Tecumseh and Brock (13 page)

A masterful performer who punctuated his remarks with theatrical gestures, Tecumseh used rhetoric to drive home his arguments and leave an indelible impression on his listeners. There is no record of Tecumseh's speech in Tuckhabatchee,
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but he had been delivering essentially the same set of remarks on a number of occasions during his tour. We do have a record of his words spoken a few months later, and that gives us a good idea of what he had to say to the Muscogee national council.
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“Brothers — We all belong to the same family; we are all children of the Great Spirit; we walk in the same path; slake our thirst at the same spring; and now affairs of the greatest concern lead us to smoke the pipe around the same council fire.

“Brothers — We are friends; we must assist each other to bear our burdens. The blood of many of our fathers and brothers has run like water on the ground, to satisfy the avarice of the white men. We, ourselves, are threatened with a great evil; nothing will pacify them but the destruction of all the red men.

“Brothers — When the white men first set foot on our grounds, they were hungry; they had no place on which to spread their blankets, or to kindle their fires. They were feeble; they could do nothing for themselves. Our fathers commiserated their distress, and shared freely with them whatever the Great Spirit had given his red children. They gave them food when hungry, medicine when sick, spread skins for them to sleep on, and gave them grounds, that they might hunt and raise corn.

“Brothers — The white men are like poisonous serpents: when chilled, they are feeble and harmless; but invigorate them with warmth, and they sting their benefactors to death. The white people came to us feeble; and now we have made them strong, they wish to kill us, or drive us back, as they would wolves and panthers.

“Brothers — The white men are not friends to the Indians: at first they only asked for land sufficient for a wigwam; now, nothing will satisfy them but the whole of our hunting grounds, from the rising to the setting sun.

“Brothers — The white men want more than our hunting grounds; they wish to kill our warriors; they would even kill our old men, women, and little ones.

“Brothers — We must be united; we must smoke the same pipe; we must fight each other's battles; and more than all, we must love the Great Spirit; he is for us; he will destroy our enemies and make his red children happy.”
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In his stirring address at Tuckhabatchee, Tecumseh drew on his close ties to the Muscogee people. “Oh, Muscogees!” he shouted. “Brethren of my mother! Brush from your eyelids the sleep of slavery, and strike for vengeance and your country!”
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The effect was overwhelming. A thousand warriors raised their tomahawks in the air. But throughout Tecumseh's address, Big Warrior sat with a disapproving frown on his face.
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At the end of his talk, Tecumseh searched out those who had appeared unmoved during his speech, and then fixed his gaze on Big Warrior. Pointing his finger toward the Muscogee leader's face, he told him, “Your blood is white: you have taken my talk, and the sticks and the wampum, and the hatchet, but you do not mean to fight: I know the reason: you do not believe the Great Spirit has sent me: you shall know: I leave Tuckhabatchee directly, and shall go straight to Detroit: when I arrive there, I will stamp the ground with my foot, and shake down every house in Tuckhabatchee.”
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Big Warrior's attitude toward Tecumseh was almost certainly influenced by his personal circumstances. Along with other upper-crust Muscogees, he had grown wealthy through the use of slave labour and the cotton gin to profit from the sale of cotton, much in the manner of the southern slave owners.
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Big Warrior did not respond to Tecumseh's accusation. Instead, the first to reply to Tecumseh following his speech was William Weatherford, a mixed-blood Muscogee also known as Lamochattee (“Red Eagle”), who would play a vital role over the next few years. He was far from convinced by what he had heard. If Tecumseh was so set on war with the whites, Weatherford demanded to know why he had not already led the northern tribes into battle against them. Tecumseh replied that all of the native peoples needed to come together in the struggle at hand. Weatherford shot back that the Shawnee chief's suggested path would lead to war with the United States and that the native peoples could no more count on the British than on the Americans. Relying on the British for military assistance would be sheer folly.

There were others who rejected Tecumseh's suggestion of a native alliance against the United States. During a conversation later that evening between Tecumseh and Cherokee leaders, one chief vowed to kill Tecumseh if he carried his message to Cherokee country.
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Tecumseh did win adherents to his cause, however. His words stirred many of the warriors present. The Muscogees faced their own struggle to halt the seizure of their lands by the Americans, and they would remember Tecumseh's speech during the perilous events to come.

The Shawnee chief then departed for the North, but the prophecy he had hurled at Big Warrior was not forgotten. Some of the Muscogees counted the days, calculating how long it would take Tecumseh to reach Detroit. In the early hours of December 16, the day when the Muscogees had reckoned Tecumseh would complete his journey, the earth trembled as the first waves of a powerful series of earthquakes struck the eastern United States. Every house in Tuckhabatchee was shaken to the ground. “Tecumseh has got to Detroit!” was uttered by many Muscogees on that day.
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That the earthquake struck is an indisputable fact. And it is no less a fact that many Muscogees connected the trembling of the earth with Tecumseh's prophecy and drew the conclusion that the Shawnee chief's call to arms must be heeded.

By the time Tecumseh reached Detroit, the conflict between the United States and the native confederacy had already exploded in armed struggle. While the Shawnee chief was presenting his case to the Muscogees at Tuckhabatchee, William Henry Harrison was preparing a pre-emptive military strike against Tecumseh's brother, the Prophet.

Chapter 6

The Prophet

I
N THE AUTUMN
OF 1811
, William Henry Harrison set out to attack a town established by Tecumseh and his younger brother, Lalawethika, who had renamed himself Tenskwatawa and was known to his followers as “the Prophet.” Located next to cultivated fields by the Wabash River, Prophetstown was a thriving settlement with sixty lodges, a guesthouse, a large council house, and a medicine lodge. Two hundred bark-sided houses overlooked the river. Over the previous three years,
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a thousand warriors from a number of tribes had been attracted to the town by the teachings of its spiritual leader.

While Tecumseh became the renowned warrior and political leader around whom a native confederacy coalesced, it was his brother who fed it the spiritual and ideological sustenance that bound the movement together. Lalawethika soared in influence among the Shawnees and other tribes in the Ohio country by preaching the message that native peoples must return to their traditional ways, reject American ideas and material goods, and fight for their land.

During the winter of 1774–75, Tecumseh's mother, Methoataaskee, had given birth to triplets, all boys. One of the triplets died at birth. The two who survived were Kumskaukau (meaning “A Cat that Flies
in the Air” or “A Star that Shoots in a Straight Line over Great
Waters”) and Laloeshiga (“A Panther with a Handsome Tail”). The latter grew up under the name Lalawethika (“He Makes a Loud Noise” or “The Noise Maker”), but he later took the name Tenskwatawa (“The Open Door”).
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Lalawethika's early years were difficult and seemed to foreshadow a sad and failed life. He spent his youth aimlessly, often drunk and dissolute. An accident cost him an eye, and he used a handkerchief to cover the socket.

One day in the autumn of 1805, smoking in his wigwam, he
dropped his pipe and fell into a coma or trance so deep that those around him believed he was dead. When he regained consciousness, he told his fellow tribesmen that he had been transported up to the clouds, where he spoke with the Great Spirit. Calling himself Tenskwatawa, he started preaching a religious doctrine to wean his people from the ways of the white man and back to the course they had been created to follow. Those who became his followers called him the Prophet. The mantle of “prophet” was a respectable calling among the Shawnees; Tenskwatawa assumed it shortly after the death of an elderly prophet named Penagashega.
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He told others of his life-altering experience, in which he had embarked on the spectral journey taken by the souls of the departed. At a critical point, Tenskwatawa reached a crossroads. There he saw a few natives taking the fork to the right, which led to heaven; far more of them, though, took the fork to the left. Three houses appeared at the side of this fateful road. Beside the first two houses, paths led the journeyers back to the road to salvation. These houses were “last chance” way stations offering the souls of the dead a final opportunity to redeem themselves and come back to the light. Most, however, continued past them on the road to perdition, the road to the last house, named Eternity, from which there was no return.

Having seen the point of no return, Tenskwatawa came back to consciousness. From then on, he was on a mission. He believed that the Great Spirit had chosen him to convey the message to the people that they must change. Tenskwatawa amazed others, including his brother Tecumseh, with his sudden transformation. Because revelations transmitted through a dream were an accepted part of Shawnee culture, and since these were fearful times, people listened. Not only people from his own village but other Shawnees, Ottawas, Senecas, and Wyandots beat a path to his door to hear what he had to say.
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Propelled by the necessity to pay heed to his dream, and undoubtedly
reinforced and energized by the positive responses of so many others,
Tenskwatawa's message grew into an agenda.

Tenskwatawa taught his tribe that they were the original creations
of the Masters of Life and that this imposed a great responsibility on them. They had to return to the traditional customs of the tribe and to eschew the ways they had borrowed from the white man. Henceforth, native women must not marry white men. Tenskwatawa preached against all innovations in clothing and declared that the Shawnees must continue to wear the original dress of their people. He issued a powerful warning against drunkenness, claiming that when he was lifted into the clouds, the first place he reached was the dwelling of the Devil, where those who had died drunkards were confined. Flames shot out of the mouths of the unfortunate wretches; this terrible scene had put an end to his own excessive drinking. He insisted that native peoples should practise a code of community property, and proclaimed that the young must cherish and respect the aged and infirm.
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Above all, the Prophet took a very hard line where the Americans were concerned. He declared that they “grew from the scum of the great water, when it was troubled by the Evil Spirit. They are numerous, but I hate them. They are unjust. They have taken away your lands, which were not made for them.” As for commercial dealings with the Americans and British, the Prophet had pithy advice: “Pay the white traders only half of what you owe, because they have cheated you.”

The Prophet's gospel affected many people, including his brother Tecumseh. It drove home a powerful ideological message: the Great
Spirit intended a separation between natives and whites, a
fundamental division that must not be breached. Becoming dependent on the ways of the whites was the path to demoralization. Instead, native people needed to return to their old ways. Not only should men dress the way their ancestors had, they should shave their heads, leaving only a scalp lock. The crowns of their heads should be adorned with eagle feathers, and they should paint their faces.

He did not want natives to be reduced to settler-style farmers. Instead, he advocated a lifestyle that combined growing food with hunting over a wide area of land. When doubters complained that there was no longer enough game to sustain the native people, he responded that the animals were being laid waste to meet the appetites of the whites and those natives who had taken up the whites' customs. He directed his people to give up animals introduced by the Europeans, with the exception of the horse, which had been fully integrated into traditional native hunting practices and had become indispensible to the hunters.

As one of his followers transcribed it, the Prophet preached that the message of the Great Spirit was clear: “My children, you complain that the animals of the forest are few and scattered. How shall it be otherwise? You destroy them yourselves, for their skins only, and leave their bodies to rot or give the best pieces to the whites. I am displeased when I see this, and take them back to the earth that they may not come to you again. You must kill no more animals than are necessary to feed and clothe you.”
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Where previously Lalawethika had been the object of derision, he now was taken very seriously by a growing number of people in his own tribe and eventually other tribes as well.

Tenskwatawa's emergence as the Prophet occurred at a time of deep unease among the Shawnees. The winter of 1804–5 was unusually cold, and floods accompanied the spring that followed, resulting in severe damage to the cornfields. Disease struck many native villages, including Tecumseh's. Fever struck suddenly, carrying people off within days. Native doctors did their best to combat the severity and spread of the malady, but to no avail. Called “bilious fever” at the time, the disease was likely influenza or smallpox.

For the native peoples of North America, virulent and deadly outbreaks of illness were already an old story by the beginning of the nineteenth century. From the first days of their conquest of the Americas, Europeans brought diseases against which the native peoples had no immunity, and these were far more destructive than the weapons of the white man. In the first decades, whole villages were felled. Even in Tecumseh's time, sudden epidemics in native villages wiped out large swaths of the population.

When disease struck, it brought in its wake not only suffering and death but also anxiety and fear. Many natives believed that such misery could only mean that the Great Spirit was deeply displeased. Another explanation was that witches were at work in the villages and that they had caused the epidemic. Those suspected of being witches could be either male or female. The accused were usually elderly people who were believed to use medicine to the detriment of those around them.
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Witch hunts could tear communities apart. People were terrified of being accused next. For example, George Blue Jacket, the son of the famous warrior chief who had been educated by whites, pronounced, “This witchcraft is a very wicked thing. They [witches] can go a thousand miles in less than an hour and back again, and poison anybody they hate and make them lame, and torment them in many wicked and cruel ways.” He believed that witches could “go into houses with their poison even if the doors are locked ever so tight, and the people cannot get awake till they are gone. This witchcraft has prevailed greatly and been very common among our people, and some of the white people have learned it and practice it, and it's a very wicked thing.”
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While the Prophet was developing the
Weltanschauung
on which the native confederacy of Tecumseh would be based, he was also drawn into the dark task of outing the witches and punishing them. In March 1806, a great council of the Delawares was convened at Woapicamikunk, and people from the surrounding area were pressured to attend. Especially anxious were the elderly and those unfortunate enough to be regarded as anti-social or strange. Such people feared that if they attended the council they could be singled out as witches. If they failed to participate in the ceremonies at the council, on the other hand, this could heighten suspicions against them.

By the time the Prophet arrived at Woapicamikunk, the council was already underway and the principal suspects had already been identified. Two Delaware chiefs, Tetepachsit and Hackinkpomska, who had been centrally involved in ceding land to white settlers, had been placed under guard and were being forced to confess that they were witches. Young men bound the elderly Tetepachsit and tortured him with flaming torches. To assuage his tormenters, the old chief at last admitted to having practised sorcery. He claimed, though, that he had left his medicine bag in the house of a Christian-born native named Joshua, who spoke a number of native languages and served as an interpreter.
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A search party set out for the nearby Moravian mission to fetch Joshua and bring him back to act as a witness. Tetepachsit swore, when Joshua was paraded before him, that his testimony while he was being tortured had been false and that the poisonous medicine was hidden elsewhere. That was enough to keep Joshua from harm for the moment, but it did nothing to end the ordeal for the old chief.

As soon as the Prophet arrived, men and women were walked past him in a circle so that he could search for signs that some among them were practitioners of witchcraft. He confirmed that Tetepachsit and Hackinkpomska were witches. Although Joshua was deemed to possess no evil medicine, he too was condemned because he was said to have influence with an evil spirit.

The first person to be put to death, though, was an old woman. While enduring torture — she was slowly roasted over a fire for four days — the old woman confessed to having given her medicine to her grandson, who was away hunting at the time of the trials. Fortunately for the young man, he was spared when he admitted that his grandmother's story was true and that he had used the evil medicine to fly from Kentucky to the Mississippi and back in a single day.
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Then Tetepachsit met his death. He claimed to have hidden his medicine in several places, which were duly searched. Nothing was found. The old man, aware that he could not escape death, dressed in his finest apparel and assisted in the building of the pyre on which he would be burned. His dignity and age moved one of the executioners to tomahawk him. The old chief's body was placed in the blazing fire. The executioners then proceeded to put Joshua to death.
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Further executions ensued, but soon the hysteria declined as fewer Delawares succumbed to the epidemic.

In the spring of 1806, when William Henry Harrison learned of the executions, he dispatched a messenger to deliver a speech to the Delawares that denounced the Prophet as a fraud and counselled an end to the executions of those accused of witchcraft. “Who is this pretended prophet who dares to speak in the name of the Great Creator,” challenged Harrison. “Examine him. Is he more wise or virtuous than you are yourselves, that he should be selected to convey to you the orders of your God? . . . Clear your eyes, I beseech you . . . No longer be imposed upon by the arts of an imposter.”

“Let your poor old men and women sleep in quietness, and banish from their minds the dreadful idea of being burnt alive by their own friends and countrymen,” read Harrison's message. “I charge you to stop your bloody career . . . if you value the friendship of your great father, the President — if you wish to preserve the good opinion of the Seventeen Fires . . .”
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Tecumseh's brother had launched a new career. His harsh message grew out of the profound insecurities facing the tribes of the region. His was an ideology that brooked no compromise with the United States and its advancing line of settlements. It was, in that sense, an ideology of resistance.

Undoubtedly, such personalities are present in all societies. But they gain an audience and become significant societal actors only in times of great crisis. They are products of their communities as much as they are unique individual actors. What repels us about the Prophet are the witch hunts. The Prophet did not initiate the witch hunts, but he lent himself to them with no reservations. He was immersed in kindred cultures that sought personalized explanations for great calamities. Finding evildoers and determining responsibility for plagues, famines, and natural disasters has been commonplace in the civilizations of the world.