The Shawnee Prophet, Tecumseh, and Tippecanoe: A case study of historical myth-making

Journal of the Early Republic

Volumn 22, Issue 4, 2002, Pages 637-673

  Cave, Alfred A ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF TOLEDO   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 66449124762     PISSN: 02751275     EISSN: 15530620     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/3124761     Document Type: Review

References (98)

1. Indiana Sentinel quoted in Glenn Tucker, Tecumseh: Vision of Glory (Indianapolis, 1956), 325;
2. Benjamin Drake, Life of Tecumseh and of His Brother the Prophet; with a Sketch of the Shawanoe Indians (Cincinnati, 1841), 88, 228-34;
3. Charles Mair, Dreamland and Other Poems & Tecumseh: A Drama (1901; rep., Toronto, 1974).
4. For another very harsh stage portrayal of Tenkswatawa, see George Jones, Tecumseh, and the Prophet of the West: An Historical Israel-Indian Tragedy in Five Acts (New York, 1844).
5. A typical example of the overall prevalence of Drake's judgment of Tenskwatawa is found in a later nineteenth-century biography of Tecumseh and the Prophet, which declared the latter a man "who was neither courageous, truthful or above cruelty." Edward Eggleston and Lillie Eggleston Seeyle, Tecumseh and the Shawnee Prophet: Including Sketches of George Rogers Clark, Simon Kenton, William Henry Harrison, Cornstalk, Blackhoof, Bluejacket, the Shawnee Logan, and Others Famous in the Frontier Wars of Tecumseh's Time (New York, 1878), 113.
6. Drake's research notes are preserved in the Tecumseh Papers/Draper Manuscripts, State Historical Society of Wisconsin. A microfilm edition of those papers is available. They reveal Draper's excessive reliance on the recollections and judgments of Anthony Shane and his wife. For an overview of the treatment of Tecumseh in American historiography, see Terry Rugley, "Savage and Stateman: Changing Historical Interpretations of Tecumseh," Indiana Magazine of History; 85 (Dec. 1989), 289-311.
7. On the Prophet, Rachel Buff, "Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa: Myth, Historiography and Popular Memory, Historical Reflections: Reflexions Historiques, 21 (Summer 1995), 277-99, is suggestive but far from complete.
8. Alan Eckert, A Sorrow in Our Heart: The Life of Tecumseh (New York, 1992), 420, 426.
9. David Hurst Thomas, Skull Wars: Kennewick Man, Archaeology, and the Battle for Native American Identity (New York, 2000), 10;
10. Herbert Goltz, "Tecumseh, The Man and the Myth" (M.A. thesis, University of Wisconsin, 1966);
11. "Tecumseh, the Prophet and the Rise of the Northwestern Indian Confederation" (Ph.D. diss., University of Western Ontario, 1974);
12. R. David Edmunds, The Shawnee Prophet (Lincoln, NE, 1983), 142.
13. For examples of the new emphasis on the Prophet's leadership, see Richard White, The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650-1815 (New York, 1991), 469-516;
14. Gregory Evans Dowd, A Spirited Resistance: The North American Indian Struggle for Unity, 1745-1815 (Baltimore, 1995), 122-46;
15. and John Sugden, Tecumseh (New York, 1998). Sugden's biography is the most comprehensive and reliable work on Tecumseh and the Prophet published to date.
16. Edmunds, Shawnee Prophet, 116.
17. Edmonds echoes Drake, who wrote: "With the battle of Tippecanoe, the Prophet lost his popularity and power among the Indians. His magic was broken, and the mysterious charm by means of which he had for years, played upon the superstitious minds of this wild people, scattered through a vast extent of country, was dissipated forever." Life of Tecumseh, 155.
18. The other citations in this paragraph are to Bill Gilbert, God Gave Us This Country: Tekamthe and the First American Civil War (New York, 1989), 372;
19. Sugden, Tecumseh, 357-58;
20. and Gregory E. Dowd, "Thinking and Believing: Nativism and Unity in the Ages of Pontiac and Tecumseh," American Indian Quarterly, 26 (Summer 1992), 322-27.
21. There are two accounts of Lalewithika's vision available to us. One comes from Shakers who visited the Prophet's community in Ohio in 1806 and is found in J. P. MacLean, "Shaker Mission to the Shawnee Indians," Ohio Archaeological and Historical Society Publications, 11 (June 1903), 216-29.
22. The other is implicit in the Prophet's description of hell in his interview with Charles G. Trowbridge in 1824. See Vernon Kinietz and Erminie Voegelin, eds., Shawnese Traditions: C.C. Trowbridge's Account: Occasional Contributions from the Museum of Anthropology of the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor, 1939), 41-42.
23. Kinietz and Voegelin, eds., Shawnese Traditions, 3;
24. Thomas Forsyth to William Clark, Dec. 23, 1812, in Emma B. Blair, ed., Tribes of the Upper Mississippi Valley (2 vols., Cleveland, 1912), 2:274-78;
25. Anthony Shane Interview, Tecumseh Papers, 12YY:3-13. For similar doctrines held by the Prophet's followers in the northern Great Lakes region, see Edward Augustus Kendall, Travels through the Northern Parts of the United States in the Years 1807 and 1808 (New York, 1809), 287.
26. The idea of a separate creation of whites is found in the teachings of several eighteenth-century Native-American revitalization prophets. See Dowd, Spirited Resistance, 21, 30, 41-44, 141-42, 167, 200.
27. As to possible Christian influences on Tenskwatawa, several Shakers had visited the future Prophet's village shortly before his first vision. A Moravian mission was located near a neighboring Delaware village. The Prophet's efforts to reduce the role of women is discussed in Timothy Willig, "Prophetstown on the Wabash: The Native Spiritual Defense of the Old Northwest," Michigan Historical Review, 23 (Fall 1997), 138-39.
28. Tenskwatawa may not have been fully successful in this area. Joseph Barron, a French visitor to Prophetstown, claimed that "the wife of the Prophet, under the royal designation of 'Queen' enjoyed an influence and power behind the throne greater than the throne itself ... she possesses an influence over the female portion of the tribe not less potent than her husband's - an influence felt, and often disastrously felt, in the councils of the nation - particularly where the subjects of wrong and injury to the white race were matters of deliberation." Barron Interview, Tecumseh Papers, 3YY:110. Judge John Law, an early historian of Indiana, also believed that the Prophet was controlled by his wife and that the women retained great power. See John Law, The Colonial History of Vincennes ("Vincennes, IN, 1858), 100-01. But Stephen Ruddell's son testified that his father, who knew both Tecumseh and the Prophet, had given no indication that the Prophet's wife had any particular influence. J. M. Ruddell Statement, Tecumseh Papers, 3YY:115. Charles Tucker, described as "an aged & intelligent Shawnee Chief," also reported to Draper, "I doubt that she was a woman of much influence." Charles Tucker to Lyman Draper, nd, Tecumseh Papers, 3YY:12. The evidence is thus inconclusive. It seems reasonable to assume that the Prophet endeavored to reduce the role of women but was not totally successful.
29. Alfred A. Cave, "The Failure of the Shawnee Prophet's Witch-Hunt," Ethnohistory, 42 (Summer 1995), 445-75;
30. Forsyth, in Blair, Tribes of the Upper Mississippi Valley, 2: 274-78;
31. John Tanner, The Falcon: The Narratives and Adventures of John Tanner (1830, rep., New York, 1994), 146;
32. Edmunds, The Shawnee Prophet, 54.
33. McClean, "Shaker Mission to the Shawnee Indians," 215-29; Edmunds, Shawnee Prophet, 54-55;
34. William Wells to William Henry Harrison, Aug. 20, 1807; Harrison to the Shawnees, [Aug.] 1807; The Prophet to Harrison, [Aug.] 1807, June 4, Aug. [1], 1808, in Logan Esarey, ed., Messages and Letters of William Henry Harrison (2 vols., Indianapolis, 1922), 1:239-43; 249-51; 292, 299.
35. See Douglas E. Clanin, ed., "The Papers of William Henry Harrison, 1800-1815" (microfilm, 10 reels, Indianapolis, 1999), reel 2:900-03, 916-20, 290; 3:173; 224-26. For specialists interested in the early years of Harrison's career, the Esarey edition of Harrison's papers has been supplanted by the more comprehensive work of Douglas E. Clanin and associates, issued on microfilm by the Indiana Historical Society in 1999. For the convenience of the general reader, I have cited the more accessible Esarey edition wherever possible, adding in brackets the location of the document in question in the Clanin microfilm edition. The Clanin references are to the complete text. A number of Harrison letters, some of them relevant to this study, were not included in the Esarey materials. A number of letters and other documents, not written by or to Harrison but also of importance to this inquiry, are not found in the Clanin microfilms but are available in the Esarey collection. Both collections must therefore be consulted by students of Tecumseh and the Prophet.
36. Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, History of the Indian Tribes of the United States: Their Present Condition and Prospects and a Sketch of their Ancient Status (Philadelphia, 1857), 35;
37. Harrison to Secretary of War, Sept. 1, 1808; Nov. 9, 1808, July 14, 1809, in Esarey, ed., Messages and Letters, 1:302, 321-22, 355-56; [Clanin, reel 3:228-29, 303, 446-56];
38. Edmunds, Shawnee Prophet, 76-77, 82;
39. Willig "Prophetstown on the Wabash," 141-42.
40. Harrison to William Eustis, July 5, 1809, in Esarey, ed., Messages and Letters, 1:349 [Clanin, reel 3:446];
41. Wells to Dearborn, Apr. 22, 1808, in Clarence E. Carter, Territorial Papers of the United States (27 vols., Washington, DC, 1934-49), 7:558-60;
42. Teresea M. Baer, "Hero and Villain: William Henry Harrison and the Indian Land Treaties," Traces, 11 (Fall 1999), 12-19,23.
43. Harrison to Secretary of War, Aug. 22, 1810, in Esarey, ed., Messages and Papers, 1:459-69 [Clanin, reel 4:68-77];
44. Moses Dawson, Historical Narrative of the Civil and Military Services of Major General William Henry Harrison (Cincinnati, 1824), 158-59.
45. John Johnson to Editor of Liberty Hall, in Esarey, ed., Messages and Letters, 1:559-60;
46. Harrison to Secretary of War, June 25, July 3, July 10, 1811, Harrison to Secretary of War, Oct., 28, 1811, ibid., 1:524-28, 532-35, 537 [Clanin, reel 4:586-90, 604-09, 629-37, 5:19-22].
47. Gilbert, God Gave Us This Country, 270-71.
48. Tecumseh Statement at Massassinway, ibid., 2:51. The sources historians have cited over the years in support of the reconstruction of events summarized above simply assume, without any particular evidence, that the Prophet ordered the attack. In his article "Thinking and Believing: Nativism and Unity in the Ages of Pontiac and Tecumseh," Dowd raises a question about the Prophet's role in the outbreak of hostilities but does not pursue the matter in any depth. A close reading of the sources that presumably document the Prophet's responsibility does not support the customary conclusion. For example, the Shane Interview, Tecumseh Papers, 12YY:27, 57, charges the Prophet with responsibility for giving warriors false assurances of supernatural aid but does not explain the exact circumstances precipitating the battle. Shane was not an eye-witness. Nor were the Indians quoted in "Meeting of P. B. Whiteman and the Shawnees," ibid., 5YY:8, another source frequently cited in support of the customary account of Tenskwatawa's role. The Whiteman conference with the Shawnees was conducted with members of Black Hoof's band, enemies of the Prophet who assured Whiteman they would kill him as soon as they had an opportunity. They were in no position to testify about the Prophet's activities on the morning of the battle. Another favored source, "Shabornee's Account of Tippecanoe," is equally unreliable. Reprinted in the Indiana Magazine of History (ed. Wesley Wickar, 21 [Mar. 1921], 355-59), it was first published in 1864 in a book by Solon Robinson entitled Me-Won-I-Toc.
49. Purportedly containing the reminiscences of an aging Potawatomi chief who fought for Tecumseh but later became pro-American (opposing Black Hawk), the account contains a number of obvious errors. Shabonee claimed to have been present at Tippecanoe, but his account of the battle for the most part reflected American propaganda and thus does not ring true. He reported that British officers were in residence at Prophetstown and instigated the attack on Harrison. All available evidence indicates that was not the case. He insisted that Harrison harbored no aggressive designs against the Prophet's community. And in a passage that must have delighted his white readers, the old chief purportedly declared that at the height of the battle "I could not lift my gun. The Great Spirit held it down. I knew then that the great white chief [Harrison] was not to be killed, and I knew that the red men were doomed." He was quoted as saying that Tippecanoe "was my last fight," when in fact the real Shabonee fought later with Tecumseh in Canada. His account of the Prophet's role in Tippecanoe is contradictory, implying in some passages that he orchestrated the attack, claiming in others that the British were in charge, and in another that the Prophet lost control of the younger warriors. His claim that Tippecanoe ruined the Prophet's reputation has been given a weight it does not deserve. The old chief may have been telling his white benefactors what they wanted to hear, or the account may be (at least in part) a forgery. This writer inclines to the latter explanation. Another document often cited in accounts of the outbreak of the battle contains a report from the Miami chief Little Eyes that implies but does not state explicitly that the Prophet ordered the attack. Little Eyes, as we will note, related the anger of warriors who discovered the Prophet's war medicine was ineffective. See R. I. Snelling to Harrison, Nov. 20, 1811, in Esarey, ed., Messages and Letters, 1:643-46 [Clanin, reel 5:70-750].
50. Indian Speeches, 1816, Lewis Cass Papers (William L. Clements Library, Ann Arbor, Michigan); Drake Memoranda, Tecumseh Papers, IYY:162.
51. R. I. Snelling to Harrison, Nov. 18, 1811, Harrison to Secretary of War, Apr. 15, 1812, in Esarey, ed., Messages and Letters, 1:643-44, 2:34-35 [Clanin, reel 5:70-75, 495-97].
52. Log of the Army to Tippecanoe, Sept. 26 to Nov. 18, General Orders, Dec. 20, 1811, ibid., 1:633-34, 675-76; Western Sun, Dec. 21, 1811, quoted ibid., 1:676-77; statement of William Brigham, in Adam Walker, A Journal of Two Campaigns of the Fourth Regiment of U. S. Infantry in the Michigan and Indiana Territories, reprinted ibid., 1:705;
53. Sugden, Tecumseh, 258, 236.
54. Harrison to Secretary of War, Dec. 4, 1811, Little Turtle to Harrison, Jan. 25, 1812, ibid., 1:656, 2:18-19 [Clanin, reel 5:108-09, 298-300]; Joseph Lalime to Benjamin Howard, Feb. 4, 1812, Ninian Edwards to Secretary of War, Mar. 3, 1812, Acting Governor Attwater to Secretary of War, Jan. 21, 1812, in Carter, ed., Territorial Papers, 14:536-37, 16:193-94, 10:376-77;
55. Harrison to Secretary of War, Apr. 14, 1812, in Esarey, ed., Messages and Letters, 2:32 [Clanin, reel 5:487-90];
56. American State Papers: Indian Affairs (2 vols., Washington, DC, 1832-34), 1:807;
57. Drake, Tecumseh, 157;
58. On Shane's activities on behalf of the United States, see Benjamin Stickney to Governor Hull, July 8, 1812; Stickney to Secretary of War Eustis, Oct. 6, 1812, in Gayle Thornbrough, ed., Utter Book of the Indian Agency at Fort Wayne, 1809-1815 (Indianapolis, 1961), 178, 188.
59. For his services to the United States, Shane received, through an act of Congress, a grant of 320 acres on the St. Mary's River in Ohio. See Journal of the House of Representatives, Feb. 18, 1815, 9:789 (Library of Congress internet edition).
60. For evidence of Tecumseh's continuing commitment to the religion of the Prophet, see the account of Tecumseh's visit to the Sac in William H. Keating, Narrative of an Expedition to the Source of St. Peter's River (2 vols., Philadelphia, 1826), 1:236.
61. Tecumseh's insistence on the destruction of medicine bags contributed to the failure of that visit, a failure that Black Hawk later lamented. See Life of Black Hawk (1834; rep., New York, 1994), 11. During his southern tour in 1811, many who heard Tecumseh believed that he was the Shawnee Prophet. (See Choctaw notes, Tecumseh Papers, 4YY:92.) The efforts of white historians to represent Tecumseh as a pragmatic, secular war leader misrepresent the nature of his appeal. The deprecation of the Prophet's religion was a major theme in nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century Tecumseh literature. Writers who celebrated Tecumseh as a worthy (and dead) adversary were reluctant to admit that he believed in the Prophet's message. In an entry that has influenced many later writers, Draper in his notes on Tecumseh summarized a story from The Canadian Monthly of December 1824 that asserted that Tecumseh "evinced little respect for the arts by which the Prophet has over-turned his unfortunate Tribe, and always spoke of him as 'his foolish brother.'" Overall, the Monthly's account of the movement is far from authoritative, containing many errors, including a claim that the Americans, not Tecumseh's people, initiated the attack at Tippecanoe. On balance, there is little reason to believe that its unknown author was really privy to Tecumseh's personal remarks about the Prophet. Stephen Ruddell told his son that "the Prophet exercised unbounded influence over him" and that "Tecumtha was the tool of the Prophet." Ruddell to Draper, Nov. 15, 1884, Tecumseh Papers, 8YY:43.
62. Governor Edwards to the Secretary of War, in Carter, ed., Territorial Papers, 16:193-94.
63. See also William Wells to Secretary of War, Feb. 10, 1812, in Esarey, ed., Messages and Letters, 2:21-22;
64. Snelling to Harrison, Jan. 18, 1812, Harrison to Secretary of War, Feb. 26, 1812, in Esarey, ed., Messages and Letters, 2:15-17, 27 [Clanin, reel 5:289-91, 398-400];
65. For various public resolutions and testimonials celebrating Harrison's generalship, and a few statements critical of his conduct, see ibid., 1:662-713. For a more extensive collection of documents bearing on this issue, consult reel 5 of Clanin, Harrison Papers. For a good overview of the charges against Harrison, see Freeman Cleaves, Old Tippecanoe: William Henry Harrison (New York, 1939), 105-09.
66. For a typical example of the celebration of Tippecanoe as one "of the brightest pages of Western History," and of Harrison as the savior of civilization in the wilderness, see Law, The Colonial History of Vincennes, 97.
67. This theme permeates Charles S. Todd and Benjamin Drake, Sketches of the Civil and Military Services of William Henry Harrison (Cincinnati, 1840).
68. As to twentieth-century biographers, James A. Green, William Henry Harrison: His Life and Times (Richmond, 1941), 133 (quotation),
69. and Cleaves, Old Tippecanoe, 103-04,
70. accept at face value both Harrison's claims and the very questionable account of Shabonee, as does Homer J. Webster, William Henry Harrison's Administration of Indiana Territory (Indianapolis, 1907), 282.
71. Warren Miles Hoffnagle, The Road to Fame: William Henry Harrison and National Policy in the Northwest from Tippecanoe to River Raisin (Columbus, OH, 1959), 16-22, declares that Tippecanoe destroyed the Prophet's influence.
72. Dorothy B. Goebel, William Henry Harrison (New York, 1926), 124-25, is more critical of Harrison. There is no up-to-date biography.
73. "Tippecanoe," Thomas Cochran, ed., Concise Dictionary of American History (New York, 1962), 947;
74. James Wilson, The Earth Shall Weep: A History of the Indians of the United States (New York, 1999), 155.
75. For other examples of acceptance of the Tippecanoe myth, see William Christie Macleod, The American Indian Frontier (New York, 1928), 521;
76. Angie Debo, A History of the Indians of the United States (Norman, OK, 1983), 109;
77. Arrel Morgan Gibson, The American Indian: Prehistory to Present (New York, 1980), 287;
78. William T. Hagan, American Indians (3rd ed., Chicago, 1993), 62;
79. Colin G. Calloway, First Peoples: A Documentary Survey of American Indian History (Boston, 1999), 219;
80. Herman J. Viola, After Columbus: The Smithsonian Chronicle of the American Indian (Washington, DC, 1990), 130;
81. Secretary of War William Eustis to Harrison, Jan. 12, 1812, Harrison to Secretary of War, Feb. 19, 1812, in Esarey, ed., Messages and Letters, 2:14, 25 [Clanin, reel 5:272-90, 378-79];
82. Stickney to Harrison, Apr. 18, 1812, in Thornbrough, Letter Book, 105;
83. Harrison to Secretary of War, Feb. 26, 1812, Harrison to Secretary of War, Apr. 22, 1812, in Esarey, ed., Messages and Letters, 2:26, 41 [Clanin, reel 5:398-400, 527-30].
84. On Indian attacks, see Wells to Secretary of War, Mar. 1, 1812, ibid., 2:27; Harrison to Secretary of War, Mar. 4, 1812, in Clanin, ed., Harrison Papers, reel 5:412-14; Harrison to Secretary of War, Apr. 14, 15, 1812, in Esarey, ed., Messages and Letters, 2: 32-35 [Clanin, reel 5:487-90, 495-97].
85. Speeches of the Indians at the Massassinway, May 15, 1812, in Esarey, ed., Messages and Utters, 2:50-53; Harrison to Eustis, Mar. 4, 1812, in Clanin, ed., Harrison Papers, reel 5:412-14.
86. Governor Edwards to Secretary of War, June 23, July 21, 1812, RG 107, National Archives Microfilm M271, frames 9415, 9431; Benjamin Stickney to William Henry Harrison, June 30, 1812; Stickney to John Johnson, July 6, 1812, in Thombrough, ed., Letter Book, 149-52; 154-55;
87. "Narrative of the Expedition of Mr. Hunt," in John Bradbury, Travels in the Interior of America in the Years 1809, 1810 and 1811 (1819; rep., Lincoln, NE, 1986), 227.
88. Rugley, "Savage and Statesman: Changing Historical Interpretations of Tecumseh," 290.
89. Stickney to Governor Hull, June 20, 1812, in Thornbrough, ed., Letter Book, 142-43.
90. Chambers to Proctor, Aug. 12, 1811, in Esarey, ed., Messages and Letters, 2:93.
91. Wells to Harrison, July 22, 1812, in Esarey, ed., Mesaages and Letters, 2:77-78 [Clanin, reel 5:690-95];
92. Report of Auguste LaRoche and Lewis Chevalier, Apr. 4, 1813, in Carter, ed., Territorial Papers, 14:554;
93. Lewis Cass to the Secretary of War, Apr. 24, 1816, in Carter, ed., Territorial Papers, 10:629.
94. "Journal of the Proceedings of the Commissioners Appointed to Treat with the Northwest Indians at Detroit, Aug. 3-Sept. 8, 1815," American State Papers: Indian Affairs, 2:17-25;
95. "The Prophet" Encyclopedia Britannica (Internet Edition).
96. Noel William Schutz, "The Study of Shawnee Myth in Ethnographic and Ethnohistorical Perspective," (Ph.D. diss., Indiana University, 1975), 38;
97. James H. Howard, Shawnee! The Ceremonialism of a Native American Tribe and its Cultural Background (Athens, OH, 1981), 198. The descendents of those Shawnee who opposed both the Prophet and his brother have accepted the heroic image of Tecumseh, but not of Tenskwatawa.
98. Paul Radin, The Winnebego Tribe (Washington, DC, 1923), 70-72.