Bear Grease - Ep. 88: Tecumseh - A Panther Crossing the Sky (Part 1)

Episode Date: January 11, 2023

On this episode we’re neck deep in the murky waters of American identity - we’re peering into the life of the Shawnee leader, Tecumseh. I want to understand his social and political context, the foundations of what built him, while trying to understand the extraordinary leadership of the man whose name means “a panther crossing the sky.” He was a hunter, a warrior, and an exceptional orator. He was a revolutionary leader who was a genius. Though he was considered an enemy of the United States, his legacy was grafted into our national character, and I believe he’s an American hero. In this series we’re going to hear from the current Chief of the Shawnee Nation, Ben Barnes, New York Times Best Selling author, Robert Morgan, acclaimed historian and author, Peter Cozzens, and Native American historian, Dr. Dave Edmunds. In all my work on this-here Bear Grease podcast, I don’t think I’ve ever had to dig as deep into American’s boneyard to get the goods. I really doubt, you’re going to want to miss this one... Connect with Clay and MeatEater Clay on Instagram MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube Shop Bear Grease MerchSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Built to perform, built to last. Check out. First Light's new field. Worldware gear at firstlight.com. Tecumseh was the most remarkable Native American leader in all of American history. He was a man that tried to unite the tribes to hold the Ohio Valley and the Midwest against American expansion, but his leadership was of such a great nature. His leadership was so grand that he was admired not only by Native American people,

but by the Americans who opposed him. he has emerged as a major folk hero throughout all of the United States. On this episode, we're neck deep in the murky waters of American identity. We're peering into the life of the Shawnee leader, Tecumse. I want to understand his social political context, the foundations of what built him, while trying to understand the extraordinary leadership of this man whose name means a panther crossing the sky. He was a hunter, a warrior, an exceptional orator. He was a revolutionary leader considered a genius.

And though he was an enemy of the United States, his legacy was grafted into our national character. And I believe that he's an American hero. In this series, we're going to hear from the current chief of the Shawnee Nation, Chief Ben Barnes, and New York Times bestselling author Robert Morgan. We'll hear from Peter Cozons, an acclaimed historian and author. And from Native American historian, Dr. Dave Edmonds,

we got these guys stacked in here deep. And in all my work on this here, Bear Grease podcast, I don't think I've ever had to dig as deep into the American bone yard to get the goods. I really doubt that you're going to want to miss this one. My name is Clay Newcomb, and this is the Bear Grease. podcast where we'll explore things forgotten but relevant search for insight and unlikely places and where we'll tell the story of americans who live their lives close to the land presented by hf gear american made purpose built hunting and fishing gear that's designed to be as rugged as the places

we explore the being within communing with past ages tells me that once nor Lately, there was no white man on this continent, that it then belonged to the red man, children of the same parents, placed on it by the great spirit that made them to keep it, to traverse it, to enjoy its productions, and to fill it with the same race, once a happy race, since made miserable by the white people who are never contented but always encroaching. The way and the only way to check and stop this evil is, all red men to unite in claiming a common and equal right in the land as it was at first and should be yet for it never was divided but belongs to all for the use of each for no part has a right to sell

even to each other much less to strangers those who want all and will not do with less Tacomsa spoken to William Henry Harrison in 1810. Tacomsa, I'd like you to take an inventory of everything you know about him. Did you know what tribe he was from, when he was alive? Have you heard of towns or businesses or people named after him? If you're an American, I'm certain you've heard his name. And if you're into how things came to be as they are on this continent, you'll want to know what he did.

And if things had just gone slightly different for him, these contiguous United States we know today would have an Indian nation occupying the likes of what is now, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin, maybe even bigger. Tacomsa commanded the largest Native American forces ever rallied against the United States, larger even than any of the Indian Wars of the West.

And, interesting to me, Tacomsa is considered by many to be one of the greatest orators in American history. That's right, all of American history. I'm in search of learning who this man was and what drove him to his death on the battlefield on a cool October day in 1813. His passing scattered to the winds the unified Native American forces and marked the end of their most serious resistance east of the Mississippi. and soon after, most of the weakened tribes moved west. Tecumse's death was the end of an epoch of governance of the great Native American civilizations in the eastern one-third of this continent.

But much of his life doesn't make sense to me, and I need answers. Well, why don't we begin with the paradox of Tecumse being, for most of his life, an enemy of the United States, but being one of the most celebrated people of that era by Americans, put on stamps, the statues to him. Now, why would that be? Why would he be so celebrated in the country he'd fought against? That was the voice of New York Times best-selling author Robert Morgan. He was also the author of the Boone biography, which me and Steve Ronella love so much. I'm after the answer to his question. Why did our young country love this man who would today be labeled a domestic terrorist?

But let's get things straight from the beginning. We're all going to have to gather up and put on our learning caps if we even want to pretend to understand what was actually going on with the Kumseh. If you want to listen to some soft rock and scroll through TikTok, then this series probably isn't going to be your favorite. So, first of all, you can't talk about Tacomsa without talking about his brother, Tinsquadoa, also known as the Prophet. These boys are inseparable and started a movement or a revolution that sought to stifle the expansion of the United States and unite the Indian tribes like never before into one Indian nation, a pan-Indian confederacy. Bam, that's it.

That's the term you got to remember. Pan-Indian Confederacy. It's everything in this story. But Tecumse's life was so much bigger than just being a military leader. He was called a genius by U.S. President William Henry Harrison. We're now going to hear from Dr. Dave Edmonds at the University of Texas at Dallas. He's a distinguished author with more accolades related to Native American history than we've got room to tell. He's going to help set the context for Tecumse's life. I mean, first of all, Tecumse's a remarkable man. He's one of the few Native American leaders that his opponents at the time admired.

You almost never find any kind of historical reference to Tecumse that's negative. And the more you read about him, in some ways, it's sort of hard to do a biography of him, because he kind of transcends history and folklore, and this figure emerges out of there. when the movement first starts, he's not mentioned. Everything that's mentioned is this prophet, this prophet, this strange man. And so as time went on, I begin to realize that the movement starts sort of as a religious movement by DeComse's brother. And at this time, things are very bad for tribal people in the Midwest.

I mean, they're losing their lands. There have been a lot of diseases that have swept through. Some of them have been picked up and parting, beginning to move them west. Things are just going very bad. It seems like the world is kind of collapsing around them. And the Shonis believe that there are two forces in the world. There's the master of life, which is the major power in the universe. What you want out of life is harmony to live the way the master of life wants you to live.

But there's a bad force in it, too, the great serpent. and these forces by back and forth. And many of them believe that by the early 1800s that the Great Serpent was gaining the upper ground. The Great Serpent was gaining the upper ground. When you look at what was happening to their civilization, it's hard to argue with their synopsis. In the preceding 400 years as much as 80% of the Native American population was killed by disease, brought over by Europeans, let alone the, the amount killed in warfare. Perhaps some Norse colonies were established in North America as early as 1,000 BC,

but systematic European exploration and colonization began in the late 1400s. My friend Taylor Kean of the Omaha tribe says that the idea that Europeans landed in an uninhabited wilderness just isn't true. There was no wilderness, but rather a great civilization. But the worldview of the inhabitants, their land ethic, and every possible ideology of how a human should live, was different than the Europeans. To them, it looked like wilderness. To the Native Americans, it looked like a well-ordered, established civilization.

Primarily because of disease brought over by Europeans, the great Native American cities dried up. And with it, their history, their tradition, their ability to protect themselves, their economies. They were sapped dry by an invisible enemy. These are the words of Tinsquodawa, the prophet Tecumse's brother. A wind blew west over the Atlantic, driving before it a frothy foam or scum. It blew this scum, which was evil and unclean upon the shore of the American continent, and the scum took form. The form that it took was that of a white man, of many white men.

of many white people, both men and women. Wherever the scum lodged on the shore of the continent, it took this form. The Native Americans knew their civilization was in trouble. In the 1760s, a Delaware prophet named Neoland proclaimed that, quote, the whites would be wiped from the continent. Game animals would return in abundance, and the earth would become an Indian paradise. end of quote. As a civilization, they were clearly looking for a remedy against this threat. They were looking for a way forward. And going back to what Tenskwawa said, this kind of language

today spoken about any race of people is pretty rough. But looking at the situation 200 years later, and knowing the broken treaties and the outright atrocities committed by the American government towards the tribes, his reasoning seems logical. It's kind of mind-boggling to me. And I'm not bringing these things up as racial or political statements, so I wouldn't let them tickle either of those taters. I love America and am deeply grateful to be an American. No doubt. But it's unrealistic to view the America we know today without acknowledging that it came at the cost of almost extirpating a pre-existing civilization of people. That's just the way it happened. And as a separate idea, I don't view this story as their history and our history, as in Native American and white European.

I mean, most of my descendants were white Europeans, but the Native American influence on early American identity as undeniable and significant. The America that emerged in the 19th century was radically influenced by Native Americans. I think the difference between Europeans today and the gritty, close to the land, American identity, that lives in so many of the people that I know in love in this America is linked to that Native American influence. Hang with me. Daniel Boone was America's earliest non-political folk hero and archetype because of, I believe, and many others,

the Native American influence on his life. Indians taught Daniel Boone how to be Daniel Boone. And Daniel Boone taught us a lot about American identity. Dad Gubbitt, that guy deep, Quick, but we have to set the stage. And this isn't an easy one. All this is important because it forms the context of Tecumse's life. He was born into a literal war zone and a cultural war zone in the spring of 1768.

The circumstances around his birth are quite extraordinary. This is the voice of author Peter Kozans. He's a leading historian on the life of Tecumseh after he wrote a book called Tecumse. and the prophet. I think it's a really great book. One of the interesting dates in Tecumse's life is indeed his birth date, you know, for two reasons. He was born just after this comet shot through the air over the skies of the southern Ohio. And one of Tecumse's mother's friends saw that, and that became part of his name. Yeah. Tecumse is a short form of a larger Shawnee word, meaning one who passes across.

the Comsa belonged to the Panther clan. At the time, 12 clans among the Shawnee, most of them were named for animals. Depending on the clan you were born into, you were expected to emulate the traits of the animal. And panthers were very common in the forest. Right, Mountain lions. Yeah, they were very common.

That would have been a common predator in that time. And, you know, the traits of the panther were stealth, strength, speed. And those were traits that you're expected. to emulate if you were a boy. So in Tecumse's case, he who passed a cross would have been a celestial panther crossing the sky from one end of the earth to the other. And so it was, in his case, a panther crossing the sky. Tecumse's name means a panther crossing the sky. How cool is that? But the pronunciation of his name is elusive. They say that it was probably closer to Tecumpt Thiff,

with a thiff on the end of it, which is odd to our ear. A man today could only wish he was named after a panther comet. Celestial signs in the sky at the birth of people who become great is very interesting to me. Mark Twain was born under the tailings of Haley's Comet in 1835. Jesus was born under an unusually bright star that some believe was a planetary conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn appearing close together. Some would chalk off the account of Tecumse's birth comet to folklore, but the story was relayed by multiple sources who knew Tecumse. Any way you slice it, the Panther clan of the Shaanese were thought to be the best hunters and warriors.

It's recorded, folklore or no folklore, I don't really care, that Pucksin-Waw, Tecumse's father, in accordance with Shawnee tradition, buried Tecumse's ambelical cord with the antler of a young buck to help him grow into a mighty hunter. Man, I wish I'd known that trick when my kids were born. Here is Shawnee Chief Ben Barnes on Tecumse's childhood. You know, when I think about Tecumse, I think about the child that he must have been. And growing up in that family,

one of those families were starting to disappear. By that I mean is the way that you understand your family is different the way that I understand my family. It's actually the way that you, understand your family is different than the way that most of the world understands their family. I see a lot of disconnect in the dominant society where folks don't keep in touch with family. Well, in traditional communities, in Tacomps's traditional community, all of his mama's sisters would have been his moms. All of his dad's brothers would have been his dads. He would have had

a score of grandparents or more. All of those siblings that are coming out of these, that we would call it, you and I would call cousins are his siblings. And so he had, he had that. You and I would call, this huge family wrapped around, imagine if you were wrapped around by that much family. You know, in the times we live in now, having that big of a nurturing community, you know, would have a lot of value. We don't feel so separate and isolated.

So that was the child he grew up to be. He sees the beginnings of that community being shattered, him and other disaffected young men as teenagers. They're seeing the lessons of people like Blue Jacket and others. It's like, yeah, yeah, look at what we did, battle, you know, at Sinclair's defeat. Look at that. We can do this.

Growing up being a young man, say, how come they're talking about appeasement again? How come they're trying to, what they want to do anything they can to stay in Ohio? Well, that didn't sit well with some of those young men. So it's thinking about him as a person, you know, and starting with, you know, what that community looked like and how that community is in the process of shattering in front of his very eyes. DeCompses foundations come at a time when Shawnee communities were being shattered. To understand the social dynamics of really what was happening in the Native American communities, their social structure is essential to understand.

But what built Tecumse's functional identity wasn't nearly as romantic, but tragic. Tecumseh. Tecumse was born in Chilicothe, Ohio. Nobody's really sure. His father and mother attended a conference that the Shawnee leadership had called at the Shawnee Village of Chilicothe, which is a bit distant from modern-day Chilli-Cothe, closer to Zinio, Ohio than it is Chilacophie. So they were experiencing these initial inroads into Kentucky,

initial probing along the Ohio River from Virginia, surveyors and others were starting to stake out land in the Ohio Valley. And so the Shawnee leadership got together to pose a question, should we stay here or should we migrate west of Mississippi? And so Tecumse's father, Pocchionois, and his mother attended this conference while she was like eight plus months pregnant. So at the time of his birth, literally his family was in the midst of deciding what to do about these European interlopers coming into our land that we've had for time immemorial. Not long.

They had it at one time, but then they'd lost it to the Uruguay. Just come back to it from there, that diaspora that happened in the 1600s just reclaimed it. And now here we have a potential. new thread. And I mean, even though the trickle of whites coming into the country was just at a trickle, a lot of the shiny could kind of see the handwriting on the wall. History is more complex than an easy narrative. Some recorded that Tecumseh was born two arrow flights southeast of Chilacothe, Ohio. I like that unit of measurement. In the big picture, the Native American people had been, quote, here since time immemorial, essentially means.

meaning so far back that it can't be traced. However, in a shorter view, the Shawnees had just returned to the section of Ohio, and now it was illegally filling up with English colonists. This was before America was America. It was 1768, and the American Revolution wouldn't happen until the mid-1770s. The land was literally and lawfully owned by the Native Americans, but it was really messy. And in order to understand the situation, one has to stop themselves, from seeing the current structure of the United States, and imagine another country coming to our America today and literally stealing our land and building their government.

It would not be any different. The native people were in personal crisis. Can you imagine the stress? And Tacomsa was born right in the thick of it, but was riddled with his own personal crisis, a string of war-related deaths of importance. important figures in his life. So, Tecumse is born 1768, and he's born right in the beginning heat of European movement

into Indian territory west of the Appalachian Mountains. And Tecumse's life, if you had a landscape version of his life the first 20 years, you would see an incredible amount of instability. So the chief, the main leader of the Shani's dies cornstalk, who would have been influential in his life. then his father dies. And then he's kind of semi-adopted by Blackfish, who's another Shawnee leader, who also is killed in battle.

So by the time Tacumsa is a teenager, three very influential men in his life have been killed essentially at war, or straight up murdered. Last spring, Clay Newcomb and I collaborated with Jason Phelps at Phelps game calls in building each of our own favorite turkey diaphragms called Prime Cuts.

Now, I'm going to tell you, I love mine because it's easy to use. I'm not going to win a turkey calling contest. It's just not going to happen. But when I run this call, I get the sounds that gobblers are looking for. I have a great turkey hunting track record. If you go listen to real turkeys out in the woods, they're not going to win calling contests, right? That's who I listen to.

I can make those sounds on my cut. I also hunt with Phelps's cut, and I hunt with Clay's cut because they're all three great cuts. Check out Prime Cuts at Phelps gamecalls.com. I think you'll be glad you did, and you'll find out that the Steve Ronella cut is an easy-to-use cut for beginning callers who just want to start making good turkey noises and getting action. Tecumse was six years old when his father died at the Battle of Point Pleasant in West Virginia in 1774. His older brother, Chisacua, was there. and buried him in the forest near where he fell. Can you imagine burying your dad in the forest?

He was charged by his father to raise his younger siblings and fight for Indian lands. Chisacua would have great influence on the child, Tacomsa. He considered it an honor to fall in battle, and Chisacua said, quote, he didn't wish to be buried at home like an old squaw, but preferred the fowls of the fowls of the year. year should pick his bones. These words would be like an injection of lightning

into the identity and worldview of a child. And in 1792, Chisaqua, Tecumse's older brother, would also die in battle. Tecumse would have been 24 years old. The sting and stench of death hovered over this man like a fog. But that wasn't all. And adding to that, the most important woman in his life has gone. Because when he was still a boy, his mother picked up and with almost half

the Shawnee, this was during the course of the Revolutionary War, were being pushed north. And about a thousand of the Shawnee just upped and decided to move west of the Mississippi into what was then Spanish Louisiana and take advantage of an offer by the Spaniards to come live there basically as a buffer against hostile plains Indians. So she left. I mean, She abandoned her kids. She banned, and Ticomsa and his younger brother were left to be brought up, essentially by Blackfish while he lived, by Tecumse's older sister, Tecum Pise, and her husband. What do you make of his mother leaving him?

That didn't compute with me. It didn't compete with me either. It still doesn't. The Shawnee, generally speaking, and they not only doted on their children, but they deeply loved their children. And they had family with the Shawnee and the other tribes in Midwest, it was family first, then clan, then what they call, what we call division, which is a number of clans that shared a similar sort of function within Shawnee society, and then you were Shawnee. And just after that, you're an Indian. And for a mother to abandon, I mean, she was sacrificing

their patrimony, maybe because she was so bereft at having lost her husband, but she was, she was following her own clan. I guess any way you look at it, it would be the result of a society that's in crisis. Absolute crisis. Falling apart. So that is the foundation of this young Tecumse's life. Absolutely. Born into a time of turmoil and raised in a time of constant warfare

and chaos and uncertainty. And that becomes the foundation for everything that he's going to do and fight for in the future. And it's so interesting to me when you think about the response that people have to crisis. because presumably there were many in that society and other societies that have fallen apart.

In today's society, our society, that in some ways is breaking apart, is there's people that respond very negatively to that and it weakens them or causes them to break up. But then inside of Tecumse's life, there was a response of to become a great leader and to project a way forward. That's exactly what Ticumse would do along with his brother Tenskwadawa. Project a way forward. Understanding the very personal nature of a disintegrating society is essential to the Native American story. And when you see the strategic plans by the United States government to destroy Indian culture, it's mind-boggling. In 1803, President Thomas Jefferson declared an empire of liberty.

and in a confidential letter to the governor of the Indiana Territory and the future president, William Henry Harrison, Jefferson wrote, quote, We wish to draw the Indians into agriculture. When they withdraw themselves to the culture of a small piece of land, they will perceive how useless to them are their extensive forests and be willing to pair them off in exchange for necessities from their farms and families. To promote this disposition to exchange lands, we shall push our trading houses and be glad to see them run up debt, because when these debts get beyond what the Indians can pay, they will be willing to lock them off by session of lands. In this way, our settlements will gradually circumscribe and approach the Indians, and they will either incorporate with us as citizens of the United States or remove beyond the Mississippi. Should any tribe be full-hearty enough to take up the hatchet, the seizing of the whole country of that tribe, and drive them across the Mississippi as the only condition of peace, would be an example to others and a furtherance of our final consolidation?

End of quote. The United States government was literally trying to take the hunt out of the Indians through agriculture. They will perceive how useless to them are their extensive forests. I don't like the sound of that. And in some ways, it feels like that's happening today too. I'm telling you, we're going to learn a lot of stuff from Tacomsa. In 1795, he would refuse to sign the Treaty of Greenville. It really ticked him off because it redrew Indian-line lands.

But even more egregious, Harrison, William Henry Harrison, would later make treaties with multiple tribes, pitting them against each other, and in the Treaty of St. Louis in 1804, he purchased 51 million acres for less than a penny per acre. That's just one of hundreds of treaties. This wasn't highway robbery. They were carjacked and left for dead on the road. This was the world Tacompsa emerged in. But the muck gets even deeper when it comes to losing land.

Here's Dr. Dave Edmonds. The Shawnees believe that they occupy, and many tribal people believe, they occupy the center of the world. Where they live is the center of the world. But the Shawnees, the Ohio Valley is the center of the world. And they were basically given that land to be theirs. I think there's something else to understand here within the framework of many tribal cultures. Where you live, your location is very, very important to people. Many tribal religions are sites specific in that their gods, the powers in the universe basically hold forth in this area.

If you pick them up and move them to another place, you're taking them away from their gods. Forced relocation, whether by threat of violence or later by organized removal, would be philosophically different for Native Americans than Europeans. Recently, these Europeans had traversed the Atlantic and came to an entirely new land of promise. Their connection to the land was primarily utilitarian and governed by a modern idea of individual land ownership, modern compared to a hunter-gatherer society. This idea of personal land ownership is an abstract idea and completely oppositional and confusing to the Native American worldview. In Chief Seattle's famous speech, he spells out their land ethic well. He said, quote, how can you buy or sell the sky, the warmth of the land?

The idea is strange to us. If we do not own the freshness of the air and the sparkle of the water, how can you buy them? End of quote. This would be like you're standing in your yard and a soccer game forms out of thin air around you. And you don't know the rules. But the rules of the game actually violate your conscience and worldview. But if you lose, you lose your house. Here's Peter Cozons.

We're now going to start to describe Tecumse's unique young life and we'll see that hunting was a very important part of it. Continuing to talk about Tecumse when he was young. To me, it's one of the most interesting parts of his life. I mean, all the stuff he did when he was older is what he became famous for. Right. But, and he was known as a great hunter. There were multiple stories when he was 16 years old.

Supposedly he went on a buffalo hunt, killed 16 buffalo on his own with a bow and error. Right. He was with a group of, included his younger brother, Tengswatawa, who they placed bets on who could kill the most bison. To Combs, they ended up killing more than all of the others put together. So he was. Yeah. And there was another time when there was a challenge to see who could kill the most deer in like a three-day period. And Tacomso went out and it said he killed 40 deer, which

that's one of those stories that I kind of have a little bit of hard time. Or I can't put the pieces together of how. I can't either. I mean, we already put them all. I mean, this is, no, that one strikes me as apocryphal. Well, but I think what we can take away from that is that his reputation as a hunter in the whole Shawnee Nation eventually. Right. would be very established. Exactly. And it was believed to be one of the best hunters in the whole Shawnee Nation. Yeah, the number of deer or buffalo that he killed is really irrelevant.

What's relevant is that he was seen by others as being far much they're better in what was one of the two most important things in male Indian society, hunting and warmaking. It was said that Tecumse loved solitude, which was unusual for the highly social shawnees. He learned to purify his breath with sastafras as a means of scent control when big game hunting, and he would ask the spirits of the animals he killed for forgiveness. This was standard Shawnee stuff. Speaking of hunters, a very interesting component of Tecumse's life is that it overlapped in a unique way with the life of the American folk hero and Bear Greece Hall of Famer Daniel Boone. You can't make this stuff up. Do you? You can't make this stuff up.

you remember when Boone was adopted by the Shawnee Blackfish? Here's Robert Morgan. That's a fascinating overlap. So Blackfish was Boone's adopted father. So Boone was adopted by Blackfish when Boone was in its 40s, I think. And so, and then Blackfish was a father figure to Tecumse. And so they had, you know, kind of this overlapping father. And then Tecumseh would have been a young man but was involved in the Battle of the Blue Licks. He would have been 16 at the Battle of the Blue Licks. Okay, a teenager.

No, no, 14, I'm sorry. Wow. And we know for sure he was at the Battle of Blue Licks. Yeah, that's incredible. And that's where Boone lost his son, and it was one of the biggest train wrecks of Boone's kind of frontier career was Blue Licks. And Ticcumsa was there, which is wild.

Boone was 34 years old when Ticumse was born in 1768. In 1778, Tacumsa would have been 10 years old and was basically being fathered by Blackfish when Boone and his men were making salt on the licking river and were captured by

Blackfish. Boone stayed with the tribe for four months. He ran the gauntlet and was officially adopted by Blackfish and given the Shawnee name of Shell Tawee, or Big Turtle. Boone would later recount to his son Nathan,

how blackfish would suck on a sugar cube and then hand it to him to eat. Boone said he would often give children in the village treats, and it's very possible that the 10-year-old Tacomsa would have known old D.B. How wild is that? Boone would eventually escape, but in 1882, he would meet the Shawnees in the Battle of the Blue Licks in Kentucky, where his son Israel would be killed, and Tecumse was there in that battle.

Here's Peter Cozons with an incident that physically branded young Tecumse's life. DeCumse, when he was 21 years old, they're going to go on a bison hunt. Tecumse, his enthusiasm kind of overcomes his prudence, and he falls from his horse in the course of chasing down a bison and shatters his thigh bone. and he during the long winter months, he's unable to rise from, you know, his bear skin or buckskin bed in their temporary wigwam. I mean, he was wrapped in blankets. He was wracked with pain. And for the only time in his life that I've found any mention of this, he fell into a deep depression.

He became deeply despondent because he thought, you know, if he were to emerge a cripple, he would be no use as a hunter. as a warrior. I mean, essentially, he would be no use to his people. And he actually contemplated suicide rather than the prospect of living on the charity of others. And when the spring came and his older brother urged to Comsa to stay in their camp until he mended enough to resume the trip west of the Mississippi, you know, wait for others to come back for him. But instead, he fashioned the crude pair of crutches and followed along with Chesa Cal and the others. But he paid a high price for that, for his bullheadedness, and that he, in walking on his leg before the thigh was completely healed, he developed a permanent limp. It troubled him for the rest of his life.

Yeah, so his whole life, people talk about that. When he's meeting with U.S. military generals and people comment on, he'll be the one with the limp. He'll be the one with the limp. We're continuing to build the pieces of Tecumse's life that will add up to how he became the most influential Indian leader in American history. These small stories matter. It seems like everybody in history that's famous was always, you know, three inches taller than the average guy. It was said that he was about 5-11, which would have been fairly tall.

A bit taller. They said he was kind of stocky and muscular. He stood out amongst a crowd. of Shawnee's. And he had a real striking face. Everybody commented on that, you know, the white friends he made, American enemies, his British and Canadian allies, all commented on how striking his looks were, not only his physical carriage, but also his features, his eyes, his nose.

He was a handsome man and had a real striking charismatic quality about his appearance. That appealed to Indians and to whites. I think it's so interesting because before there were photographs that could be put on the internet or put in a newspaper, when people gave account of meeting someone, they would describe them. And great detail. And any more as journalists or if we're writing a report, if you wanted to tell it, somebody looked like, you'd just put their picture there.

But I think it's so fascinating when I read because all these guys, there's many accounts of different people describing the way to come to look. And they do these metaphors or they get very descriptive in their vocabulary. Yeah. His piercing or burning eyes that could suddenly turn jolly in an instant. And just a level of description, yeah, you would never see today. A federal government official who interacted with the Kumsa said that he was, quote, too heavily built to be swift on foot, but all together formed for strength and to endure great hardships.

Yet another American officer said, quote, he was one of the. finest looking men I ever saw, about six feet high, straight, with large, fine features. Stephen Riddell was a white kid who was captured as a child. He knew English and he was raised as a sibling to Ticumse. He was the one that taught Ticumse English. Anyway, Riddell later said of Ticumsa, quote, There was something in his countenance and manner that always commanded respect. and at the same time made those about him love him.

Later in life, Tecumseh would have shoulder-length black hair and always wore a nose ring. In later years, he showed up to official meetings with government officials wearing a cloth headdressing with a white ostrich feather. In 1808, during the rise of Tecumse's fame, a French fur trader dude, not surprisingly named Pierre, sketched the most realistic imagery we have of. the Shawnee. This was before photographs. It's the only portrait believed to accurately depict him. There are, however, today many updated versions of the sketch. And to put this next section into context, starting when Ticumse was a teenager, he was involved in many battles, skirmishes, and raids of all kinds. He wasn't involved in an official war until the war of 1812, but he lived in a war zone filled with garage.

rila warfare his whole life. And in warfare, like in hunting, he stood out amongst his peers. Here's a very interesting part of Tecumse's character. This was not unique to the Shawnee, but again, the other tribes all faced a similar crisis of being confronted by growing and growing white encroachment on their lands. And with that came the whiskey traders and that really tore apart Shawnee and other societies and others became, you know, rabidly hateful of whites. Tecumseh didn't do either. He not only he maintained his humanity through all this.

He opposed the traditional shawney practice of torturing male prisoners. During times of peace, the times of peace that existed, well, he developed great friendships among white settlers on the other side of the treating line. And so he maintained, you know, he didn't let the war and this local creating him a hatred of whites or a loss of his humanity. And that's something that's also really admirable on him. One of the things he was known for was, even from a young age, having he disdained the torture that was extremely common. When you think about a trend inside of a society, to find somebody that deeply opposes a trend is unusual. And where he got that,

I mean, I guess we don't really know. know, and that trait manifests itself in him at age 15 when he was on one of his first war parties. And that was an age when you were like just an apprentice warrior. I mean, you, you were basically a menial to a war party. You were kind of their errand boy. When he was on this one particular war party along the Ohio River, he spoke up and objected loudly to the older warriors, torturing and and then killing some white male prisoners. And that was unheard of. I mean, Stephen Riddell relates that and said,

this was just something that was not done. Culturally unusual. Culturally unusual. After all we've heard about the fog of death surrounding his life and these broken treaties, I find it odd how he was able to get along with the whites. And his passion for the Indian Confederacy and the development of an Indian nation

didn't seem to translate and translate into hatred or vitriol. This was evidenced by his stance on prisoner torture and some of his unique relationships that he had with white people throughout his whole life. He just wanted a space for his people to live in their traditional ways. And he always sought peace before war.

Remember that about him, because you hear about him as a warrior, but he always sought peace before war. He was an incredible diplomat who was truly looking out for the best interests of his people. Getting back to our original question of why this enemy of the United States was a folk hero, these kind of things would have gotten back to the American public and they respected him for it. Sadly, his popularity would grow even more after his death as his story was more widely circulated.

As we move further into Tecumse's young life, you might be wondering if he had a wife and kids, but like in so many other ways, Tecumseh was unusual. I mean, there's two schools of thought among those who knew him personally. Stephen Riddell said girls in particular were attracted to him when he was growing up, but that he would, I mean, he would not have much to do with them. But whatever the case, he certainly found it easy to break off relationships. I mean, when he and his older brother were living among a group of the Cherokee, he took a Cherokee woman as his mate, who by all accounts was very pretty. And he may have bore her a child. but when his brother said it's time for us to move back to Ohio,

he just left her behind. And when he married Shawnee Women, his first wife was not at all attractive, and he jettisoned her easily. He jettisoned another wife because shortly after marrying her, he invited some friends over for dinner, and she had not plucked turkey, if I recall, a wild turkey, had not plucked all the feathers out.

And he, I guess he was looking for an excuse, and he said, well, how dare you embarrass me? It was in front of my friends. You're banished. Go back to your family. family and threw her out. So women didn't seem to be particularly important to him until later on when he was living in what became known as Prophetstown. By this time, he would have been around age 40, according to some accounts left by members of other tribes who knew him. He was, I mean, he had a

different woman in his wigwam every night. So maybe he just was a little late. Something changed. So to come so, yeah, he was not a family man. man by any sense. And that's so ironic because what we see is this is this man who deeply loved the traditional ways of the Shawnee. He wanted that. So you would, you would think this man really valued the traditional Native American way of living.

Yeah, it is kind of eccentric. It is very much so. And maybe that's partly what gave him the energy or maybe it was the energy in the drive to establish this pan-Indian community that just so much so important to him that is, It subsumed personal desires on this part. Very interesting. So now we understand the chronology of Tecumse's young life. Now he's an adult, and this is where things get dicey.

You thought that other stuff was dicey. This is the Genesis story of he and his brother's revolution and the pan-Indian confederacy. By 1805, the Indians of the Midwest were, I mean, they were being pushed onto an ever-decreasing amount of land. And so in 1805, Tecumse to a younger brother, Tengswatawa, had this vision that at the time he was an absolute ne'er-do-well alcoholic. And he collapsed into this trance so deeply that Tecumse and others thought he was dead. He emerged from that, proclaiming that he had had a vision of what was about to befall the Indians, which was ultimately, you know, complete disaster. annihilation if they didn't return to traditional values and that they were being punished for

what was happening to them. It wasn't the fault of the whites. It was because they themselves had wandered off the spiritually correct path of living. This pan-Indian religious movement grew up around Tengs Latawa, and he became really the most influential prophet in American Indian history, and prophets and prophecy were very important in American Indian way of life. and one who was recognized as a genuine prophet who genuinely had communications with the great spirit, the master of life, God, was accorded a great deference. This pan-Indian religious movement is so important to understanding Tacumsa and Tinsquodawa. I want to hear Dr. Dave Edmunds speak about it. They who had been, they called themselves, we were once the masters of the Ohio Valley.

we've lost things? What's happening here? We've strayed. Well, then on a sudden comes this man who has this vision, who was a Tenskwitawa, the Shawnee Prophet, is a man of not much reputation before he has this vision. And he has this, falls into this sort of trance, and he falls over into, in his wigwama, his wife is preparing a meal. In fact, he almost falls into a fire. And they think he's died and then he comes back and he says I've I have been taken to heaven and I've seen what it's like and I know what we need to do and we need to get away from these white ways we need to give up drinking and we need to hunt only with bows and arrows we can use we can use firearms to protect us but we need to go back to the old ways we need to wear clothing that's made of

traditional skins or our own fabrics etc and then regulation about how fire could be started. He said fire could only be started with sticks. And he begins to preach this. On Blood Trails, the stories don't end when the hunt is over. They just get darker. I've seen something in the road. I instantly thought it was a sleeping bed and there was a full of blood. Oh my God, he doesn't have a hit. Blood Trails is a true crime podcast born in the outdoors, where the terrain is unforgiving, the evidence is scarce, and the truth gets buried. under brush and silence. Indications were he should be right there, but he wasn't.

This season, we're going deeper. From cold case files to whispered suspicions, from remote mountains to frozen backwoods. Each story begins in the wilderness and ends in darkness. Because out here, there are no witnesses, no cameras, just fragments and the people left behind trying to piece them back together. He's not an honest person. He's incapable of being honest.

Somebody somewhere knows something. I'm Jordan Sillers. Season 2 of Blood Trails premieres April 16th. Follow now on Apple, Iheart, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. In 1805, Tensquadoa's spiritual message of returning to the traditional Indian ways begins to spread. Remember, by this time, white technology had rapidly taken hold in native communities through Jefferson's trade agenda and others. But the message is a combination of Tensquadoa's own doctrine and some preceding Native American prophets. It proclaimed a need for repentance in order to be connected back with the Great Spirit.

It involved intricate specifics of how Indians should live. One that I thought was interesting was that they needed to have a constantly burning fire in their wigwams, which symbolized rebirth in a new faith. Tinsquadoa said, quote, summer and winter, day and night, in the storm or when it is calm, you must remember that life in your body and fire in your lodge are the same. End of quote. But the fire couldn't be started with the white man's flint and steel. It had to be started with sticks and burn year round.

Misty Newcomb is always cold, so she would love it if we did this at our house. And it also reminds me of the home fires of rural frontier America. That was a real thing. People kept fires burning year round as a spiritual or philosophical statement. Anyway, the doctrine in the words of Peter Cozen's was a syncretic creed of spiritual and cultural renewal. Here is an interesting aside. This Indian revival coincided with and was a lot like. the Christian revivals happening at the same time on the frontier.

Here's Robert Morgan. And what I want to say is that he and the other Indians are at that time mirror almost perfectly the revival preachers of the Second Great Awakening, which is happening this time. The metaphors are the same. You've got to repent. You've been doing the wrong thing. You've got to humble yourself. And they're saying this to the Indians.

He's saying it to the Indians. and the revival preachers that say it to the white people. Yes. To get a seed in heaven, to bring the millennium, you've got to do this. And DeCompsi is saying to the Indians,

you've got to repent, you've got to give up your sinful ways to achieve this paradise on earth. But another thing I want to say is that even the prophet was inspired by a lot of the preaching and the tradition of Christianity. These really mirror each other

that these cultures had mixed to that extent that the prophet said things that the Indians had never heard before from other holy men. And they resemble amazingly, you know, the things that would have been heard in a sermon been read in Christianity. And in the other direction,

that tremendous Indian oratory inspires the white preachers, and they pick up a lot of the tricks and rhetoric on them. And this goes into the 20th century. It's cliche to say that the ghost dance religion ended with a wounded knee. It didn't. It's still with us.

It never went away. And preachers like Oral Roberts and almost all of those revival preachers have Indian blood. So that influence, it's just one of the many ways in which Indian culture influenced white culture as much as the other way around, the white culture, influencing Indian culture. Very interesting. We'll continue to see how Indian oratory affected the speech and communication of the American frontier. Here's Peter with more on the genuine nature of Tenskwadawa's personal transformation. Alcoholics Anonymous could learn a lot from Tengsvatawa because literally he was, the evening he had his vision hunched over the campfire.

in his wigwam, in the early spring, cold. He was still an alcoholic at that moment. And he emerged from his seemingly comatose state, not only articulating the initial points of his doctrine of spiritual rebirth. From the moment he emerged from that vision, he never took another drop of drink the rest of his life. You know, I've talked to doctors who read my book, and others, and this is no way to explain it through rational.

Something genuine happened to him spiritually. By all accounts, his transformation produced genuine lifelong change. He became a traveling evangelist, but here is the meat of what Tecumse did that made him who he was. DeCumse essentially co-opted his brother's movement and turned it into a political and military alliance around 1808. And he said, you know, look, we have to not only return to traditional values, as my brother is saying, we also have to band together as the need arises politically in military. We are one people eating from the same bowl with the same spoon, and we cannot

continue to yield to the white men and give up land piecemeal. And if we do, we're all going to be driven into the Great Lakes, and that'll be the end of us. We're one people eating from the same bowl with the same spoon, Tecumseh said. Indian speech constantly used powerful metaphor. He and Tinsquadoa increased in power with many of the tribes in the Midwest and Great Lakes regions, unlike Indians ever had. Tensquadoa was the spiritual leader,

and Tecumseh was his mouthpiece, almost like Aaron and Moses in the Bible. Aaron spoke for Moses to Pharaoh and to the people. Here's a unique thing. Signs and wonders. seem to follow these two, kind of like Aaron and Moses. I'll let you decide what you think. Here's a look into the government's original plan

to discredit this Indian prophet who was gaining so much traction with the tribes. William Henry Harrison, who was the governor of Indiana and had the Northwest Territory there, and I said, you've got to do something about this. And so he issues this speech. Why are you following this crazy man? He's not holy.

he is just a false prophet. If he really is a prophet, ask him to bring the dead back. Ask him to make the rivers run backward. Ask him to make the sun stand still. And what Harrison obviously does not know or overlooks it, is that there is a eclipse coming. Whether the prophet knew it or not, that's the question. I can't believe that he knew it.

But anyway, in June, a big eclipse right across the Midwest. West, so in the mid-day, and it gets so dark that the bird's nest and farm animals go into the barn. And the prophet says, I tell you, I have made this unsan still. My goodness, it's influenced and it spreads. This is a miracle as far as the tribe. And it spreads. Tinskwada, after he received the challenge from William Henry Harrison, gathered his people and said, quote,

50 days from this day, there will be no cloud in the sky. Yet when the sun has reached its highest point, at that moment, will the great spirit take it into her hand and hide it from us. The darkness of night will thereon cover us, and the stars will shine round about us. The birds will roost, and the night creatures will awaken and stir. End of quote. In June of 1806, there was a solar eclipse that blacked out the sky. Many said that Tinsquadoa was told about the eclipse coming.

Others said it was a miracle. We'll never know. But it did increase Ten Squatawa's fame. But I'll tell you one thing that we do know. Tacomsa would become known as one of the greatest, if not the greatest orators in Native American history. And even in American history. It's hard to quantify because there are no audio recordings of him. But here's Robert Morgan. Tell me about how you said that he was. maybe the greatest orator that this nation's ever seen. I think it's quite likely he was the greatest orator

just because of his power over people. He could inspire really anybody who listened to him. He did run into one Indian who disputed him about the Confederacy, and that was, of all people, Red Eagle. And the legend is that Red Eagle, you know, said to him, he's up there preaching, and everybody was just absolutely swayed by him, And Red Eagle, a very strong personality. He said, you know, you're just full of hot air.

And DeCompis said, you think I don't have the power. When I get back to Detroit, I will stomp my foot, and it will shake your towns down. And he went back to Detroit, and the great earthquake of 1811 came and shook their towns down. Yeah. That's wild. Yeah, he's, what do you make of that? Tin Squatter, I did it, the same thing about, turning the sun black with the eclipse.

But the earthquake, man, do you think he just got lucky? Or do you think he really was, he called that one down? We'll never know. Yeah. He'll never know. Well, that time period, I believe it was 1811, was when all those new Madrid earthquakes started happening up and down the Mississippi River Valley, which made Real Foot Lake in Tennessee. Whatever happened, a lot of earthquakes happened after that.

They just kept happening. There were many afterquakes also. Made the Mississippi run backward for a certain time. It was an enormous earthquake. It was called the Year of Miracles. Tecumseh and his little brother began to amass an influential national following of Native Americans through their doctrine of revival of traditional ways, followed by these signs and wonders. But the other equally important component of their message was a strong, militant,

on no more lands being seated to the United States. The United States took note of this message and its power. However, surprisingly, most of their own, the Shawnees, didn't follow these brothers. Most of their following came from other tribes. Even old J.C. said that a prophet wouldn't be accepted in his hometown. Here's Peter giving more insight into the division amongst the tribes. Tinsquantawa becomes this prophet, recognized, authorized profit inside of the Shani Nation. His brother is this war leader, Hunter.

Talk to me about how they worked together to have influence like they did. And we got to be careful with our terminology because he wasn't really recognized, neither one or recognized as anything by most Shani. Okay. Most of the Shani. There were only about 1,000, maybe 1,200 Shani who still lived in the Midwest at the time. time that Tecumse and Tengsuatoa ascended to power, so to speak, when they became influential. And the great majority of the Shawnee rejected Tengswatawa's doctrine right from the get-go, and subsequently rejected Tukumse, maybe in part, because, again, it was such a small community that most Shawnee knew Tengswatawa as this alcoholic deadbeat.

And the majority of Shawnee lived in a village in northeast and Ohio, under a chief named Blackfoot. And they gravitated to Blackfoot, and they really wanted to assimilate. I mean, they really wanted to walk the white man's road, so to speak. They welcomed farm implements. They welcomed instruction and farming. They were willing to give up the hunt. And what was particularly remarkable about that is that farming was anathema to Indian men.

It was believed that there were two kinds of power that the master of life bestowed upon humans. female power, and that was for women that allowed them to succeed as agriculturists and also in childbearing. And then there was male power that was exclusively useful in the hunt and in war. And those two should never be mixed. I mean, for a man to take up farming alongside a woman would be essentially to give up his male power, his masculinity. This was really tearing down the whole society. The whole fabric society. And so for the, for, for, all these sonny mails to say, okay, we're willing to forego this and, you know, walk the white man's road was pretty remarkable. But they did. Unfortunately, the U.S. government betrayed them

down the road. From afar, it would seem that all Indian tribes would be against selling land and assimilating into white culture. However, that just wasn't the case. This is why Tecumse's rational but radical message to stand against the United States was so wild. The situation was tearing apart the fabric of Indian culture. The people were looking for leadership. They were looking for an answer. Here's Chief Ben Barnes putting Tecumse into context with the other leaders inside of his community. He makes the point that Tecumse was a great leader, but he was result of all the things and leaders that had come before him, making even more sense of who he was. He was really, he was ticked off. He's ticked off and he's a young person and he'd seen leadership.

of the past. So he was not like a formal leader and went through leadership. He was he was a leader that ascended. It's like, listen, we're all mad. We're ticked off. Nobody's doing things about it. We need a military response to this. And of course he wasn't speaking in those terms. But he's just talking, we need to come together and take up arms. But he wasn't all by himself. You know, this is, this is a long line of people leading these fights. Blackfish, Black Hoof even, and Blue Jacket. So he had seen these military campaigns that had just stopped short of drawing a line, the line that King of England had proposed, you know,

this would all be Indian territory west of that line, and that didn't happen. But what's really intriguing to me is he was not alone even at the time that he was leading this revolution, this pan-resistance revolution. His brother, Tinsquatwa, was leading a religious revival. At the same time, you. You have this other movement that's a militarized revival. And what's really intriguing is you have to put both those things into context at the same time where Tecumse is not an appointed leader of all the Chenees.

These are disaffected angry people. And he starts gathering other disaffected angry people to him for this battle. And the communities are like they had some communities in support of his efforts. Some wanted to say, well, let's see how this goes. And then he had some that's like, you know what, we've already. left. So long before Tacomsa started his military campaign, Sean East had already said, you know,

we're out of here. We're leaving Maryland. We're leaving West Virginia. We're leaving Virginia. We're leaving these places in Alabama, Georgia, and moving into Arkansas, Missouri. I find when talking with the chief, he's always placing Tacumsa in the context of his community. We'll talk

a lot more with Chief Barnes in later episodes. But it's clear that the tribe was divided about what to do, and they were looking for leadership and these brothers offered a solution. A milieu or a, what we would call it, a climate there in the Midwest, of whether it's been an awful lot of unrest, and here's an answer, here's an answer. And it spreads.

Well, Tecumse then steps in, and he begins to form a political thing to this. Well, the prophet initially was sort of a white saw the prophet is kind of a crazy man, but not, I mean, he's a threat in some ways. But when Tecumseh comes in and says, we're going to unite, we're going to bring the tribes together, that really frightens the government. Because they want to approach tribal people piecemeal, play tribal people off against each other. And Tecumse says, no, we do not need Potawatomi land, Shawnee land, Delaware land, Kickapoo land, Miami land. We want to have Native American land. It's our land.

and no more land should be seated piecemeal. That's a great threat. That is an incredible threat to a young nation so hungry for land that they'd do anything, and I mean anything. Tecumseh didn't have a choice of when he was born. Was it a blessing or a curse that he was a natural leader, a visionary, an idealist, charismatic, with a magnetic demeanor,

and a heritage that wouldn't allow him to, back down even when standing before great foes. Little did he know that he was fighting a young version of a great giant, a nation that would become the most powerful nation in the history of the planet. If he could see the handwriting on the wall, he didn't care. I can't help but respect that kind of passion and adherence to the vision. In a very ironic way, Tacompsa represents the American spirit of freedom. from oppression and a willingness

to die for that. His indomitability, nobility in the midst of struggle, and insight beyond his time about the unification of his people are traits that mark his life and that we would hope are built inside the national

character of America, which that's massively up for debate whether it is. But hey, we're just getting started. Tacomsa is only in his 30s. We're just scratching the surface of who this guy was and what he did. On part two of this series, we'll get into the warfare years of Tecumse's life. I want to end with a quote from William Henry Harrison,

who was Tecumse's gravest enemy and would eventually become the president of the United States. Here's Peter Cozons. Here's what William Henry Harrison said after his contentious 1811 conference with Tecumse. He said, He wrote this in a letter to the Secretary of War. He said, the implicit obedience and respect which the followers of Tacompsa pay to him is really astonishing, and more than any other circumstance bespeaks him one of those uncommon geniuses which spring up occasionally to produce revolutions and overturn the established order of things. If it were not for the vicinity of the United States,

He would perhaps be the founder of an empire that would rival in glory that of Mexico or Peru. Stay tuned for part two of this series called Uncommon Genius. I can't thank you enough for listening to Fair Greece. I hope these stories are in some way meaningful and impacting to you. Tackling these historical figures is a daunting and intimidating task. and there's some risk involved in today's climate to talk about anything controversial. So I ask that you'd listen to these stories in the manner in which they're intended to be delivered. I want to bring honor to the men that I consider great men and tell the truth of our history without vilifying anybody,

but simply looking back so we can learn. Please do me a favor by leaving us a review on iTunes, and please share Bear Grease with somebody this week. I look forward to talking with everyone on the render on the next episode. Have a great week. On Blood Trails, the stories don't end when the hunt is over. They just get darker. I've seen something in the road. I instantly thought it was a sleeping bag.

And there was a full of blood. Oh, my God, he doesn't have a hit. Blood Trails is a true crime podcast born in the outdoors, where the terrain is unforgiving, the evidence is scarce, and the truth gets buried under brush and silence. Indications were he should be right there, but he wasn't. This season, we're going deeper, from cold case files to whispered suspicions, from remote mountains to frozen backwoods.

Each story begins in the wilderness and ends in darkness. Because out here, there are no witnesses, no cameras, just fragments, and the people left behind trying to piece them back together. an honest person. He's incapable of being honest. Somebody somewhere know something. I'm Jordan Sillers. Season 2 of Blood Trails premieres April 16th.

Follow now on Apple, IHeart, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.