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Authors: Pierre Berton
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sold to white men in Kentucky. The sedentary Iroquois pocketed the cash while the advancing pressure of settlement forced the Shawnee northward and westward always onto lands occupied by other tribes. For years now they have been hunting over the disputed territory east of the Wabash, but in Harrison’s conventional view they do not “own” it because the Miami were there first. Tecumseh’s own wanderings underline the Shawnee dilemma. He has no fixed home but has moved northward from settlement to settlement, from Kentucky to Indiana to Ohio to Prophet’s Town on the Tippecanoe. Men with such a history must feel the land belongs to all.
Unlike the Prophet, Tecumseh is a warrior. The major influence in his life was his older brother, Cheeseekau, fourteen years his senior and clearly a replacement for his father, who died when Tecumseh was an infant. Cheeseekau taught him to hunt with bow and arrow (nurturing in him a contempt for firearms, which frighten away deer), to fight with a tomahawk, and to develop his scorn and hatred of the white man, especially white Americans. From the age of fifteen, when he survived his first skirmish at his brother’s side against the Kentucky volunteers, he has done battle with American frontiersmen and American soldiers. He has fought in every major engagement, rising to band leader after Cheeseekau’s death in the Cherokee war in 1792 and emerging unscathed two years later at the disastrous Battle of Fallen Timbers, when another brother fell to an American musket ball.
Tecumseh’s Frontier
Yet his closest companion for fifteen years was a white youth, Stephen Ruddell, who has become a Methodist missionary to the Shawnee. Captured by the tribe during the Revolution and adopted into a Shawnee family, young Ruddell was present on the famous occasion when, at sixteen, Tecumseh impassively watching a white prisoner being consumed by the slow fire of the stake, rose up and in a speech that foreshadowed later eloquence swore he would never again allow such horror in his presence.
It is this mixture of savagery and compassion that baffles men like Harrison. In battle, stripped naked save for a breech cloth, his face daubed with ochre, his tomahawk stained with blood, Tecumseh is demonic. Yet Ruddell remembers that from his boyhood he was “remarkable … for the dignity and rectitude of his deportment.” He does not like to take prisoners in battle, but when he does he treats them with humanity. Nor will he allow the killing of women and children.
Like his younger brother, he has managed to conquer alcohol, not as the result of the mystical experience that transformed the Prophet from an idler and a wastrel into a native messiah but as a simple act of will. Alcohol befuddled his ambition, interfered with the clarity of his vision.
For similar reasons he has managed to free himself from the tyranny of sex. To him, women are inferior creatures; he treats them with courtesy but will not hunt in their company. And like alcohol, they may divert him from his purpose. As a young man he realized his own attraction to the tribal beauties but was determined not to be ensnared. “The handsome are now anxious for me,” he told a white acquaintance, “and I am determined to disappoint them.”
His first wife, Manete, whom he married at twenty-eight, was a mixed blood, considerably older than he and certainly no beauty. From her as from all his other women he demanded affection and absolute obedience. The day of reckoning came when he asked her to make him a pouch to hold his war paint. She told him she did notknow how and offered to find a friend who did. It was the end of the marriage. Tecumseh snatched back the materials, declared that he would save her the trouble, gave her some presents, and banished her forever.
Another wife – the Shawnee are allowed as many as they wish – received a similar rebuff. Tecumseh had killed a turkey and invited friends to dine; he was discomfited to
Unlike the Prophet, Tecumseh is a warrior. The major influence in his life was his older brother, Cheeseekau, fourteen years his senior and clearly a replacement for his father, who died when Tecumseh was an infant. Cheeseekau taught him to hunt with bow and arrow (nurturing in him a contempt for firearms, which frighten away deer), to fight with a tomahawk, and to develop his scorn and hatred of the white man, especially white Americans. From the age of fifteen, when he survived his first skirmish at his brother’s side against the Kentucky volunteers, he has done battle with American frontiersmen and American soldiers. He has fought in every major engagement, rising to band leader after Cheeseekau’s death in the Cherokee war in 1792 and emerging unscathed two years later at the disastrous Battle of Fallen Timbers, when another brother fell to an American musket ball.
Tecumseh’s Frontier
Yet his closest companion for fifteen years was a white youth, Stephen Ruddell, who has become a Methodist missionary to the Shawnee. Captured by the tribe during the Revolution and adopted into a Shawnee family, young Ruddell was present on the famous occasion when, at sixteen, Tecumseh impassively watching a white prisoner being consumed by the slow fire of the stake, rose up and in a speech that foreshadowed later eloquence swore he would never again allow such horror in his presence.
It is this mixture of savagery and compassion that baffles men like Harrison. In battle, stripped naked save for a breech cloth, his face daubed with ochre, his tomahawk stained with blood, Tecumseh is demonic. Yet Ruddell remembers that from his boyhood he was “remarkable … for the dignity and rectitude of his deportment.” He does not like to take prisoners in battle, but when he does he treats them with humanity. Nor will he allow the killing of women and children.
Like his younger brother, he has managed to conquer alcohol, not as the result of the mystical experience that transformed the Prophet from an idler and a wastrel into a native messiah but as a simple act of will. Alcohol befuddled his ambition, interfered with the clarity of his vision.
For similar reasons he has managed to free himself from the tyranny of sex. To him, women are inferior creatures; he treats them with courtesy but will not hunt in their company. And like alcohol, they may divert him from his purpose. As a young man he realized his own attraction to the tribal beauties but was determined not to be ensnared. “The handsome are now anxious for me,” he told a white acquaintance, “and I am determined to disappoint them.”
His first wife, Manete, whom he married at twenty-eight, was a mixed blood, considerably older than he and certainly no beauty. From her as from all his other women he demanded affection and absolute obedience. The day of reckoning came when he asked her to make him a pouch to hold his war paint. She told him she did notknow how and offered to find a friend who did. It was the end of the marriage. Tecumseh snatched back the materials, declared that he would save her the trouble, gave her some presents, and banished her forever.
Another wife – the Shawnee are allowed as many as they wish – received a similar rebuff. Tecumseh had killed a turkey and invited friends to dine; he was discomfited to
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