Tecumseh: Address to General William Henry Harrison at Vincennes, Indiana Territory

Tecumseh was a Shawnee Chief, warrior, and orator who traveled widely promoting inter-tribal unity and resistance to American expansion onto tribal lands. Tecumseh lost both his father and eldest brother in wars with American forces before joining in the Western Confederation’s failed effort at the 1794 Battle of Fallen Timbers. Tecumseh’s younger brother, Tenskwatawa, known as the Prophet, led a restorationist religious movement that rejected European cultural and religious influences and hoped to reestablish Native American cultural and religious traditions. In 1808 the brothers founded a multi-tribal village called Prophetstown near the Tippecanoe and Wabash Rivers, which grew to be the largest city in the region and effectively an independent city-state inside the Indiana Territory. Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa worked to maintain a peaceful existence between Prophetstown and surrounding tribes and the Americans.