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Tecumseh was born on March 9, 1768, at a Shawnee Indian village probably near the modern city of Xenia, Ohio. His name most likely referred to a stellar constellation conceived of in Shawnee lore as a cougar, giving rise to translations as either "Shooting Star" or "Crouching Panther." His father, Puckeshinwa, patron of Tecumseh's panther clan, was a war chief who fought against European expansion west of the Appalachians but was killed in 1774 at the Battle of Point Pleasant, a defeat that resulted in a treaty forcing the Shawnee to give up any claims to Kentucky. Two of Tecumseh's older brothers were also killed fighting against the Americans.

Tecumseh rose to prominence fighting against renewed American westward expansion after the Revolutionary War. The Indians were led by the Shawnee war chief Blue Jacket, who was ultimately defeated at the Battle of Fallen Timbers in 1794. The battle itself was not so disastrous, but the retreating Indians had expected to be protected by their British allies. However, the British did not wish to provoke open war with the United States and so turned their retreating allies away from the gates of Fort Miami, in Ohio, a demoralizing setback that caused most of Blue Jacket's war band to disperse. Blue Jacket had led a multitribal force known to Americans as the Western Lakes Confederacy, which was the largest and most powerful Indian resistance movement ever organized in North America. The Shawnee were forced to yield most of Ohio in the subsequent Treaty of Greenville of 1795, which also began the practice whereby subsidies in cash and trade goods were paid to prominent Indian leaders by the Americans on the understanding that they would redistribute that wealth to promote American interests. Tecumseh never accepted this treaty, leaving the way open for him to lead renewed resistance.

Following the Treaty of Fort Wayne of 1809, by which a large number of chiefs gave up southern Indiana to the United States in exchange for trade goods, and until the War of 1812, Tecumseh traveled extensively, even beyond the traditional Shawnee area of the Old Northwest (Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, and Wisconsin). Throughout the region between the Appalachians and Mississippi and into Missouri, within the newly Americanized Louisiana Territory, he spoke against the United States and in favor of Indian unity, attempting to create a united Indian resistance to American expansion. His fiery oratory was the only tool at his disposal for this task, since the necessary legal and institutional framework for such an organization did not exist in Indian culture, the structure of which was based largely on personal loyalties.

Tecumseh was never able to enact his hopes for an Indian confederacy, because the military commander William Henry Harrison's destruction of his base at Prophetstown on the Tippecanoe River in Indiana spoiled the Indian leader's reputation for victory. After this defeat, he was able to lead only a small war band in revolt against the United States during the War of 1812. His hopes in this case were never realized either, because the British had no interest in detaching the Ohio Valley from the United States but only in defending Canada. Arguably, the British sacrificed Tecumseh and his warriors to that defense once it became clear that the Indian and British war aims differed. Tecumseh was killed at the Battle of the Thames, in Ontario, in 1813.

References:

1. Calloway, Colin G. The Shawnees and the War for America. New York: Viking, 2007.

2. Cave, Alfred A. Prophets of the Great Spirit: Native American Revitalization Movements in Eastern North America. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2006.

3. Dowd, Gregory Evans. A Spirited Resistance: The North American Indian Struggle for Unity, 1745-1815. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992.

4. Eggleston, Edward. Tecumseh and the Shawnee Prophet. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1878.

5. Klinck, Carl F., ed. Tecumseh: Fact and Fiction in Early Records: A Book of Primary Source Materials. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice- Hall, 1961.

6. Sugden, John. Tecumseh: A Life. New York: Henry Holt, 1998.

7. Turner, Frederick W., III, ed. The Portable North American Indian Reader. 3rd ed. New York: Viking Press, 1986.

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