Tecumseh. Jim Poling, Sr.
That autumn, a Long Knives’ militia crossed the Ohio near Limestone and hit a village that was only partially occupied because many people had moved off to winter hunting grounds. Some of the villagers raised an American flag in a vain attempt to stop the attack. The Long Knives killed some villagers then rounded up the rest as prisoners. One prisoner was the elderly chief called Moluntha, who was interrogated by an American colonel about an earlier battle in which the Kentuckians had suffered a humiliating defeat. The colonel did not like the answers he received and hit the old chief with the flat side of a tomahawk, knocking him to the ground. As the old man struggled to get up, the colonel sunk the tomahawk into his skull, then scalped him.
More settlement, and more atrocities like the killing of a defenceless elder, enraged the Shawnee. They rampaged through what is now western Pennsylvania, West Virginia, eastern Ohio, and north Kentucky. One of their favourite spots was along the Ohio River, because the transportation artery floated hundreds of settlers downriver toward new homes and new lives in Kentucky. Tecumseh was a regular among the warriors who attacked settlers’ flatboats, rich targets loaded with livestock and household possessions. The Indians launched bark canoes or simply waited at narrow spots in the river to make interceptions. Sometimes they stood white captives on the shore as decoys to lure boats into landing.
The large flatboats, some nearly one hundred feet in length, were propelled and steered by long oars, requiring four to six men as crew. When they had to man the oars in difficult situations, the men could not fight back. That’s when the Indians poured musket balls and arrows at them.
Tecumseh was among a band of Indians that attacked a large flatboat being brought downriver by traders. The Shawnee captured the boat and killed all the people aboard, except one. This man was taken prisoner and later burned alive. Tecumseh watched the burning, but was young, with no status to interfere. The burning scene seared his memory. He told other warriors of his disgust of torture and promised himself that he would prevent such brutality in future.
Dislike of needless cruelty became a Tecumseh characteristic. He believed it was wrong to murder helpless captives and was not afraid to tell others.
“He was always averse to taking prisoners in his warfare,” Ruddell wrote later in life. “But when prisoners fell into his hands he always treated them with as much humanity as if they had been in the hands of civilized people — no burning — no torturing. He never tolerated the practice of killing women and children.”
The Shawnee of Tecumseh’s time were wanderers. Probably no other North American Indian nation split so often and moved so much. Some of their movements were dictated by politics and war, like when the Iroquois pushed them from the Ohio Country valleys in the 1600s. This displacement saw them mingle with other nations; the Cherokee and Seminoles, among others.
Aside from that, they enjoyed moving about. They were a congenial people who liked visiting and socializing. They were well accepted by other Indian nations and adept at good relations and the art of diplomacy. They were Algonquian speakers, meaning they spoke a dialect of one of North America’s most widespread Indian tongues, and the language facilitated movements among others.
Their style of living also made moving about easier. Their bark houses were quickly rebuilt wherever forests existed. Thin but sturdy poles lashed together made a house framework to which they attached large pieces of bark. When bark was not available, or when time was an issue, animal skins were fitted over the frame.
As a youth, Tecumseh was driven from place to place on the Ohio frontier by the advancement of the whites. As he grew to adulthood he travelled with Cheeseekau for hunting and for raids aimed at stopping the encroachment of settlements. Later he would travel even more extensively — by horse, canoe, and on foot — in his efforts to organize Indians into a confederacy to stop the settlers.
Tecumseh was twenty when Cheeseekau organized a major move. He planned to relocate to Spanish-held territory in Missouri. Many of the Shawnee were tired of the settlers’ encroachments and the constant wars. At this time, North America was divided up between the British, who had Canada, the Spanish, who had much of the territory west of the Mississippi, and the Americans, who were expanding across the Appalachians. They were all rivals and drew the Indians into warfare to further their own purposes.
The Shawnee brothers and their followers travelled at the invitation of an enterprising fellow named Louis Lorimier, a Montrealer who traded south of Lake Erie. Lorimier spoke several Indian languages, had a Shawnee-French wife, and had helped the Indians fight American settlement on the Ohio frontier. All that made him a rogue in American eyes, and he fled the American advancement on the Ohio Country for Spanish Territory west of the Mississippi River. He opened a new trading business at Ste. Genevieve (Missouri) then hatched a plan to colonize the area with Shawnee and Delaware Indians. The Spanish liked his idea because they wanted to build their presence in the West to help ward off the hostile Osage Indians and the new United States of America.
Cheeseekau and Tecumseh were among two hundred Shawnee and Delawares who left the Ohio frontier for Missouri in the summer and fall of 1788. A hunting accident delayed the trip. Tecumseh was chasing buffalo when he was thrown from his horse and broke his thigh bone. He could not travel, so the group set up a winter camp. The leg was still not fully healed when spring arrived, but Cheeseekau said they could wait no longer and suggested that Tecumseh stay behind with a few warriors until he was fit to travel. Tecumseh refused and resumed the Missouri trek, using crutches when he had to walk. The injury left him with a limp and one leg bowed and shorter than the other.
Lorimier had land for them when they arrived, but they were not the only newcomers. The Spanish had made a deal with a former United States Indian Agent to bring in American settlers who were building New Madrid on the banks of Mississippi. He warned the Americans not to interfere with the Indians, but it wasn’t long before trouble started. Some Americans passing through the area shot at Delaware and Cherokee hunters and stole their furs. The Indians were outraged and talked of burning New Madrid in retaliation, but that cooled. Cheeseekau saw, however, that sharing the territory with Americans was not going to work. Soon after arriving, his group left, crossed the Mississippi, and headed south to the Tennessee River Territory to join the Chickamauga War against American settlement.
The Chickamauga War had raged for twelve years before Cheeseekau and Tecumseh arrived. The worst of it had begun in 1776, at the beginning of the American Revolution. Tribes from north of the Ohio River, encouraged and supported by the British, had urged Cherokee tribes to join in the war against the Americans. The Cherokee raided white settlements east of the Appalachians, but succumbed to the white man’s musket balls, diseases, and land grabs. The British then offered guns, ammunition, money for scalps, and a powerful alliance to launch new efforts against the breakaway colonists.
Most of the Cherokees declined and remained neutral. Some, led by the fierce fighter Tsi’-yu-gunsi-ni, or Dragging Canoe, attacked American settlements, killing, scalping, and taking captives. The Americans retaliated, attacking thirty Cherokee villages and destroying houses and crops. The main body of Cherokees, most of whom had not fought, signed “peace” treaties in 1777, ceding five million acres of land to the Americans.
Dragging Canoe refused to recognize the treaties and took his rebels to Chickamauga Creek, which flowed into the Tennessee River at present-day Chattanooga. They built village strongholds in the forested mountains overlooking the Tennessee, and raided white settlements and the boats bringing even more settlers downriver. They became known as Chickamaugas to distinguish them from the Cherokees who signed the treaties. They were not just Cherokees, but Creeks, Shawnees, and other Indians, plus rebel whites and African Americans who were opposed to the settlement of the Tennessee frontier.
Cheeseekau and Tecumseh join the Chickamaugas because they could not find a more fierce or powerful ally in the struggle against settlement. They were all brothers in a family of oppressed people. The Chickamauga Cherokees had often visited