There were other reasons for war with Britain besides its violations of neutral rights. The Indians were again restive, and western farmers believed that the British in Canada were egging them on. This had been true in the past but was no longer the case in 1811 and 1812. American domination of the southern Great Lakes region was no longer in question. Canadian officials had no desire to force a showdown between the Indians and the Americans, for that could have but one result. Aware of their own vulnerability, the Canadians wanted to preserve Indian strength in case war should break out between Great Britain and the United States.
American political leaders tended to believe that Indians should be encouraged to become farmers and to copy the “civilized” ways of whites. However, no government had been able to control the frontiersmen, who by bribery, trickery, and force were driving the tribes back year after year from the rich lands of the Ohio Valley. General William Henry Harrison, governor of the Indiana Territory, a tough, relentless soldier, kept constant pressure on them. He wrested land from one tribe by promising it aid against a traditional enemy, from another as a penalty for having murdered a white man, and from others by corrupting a few chiefs. Harrison justified his sordid behavior by citing the end in view—that “one of the fairest portions of the globe” be secured as “the seat of civilization, of science, and of true religion.” The “wretched savages” should not be allowed to stand in the path of this worthy objective. Unless something drastic was done, Harrison’s aggressiveness, together with the corroding effects of white civilization, would soon obliterate the tribes.
Tecumseh, the Shawnee chief, made a bold and imaginative effort to reverse the trend by binding all the tribes east of the Mississippi into a great confederation. Traveling from the Wisconsin country to the Floridas, he persuaded tribe after tribe to join him. “Let the white race perish,” Tecumseh declared. “They seize your land; they corrupt your women. . . . Back whence they came, upon a trail of blood, they must be driven!”
To Tecumseh’s political movement his brother Tenskwatawa, known as “The Prophet,” added the force of a moral crusade. Instead of aping white
As a young man Tecumseh was a superb hunter and warrior; his younger brother, Tenskwatawa, was awkward and inept with weapons; he accidentally gouged out his right eye with an arrow. In 1805 he had a religious vision, became known as "The Prophet,” and inspired Tecumseh's warriors.
Customs, the Prophet said that Indians must give up white ways, white clothes, and white liquor and reinvigorate their own culture. Ceding lands to the whites must stop because the Great Spirit intended that the land be used in common by all.
The Prophet saw visions and claimed to be able to control the movement of heavenly bodies. Tecumseh, however, possessed true genius. A powerful orator and a great organizer, he had deep insight into the needs of his people. Harrison himself said of Tecumseh, “He is one of those uncommon geniuses which spring up occasionally to produce revolutions and overturn the established order of things.” The two brothers made a formidable team. By 1811 thousands of Indians were organizing to drive the whites off Indian land. Alarms swept through the West.
With about a thousand soldiers, General Harrison marched boldly against the brothers’ camp at Prophetstown, where Tippecanoe Creek joins the Wabash, in Indiana. Tecumseh was away recruiting men, and the Prophet recklessly ordered an assault on Harrison’s camp outside the village on November 7, 1811. When the white soldiers held their ground despite the Prophet’s magic, the Indians lost confidence and fell back. Harrison then destroyed Prophetstown.
While the Battle of Tippecanoe was pretty much a draw, it disillusioned the Indians and shattered their confederation. Frontier warfare continued, but in the disorganized manner of former times. Like all such fighting it was brutal and bloody.
Unwilling as usual to admit that their own excesses were the chief cause of the trouble, the settlers directed their resentment at the British in Canada. “This combination headed by the Shawanese prophet is a British scheme,” a resolution adopted by the citizens of Vincennes, Indiana, proclaimed. As a result, the cry for war with Great Britain rang along the frontier.
•••-[Read the Document Pennsylvania Gazette, "Indian hostilities" at myhistorylab. com
World History
