky Mounted Riflemen built a political career on never quite claiming that he killed Tecumseh (and never denying it), nobody really knows what happened to the great war leader. Reliable native accounts indicate that he took a charge of buck-and-ball to the chest. (Johnson’s remarkable bravery and fortitude was enough of a foundation for his reputation. See Jace Gabbard’s “Vengeance on the Thames.”)
All we know for sure is that Tecumseh fell in battle, and with his death, the last vestiges of the final great confederacy of tribes east of the Mississippi dissolved.
His body was never found.
Virtually everyone who came into contact with Tecumseh testified to his brilliance, his eloquence, his personal bravery and battlefield competence. He was one of the greatest of the Frontier Partisans.
The PBS video “We Shall Remain: Tecumseh’s Vision” is well worth watching. It is available on Hulu here or on Netflix.
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