On Sunday, I was watching Aerial America: Indiana while doing my physical therapy exercises. The show spent time retelling the efforts of Tecumuseh. Legend claims that famous warrior and dynamic orator Tecumseh began life in an Ohio Shawnee village in 1768, as a great meteor flashed and burned its way across the heavens. This event accounts for his name: The Shooting Star, or Celestial Panther Lying in Wait. Prophetically, he believed that the white man would never rest until all American Indians were dispossessed. 

The 1783 Treaty of Paris, which ended the Revolutionary War, England recognized American sovereignty west to the Mississippi, betrayed the Native allies who had supported it in the conflict. The Northwest Ordinance of 1787, passed by the Confederation Congress, hypocritically promised to treat American Indian people with “utmost good faith.”

Tecumseh conceived of an alliance of all remaining native people: All Indian people would set aside their ancestral rivalries and unite into a single movement to defend their culture and homelands. After both victories and defeats, Tecumseh saw the War of 1812 as his final opportunity to construct an independent Indian nation. He journeyed to Canada in July of 1812 and forged an alliance with the British. General Isaac Brock placed Tecumseh in command of all Native American forces with the understanding that, should the British and Indians be victorious, the Old Northwest would comprise an independent Indian nation under British protection. 

Despite a number of victories, this partnership turned fatal on October 5, 1813, at the Battle of the Thames River (runs through what is now London, Ontario). Outnumbered three-to-one by General William Henry Harrison’s army, the Indian and British forces were overwhelmed, without fortifications, and ultimately doomed.Harrison pursued them to the Thames River where Tecumseh was killed on October 5, 1813. 

Tecumseh’s vision of a unified American Indian homeland was never realized. Within 35 years of Tecumseh’s death at Moraviantown, (in what is now Ontario) many Native nations east of the Mississippi River were forcibly relocated. Though Tecumseh never lost sight of his goal to unite native tribes, his influence was not enough to defeat America’s military and save the Native way of life.

Writes Harvard history professor Philip Deloria: “Tecumseh, his alliance, and his war are only a trace memory.”

https://www.nps.gov/people/tecumseh.htm
https://www.history.com/topics/native-american-history/tecumseh 
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/11/02/what-tecumseh-fought-for