American Experience (1988) s21e06 Episode Script

1
(man speaking Native American
language)
It is a story
at the heart of America
one richer and more surprising
than we've been told.
(tribal drumming)
American Experience
presents a story
that spans 300 years
and a vast continent.
WOMAN:
The greatest thing a person can
have is the power.
Benegotsi. It's scary.
It is a story of hope
courage
and survival.
We were about to be
obliterated culturally.
Our spiritual way of life,
our entire way of life,
was about to be stamped out.
(roaring)
MAN:
Every tribe in this country
has a time of horror
Absolute horror when they were
confronted by this invader.
MAN:
What we did to the Southeastern
Indians, it's ethnic cleansing.
MAN:
It was done to them,
so they did it back.
But better.
MAN:
Whatever means and manner
we could,
since the Europeans
arrived here,
we've had to fight
for our survival.
An epic history of America
(whooping)
seen through Native eyes
too remarkable
too inspiring
to ever forget.
The master of life has appointed
this place
for us to light our fires
And here we shall remain.
Exclusive corporate funding
for American Experience
provided by:
Major funding provided by:
Funding for We Shall Remain
provided by:
And by the Corporation
for Public Broadcasting.
And:
NARRATOR:
No pictures were ever made
of him during his lifetime.
No account in his own words
was left behind.
Looking back, the movement
he led would seem in many ways
to have been doomed to failure
from the start.
And yet in the course
of his breathtakingly brief
and meteoric career,
he would rise to become
one of the greatest Native
American leaders of all time
And one of the most
gifted, farsighted,
revered and inspiring
Forging, from the glowing embers
of his younger brother's
soaring vision,
an extraordinary coalition,
and orchestrating
the most ambitious
pan-Indian resistance movement
ever mounted
on the North American continent.
KEVIN WILLIAMS:
I mean, to be Shawnee,
and to have Tecumseh be a member
of that tribe is to be honored,
to be honored to be
in that tribe.
He and his brother, you know,
was trying to get
the Shawnee people back
to their roots
and try to keep their lands
from being taken.
He was a visionary.
And I think today,
what would have happened if he
had succeeded in his plan?
It would have changed history.
ANDREW WARRIOR:
He had a vision to make sure
that the Indian way of life
was going to continue
at whatever cost.
This is a man an Indian man,
a self-proclaimed leader,
a self-proclaimed chief
Who stood up and said,
"Hey, this is enough.
"I don't want no more of this.
You've taken enough."
And he took a stand.
STEPHEN WARREN:
One way one might think
of Tecumseh
is as a man who led a revolution
of young men
Young men who were tired
of the accommodationist stance
of their elders;
young men who thought that
the leadership structure
of the Shawnee tribe needed
to be reordered and reimagined
in order for the Shawnees and
all Native people to survive.
DAVID EDMUNDS:
What Tecumseh is fighting for is
the ability of Indian people
east of the Mississippi to hold
onto their homelands.
Their lands are under siege
in the period after
the American Revolution.
The white frontier is moving
into the Ohio Valley.
It's also moving onto the Gulf
Plains in the South.
And Tecumseh says,
"This has got to stop.
We have to stand and all realize
that we're in this together."
I think Tecumseh's one of those
people that,
if he were alive today and
would walk into a room,
people would stop talking
and just stare at him.
Tribal people back
in the first part of
the 19th century would say,
"Tecumseh is a man of very,
very strong medicine."
There was this aura around him
of leadership and respect,
that even people
who opposed him
Even his enemies admired him.
(speaking Shawnee)
(whooping)
EDMUNDS:
His genius was in
inspiring people.
And he was a very inspirational
man that was able to bring out
the very best in those people
who supported him.
And to see beyond any particular
tribal affiliation,
and to realize that
this was a struggle
that was of greater magnitude.
I also think that there was
a spiritual component to this,
that he believed that
he was appointed
by the powers in the universe
to really bring people together
and to make this stand
and to retain what was left
of the Indian homeland.
This was his life.
This was what he had been born
to do.
TECUMSEH:
These lands
are ours.
No one has a right to remove us.
The Master of Life knows
no boundaries,
nor will his red people
acknowledge any.
The Master of Life has
appointed this place
for us to light our fires.
And here we shall remain.
GEORGE BLANCHARD:
Well, I've always heard
"Teh-cum-theh."
"Teh-cum-theh" means,
in our culture and our belief,
at nights, when we see
a falling star,
it means that this panther
is jumping
from one mountain to another.
And as kids, when we saw
these falling stars,
we'd kind of hesitate about
being out in the dark,
because we thought there
were actually
panthers out there
walking around.
So that's what his name meant,
Tecumseh.
EDMUNDS:
Ohio was a very special place
for the Shawnees.
The Shawnees called Ohio,
and the Ohio Valley,
the center of the world.
It was an area where
Shawnee villages dotted
the river valleys.
It was an area where one could
come down from Ohio,
cross the Ohio River
and hunt into the bluegrass
region of Kentucky,
where, at this time, there were
small herds of buffalo,
there were elk,
there were deer there.
So it was a very special place,
and it was a place which was
very dear to Shawnee hearts.
The word Shawnee means
"Southerner"
and they were called
the Southerners
by other Algonquin-speaking
people.
Shawnees had lived in
the Ohio Valley off and on
for a great period of time.
They had scattered
in the early 1700s,
but they'd come back into Ohio,
and they hunted extensively
into Kentucky.
(gunshots, whooping)
COLIN CALLOWAY:
Tecumseh was born around 1768.
That's the same year that the
huge treaty at Fort Stanwix
in New York essentially opens up
what is now Kentucky
to English settlement.
Much of that territory is
Shawnee hunting territory.
So right at the time
of Tecumseh's birth,
it's clear that issues of land
and English or American access
to this land
are going to be vital factors
in shaping his life.
EDMUNDS:
Tecumseh and his younger brother
grew up in the midst
of the American Revolution.
And it was an exciting time,
I'm sure, for a young Shawnee
man to come to manhood,
but it was also a time of danger
and a time of a certain amount
of turmoil.
It was a time when Shawnee
warriors went south
across the river to strike at
the frontier forts in Kentucky,
and it was a time when
the Shawnee villages
north of the Ohio were attacked
periodically
by expeditions of Kentuckians
into the region.
NARRATOR:
Named for the Kispokothe war
clan into which he was born
Whose spiritual patron
was a celestial panther
leaping across the heavens
He showed promise
from the start:
quick to learn,
graceful and athletic,
and touched with a striking
natural charisma.
"There was a certain something
in his countenance and manner,"
a childhood friend recalled,
"that always commanded respect
and made those about him
love him."
The contrasts could not have
been more striking
with his troubled younger
brother, Lalawethika.
EDMUNDS:
Lalawethika was seven years
younger than Tecumseh
and grew up in his brother's
shadow.
He was very unsuccessful
as a little child.
His nickname was Lalawethika,
which means "the noise maker."
I think translated idiomatically
it probably meant loudmouth,
a person that makes
a lot of noise.
As a child of about ten
or 12 years old,
he shoots his own eye out
while fooling around
with a bow and arrow,
and just is not a very happy
young child.
Tecumseh!
(birds chirping)
NARRATOR:
In the end, no Shawnee family
would be left untouched
by the rising tide of violence
in the Ohio River Valley.
WARREN:
Tecumseh and Lalawethika
lost their father
when Tecumseh was seven.
Their mother left for Missouri
in 1779 after horrifying warfare
between the Long Knives
and the Shawnees.
So that by the time
Lalawethika was 13,
roughly half of their
immediate family members
had either been killed or had
voluntarily removed from Ohio.
NARRATOR:
For the Shawnees as a whole,
the outcome of the American
Revolution would prove
nothing less than cataclysmic.
All through the war they fought
valiantly on the British side
in defense of their homelands
without losing a battle,
only to discover following
the British surrender
that their one-time allies
had ceded
all lands west
of the Appalachians
to the new American republic.
CALLOWAY:
At the Peace of Paris in 1783,
no Indians are there.
The terms of the treaty do not
even mention Indian people,
and yet this is a treaty
that has huge significance
for Indians.
Britain transfers to the new
United States all territory
that it has claimed south
of the Great Lakes,
east of the Mississippi,
north of Florida.
That is Indian country.
For the United States,
it's a crucial resource.
Land is the basis
of the new nation.
Land is the opportunity
to create
what Jefferson comes to call
an "empire of liberty."
But you have to get that land
from Indian people.
And within a few years,
Indian people begin to recoil
from that
and to recognize the degree
to which
the United States represents a
major threat to their existence.
Indian nations begin to unite
in a confederation
to resist that expansion.
NARRATOR:
In the alliance of tribes
that now rose up
to stop the white invasion, the
Shawnees would take the lead,
and Tecumseh himself first make
a name for himself
on the field of battle
in what would prove to be
the beginning of an epic
30-year-long struggle
waged across a thousand miles
that would permanently shape
the physical and moral geography
of the new nation.
(whooping)
EDMUNDS:
The area they called
the Old Northwest
The area north of the Ohio
Was sort of up for grabs
in the period after
the American Revolution.
The British still had forts
at Detroit
and they still had a lot of
influence among the tribes
because they were operating
out of Canada.
And the British are
not even sure
whether the new United States
is going to stand.
And they feel that if
the United States goes under,
they want to be able to move
back into this region in force.
And so the British keep
telling the Indians,
"Well, you should stand up
against the United States
and we will supply you with guns
and ammunition."
(whooping)
NARRATOR:
For six long years,
the Shawnees and their allies
kept U.S. forces on the run,
all but destroying the American
army in 1792
in northern Indiana,
only to be stopped
two years later
at the battle of Fallen Timbers
in northern Ohio,
where a well-planned retreat
to the safety of a nearby
British fort
was turned into a disaster
for the Indian Confederacy
and a bitter lesson
in British reliability
that Tecumseh would never
forget.
EDMUNDS:
Tecumseh fights in the battle
and eventually has to withdraw
with part of his warriors
towards the British fort.
The tribal people assume
that the British are going
to let them into the fort
and that there'll be another
stand made there.
But the British refuse them
entrance.
CALLOWAY:
The British slam the gates
of the fort in their faces,
fearful of a renewed war
with the United States.
To the Indians to Tecumseh
This is another act
of British betrayal.
EDMUNDS:
Well, Fallen Timbers is a
disaster for tribal people.
And it is following this battle
that the tribes are forced to
sign the Treaty of Greenville,
giving up about the southeastern
two thirds of Ohio.
Tecumseh refuses
to sign the treaty.
He even refuses to participate
in the proceedings.
Tecumseh is incensed that they
are now forced to give up
much of his former homeland.
But this is the death knell,
in many ways,
for the tribes
in the Old Northwest.
DONALD FIXICO:
The natural world that the
Shawnees knew was changing.
The eastern tribes are being
pushed farther into their lands.
Their observations of deer being
less, bear being less,
the receding of wild game.
And so Tecumseh knows he has
to construct some type of plan.
And it has to be a large plan
in order to confront
this huge westward expansion
that begins to pulsate into
different areas,
into the Great Lakes area
and into the southeast part
of the United States.
But how do you stop this huge
westward expansion?
NARRATOR:
The Treaty of Greenville marked
a crucial turning point
in the battle for the eastern
half of the continent,
opening the Ohio River Valley
to a flood of white settlers,
and hemming the Shawnees
and their allies
onto dwindling tracts of land
too small to sustain
the old ways of life.
Even in the newly created
Territory of Indiana,
into which Tecumseh and his
followers now retreated,
hoping to find refuge,
a systematic policy of land loss
and dispossession
was soon put into place
by American politicians
eager to effect the transfer
of land any way they could
and convinced the Indian
way of life was dying.
"The American settlements will
gradually circumscribe
and approach the Indians,"
President Thomas Jefferson
wrote in 1801,
"who will in time either
incorporate with us
"as citizens of
the United States
"or remove beyond
the Mississippi.
"Some tribes are advancing,
"and on these, English
seductions will have no effect.
"But the backward will yield,
"and be thrown further back into
barbarism and misery,
"and we shall be obliged
to drive them
with the beasts of the forest
into the stony mountains."
WARREN:
I don't think we appreciate just
how ruthless
Thomas Jefferson was as
president in 1801
and how ruthless folks
like Jefferson's
territorial governor,
William Henry Harrison,
were in the period
specifically after 1800.
The Americans employed what was
called the "factory system."
And what that was
was the establishment
of government forts
throughout the Old Northwest
where the government
would accept furs
in exchange for goods.
And it became a way
of making Native people
into debtors of
the United States.
And when Thomas Jefferson
becomes president,
in his first term, he writes
William Henry Harrison and says,
you know, essentially:
"Through the factory system,
Native people will incur debts
"beyond what they are willing
to pay.
"And they will only be able
to pay those back
through a cession of lands."
JOHN SUGDEN:
So, for the Shawnees,
for Tecumseh,
it was a period of continual
dispossession,
continual violence
and continual retreat.
There is no place at that time
you could really,
if you were a Shawnee,
have called home
because it was constantly
being taken off you.
WARREN:
So that by 1805,
Native people find
themselves confined
to a small corridor of land
Really a spit of land
In northwestern Ohio and
northeastern Indiana.
That's all that's left to them.
And it is not enough to continue
a hunting tradition.
What was happening to them was
a tragedy of epic proportions.
Men could no longer hunt;
they could no longer operate
as life-sustaining killers;
they could not feed their
families via hunting;
they were on a constant
war footing.
And another horrifying aspect
of it
is that so many men have tried
to protect their people
through war,
and have died doing it,
that these villages are totally
out of balance.
So that there are probably
double the number of women
as men in any Native village
in 1805
because of this war
of attrition.
And so these are not only broken
homes, but broken communities.
EDMUNDS:
It is a time in which disease
flourishes and spreads
across many of the tribes
of the Ohio Valley.
It is a time when alcoholism
begins to spread
among the tribe.
The very fabric
of tribal society
The kinship systems
Seem to be under stress.
And it's a time when, I think,
a lot of Shawnees are having
second thoughts about,
"Who are we, and what is going
on here?
"Why has the Master of Life
turned his face from us?
"What has happened to us?
(coughing)
"What have we done
to cause this?"
NARRATOR:
By the spring of 1805,
the misery and suffering
in northern Indiana
had reached the breaking point.
In Tecumseh's village
along the White River,
even so great a provider as he
was helpless to defend his
people from the rain of woe
now descending upon them;
while almost day by day, his
younger brother, Lalawethika,
a failed hunter and warrior,
who had tried without success
to support his family
as a holy man and healer,
sank further and further into
an abyss of shame and despair.
WARREN:
I think that Lalawethika
fell victim
to all of the worst unintended
consequences of colonialism.
You know, he was an alcoholic;
and many viewed him as lazy;
prone to violence;
he abused his wife.
And so every opportunity
that Lalawethika had
to distinguish himself
resulted in failure.
And, by most accounts, he could
not support his family.
So that he was dependent upon
Tecumseh, and others like him,
to literally feed his family.
He was so caught up in the
sadness and the despair
of dependency upon the United
State in the form of alcohol
and the fur trade, of land loss.
It was so destructive,
and such a sad time.
NARRATOR:
It would be all the more
surprising, then,
in the dark spring of 1805,
as the universe continued to
come unhinged for the Shawnees
that a message of terrifying
beauty and hope
would be brought to
the beleaguered people,
coming in their very darkest
hour, and in the end,
from the least likely
of sources.
(crying)
(thunderclap)
(sobbing)
WARREN:
In 1805, his family
recalls an event
in which Lalawethika
falls into a fire.
He just he collapses.
And everyone in his
immediate family,
and in his immediate vicinity,
believes that he's dead.
(speaking Shawnee)
But he miraculously comes back
to life.
He wakes up to report a vision
of extraordinary breadth
and power.
I died.
I was carried in a dream
by the Master of Life
down into the spirit world
until we came to a parting
of the ways.
To the right lay the road
to paradise,
open only to the virtuous few.
To the left, I saw an army
of forsaken souls
stumbling on towards
three dark houses,
fearful dwellings of punishment
and pain.
I saw unrepentant drunkards
forced to swallow molten lead.
And when they drank it their
bowels were seized
with an exquisite burning.
At the last house their torment
was inexpressible.
I heard their screams,
crying pitifully,
roaring like the falls
of a great river.
CALLOWAY:
When Lalawethika recovers
from his vision,
he says that he has come
with a message.
And the message is, I think,
a message of revitalization,
of restoration, for a people
who've lost their way
in the way that he had lost
his way.
He is a reformed individual.
He takes a new name for himself:
Tenskwatawa, "the Open Door."
And the message that he brings
That Indian people can make
themselves whole again
by rejecting
the worst influences
that white people have brought
to them
Hits a powerful chord.
It gives people who may have
lost hope a new hope.
It gives them a direction.
It gives them an opportunity
to remake themselves,
to restore themselves,
by reviving their Indian culture
and identity.
SUGDEN:
Well, the impact is he reforms
instantly.
He suddenly doesn't drink
anymore.
And he is preaching to others
now that,
"If you want to save yourselves,
you have to have a personal
revolution in your way of life."
My children
the Great Spirit bids me to say
to you thus:
You must not dress like
the whites.
You must not get drunk.
It displeases the Great Spirit.
WARREN:
And he formulated a message
that appealed
to a great many Shawnee,
Delaware, Wyandotte, Kickapoo,
Pottawatomie because that was
their experience at the time.
You know, this is a world
totally out of balance.
And so his vision is the vision
for all Native people,
in a broad way.
It's intended for everyone.
And as a recovered alcoholic,
you know,
he could speak to people
who had not had that
conversion experience,
who were still caught up
in that cycle of despair.
SUGDEN:
He took the name Tenskwatawa,
the Open Door,
which was a way of
he was suggesting
that he was a way that you could
reach grace through him.
He was a doorway to salvation.
NARRATOR:
Friends and family members
were astonished by the changes
that had transformed Lalawethika
almost overnight,
and none more so than
Tecumseh himself,
who, all through the fall
and winter of 1805,
looked on thoughtfully as young
men from across the Midwest
trooped into their village
along the White River
in increasing number,
drawn by his brother's
siren call of renewal,
and by his brother himself,
who would soon be known simply
as the Prophet.
(speaking Shawnee)
Now, my children, I charge you
not to speak of this talk
to the whites.
(response in Shawnee)
The world is not as it was
at first
but it is broken
and leans down.
And those that are on the slope,
from the Chippewas and further
will all die if
the earth should fall.
Therefore, if they would live,
let them send to me two persons
from each village
to be instructed
so as to prevent it.
WARREN:
I think Tecumseh understands
that there are a whole bunch
of wounded warriors out there,
and by wounded I mean people
who are psychologically wounded,
people who are culturally
wounded.
And I think he sees
Tenskwatawa's vision
as a means of inspiring them
to act,
to pick up their feet, you know,
and to join him.
So he parlays Tenskwatawa's
vision
into that kind of pan-Indian
organizational scheme.
SUGDEN:
And very quickly,
as early as 1806,
you see a political plan
coming into it.
Tecumseh is saying,
"We can use this movement
to reunify this broken people,
the Shawnees."
Which was a long-desired dream
of Shawnee leaders,
was to bring this scattered
tribe together,
make them of consequence again.
(speaking Shawnee)
(speaking Shawnee)
NARRATOR:
In the spring of 1806,
the two brothers took their
first decisive step.
Eager to establish a center
for the new movement
and to re-assert the Shawnee
claim to homelands
already ceded by treaty,
they moved their village to
a new site in western Ohio
on the American side of the line
established
by the Treaty of Greenville
ten years earlier,
in open defiance
of the American government,
then sent out messengers to
villages across the region,
often led by Tecumseh himself.
The Shawnees have heretofore
been scattered about in parties,
which we have found has been
attended with bad consequences.
We are now going to gather them
all together to one town
that one chief may keep them
in good order
and prevent sickness, want and
shame from coming among them.
EDMUNDS:
Initially, Tecumseh remains
in the Prophet's shadow.
We know that he's aware of his
brother's transformation;
we know that the brother lives
in, quote, "Tecumseh's village."
But it is the Prophet
that first attracts the tribal
people to the village.
NARRATOR:
From the start, the new movement
sent shock waves
surging through Indian country,
unsettling Native
communities already rocked
by decades of change
and deeply dividing
the Shawnees themselves
along with other
worn-down tribes,
like the Delawares
and the Wyandottes.
SUGDEN:
The Shawnee chiefs in Ohio
saw a power struggle
in it straight away.
They saw, "This is a man, from a
junior division of the Shawnees,
"bidding for power
and we're damn well
not going to give it to him."
CALLOWAY:
Even within Tecumseh's
own nation,
there are Shawnees who are now
trying to follow
the white man's path,
who are following the lead
of Black Hoof,
who was a person who had fought
against the Americans
through the Revolution, up until
the Treaty of Greenville,
but now, as an older man,
is saying,
"We fought. We've tried that
way, it's not working.
We need to try this way."
NARRATOR:
In April 1806,
eager to win more recruits
from among the troubled tribes
in Ohio and Indiana,
Tenskwatawa issued
a direct challenge
to any leaders who opposed him,
accusing them of witchcraft
and of being in league
with the U.S. government.
WARREN:
He essentially engaged
in a series of high-profile
confrontations
with their leaders
to the point where
he enters into
a Wyandotte village
and engages in a ritualized
killing of a Wyandotte leader.
He essentially accused him,
and others like him,
of being a witch, of attempting
to undermine them,
by acting as a kind of wedge
for Americans
to enter their communities
and harm their people.
And so people begin to see him
as an iconoclast, of sorts,
who's willing to take on
government chiefs
who are in the pay
of the United States.
And his message spreads
like wildfire as a result.
NARRATOR:
In late April,
as a wave of fear and unease
rippled through white
communities in southern Indiana,
the territorial governor,
William Henry Harrison,
fired off a letter
to the Delawares
denouncing the Shawnee Prophet
as an impostor
and urging them to put his
supposed powers to the test.
WILLIAM HENRY HARRISON:
My children,
who is this pretended prophet
who dares to speak in the name
of the great Creator?
Examine him.
Command of him some proof
at least
of his being a messenger
of the deity.
If he is really a prophet,
ask him to cause the sun
to stand still,
or the moon to alter
its courses,
the river to cease to flow
or the dead to rise
from their graves.
If he does these things,
you may believe he is sent
from God.
Otherwise, drive him
from your town
and let peace and harmony
prevail amongst you.
EDMUNDS:
And in June 1806,
the Shawnee Prophet predicts
an eclipse of the sun,
called a "Black Sun"
by the Shawnees,
which is a sign of great things
to come, a sign of great change.
And, at first, many Shawnees,
many other Indians, said,
"Oh, this time I don't really
think he's able to do it."
(speaking Shawnee)
TENSKWATAWA:
Did I not speak the truth?
See now, the sun is dark!
(whoops)
EDMUNDS:
And the eclipse was so complete
that the farm animals, for
example, went into the sheds,
the birds roosted, et cetera.
And the Prophet's stock after
this just rose like a skyrocket.
William Henry Harrison could not
have done anything
that helps the Prophet
and propels the Prophet
and Tecumseh
to a position of prominence more
than issuing this challenge.
NARRATOR:
As news of the miracle spread,
the trickle of pilgrims coming
into Greenville
swelled to a flood.
By July, Ojibwa villages
on the shores of Lake Superior
stood empty and deserted.
To the south, Potawatomis
left corn crops
standing in the fields and came
to hear the Shawnee holy man
whose words now,
with each passing month,
seemed to grow in stridency
and power.
My children,
the Great Spirit bids me
say to you thus:
have very little to do
with the Americans.
They are unjust;
they have taken away your lands,
which were not made for them.
The whites I have placed on the
other side of the Great Water,
to be another people,
separate from you.
In time, I will overturn
the land
so that all the white people
will be covered
and you alone shall inhabit
the land.
WARREN:
And the U.S. government panics.
And the fear really
proliferates.
Because by 1807, certainly,
I think most Americans just
assumed an orderly process
of dispossession and conquest
in which Native Americans
would gradually recede
from the picture, or assimilate
into American society.
And when Tenskwatawa
has his vision,
all of a sudden ten years
of confidence erodes
as Native people reconsider and
attempt to reorganize themselves
in an effective way against
Jefferson's vision of land loss
and dispossession.
NARRATOR:
Now events began to accelerate.
In the spring of 1807,
the Indian agent at Fort Wayne,
William Wells, alarmed
by the upturn in Indians
passing through his outpost,
accused the Prophet
of keeping settlers
"in a continual state
of uneaseness," he said,
and demanded he leave
Greenville.
That June, convinced that
English agents operating
out of Canada were egging
the Indians on to war,
William Henry Harrison
fired off a letter
to the Secretary of War.
"I really fear," he wrote,
"that this said Prophet is
an engine set to work
by the British for some
bad purpose."
In the fall of 1808, as the war
of words grew louder,
the two brothers decided to move
their center of operations
to a new site, 150 miles west,
strategically located
near the junction
of the Wabash and
Tippecanoe Rivers,
deep in Indiana Territory,
far away from prying white eyes,
they hoped,
and closer to the western tribes
that had been most receptive
to the Prophet's message
to begin with.
The new village,
called Prophetstown,
would rise to become
one of the greatest centers
of Indian resistance
on the North American continent.
It would also become
a major obstacle
to the dreams
of statehood nurtured by
William Henry Harrison,
who in 1809 redoubled
his efforts
to drive the Indians
from Indiana,
bribing local chiefs
into signing away lands
over which they had no authority
and pressing one land cession
after another
through the territorial
legislature,
culminating in the notorious
Treaty of Fort Wayne
in the autumn of 1809.
SUGDEN:
The Treaty of Fort Wayne really
changes everything,
and the politics
comes to the fore.
Here's three million acres
of Indian land
suddenly snatched away,
and white settlements are moving
closer than ever before
to Prophetstown.
And suddenly there is a need for
very urgent political action.
NARRATOR:
For Tecumseh, it was
the decisive moment.
Convinced now that only the most
radical and concerted efforts
could save the Indian land base,
he stepped out from behind
his brother's shadow
once and for all
and sprang into action.
In the months and years to come,
rallying warriors from half
a continent to his cause,
he would do everything he could
to push back and redraw
the still fluid boundaries
of the new United States,
and to create a permanent
Indian homeland
in the very heart
of the country,
bounded by the Ohio River
to the south and east,
by the Great Lakes to the north
and by the Mississippi River
to the west
A United Indian States
of America
within the United States.
CALLOWAY:
Tecumseh's vision is
to establish, I think,
what I would call cultural
and physical space
for Indian people.
He understands that
for Indian culture to survive
and for Indian independence
to survive,
there needs to be a land base,
and that land base can only
be preserved and protected
by a united tribal resistance.
This is no longer a fight
that can be waged
by just some Shawnees, just some
Delawares, just some Wyandottes.
He's appealing to a larger,
pan-Indian future,
in which the future of all
Indian peoples will be affected
by the stand that Indian peoples
take now.
They have driven us from the sea
to the lakes,
and we can go no farther.
They have taken upon
themselves to say,
"This tract of land belongs
to the Miamis,
and this to the Delaware"
and so on.
Our father tells us that we have
no business on the Wabash,
that the land belongs
to other tribes.
But the Great Spirit intended it
to be the common property
of all the tribes, nor can it be
sold without the consent of all.
NARRATOR:
In 1809, Tecumseh set out
with an entourage of warriors
and interpreters on the first
of a series of epic tours
East to the Shawnees
and Wyandottes in Ohio;
west to the Sacs and Foxes
and Hochunks in Illinois;
south to the Creeks and Choctaws
in Alabama and Georgia;
and north, as far away
as Canada,
to the home of the Senecas and
the Iroquois and the British
Determined to swell the ranks
of the burgeoning Indian
confederacy any way he could
and to find supplies
and reinforcements
for the armed conflict
he now knew was inevitable.
SUGDEN:
He doesn't pluck this
confederacy out of nowhere.
He just tries to revive
the confederacy he had known
as a young man.
He even uses the same
terminology,
the idea that the land is held
in common by the Indians.
No one tribe can cede it without
the permission of the others.
And, therefore, it's in all our
interest to defend it.
Now, this was a job that was
much more difficult
than the job of the American
founding fathers,
who at least had some tradition
of common origin
and a similar language
and similar thought patterns
and mindsets.
On top of those problems,
though,
Tecumseh was facing the fact
that these weren't states,
they were fragmented villages.
So you couldn't just convince
a few chiefs
and hope that was going to do
the business for you.
Those chiefs might have almost
no or little authority
within their own communities.
But this lack of authority
in Indian communities
both played against him
and for him,
because even if the chiefs
were in opposition,
he could pull the warriors
from underneath them
by appealing to them.
And this is really
one of his strategies.
(speaking Shawnee)
(whooping)
Listen, my people.
The past speaks for itself.
(whooping)
Where today are the Pequots?
Where the Narragansett,
the Powhatan, Pokanoket
and many other once powerful
tribes of our race?
(clamoring)
Look abroad over this
once beautiful country
and what do you see?
Nothing but the ravages
of the pale-face destroyers.
(whooping)
And so it will be with you,
Creek, Chickasaws and Choctaws.
The annihilation of our race
is at hand
unless we are united
in one common cause
against the common foe.
(shouting in agreement)
(whooping)
FIXICO:
I mean, so many different groups
come to this call for warriors.
When you think about
20 different tribes
Many in which the languages
are so different
and the politics are
so different.
He's dissolved tribal barriers,
tribal differences,
cultural differences, as well,
and he's got them to believe
in one mind.
For one person to get so many
people to come of the same mind,
yes, indeed, it's propaganda;
yes, indeed, it's campaigning;
yes, indeed, it's diplomacy
Being an ambassador,
a military strategist.
And so, in my mind, he's
succeeded with this idea.
NARRATOR:
By 1810, the impact
of Tecumseh's diplomacy
could be felt up and down
the Wabash.
By May, nearly a thousand people
had streamed into Prophetstown,
and all spring and summer
the numbers continued to build.
Fearing imminent bloodshed,
William Henry Harrison called
for a contingent
of federal troops
to reinforce the territorial
capital at Vincennes,
then sent a messenger
to Prophetstown itself
urging the Prophet to come
to Vincennes to air grievances
about the Treaty of Fort Wayne.
In the end, it was Tecumseh
himself who replied,
telling the messenger that he
personally would come to meet
with Harrison to discuss
Indian outrage
over the newly ceded lands.
On August 12, 1810,
a party of 75 warriors
with Tecumseh in command arrived
at Harrison's headquarters
for the historic confrontation.
SUGDEN:
There were some canonical
stories about Tecumseh,
which, even if you knew
nothing else, you could say,
"This is someone you have
to reckon with."
One of them is that
confrontation with Harrison
in 1810
That magnificent, really,
confrontation
where he knew a conflict was
coming, and so did Harrison.
And here you have
two representatives
of entirely different
philosophies and points of view.
And neither individual
was afraid of the other.
Harrison had no need to be; the
resources were all behind him.
But Tecumseh
there was no sense that being in
a weak position should mitigate
or reduce his point of view or
the worthiness of his cause.
How, my brother, can you blame
me for placing little confidence
in the promises of our fathers,
the Americans?
You have endeavored
to make distinctions.
You have taken tribes aside.
You wish to prevent
the Indians from uniting,
and from considering their land
the common property
of the whole.
I do not see how we can
remain at peace with you
if you continue to do so.
Brother, this land
that was sold,
and the goods that
were given for it,
they were done only by the few.
If you continue to purchase land
from those who have
no right to do so,
I do not know what will be
the consequence.
I now wish you to
listen to me, brother.
I tell you so because
I am authorized
by all the tribes to do so.
I am at the head of them all.
I am a warrior, and all
the warriors will meet
in two or three moons from this.
Then I will call those chiefs
who have sold the land to you
and shall know what to do
with them.
For, brother, we want
to save this land;
we do not wish you to take it.
And if you take it,
you shall be the cause
of the trouble between us.
The United States has
not treated the Indians
dishonestly nor unjustly.
Indians are not one nation, nor
do they own the land in common.
Has not the Great Spirit given
them separate tongues?
(speaking Shawnee)
This council is over.
SUGDEN:
He stood up in a very remarkable
and frank way
and more or less admitted
to Harrison that war would come.
I think he said at one point,
"You are pushing us
into a conflict.
"We have no alternative.
This is going to happen if
you continue with this policy."
And, of course,
Harrison certainly was going
to continue that policy.
But both men gave no ground.
NARRATOR:
For nearly a week
the talks continued,
Tecumseh insisting the lands
be returned;
Harrison insisting they had been
fairly acquired,
refusing to return them.
Before the deadlocked
meetings adjourned,
Harrison promised to pass
Tecumseh's demands
on to the president in
Washington, adding, however,
that he very much doubted
the request would be granted.
No one present ever forgot
Tecumseh's reply.
As the Great Chief in Washington
is to determine the matter,
I hope the Great Spirit will put
some sense into his head
to induce him to direct you
to give up this land.
It is true, he is so far off.
He will not be
injured by the war.
He may still sit in his
town and drink his wine
whilst you and I will
have to fight it out.
The implicit obedience
and respect
which the followers of Tecumseh
pay to him is really astonishing
and more than any other
circumstance bespeaks him
one of those uncommon geniuses,
who 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.
SUGDEN:
Now, Tecumseh did
a remarkable thing.
He said a remarkable thing
in 1810,
when he confronted Harrison
at Vincennes.
He said something I don't think
any Native American had said
before,
and I don't think many had
said afterwards.
He stood up,
defended Indian land,
and said he represented every
Indian on the continent.
Now, what a preposterous
assertion,
even for someone whose life had
been so far-flung as his.
But to make such a claim
at that time,
it was an absolutely
preposterous thing to say.
Yet what he was saying was
that he understood that Native
American peoples
were in a particular
historical predicament,
and he was articulating
that predicament
and he was doing it
for all of them.
EDMUNDS:
Well, I think by 1811,
Tecumseh can see that war
is imminent
between the Americans
and the British,
and I think he hopes to use
this war to help defend
Native American homelands
in the Old Northwest.
The problem for Tecumseh is
always going to be
one of logistics.
It's one of bringing in
large numbers of warriors
and supplying them,
and feeding them,
and providing them with adequate
arms and ammunition.
WARREN:
My sense of Tecumseh is that
he was keenly aware of moments
of opportunity,
moments to strike,
moments to act,
and 1811 was not
one of those moments.
NARRATOR:
The dog days of summer 1811
were just reaching their peak
when Tecumseh embarked
on one last grueling tour,
heading south this time to what
the Shawnees called the Mid-Day,
determined to bring the
Chickasawas, Choctaws and Creeks
into the confederacy,
and to shore up British support
for the movement.
Before leaving Prophetstown,
Tecumseh urged
his younger brother
to do everything he could
to keep from being drawn
into a fight with Harrison
prematurely,
then made one last stop
at Vincennes
to see Harrison himself
before continuing south,
hoping to convince him not
to initiate hostilities.
WARREN:
I think it was crucial to hold
off for several reasons.
The first is that
Tecumseh was the only person
equipped to lead;
the second being that British
support was crucial
and, whatever they did,
it had to be coordinated
with the British;
and third, I think Tecumseh was
really confident
that his Southeastern tour
would result
in a great many adherents.
WILLIAM HENRY HARRISON:
August 6, 1811.
The day before he set out,
he paid me a visit
and labored hard to convince me
that he had no other intention
by his journey to the south
than to prevail on all
the tribes to unite
in the bonds of peace.
August 7.
He is now upon the last round
to put a finishing stroke
to his work.
I hope, however,
before his return
that that part of the fabric
which he considered complete
will be demolished, and even
its foundations rooted up.
NARRATOR:
In late August,
writing that Tecumseh's
"great talents" alone
were holding together
the heterogeneous mass
of warriors on the Wabash,
Harrison received permission
to march on Prophetstown,
and one month later
On September 26, 1811
At the head of a force
of nearly 1,000 men,
headed north towards the Indian
stronghold, 180 miles away.
As reports came in
to Prophetstown
of Harrison's approaching army,
hundreds of warriors converged
on the Indian village
to defend it.
CALLOWAY:
As Tenskwatawa watches
the American army advance,
he is faced with the question
of what to do.
Do you sit and wait,
to see if the American
intentions are peaceful,
or should you strike against it?
When Tenskwatawa hears
of the American army advancing,
he interprets this
as an act of aggression.
NARRATOR:
Around 2:00 on the afternoon
of November 6,
Harrison's thousand-man force
clambered up a steep ravine
on the eastern side
of a narrow stream
called Burnett's Creek
and went into camp on a narrow
bench of high ground
planted with high oak trees.
One mile to the east lay
Prophetstown, stretching south
along the Wabash from the mouth
of the Tippecanoe.
As the light began to fail,
two officers and an interpreter
rode out under a white flag
to convey Harrison's orders
that the Indian camp disperse.
WARREN:
Tippecanoe.
There's a crucial moment
on November 6
when Harrison arrives.
He arrives with more
than a thousand men.
And Harrison and Tenskwatawa
agree to meet the next day
to discuss how they might reach
some kind of compromise.
But on the night of November 6,
Tenskwatawa is besieged by his
Western Algonquian allies,
and they tell him, "Look.
"We have to fight,
we have to surprise them.
"They think we're going
to have a discussion,
but let's wage
a preemptive strike."
To come all that way
and to do nothing
but wait for Tecumseh
made little sense to them.
(speaking Shawnee)
(men whooping)
WARREN:
And so Tenskwatawa goes against
his brother's wishes for him.
You know, he caves to pressure.
And not only that, but he tells
his allies that they'll be safe
from American bullets, that his
power as a medicine man
is such that no one
will be harmed.
NARRATOR:
Sometime in the night, a long
column of warriors
began to file silently
out of the village,
heading in a long arc
for the northwest corner
of the American encampment.
FIXICO:
It was a very wet morning.
Sentries are posted
and everything.
And, possibly,
Winnebago warriors,
but certainly warriors,
tried to penetrate the camp,
crawling into the camp.
And they even make it
past the sentries.
NARRATOR:
Around 4:00 in the morning,
a picket stationed
a few yards out
beyond the left flank
of the camp
thought he saw something moving
in the trees.
Whipping his musket
to his shoulder,
he fired blindly into the gloom,
mortally wounding
a Kickapoo warrior
as he attempted to steal
into the camp.
Harrison himself was in his tent
when the first shot rang out,
followed by a series of
bloodcurdling war cries
and a tremendous crash
of muskets
as the war party rushed in.
The Battle of Tippecanoe
had begun.
SUGDEN:
It was a classic Indian attack.
If you don't have the numbers
on your side,
you make a sudden attack
and try to overwhelm and
demoralize the enemy quickly.
And it was carried through
at Tippecanoe
with great determination,
considering how few warriors
there were.
And they didn't have
much ammunition.
The Indians were
a very mobile force.
They were almost like water
They gave way to things
and they strengthened
around weak points
in a very flexible way.
They didn't have to wait
for orders from chiefs.
They fought very much
individually.
So if they perceived a force
getting out of its depth,
moving forward and getting split
up from the main force,
they could easily rally round
and start surrounding it
and cutting it to pieces.
I mean, if there had been more
Indians on the ground,
the Indians might
have been capable
of inflicting great damage.
CALLOWAY:
The Indian warriors attack
Harrison's army in camp at dawn.
For a moment, it looks as if
the Indians have infiltrated
the lines; there's confusion.
But as the light increases,
it becomes clear
to the Americans
that the Indians
lack the numbers,
that they lack the ammunition
to carry this assault home.
And, eventually, the Indians
are driven from the field.
In reality, the Americans
suffered
probably more casualties
than the Indians.
The American force was superior;
the American force
was better armed;
the American force
had more ammunition.
But I do think
that it represents a blow
to the confederacy.
NARRATOR:
On the night of November 8,
two days after the battle,
Harrison's soldiers edged warily
into Prophetstown
for the first time, only to find
that the confederated forces
had dispersed
into the surrounding
countryside.
Ordering his men
to plunder the village
Setting fire to the lodges
and destroying all
the Indians' food supplies
Harrison headed back down
the Wabash towards Vincennes,
declaring in dispatches his
mission had been accomplished.
(horses neighing)
FIXICO:
Following the defeat
at Prophetstown,
one would think that
all of this was over.
And it was not.
It was just the beginning,
in fact.
It was an impossible task
of the largest scale
for Tecumseh to rebuild
his army,
and he did, making twice the
efforts, twice the stamina.
CALLOWAY:
When Tecumseh comes home,
he's reputed to have grabbed
the Prophet by the hair
and shaken him and reprimanded
him, scolded him
For this foolish action.
EDMUNDS:
Tecumseh, we know, is very angry
with his brother
after this battle.
And I think the Prophet spends
the rest of his life
trying to get back into
a position of prominence.
FIXICO:
Tecumseh has a choice.
Do you discard the Prophet
or do you reunite with him
in this kind of campaign effort?
And he realized that he has
to embrace him again.
And he forgives his brother.
And so now we're
in the next chapter
of rebuilding this huge army.
And this time
Make no mistake about it
Tecumseh is going to be there.
NARRATOR:
Though Harrison had destroyed
the Indian food supplies
and scattered
the Indian warriors,
he had not destroyed
the confederacy itself
and he had not destroyed
Tecumseh
and, in the end, only succeeded
in emboldening the great
Shawnee warrior,
who, on returning to the Wabash
in January 1812,
immediately set out
to reassemble
the scattered alliance,
convinced, despite all
appearances to the contrary,
that the moment of opportunity
for the Indian confederacy
was rapidly approaching.
WARREN:
I think, in a way, Harrison
creates a huge problem
for all Americans living
in the Northwest Territories,
because he disperses
those who are antagonistic
to the United States
everywhere across the Midwest.
They have not given up.
They're not putting
their weapons down.
NARRATOR:
All through the winter
and spring of 1812,
as long-festering tensions
between the United States and
Great Britain spiraled upward,
Tecumseh labored tirelessly
to rebuild the confederacy
and to shore up British support
before a renewed offensive
could be launched
against Prophetstown.
By May, more than 800 warriors
had streamed back
into the village
while across the Northwest,
more than 4,000 warriors
were on the move,
the largest Indian confederacy
ever mustered
on the North American continent.
By the third week of June,
Tecumseh himself was
on his way north
towards a British fort
on the Canadian side
of the Detroit River,
hoping to secure supplies
and ammunition
when a messenger arrived
bearing news he had
long been waiting for.
Three days earlier, on June 18,
the United States had officially
declared war on Britain
over the fate
of the long-contested
Northwestern frontier.
The War of 1812 had begun,
bringing with it
the last best hope
of a permanent Indian homeland
east of the Mississippi.
And of course, the British were
at a crisis point themselves;
they needed American Indian
allies.
They were fighting a war
in which the odds
were against them.
They wanted to defend
the Canadian line,
and of course they needed
manpower.
Only the Indians could fill
that void for them.
So it was an inevitable alliance
at that point.
Tecumseh needed them,
and they needed him.
And certainly Tecumseh's
war aims
He was still
Incredibly, I have to say
In 1812, looking at
some possible way
to regain the Ohio boundary
as a boundary between the white
settlements and the Indians.
And he sold that goal
to the British.
NARRATOR:
Arriving at the undermanned
British outpost of Fort Malden
in the waning days of June,
where most were convinced
that Canada would fall before
the approaching American army,
Tecumseh changed the military
equation on the ground
in less than three weeks,
rallying wavering Indian allies
to the cause
and bolstering British resolve
and astonishing the British
commander in charge,
General Isaac Brock, with his
extraordinary military skills
and sheer force of personality.
SUGDEN:
I mean, Brock's remark
is a classic one.
He spoke to Tecumseh for a very
short time, a mere few weeks.
But he wrote back to the British
prime minister and he says
that "I've talked to the
Indian chiefs, and there are
"some extraordinary characters
amongst them.
But here's Tecumseh," he says.
"A more gallant or sagacious
warrior does not exist."
NARRATOR:
Tecumseh's brilliance
on the field of battle
in the summer of 1812 would
cement his reputation
among the British high command
as one of the greatest
military leaders of all time.
In little more than three weeks,
the small but highly mobile
force under his command
completely unnerved the American
army led by William Hull,
forcing him to retreat back
across the Detroit River
to the American side
and effectively bringing the
invasion of Canada to an end.
On August 4, at the Battle of
Brownstown, south of Detroit,
with only 24 warriors
at his command,
Tecumseh attacked and routed
an American force
six times as large,
killing 19, wounding 12,
while himself losing
only a single warrior.
CALLOWAY:
Tecumseh's finest hour is
probably Detroit in 1812,
when Tecumseh teams up
with Isaac Brock,
who finally seems
to be the person
who is going to deliver
on the promises
that the British have been
making so long.
Tecumseh and Brock
together mastermind
the capture of Detroit.
NARRATOR:
On August 16,
at the Battle of Detroit,
Tecumseh convinced the American
defenders inside the fort
that they were facing an army
many times greater
than their own,
parading his small host
of warriors again and again
through a clearing
in the forest.
Before the British and Indian
attack had even begun,
a white flag appeared above
the ramparts of the fort,
and the American army
marched out
and surrendered their weapons.
It was one of the most
humiliating defeats
ever suffered
by an American army.
EDMUNDS:
Fort Detroit falls;
Fort Michillimackinaw falls.
Tecumseh and Brock,
who are very close,
are able to take Fort Detroit.
They're able to, generally,
gain the upper hand here
on the Detroit frontier.
CALLOWAY:
And it seems as if the vision
of an independent
Indian confederacy
An independent
Indian state, if you like,
supported by British allies,
but independent
of the United States
Is on the brink
of becoming a reality.
EDMUNDS:
And then, unfortunately
for Tecumseh
and unfortunately
for tribal people,
General Isaac Brock is killed
fighting the Americans
over by Niagara.
And the new British commander
is named Proctor,
and he's much less aggressive
and much more interested
in just defending Canada
and in not really helping tribal
people retake part of Ohio
from the Americans.
Tecumseh has to continually
goad Proctor
to march against the Americans.
They invade Ohio twice,
attempting to take Fort Meigs,
which was an American fort
near modern Toledo,
and are unsuccessful.
NARRATOR:
In the fall of 1813, the British
fleet was defeated
not far from Detroit
at the Battle of Lake Erie,
ceding control of the Great
Lakes to the Americans.
By then, Lalawethika
and a ragged band of followers
had appeared
in his brother's camp
along the Detroit River
in Ontario,
driven from Indiana by their old
nemesis, William Henry Harrison,
who even now was moving north
at the head of a vastly
reinforced American army.
EDMUNDS:
The Americans invade Canada.
And particularly after Perry's
victory on Lake Erie,
the British want to abandon
the Detroit frontier
and flee to what is now Toronto.
And Tecumseh makes them
stand and fight.
CALLOWAY:
The British-Indian army turns
to make a stand at Moraviantown,
on the Thames River in Ontario,
in 1813.
The outcome of the battle seems
really to have been
a foregone conclusion.
By the time the British general
Proctor actually stops
to turn to fight, he has lost
the confidence
not only of his Indian allies
but of his own men.
When the fighting breaks out,
the British resistance
is minimal.
What resistance is mounted
is mounted by Tecumseh
and the Indian warriors.
NARRATOR:
The final British betrayal
would come
on the cold, misty morning
of October 5, 1813,
when, as Harrison's vastly
superior American forces
began their attack,
the British simply abandoned
their Indian allies entirely
and left them to fend
for themselves
on the field of battle.
And in one of the more
remarkable speeches
given throughout
American history,
Tecumseh says to the British:
"Look.
You have somewhere to go.
"But we are standing here,
"and we are fighting
for our homeland.
"And if you want to run,
you run.
"But leave us the guns
and ammunition,
because we will stand
and fight."
Listen! Father!
We are much astonished to see
you tying up
and preparing to run
the other way.
You always told us to remain
here and take care of our lands.
And it made our hearts glad
to hear that was your wish.
But now we see you drawing back
like a fat animal,
running off with its tail
between its legs
(warriors shout in agreement)
Listen!
Father!
The Americans have not yet
defeated us by land.
We, therefore, wish to remain
and face our enemy,
should they make
their appearance.
If you have an idea
of going away,
leave us the guns and ammunition
and you may go,
and welcome for it.
(warriors shout)
Our lives are in the hands
of the Great Spirit.
(warriors shout)
We are determined to defend our
lands, and if it is his will,
we shall leave our bones
upon them.
(warriors whooping)
SUGDEN:
And then, finally, at the end,
you often tell great leaders
in the way they react
in adversity,
rather than victory.
He knew that the British
had given way
before they engaged themselves.
And, yet, there is no question
of him retreating.
There is no question of him
doing the "sensible" thing,
which is to fight another day.
He has committed himself
to this act.
He has said he's going to defend
this land
and, if necessary, he's going
to die for this land.
And that's what he does.
(gunshot)
EDMUNDS:
You couldn't think, in some
ways, of a more fitting way
for Tecumseh to die.
He dies in the final battle here
for the control
of the Great Lakes.
And he dies surrounded
by his comrades.
He dies killed by the Americans.
And in the aftermath,
his body is mutilated so badly
by Harrison's Kentucky militia
that the Americans who know him
can't really identify him.
CALLOWAY:
And with Tecumseh dies,
of course,
the person who has held together
the Indian confederacy,
the person who has represented
the best hope
for Indian independence
in North America.
The death of Tecumseh puts,
in a sense, finality
on the American conquest
of that area
That what we know now
as an American heartland
is going to be American.
There will be no place in there
for Indian people.
WARREN:
I think Tecumseh is,
in a sense, saved by his death.
He's saved for immortality
through death
on the battlefield.
SUGDEN:
One of the great things in icons
is to bow out at the right time.
And one of the things Tecumseh
does is he never lets you down.
He was there,
articulating his position
Uncompromisingly
pro-Native American position;
he never signs the treaties.
He never reneges
on those basic principles
of the sacrosanct aboriginal
holding of this territory.
He bows out at the peak of this
great movement he is leading.
He's there right at the end,
whatever the odds are,
fighting for it
into the dying moments.
CALLOWAY:
I think one of the things that
is so important about Tecumseh
is that he is a person
who by his vision
and by his personality
and the way he conducts himself
gives us glimpses of humanity
at its best.
That in the most difficult
of situations
In the most hopeless
of situations, perhaps
People can have the courage
to stand up and fight
for what they believe in.
Courage in the face
of adversity;
Tecumseh personifies it.
Hope hope and freedom.
That's what I thought
he stood for.
And his vision that he had.
You know, the way he looked
into the future
and tried to stop progress
for the red people.
SHERMAN TIGER:
For some people, they may
call him a troublemaker.
And I think that's because,
in the end, he lost.
Had he won, he'd have been,
you know, a hero.
But I think, to a degree,
he still has to be recognized
as a hero
for what he attempted to do.
If he had, you know,
a little more help,
maybe he would have got
a little farther down the line.
If the British would have
backed him up
like they were supposed
to have, you know,
maybe the United States is only
half as big as it is today.
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