Tecumseh: Speech to the Osage

Shawnee Chief Tecumseh, along with his younger brother, the Prophet Tenskwatawa, began a crusade in 1808 to reject the white man’s cultural and religious influences and unite Native Americans as a single multi-tribal confederacy. Initially a believer that nonviolent diplomacy would stem the white incursions into tribal lands, Tecumseh soon came to understand that political and cultural unification of the tribes was necessary if diplomacy was going to work. Tecumseh spent much of the fall and winter of 1811 and 1812 traveling to gain converts from tribes of the Eastern Seaboard, the South, the Northwest Territory, and Canada.