6 Things You May Not Know About Tec*mseh | HISTORY (2024)

1. Tec*mseh lost three close family members to frontier violence.

Born in 1768 in present-day Ohio, Tec*mseh lived during an era of near-constant conflict between his Shawnee people and white frontiersmen. At age 6, Lord Dunmore’s War broke out after a series of violent incidents, including one in which about a dozen Native Americans were plied with whiskey and challenged to a target shooting match before being slaughtered.

Tec*mseh’s father, Puckeshinwa, participated in the war, losing his life during a retreat across the Ohio River in the October 1774 Battle of Point Pleasant. As he lay dying, he supposedly told his son, Chiksika, to never make peace with the Virginians and to supervise the warrior training of his other male children. In 1788, a year after the U.S. Congress precipitated the settlement of Shawnee lands by passing the Northwest Ordinance, Chiksika was fatally wounded while attacking a stockade in present-day Tennessee. And in 1794, another of Tec*mseh’s brothers, Sauwauseekau, was shot and killed at the Battle of Fallen Timbers.

2. Tec*mseh took part in the worst defeat ever inflicted by Native Americans on U.S. forces.

In fall 1790, the Shawnees and Miamis repelled an assault on their villages near modern Fort Wayne, Indiana, killing 183 U.S. troops in the process. President George Washington authorized a new campaign the following year, in which he put Governor Arthur St. Clair of the Northwest Territory in charge of some 2,300 men. On the march north from modern Cincinnati, hundreds of them deserted as the weather worsened and food supplies ran low. For nearly two months, the remaining troops had little contact with native tribes. On November 3, the soldiers set up camp along the Wabash River in western Ohio. Washington had advised St. Clair to “beware of surprise,” but he posted few guards and built no barricades. The next morning, as the soldiers prepared breakfast, a force of Native Americans attacked and immediately overran them. Poorly trained militiamen fled, whereas the regulars who kept their position were decimated.

When the dust cleared a few hours later, at least 623 American soldiers and dozens of camp followers were dead, and hundreds more were wounded. In comparison, fewer than 300 U.S. troops died during the much-more-famous Battle of the Little Bighorn. Tec*mseh did not play a major role in the clash with St. Clair, but he scouted the U.S. soldiers during their advance north. Throughout the battle itself, in which only 21 Native Americans were reportedly killed, he guarded the rear trail to make sure no reinforcements arrived.

3. Tec*mseh tried to unite all tribes against white expansion.

The victory over St. Clair proved to be short lived, as the 1794 Battle of Fallen Timbers forced the Native Americans to give up most of present-day Ohio and part of Indiana. Tec*mseh did not abide by such agreements, believing that every tribal leader who signed them “should have his thumb cut off.” He began envisioning a confederacy that would bring all of the tribes together—even longtime enemies—to resist the whites’ insatiable desire for land.

Tec*mseh and his brother Tenskwatawa, best known as “the Prophet,” also started preaching against cultural assimilation. In 1808 the brothers founded Prophetstown in northwestern Indiana, which they envisioned as the capital of their confederacy. That same year, Tec*mseh met with British officials in Canada. He then traveled widely in the Midwest, gaining followers among such tribes as the Seneca, Wyandot, Sauk, Fox, Winnebago, Potawatomi, Kickapoo, Ojibwe, Ottawa, Delaware, Miami and, of course, Shawnee. Tec*mseh even made it as far south as present-day Alabama and Mississippi, where he preached with limited success to Chickasaws, Choctaws and Muscogees. “I have heard many great orators, but I never saw one with the vocal powers of Tec*mseh, or the same command of the muscles in his face,” recalled a white soldier who witnessed one of his speeches.

4. The U.S. Army invaded while Tec*mseh was away.

While Tec*mseh was down south in fall 1811, William Henry Harrison, then governor of the Indiana Territory, decided to march on Prophetstown. Tec*mseh had told his brother to avoid war with the Americans, but when soldiers advanced to within a mile of the town on November 6, eager Winnebago warriors snuck into their camp, forcing the Prophet to order a strike. He assured his followers that white bullets could not hurt them, and during the next morning’s fighting he purportedly retreated to a shallow cave and tried to marshal divine intervention to empower the Indians to victory by singing incantations. In the end, though the Native Americans likely suffered fewer casualties than their opponents in the Battle of Tippecanoe, they were forced to retreat and abandon Prophetstown. Harrison then burned it to the ground. Upon returning home in January 1812, Tec*mseh found his brother’s reputation destroyed and his confederacy badly weakened.

5. Tec*mseh allied himself with the British during the War of 1812.

When the War of 1812 broke out in June of that year, Tec*mseh and his supporters immediately joined with the British. During one of the first engagements of the conflict, U.S. General William Hull and about 2,000 men invaded Canada from Detroit. They were quickly repelled, however, in part due to Tec*mseh’s interception of a supply train. British commander Isaac Brock, who became friends with Tec*mseh, subsequently besieged Fort Detroit. In an act of psychological warfare, Brock informed Hull that his Native American allies “will be beyond my control the moment the contest commences.” A terrified Hull surrendered a day later. The following year, Tec*mseh participated in failed sieges of two forts in Ohio. He then reluctantly retreated with the British back into Canada. U.S. troops under Harrison’s command caught up with the British and Native Americans along the Thames River, winning a battle there that cost Tec*mseh his life. Afterwards, the surviving Shawnee divided into groups and dispersed in various directions. Most eventually ended up in Indian Territory, which became Oklahoma in 1907.

6. Many myths sprang up around Tec*mseh.

No one knows for sure who killed Tec*mseh, but that didn’t stop a number of people from taking credit. Richard M. Johnson, for example, rode his reputation as Tec*mseh’s killer to the vice presidency in 1836. Four years later Harrison used the slogan, “Tippecanoe and Tyler Too,” to take the White House. Meanwhile, since Tec*mseh did no interviews and left behind no letters or journals, storytellers filled the gaps in his life with wild tales. One account held that he courted the blonde, blue-eyed daughter of an Indian fighter, with whom he read the Bible and Shakespeare, and another held that his great-grandfather was South Carolina’s governor. Both accounts, and many others like them, are almost certainly untrue.