Tecumseh. Jim Poling, Sr.
from the Ohio, 1768–94.
In 1777, the wars forced the Shawnee to abandon much of their Scioto River homeland. They moved west to be less open to American attacks. Methoataaskee moved her family to the northwest bank of Mad River, just west of present-day Springfield, Ohio. It was safer and an excellent playground for the Shawnee children. The new village stood on a hill overlooking the river, with panoramic views of forests interspersed with small prairies. There were limestone cliffs behind the village, which the children climbed and explored, and a small swamp in which they developed hunting skills.
The Mad River area offered relative safety and serenity. Tecumseh and his siblings grew under the direction of Methoataaskee, until she decided to move south to Cherokee country, perhaps because she had taken another husband. The raising of Tecumseh and the younger children fell to the oldest brother, Cheeseekau, and older sister, Tecumapease.
The serenity of the Mad River was short-lived. In the summer of 1780, the western Ohio countryside was engulfed in the flames of war. The British assembled a large war group of soldiers and Indians along the Mad River, and marched south to attack settlements in Kentucky. They grabbed 350 prisoners, including young Stephen Ruddell, who met Tecumseh in one of the Indian encampments. Here they began their lifelong friendship.
The raid stunned the Kentuckians. They struck back hard with forces led by George Rogers Clark, who became known as a famous Indian fighter. They raided Shawnee villages, killing, capturing, and putting wigwams and fields into flame. On August 8, they arrived at Tecumseh’s village on the Mad River. Women and children were sent up to the bluffs for protection, while the warriors positioned themselves for battle. Clark advanced with a six-pound cannon, and after two days the Shawnee villages were destroyed. Tecumseh and his family, then war refugees, fled with other Shawnee farther up the Mad River, as far as the Little Miami River.
That was a turning point in the history of wars against Indians. The Americans realized that killing Indian warriors only made them more determined. Younger warriors were pushed forward to replace the missing, and more white captives, like young Ruddell, were taken to fill holes in the ranks. It was more effective to burn homes and crops because warriors who were forced to constantly find food and shelter for their starving people had little time for war.
The raids along the Mad River resulted in small numbers of Shawnee deaths, but the loss of homes and ripening crops was devastating. Morale was further smashed by the savagery of the Kentuckians, who plundered graves for scalps. The hungry Shawnee found themselves begging the British for food. They continued to fight, but the future of all Indians in the Ohio Country was becoming clear; the Americans were a force capable of conquering the Northwest.
The Revolutionary War ended in 1783, with Britain ceding all lands south of the Great Lakes and east of the Mississippi River to the new American nation. The war’s end promised only a temporary peace for the Ohio Country Indians, who continued to worry about the coming of more American settlers. The British had signed away the Northwest Indian Territory with no regard for native rights, but they had not withdrawn their protection completely. They kept some forts such as Niagara, Detroit, and Michilimackinac for thirteen years after the war because they said the Americans were not living up to all the conditions of the 1783 peace treaty.
Living between the British and the Americans was like being caught in a vice. The Indians compared the two nations to the two separate blades on a pair of scissors. John Heckewelder, a longtime Moravian missionary on the frontier, described this Indian analogy in his book about Indian customs and culture:
I have heard them, for instance, compare the English and American nations to a pair of scissors, an instrument composed of two sharp edged knives exactly alike, working against each other for the same purpose, that of cutting. By the construction of this instrument, they said, it would appear as if in shutting, these two sharp knives would strike each together and destroy each other’s sharp edges; but no such thing: they only cut what comes between them. And thus the English and Americans do when they go to war against one another. It is not each other they want to destroy, but us, poor Indians, that are between them. By this means they get our land, and, when that is obtained, the scissors are closed again, and laid by for further use.
Tecumseh entered his formative teenage years and his older siblings directed him into manhood. Cheeseekau gave him the critical knowledge of how to live off the land, hunt, and trap and how to become successful on the war trails. Tecumapease instilled in him the important human traits of honour, compassion, and doing what was right.
Teenage years are years of confusion, but they must have been especially confusing for the teenagers of Tecumseh’s time. They knew little peace. Blood and flames were constants in their lives. They watched the old ways of Indian life disappear, as they struggled against a wave of newcomers bringing disease, destructive customs, and a lust for land that could not be satisfied.
In these circumstances, Tecumseh might have been expected to grow up negative, embittered, and savagely vengeful. History shows, however, that he turned out generous, intelligent, and good natured. He was among the most fearsome warriors in battle, adept at killing with war club, bow and arrow, scalping knife, or musket, but able to demonstrate a compassion not expected for the times.
Cheeseekau, as his elder brother, guided him on his vision quest, a rite of passage for most North American Indian boys and girls. They were sent out onto the land and, through meditation and deprivation, were to receive power from their spirits. They were expected to see visions of one or more spirits in the form of an animal, bird, or natural force, such as a storm. These visions came from the Master of Life, Waashaa Monetoo to the Shawnee.
Stephen Ruddell once described Cheeseekau’s influence on young Tecumseh:
[H]e took upon himself the education of his brothers and used every means to instill into the mind of Tecumtheth correct, manly and honourable principles, leading him forth himself to battle and instructing him in warfare. He taught him to look with contempt upon everything that was mean …
Ruddell called Tecumseh a born leader and an exceptionally good hunter:
He was a great hunter and what was remarkable [was that] he would never if he could avoid it hunt in parties where women were. He was free hearted and generous to excess — always ready to relieve the wants of others. Whenever he returned from a hunting expedition he would harangue his companions, and made use of all his eloquence to instill into their minds honourable and humane sentiments.
Tecumseh and Ruddell often hunted together as boys. One day they heard hunters chasing buffalo with dogs. They climbed into the trees under which the buffalo would pass. Ruddell dropped one of the running beasts with a single-shot musket. Tecumseh fired arrow after arrow into the passing animals and dropped sixteen, a number likely exaggerated by the telling.
Tecumseh grew out of his teen years as a well-built and handsome man. He stood five feet, ten inches tall, and was athletic. Ruddell later described him as an extremely active person and quite strong. There is no record of his first battles, but he was certain to have been riding with Cheeseekau, then a warrior of some note, on hunting parties and skirmishes in his early to mid-teens. A story is told of the Shawnee fighting Kentucky militia along the Mad River. Tecumseh the teenager was said to have become afraid and fled while Cheeseekau, wounded, continued the fight.
It is an unlikely story considering Indian boys were taught from birth to hunt and fight, and when they reached their teens they were obsessed with the thoughts of their first battles. Warrior is a profession among the Indians. Some boys were raised to become medicine men, others civil leaders, while the job of the warrior-hunter was to fight and kill and be killed. Also, the savagery of the times in which the Shawnee were most often engulfed in war made it unlikely that an Indian boy was afraid of anything.
In 1786–87, Tecumseh turned eighteen and two things occurred to ensure that the Shawnee would have many more battles against the Long Knives. The new U.S. Congress, desperate for revenue and hungry for more settlement, annexed the lands west of the Appalachians, which became known as the Northwest Territory. This guaranteed a new migration of settlers from the east, something the Shawnee and some other tribes would not tolerate. However, land sales faltered because prospective