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(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.
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)
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.
Captioned by Media Access Group at WGBH access.wgbh.org