Bear Grease - Ep. 92: Tecumseh - Tecumseh’s Death (Part 3)

Episode Date: February 8, 2023

We’re on the third and final episode in our series on the Shawnee leader, Tecumseh. He’s been called the greatest Native leader in American history, but we’ve found ourselves backed against the bedrock of inevitability. On this side of mortality, all great men and their stories must come to end. On this episode we’ll talk with Peter  Cozzens, Robert Morgan, Dave Edmunds and Shawnee Chief Ben Barnes about that fateful day in October 1813, but perhaps more relevant to us today, we’ll explore the ways in which we remember history sometimes playing tricks with our conscience to console an uncomfortable past. Was the image of the Shawnee reflected back to America really him all? And we’ll contrast the way different cultures view their great men – not everyone does it the same. Lastly, and on the wild meter of interest it’s pinned in the red, Shawnee Chief Ben Barnes will tell us the vision and mission of modern-day Shawnee Nation. Boys, 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.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. First Lights fieldware collection is made for the work that happens long before opening day and continues when the season ends. Products built for early mornings, full days in real use. Hard wearing where they need to be versatile where it matters. No shortcuts. Just gear designed for the work that earns the season.

Built to perform, built to last. Check out. First Light's new field. Worldware gear at firstlight.com. All those stuff written about him, that is pure hogwash. These are 19th century stuff that gets associated with him, sort of to build him up. And he doesn't need it. He stands on his own.

It's a remarkable man. We're on our third and final episode in our series on the Shawnee Leader, Tacumsa. He's been called the greatest native leader in American history, but we've found ourselves backed against the bedrock of in-eastern, On this side of mortality, all great men and their stories must come to an end. This episode is titled Tecumse's death. We'll talk about that fateful day in October 1813, but perhaps more relevant to us today. We'll explore the ways in which we remember history and sometimes play tricks with our conscience to console an uncomfortable past.

was the image of the Shawnee reflected back to America really him at all? And we'll contrast the way different cultures view their great men. Not everybody does it the same. And lastly, on the wild meter of interest, which is pinned in the red, Shawnee Chief Ben Barnes tells us the vision and mission of the modern day Shawnee Nation. I really doubt that you're going to want to miss this one. Really giving American Indians their place in history, American history, you've got to argue that they were two of the most influential siblings in American history period. Who can you compare them to?

My name is Clay Newcomb, and this is the Bear Greece podcast, where we'll explore things forgotten but relevant. Search for insight in unlikely places and where we'll tell the story of Americans who live their lives close to the land. Presented by FHF Gear. American-made, purpose-built, hunting and fishing gear that's designed to be as rugged as the places we explore. This song is called The Last Days of Tecumse by American songwriter Grant Lee Buffalo. The song's lyrics are mysterious and short. In one minute and six seconds, it talks about spacemen and airplanes, but at the heart of the song, he says he couldn't believe all that he knew would fade. The song ends and you wish it was longer.

In many ways, it's like Tecumse's life. Like a dagger piercing your soul, Tecumse's plight for the traditional Indian way of life and lands leaves me gasping for a breath of justice or a hint of fairness in a scenario stacked with an almost undeniable inevitability that's hard to reconcile. It does not escape me that if Tecumps' vision had prevailed, These United States, which I've become fond of, would look much different than they do today,

which leaves me searching deep to evaluate if I really wanted that justice, or does it just make me feel good to look back and cast well wishes on this warrior's vision? We're going to dive right into that faithful day in 1813 when Tecumseh, his men, and a meager British force found themselves pushed into Ontario, Canada, after fighting near Detroit, Michigan. They're in the middle of what would become known as the War of 1812, a fight between Great Britain and the young United States. The war started because of British interference with U.S. trade routes,

but America wanted to own Indian lands and Canada, and both sides had Indian allies fighting with them. But the most influential group was led by the Shawnee, Tecumseh, and his pan-Indian gang fighting with the British. British. Tecumse's legacy is that he garnered the largest fighting force of Native Americans to stand against America. Some believe upwards of 6,000 warriors at its peak. He gathered fighters from at least 12 different tribes to fight for Indian lands through a religious, military, and political revolution. Uniting warriors from the tribes was a feat in and of itself, as they

carried the burden of generations of internal conflict themselves over land. And most of the tribes rejected Tecumse's radical vision of standing against the United States and demanding an Indian nation. Their reasons are as elusive as a clouded sunrise. You know exactly what's happening, but you just can't see it clearly. Some of the tribes were being paid by the United States. Many had already fled west of the Mississippi, and some just knew that this plan wouldn't succeed. Ticompsa wasn't a chief, but he rose to power in the Shawnee world because of his visionary ideology, his personal charisma, his success as a war leader, and his incredible oratory skill. And his striking good looks didn't hurt either, or at least that's what they say about him. However, he wasn't alone.

His brother, Tinskwada, known as the prophet, led the religious side of this revolution and stands as one of the most influential Native American prophets in known history. These boys were fighting for a dying way of life, which was rapidly being choked out by American encroachment. If you listen to the last two episodes, you'd know all this stuff already. Here's author and historian Peter Kozons on Tecumse's death. So Tecumseh, he basically prophes his own death. He has an intuition that this is going to be his last battle that he's going into. Tell me what happens. Yeah, Tecumseh and Tengswatawa, and they're greatly reduced alliance of now just 500 warriors down from, again, nearly 6,000 at the high point.

They're retreating deeper and deeper into Ontario with this very small British force. And they're being pursued by a vastly superior American force under William Henry Harrison, and they're fighting skirmishes all along the way as they're falling back day by day from Detroit, deeper into Ontario. And on the night of October 4th, 1813, Tecumse sitting around the fire with his closest followers, and suddenly,

Tecumse just has a revelation that he's going to be killed in battle the next day. And one of the innias to whom he tells us, his name is Shabona, and there's a fact that a town in Illinois name for him now, who went on to live into the,

I don't know, 1840s at least, you know, recall this, as did others, that, you know, he was, he was going to die the next day. Now, whether that's apocryphal or not, that's what happened. And the next morning, on October 5th, 1813, the British commander, a guy named Proctor, finally decides to stand and fight the Americans. Here's Cornell Professor and author Robert Morgan. A very good British general, very close to DeCompson. General Brock has been recalled and replaced by General Proctor, who is incompetent, basically. He doesn't know how to talk to these men. He certainly doesn't know how to talk to Indians.

They're marching away from the Americans going up toward the River Thames, and Proctor does such a bad job that he divides his men, and he doesn't communicate well with the Indians. And when Harrison arrives, he just essentially runs away and leaves DeCompsi to fight the back. that all the fighting is really done by the Indians. But Harrison is really good. I mean, whatever his reputation is among revisionists, this guy is really smart, and he defeats that group of the hero,

the Battle of the Thames, two other heroes, a colonel named Richard Mentor Johnson is the one who actually kills DeComsy. He's wounded by DeComsy, and he goes in and shoots him at close range and kills him. The supernatural nature of Tecumse's revelation about his death and the evidence from the natural realm seemed to be converging together. Almost every male figure in his life had been killed in battle.

Tecumse was now 45 years old, an age when the freshwater river of youth begins to fade into the overwhelming volume of the salty sea at the coast of middle age, and for the lifespan of his time, older age. This time in a man's life brings more wisdom, but in hand-to-hand combat, in months and even years of constant motion, living on war rations, and throwing his broken leg from the bison hunt, his physical body wasn't at its peak. A professional sports player whose career goes beyond 40 is an outlier, but I'm not suggesting Tecumseh died because of his age. It's just an interesting thought. But I wonder if Tecumseh always knew he'd die on the battlefield. The sheer volume of exposure to potential death, and the nobility in his family associated with death for this cause are interesting factors. His father, Puxin-Wa, died at the Battle of Point Pleasant and was buried in a shallow grave in the forest. But before he died, he tasked his son, Chisacua, Tecumse's big brother, to fight for Indian lands at all cost.

Chisacua would later declare he'd rather the fouls. of the air pick his bones than be buried back at camp and that's exactly what happened. Many like to throw around that they're involved in a cause they die for. But for most of us, those words are a cheap

verbal thrill, a joyride in counterfeit valor. Tacomsa paid in full in the currency of blood. Here's Dr. Dave Edmonds of the University of Texas, Dallas. When the fight is over, And then after his death, the resistance just sort of, they crumble and they begin to run.

They go back towards Detroit. When the war, when the battle is over, his body is identified initially by some people who knew him. It's on the ground there. They go to get Harrison and a guy named Simon Kenton, who's an American scout, kind of like Boone and so on the way. By the time they get there, many of the bodies are mutilated horribly in that they cut strips to make razor straps. They cut strips to all kinds of trophies. And his body, who they think his body is so mutilated, they really stuff off that can't even tell who it is.

So the question is then what happens to the body? That's hard to say. I personally think there was a mass grave and they put a lot of the bodies in there. Personally, I think he lies with a lot of the men that fell at the battle. Other people have said, no, they've carried him off. and buried his bones on the body. I don't really know. I'm sure if Tacomsa would have had his way, he would probably have wanted to be buried there amidst the warriors who fought with him.

But then some people said, oh, no, he escaped. And so, no, no, no, no. But he's killed there. He's 45 years old. Yeah, approximately. died when he was 45. And the man who killed him was a,

there's probably a 90% chance. That was Richard M. Johnson, a colonel from Kentucky. But then later go on to become vice president. isn't it? And he ran on the, he used the horrible, horrible slogan, rumsy dumpsy, rumsy, dumpsy, I'm Colonel Johnson and I killed Tacomsy. Well, um, wow. So that, that would be equivalent to, like, a political leader today running off that they killed Osama bin Laden. Yeah. Yeah, so, so it would have, yeah, except everybody hated Sama bin Laden and nobody really hated Tacomso. But the American people would have been really threatened by him, though.

Oh, sure, sure, sure. They had some level of respect, but like he was an enemy of the United States. In 1836, Richard Mentor Johnson ran for vice president. It was a peak time for Tecumse's fame in America. It was 23 years after his death, and he ran on the Democratic ticket with Martin Van Buren touting that he'd killed Tecumseh. And notice that his rhyme makes it sound like they pronounce Tecumsehosa. which my friend Robert Morgan does.

And we all know already that we're all pronouncing it wrong because it was actually Ticumpth, which is an odd pronunciation for our ear. Anyway, another name that just came up with Simon Kenton, who's believed to have identified the mutilated body of Ticumsa. Some say it was because one leg was shorter than the other from the bison wreck. Kenton was an influential American scout, hunter, and frontiersman. He was a friend of Daniel Boone, credited with saving his life once. The exploits of Kenton's life on the frontier are only slightly overshadowed by his contemporary boom.

He was captured by the Shawnee, ran the gauntlet multiple times, was adopted as a Shawnee, and they named him Cudahotha, which means the condemned man. The American frontier was a small world. Lastly, the mutilation of enemy bodies during this time was common. for both sides of this warfare. From scalping to the Americans cutting long strips of skin off the backs of enemies to make leather goods,

it was a wildly brutal time and was normalized in the culture of war. Scalping has long been seen as a historical Indian practice, but some revisionists are now saying that Europeans started it in North America as a mechanism of a bounty system. However, there is substantial evidence from the records of Europeans' earliest contact with indigenous people

that it was happening before they got here. Interesting stuff. Here's Robert Morgan defining the turning point catalyzed by Tacompsa's death. But once their great leaders kill, the morale of the Indians kind of evaporates. It's a total victory. And the British Army has fled,

and the Indians disperse. They never gather, kind of forth again. Ever again. Never again. Even a little big horn. There was a large group of Indians, but they were there not to fight Americans,

but to fight the crows, to drive them out of sullen. After his death, never again would Native American forces be rallied in such great numbers against America. If nothing else, this shows Tecumse's strength as a leader. And if you remember on the last episode,

Peter Cozen's told us how Tecumpsis saved the lives of prisoners of war from the Kentucky militia before Tecumpsis men killed them all. This was told to America, and we loved him for it. Here's an interesting consideration. I mean, his corpse was flayed. His skin was slayed off his corpse by, if not, some of the very same Kentuckians whose lives he spared at Fort Miggs, at least by Kentuckians who knew some of those Kentuckians. Right.

That isn't it. Yeah. Tragic. Tragedy. Yeah. I marvel at his restraint. Just as I marvel at Tengswatawa's ability to hold fast to his religious beliefs, even in the wake of defeat.

And he went on to live until 1835. Teng Tentwantua, the Prophet. Yeah, he died. The Prophet died on the outskirts of modern-day Kansas City, Kansas, on the Shawnee Reservation in 1835. I mean, he was a broken man. He was, I think, 61 when he died, but he was still abstemious, still meditated to the master of life, still held true to his beliefs. Yeah.

So, I mean, they're both remarkable men in their own right. And then together, you know, you have to, I mean, there's no disputing the fact that they were the two most influential Indian siblings in American Indian history. I mean, to come so, I think we've shown conclusively was the most influential political military leader. Tengswatawa was clearly the most influential Indian prophet in American Indian history. So together, they're clearly the most influential Indian siblings, but really giving American Indians their place in history, American history, you've got to argue that they were two of the most influential siblings in American history period. Who can you compare them to?

And, you know, Tengswatawa was able to cope with life afterwards. He eventually became an occasional house guest of the governor of mission and territory. who fought against Tecumse and Teclatawa under Harrison, became a house guest and a visitor in Detroit, helped lead the Shawnee West to Kansas. Eventually, in a manner of speaking, he made his peace with the Americans. Tecumse, I don't think he ever could have.

I don't think it was in his makeup. I mean, he was so dedicated to that, you know, that idea of a pan-Indian alliance and homeland, I don't know if he could have adapted to the change circumstances. Could he have adapted to what was going to happen to his people? Or would it have happened at all if he'd lived a full life? We're tiptoeing around a grand assumption that the timing of his death was an act of mercy from this master of life that he served.

It's a question no one is qualified to answer. But here's really what we're contemplating. Is there a realm beyond this one superintending men's lives? Without a doubt, both of these brothers would have said, Yes, so could this master of life have protected Tecumse? The assumption is that he could have. I'm not suggesting for a second that I know the full scope of the doctrine of the Shaanese. Not at all, but it's clear Tacumsa was no fatalist.

And from overwhelming evidence, he believed the willful actions of men could bend the spirit realm, which then orchestrated the natural realm. And I can get behind that. Taking out any philosophical meanderings, we don't know. know why he died, but the cold reality is that his corpse, absent of his spirit, lay on the banks of the Thames River on October 5, 1813. Tecumse's passion for his vision of an Indian nation seemed to be so resolute. It's hard to imagine him dying peacefully on a Kansas reservation. Here's Dr. Edmonds, and we're about to be set up for a sucker punch. He is an remarkable man in

American history. He is a man who epitomizes what within the broader film of American culture, what an ideal Indian person should be. Wait a minute. What an ideal Indian person should be? Is that what he said? As in an American being the judge of what an ideal person from another culture should be based on the things favorable to our worldview? Yeah, I think we do that. all the time. It would be like Russia idolizing an American because they exemplified what Russia thinks an American should be like. It's a mind twister, but really what I'm learning is how complex of a story this is to tell. And I'm certain that my own biases have clouded the truth even on this here, Bear Grease podcast. If you remember, I've been asking from the beginning

why Tacomsa was an American hero. We're about to be. served a hot plate of gotcha. Now Dr. Edmonds is going to tell us all the fables created about Tecumse's legacy that made him more palatable to the Americans. And that in some ways was hard to do biography of him because there's so much stuff associated with him. For example, there's the myth of that he fell in love with a white woman, Rebecca Galloway, supposedly. And he set at her feet and she read Shakespeare to him. You can see this throughout the The 19th century, all those stuff written about him, talks about this Rebecca Galloway. That is pure hogwash.

But it sort of adds to this image of a man. And to come from what we know, was married twice. Second time he married an older woman who helped take care of his son. He has a son that will survive him. Oh, the other one is he's an art. He's always sometimes pictured as tall, sort of white-skinned. And there's one rumor is that his mother was a white captive. come on this is trying to to lighten him oh the classic one is we know for example he had a ring in his

nose and it hung down upon his lip yeah yeah and the early early pictures early portraits that we have are sketches have that on him but after about 10 or 15 years the white illustrators took it out because it didn't it was they thought that denigrated him oh the other one that was very big that he was a member of the Masonic Lodge. For God's sakes, he was not a mason. But these are 19th century stuff that gets associated with him, sort of to build him up. And he doesn't need it. He stands on his own.

It's a remarkable man. In today's world, we might call this fake news, except to make someone look favorable in the fakeness. But we're about to see a potential reason that we wanted him to look good. Here's Robert Morgan directly answering the question of why Tecumseh qualified as an American hero. If he's right, the motivations aren't as noble as they seem. Now let's end with speculation on why Teacomsy is such a hero to Americans, though he fought against Americans many times. Well, Americans do admire a great warrior, an extremely brave and also a great orator.

But in my opinion, the reason he's really so much admired is he was all those things. It was charismatic, handsome, smart, could be friends to Americans. But he lost. So there's this tremendous leader who loses so we can feel good about it. He's a great man. But he lost. We beat it. See, you're a hero.

If you can beat a hero, if you defeat somebody who's not a hero, then that's not such a great accomplice. that we defeated de Comsi. You know, there are other Indian heroes, but there's nobody like DeComsey. Sherman was named William Teacompson Sherman. I grew up in a community where there was a Comcy Shipman. He was T.Comsy Shipman, that the people admired him. Wow.

You could admire him so much because he was a great leader, but we beat him, which makes us seem even bigger. If you defeat a great man, then you're greater. So he appeals to our vanity. Ah, yeah. I kind of think of it. I kind of think of it like a sports and sports situation. Like if you have a great rival and you're on this side,

if that rival beat you, you're going to hate them all the worse. But if you beat that guy, all of a sudden you might kind of be like, well, you know, they're pretty good guys, man. They're great competitors. They're this, they're that. But you only feel good about them because you beat them. Well, Achilles defeats Hector. It's the greatest warrior the Trojans ever had.

I mean, you know, that's really quite an account. You're only as good as your opponent. 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 go, 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 Phelpsgamecalls.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. In a young nation hungry for identity beating tocumsa and elevating him as a national hero made us feel good about ourselves. If you look at our motivations for this admiration that we still have for him today, it makes me wonder how close the Tecumse we've described on this series really

reflects the real Tecumse. Our biases shape our stories. It also makes me wonder who is qualified to tell any story at all. And from what basis can a human even operate from a position that lacks bias? That's a big question with a tough answer. But I know just the guy to talk to about Tacumsa. Here's Shawnee Chief Ben Barnes. Do you think we've kind of westernized and turned him into a hero when he wasn't? No, but I think it's been hyper-glamarized.

And I think if you go see that play in Ohio, I think it's absolutely terrible because they have it up there and there's a story. They've since turned it into public theater and they have a stage. And so we've done that with Tecumse. You know, we've created a figure that's just not representative of the man who he was. Have you been to that National Portrait Gallery in D.C.? No. You should go. They have a statue of Tecumse and marble and he's slain and he's laying there in either Alabama.

master and marble. And it looks very Greco-Roman. It's like, what? You know, it's just, it's that kind of, you know, myth-making. So after the Civil War, the country as a whole, started dealing in myth-making in 1880s, in 1890s. You know, some remember of a past never was. I have a book here somewhere. Katrina Phillips, staging indigenity.

She coins a term called faux-stalgia. Okay. So it's a nostalgia for things that never were. I love that phrase. Wow. faux-stalgia. Fosthauze. Fosthauja? The longing for a past that didn't exist?

Do I do this? Do you do that? I bet you do. I probably don't. Oh, laudy. I recently read an essay from Southern history author Dan Carter. He's extensively interviewed people about race relations in the South his whole life. I want to read a single paragraph.

from his essay called Shattered Pieces, Living and Writing Southern History. It startled me. As I listened to my interviewees described the events of those years, I recognized the great chasm between their recollections and what I knew to be true. And with each interview, I learned an important lesson about memory. It's not simply what we forget. The more fundamental problem is that we constantly recreate memory so that our past can live comfortably with the present without the jarring dissonances that inevitably a company changed through

time like shakespeare's monster caliban we drift into reveries of a past that is so comforting that when we awake we cry to dream again no wonder oliver goldsmith called memory that fond deceiver end of quote hmm i want to talk for a second about my reporting on Tecumse. I'm certain my own biases have influenced the way that I've perceived him. Maybe the lack of actual facts, whether they've disintegrated through time, or whether they were just simply not recorded, our image of the man today is certainly veiled. However, we have wrestled with the data points we have, and we've told this story to the best

of our ability. It's wild to think about how in a little over 200 years, just 200 revolutions around the sun, can make history so hard to understand. How much more are the ancient fulsome bison hunters, or humans even deeper in history than that? Compared to them, Tecumseh is a very modern man, but what an enigma he still is. Maybe Grant Lee Buffalo got it right

with his mysterious nonsensical lyrics in the last days of Tecumse's song. Here's more from Chief Ben Barnes. Describe to me how Tecumse and his legacy life leadership for the Shawnee Nation would, how do you view him today? Who is he to you? Does he stand out?

You know, he's this one leader that we've kind of cherry picked out to talk about and highlight. Is that the way, would you view him as a significant leader in the Shawnee Nation? I definitely view him as a significant leader. I think people are a little overly fixated on him because there's also Blackhoof, cornstalk, Bluejacket, a host of others. There's an unknown woman in the pages of history. And upon Shawnee's arrival into Oklahoma and the forcing of allotments on her people,

she became a prophet and led a religious movement and nearly militarized the Shawnee people and other tribes of Oklahoma to rise up against Indian agents. So there was almost an uprising. History didn't even bother to record her name. And so here she is leading a religious movement that is fundamental and speaks to the heart of people as much as Tecumse's time. So is he important? Absolutely. But he also, you know, he is in a long line of Shawnee heroes. Yeah.

He's a product of those. He's standing on the shoulders of other giants. Yeah. And he's not standing on that shoulder alone. He has his brother Tinskwato with him. You know, he was a man that lived within a Shawnee community that whenever his people gathered to go worship, he would have been one of those people. He wouldn't have been set apart.

And if you watch those men file in to their traditional place of worship, you wouldn't even be able to pick him out which one he was. He wouldn't be at the head necessarily be at the head of the line. He wouldn't necessarily be the back of the line. He would occupy the space that they needed him for that day. So what they needed in that day is they needed somebody to say, you know, these policies of our past are not working. It's time to take up arms. It's time to lead this pan-Indian revolution. That was what he believed. So that's who he was. He was a product of his time. Tell me if this is right, though. What I'm hearing you say about Tacumsa is kind of, like that sentence, that what's important is what happened, not who did it. Yeah. And also put them in their context. This is their communities, the products of their communities. And also, so you don't, you, it's like you're saying, you're not saying don't give credit to to Kumsa, but you're saying it's got to be viewed inside a community. That's right. That's a bizarre thing for a Western thinker to think about. I had a friend call it radical. He said, that's a radical way of thinking about things. But really, it's true of all of it.

isn't it? Didn't your things your mom, dad, aunts and uncles all do, contribute to you doing these things? Exactly. You as an individual. How much that it was really you. I mean, and not them setting you up for those successes. That's a great example of the worldview of the Shawnee versus even what I'm trying to do inside of telling this story. I mean, and that's why I came to you is because I wanted to see how you would view this guy. And every time I ask you about him, you keep bringing it back to the community and back to what he actually did and how he wouldn't have stood out, which that's so interesting to me because when I heard about Tacomsa, I wanted to make him like this hero that just stood above everybody. And that's not what you're saying.

No, very much so. He's a man. And, you know, he probably made as many mistakes as he did successes. He was a product of his time. Westerners typically. defined greatness by difference. This man was great because he was so different. He was head and shoulders above others. He stood out. The Shannis would have been more focused on the verb, the action, rather than the noun, the name, the person.

Remember our language lesson from episode two? What got done was more important than who did it. Westerners want a hero to make a granite statue out of, and the Shonies wanted a homeland nation of their own, and they didn't care who stepped up to make it happen. Perhaps that's an exaggeration, but that's what I'm hearing the chief say. Here's his answer of a very tough question.

Do you view Tecumseh as successful in what he did? Because on an external level, you would say he wasn't successful because it didn't happen the way he wanted it to. I don't know if a Canadian would say that. Okay. Imagine that spine that was shown there in the Battle of Thames.

And they said, okay, the British retreated, but not us. Today's the day we die. And who won the War of 1812? We don't teach that in American Studies for a reason. Canadians were very Canadian about it. They're like, okay, let's go back to the borders the way they were. They've been some other country. New York State would be all Canadian.

So they won that war. So was his efforts unsuccessful? I don't know. Canada won. And he threw in with Canadians and the British. So he may have died in that war. Yeah. But I would think Canadians would argue otherwise that he was certainly not a failure.

Yeah. And I think this entity that's become our memory of Tecumseh, I think that also still has some value for Indian people as a way to look up to that. It's like, okay, okay, this is larger than all I figure. But if I can just remember that he was just a man, that just a man or just a woman can do incredible acts, is that individuals matter. Individuals matter. That's good.

I now want to talk with him about the history of the Shawnee, and that's going to help us understand the current context of the modern Shawnee Nation. It could feel like we're going backwards, but we're not. Here's Chief Ben Barnes talking about the importance of understanding the different tribes as separate entities and an example of what makes a Shawnee a Shawnee. So I think one of the examples that I like to use is I think every American, at least intuitively, that's at some level, understands. is that Ireland and Italians are completely different countries, completely different cultures. But if you look at the distance over land, it's really not that far, the distance between Ireland and Italy. Well, here in the United States, we talk about tribal nations. And if I was talking about the Shawnee's and Ponnies, people would say, oh, those must be similar because the names are similar.

Well, they don't understand that tribes are very much different. We're different from each other as the Italians are from the Irish. And they think that everybody living in one area is going to be very similar. Well, that's not true. For Shawnee people, you know, we had very, we were very peculiar in the way that our communities were formed. We didn't have like one elected big man that everybody followed, right? And that big man terminology, I think comes from anthropology. So it was a community.

The community would set apart people that had shown particular wisdom. Generally, we're older. And those older folks would guide the hands of what appeared to people on the outside of being chiefs, leaders. These guys are just speakers, speakers on behalf of those old folks. of those, you know, wise and leaders. So that's one aspect. So the organized structure of leadership would have been unique to the Shawnee's and that they didn't have appointed leaders?

They did have appointed leaders, but they could be torn down in a moment's notice. If somebody tried to act unilaterally without going back to the community and having a community involved in those decisions. So would there be other Native American tribes that would have had what we would perceive as just a change? chief that was... I don't think it's... I think it's more nuanced than that. Because like when we talk about Cherokees, the modern day thing that you think of as Cherokees or Shawnees is not like it was back then. And so, while I can't speak as much about their particular histories or any of those tribes from this region, I think we have to understand that they're much more nuanced, that some of these,

some of the ways that they had came together were because of incursions by Europeans into their territories. So groups would come together and coalesce and to us and to Confederacies, like you see amongst the Muscogeean-speaking peoples. But for Shawnee people, we had always kind of been scattered apart from each other. The only thing that I can compare it to for some Americans that they can relate to is like a Jewish diaspora. So I may live in Los Angeles, but if I go into Jewish synagogue, I'm at home, right? I know what's going on. I know how to act, know how to be. People who identify as me as, you know, as Jewish, a fellow worshipper. So for Shawnee people, they can move, but we lived across 20 historic states, more than 20,

U.S. historic states. We had treaties with France, England, Spain, and later it was with Mexico, or even Republic of Texas, and of course, United States. So groups of people of racial types don't engage in treaty-making processes.

These is the Shawnee Nation is engaged in making treaties with Spain, making treaties with Europeans to carve out spaces for, you know, where these European activities can occur. What does tribal sovereignty mean? Well, since you asked that question, I'll allow me to proselytize you into the good word of the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples,

where we've codified what we believe, what we think is inherent to our peoples, that these things with pre-existed nations coming and arriving on these shores, that we believe that these principles are enshrined in our very nature of sovereignty, that we have the rights that other nations do. I was at the United Nations permanent form of indigenous peoples earlier this year, and as I was walking by looking at the various nations around the world, it was like a fifth of those nations had a lower GDP than the Cherokee Nation and the Seminole tribe. It's like, how is that possible?

How come they have a seat there whenever Cherokee Nation and Seminole Nation have a bigger GDP? So it's just, you know, it's kind of baffling. It's kind of baffling that they built the United Nations, not for us or for our inclusion. But it's like, so it's like, okay, I see how this is. But it's very strange to me that. So do you feel like you don't have the, functional sovereignty that you want? I think that sovereignty will always be a push-pull. I think that we live in a very interesting time. There's some advantages right now that I think that tribal

nations could take advantage of. People are watching Rutherford Falls, and they're seeing messages being delivered on conversations that we've only dreamed about talking about publicly, and they're having them in the open to millions of viewers. People are excited about reservation dogs, and they're binging the first two episodes this very week. We have dark winds. So we have all these native productions that are coming out. And some of these native productions, like the one being done with Sterling Harjo and Taika Watiti, down to craft services.

It's indigenous peoples making this film. The Gaffers, everybody on the film set, writers, all indigenous. So we sit in this juncture where we have native peoples occupying the cultural hegemony that Americans always wanted us to have. Really? They want these stories. But now we get to be the ones telling them. It's not Kevin Costner.

It's not Avatar. Because Avatar is basically dancing with the wolves. Am I right? It's, yeah, it's dances of the wolves in space. So it's really an Indian. I'm going to have to think about that one. That one's a little bit over my head there. You watch it, dances with wolves and then watch Avatar.

Same movie. Same movie. And that's a conversation. Indian people are having the rest of the world's not. But when you watch it, you'll see them right. Okay. And so having these conversations front and center, now people are like, oh, I see, I get it.

I get what the issues are, or starting to understand some of the issues. Or when an end joke happens on Rutherford Falls, and people are like, what's that about? What's that in-joke? And they go and they look it up on Google and, oh, that's what that is. Well, the one with the where they blurt out the owl on reservation dogs the prior season. I think this season, too, on the most recent episode, they blurred out the owl, which is a cultural joke that folks from certain woodland cultures, how seeing an owl can be bad luck in certain instances. Oh, okay.

They blurred him out. They blurred him out. They blurred him out. You know, like they do, and like if somebody's naked on the screen, they blurred out the owl that same way. They pixelated it. It's an inside joke, huh? So it's an inside joke.

We're not going to look at that. So they blurted it out for television, which is hysterical. So we have an opportunity to tell native stories. And, you know, I'm glad that Taika Waititi used his opportunity as an indigenous person from New Zealand, as a Maori person, to leverage that for a situation here in the United States and in the rest of North America to create films about us for us. So as a child of the 80s, I remember old Cool Jay in a commercial, and he had Fubu gear on.

So for us, by us, you know, nothing about us without us, or doing things with, not for. You need to do things with us, not for. So in a lot of this academic scholarship that's being written, you know, that's why when you said you wanted to come here today, we're like, heck yeah, because a lot of people have the podcast, never even come to visit Shawnee people. I think we're all grateful for the chief's willingness to talk to us. You know, I gave him a jar of bear grease as a token of my appreciation, and I told him with all sincerity that I would supply him with bear grease for life, which in my world is amongst the greatest gestures of friendship, and I meant it. And if for some reason in the future I'm unable to personally feel their bear grease needs,

I'll be relying on some of you to help me fulfill. my vow. Here's the chief talking about one of his biggest initiatives, preservation of the Shawnee language. We are very fortunate. For a long time, you know, we were a tribe without, without much in the ways of financial means. You know, we did not have a lot of money. It was what kept us together was our language, our culture, and our religion, and our sense of identity. And so we still have our ancestral religion. That still exists. We're really lucky. We still have language. We still have language speakers. So it's not good. The situation's not good for any tribal language across the United States just because that's the way it is across the entire planet. Every two weeks, language dies.

So every two weeks, somewhere on the globe, a native language dies. There's about 6,000 languages being spoken right now. I think by the end of the century, they predict we'll be just down to a couple hundred. So one of those weeks will be ours if we don't do anything. So when I become chief, just right before the global pandemic, first thing we did was declare a state of emergency. for Shawnee Language. The second thing we did is we adopted the UNESCO's International Year of Indigenous Languages. And so that we tasked our team to, we created the International Year of Shawnee Language, asked them to create a decade-long plan to restore and revive our language and get more fluent speakers because it was dying. It was, the only people,

the only speakers we had were elderly people. And so subsequently, we adopted the UNESCO international decade of Indigenous languages. We adopted that. And, Out of that, we created a 10-year plan to save our languages. And as of January of earlier this year, what amounted to 4% of the tribes' population was enrolled in a language program. So we'd created a host of new volunteer teachers. They're really community language activists as for what they really are. The language is everything. And like we said before, it's believed less than 250 people on planet Earth currently speak Shawnee.

It was once the trade language of the Ohio River Valley. Indians from other tribes spoke Shawnee to maintain relevance in trade. The greatest orator, potentially in American history, Tecumseh, spoke Shawnee as his native tongue. Boone and Simon Kenton spoke quite a bit of Shawnee. This language is important to American history. Here's a big question for the chief. What is the big picture of what you as the,

Chief of the Shawnees is trying to do inside of 2020 inside of this country. You know, we hear about the plights of these other ethnic groups inside the country that are at the forefront of media and stuff. What are you guys trying to do? So I had a seventh grader asked me that question. And it was, he asked me a question, but not in that way. It was a sometimes because of COVID, we haven't done a lot of outreach. And this past year, you know, we was like, we're going to have to start back our outreach into communities. So we visited at a school. It was a seventh grade class and he asked, he was, what's your job? Wow, that's a succinct way to ask what you just asked.

Yeah. And he said, what's your job? And I was like, wow, no one's ever put it that way. And so I actually, it took me back. And I thought, man, this is why I need to do more of these grade school events because they ask some really, no filters and they ask really sharp questions because they don't have any assumptions. And I had to explain to him. And even to myself, really. My job is to undo the effects of our removal. That's my job. So that means the wealth of the tribe, finding ways to restore that, the land of the tribe, find a ways to restore that, to protect and be a warrior for our language, to make sure that our culture survives for another millennia, to make sure that, you know, what we are as a people, these sovereign rights, these national

rights that we have, that we had prior to the United States, that we had prior encountering the Spanish, English, but those are those remain secured. So we spend a lot of time on the road at state capitals. We spent a lot of time in D.C. And some of it is educational work, some of it's lobbying work. Some of it is advocacy for issues to getting to legislative, trying to get some legislation started on some issues. So that's part of the work, but it's also in building community. And truly because of what's happened to our people, the diaspora that happened in our removal, It's finding new ways for people to connect as a community because as we talked about earlier Community is the core. It's at the center of the language.

So that that removal just broke down the culture. It was damaging. It did not destroy it because it existed in a Chrysalis of sorts because we were removed and then we were sent to Kansas. Then we were from Kansas We were the loyal Shawnee's fought for the Union sent to the Indian territory to live amongst Cherokees who we just got done fighting. they were part of the Confederacy. So that was the, I'm sure that was interesting times. But because of that, it almost became like a rural ghetto, right, for shiny people? Because we didn't speak Cherokee. We didn't worship Cherokee.

We weren't Cherokee, but we're living amongst the center of Cherokees. So what did we have to do other than Cleave under each other? So, you know, that community became almost, I don't want to say an amber, but very much a coistered community. I see. And that helped preserve it, ironically, and almost destroyed it once this, 1970s. 60s and 70s, when you saw a lot of people, you know, moving out into, moving into a lot of urban and suburban communities to take jobs. So now we've seen that revitalization. What does a Shawnee Nation look like that you would see and would want and would be happy with? We have citizens that live in 50 states.

We're the Shawnee tribe of everywhere. We have sister tribes, the Eastern Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma and the absentee-Shoney tribe of Oklahoma. But we live in 50 states. And so what I would like is I'd like for them to feel like they're connected, no matter how far away they are, that they know that there's a home, that there's always been a home, and it's our tradition, that they always know that it's home. And also, you know, to reinstill that idea that Toliko, Chilokote, Picoita, Kisbukota, and Mikulchik. These are the traditional divisions of the Shawnee tribe,

like families inside of a family. That idea, you know, you may feel that you're a little different than those others, that you may have different political ideologies. You may have different ideas on certain types of freedoms that you think you can get that you should have in the United States. But we're all part of the same community. That we're not separate. We're not a part.

We're one. And I think that's a message that Americans can learn from the Shawnee's today. I've learned a lot in this series, not just historic data about a man's life, but we've been able to peer into an ancient culture. But maybe more importantly, I feel like I have a greater understanding of the personal stress inflicted on the individuals in a society in crisis.

A story is always told from a certain point of occupancy. And I am not a Shawnee, but I've tried to lean in hard into understanding what it would have been like to be one during that time. With all our fancy technology, we can't alter the past. All we can do is look to the future with the knowledge of what happened before. Honestly, I hope we come away with a new understanding for how deeply complex the situation was and a genuine empathy, producing positive action towards indigenous peoples and the things they view as important to them in modern times.

When these series come to a close, I often find myself in a state of melancholy. Probably never again in my life will I be as mentally and emotionally. engaged in this story, the life of this man, Tecumse. A man who I did not know. We don't even have a real picture of him. There are no audio recordings of his voice, but I feel like I was there and saw the panther comet cross the sky when Tecumse was born about two arrow flights south of the village. I felt his depression when he broke his leg and acquired the limp that he believed would make him useless in war. I felt his courage when he stood against the trend, admonishing those around him not to torture prisoners. I felt his grief when he lost his father, his leaders, and his brother to war.

I felt his anger when the treaties were broken and the boundary lines were crossed. I felt the passion of his brother's vision, the master of life, and the inspiration that it gave to their people. I felt his strength when he spoke with articulation, power, and authority on the destiny of their Indian nation and land. And I felt a sultry sadness beyond justifiable rationale when I learned how he was killed, his body desecrated, and buried in a mass grave. Of these things, I do not know their resolution, or if it is possible to amend the wrongs of a past so long ago. Though he was He was a flawed man just like us. He wasn't deity come to earth.

But in the words of Chief Ben Barnes, he was just a man who occupied the space that his people needed him for that day. And because of that, I have deep respect for the man, Tacomsa. I can't thank you enough for listening to Bear Grease. If you've enjoyed this series, share it with a friend. Leave us review on iTunes. do all the silly stuff that all us podcasters ask everyone to do. I hope you have a great week, and I look forward to talking this over with the folks on the render next 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 pool 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 two 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.