TECUMSEH (Flying Panther, Meteor), TE CUMTHE, or TECUMTHA (c.1775-1813). A famous Indian chief, born near the site of the present town of Springfield, Ohio. His father was a Shawnee warrior, and his mother a Creek or Cherokee squaw captured and adopted by the Shawnees. Having by his unusual talents for leadership gained great influence among his peo ple, Tecumseh, when about thirty-five years of age, formed a plan for a great confederacy of the Indians against the whites, which should have jurisdiction, among other things, over the aliena tion of Indian lands. In this work he was as sisted by his brother Elkswatawa or Tonskwatawa (q.v.), commonly known as 'The Prophet.' He was also assisted by British agents, and found the Indians the more willing to adopt his schemes because of the general dissatisfaction over the continual encroachments of the whites upon the Indian lands. In the Sumner of 1808 Tecumseh and his brother established a village near the mouth of Tippecanoe Creek in Indiana. and here Tecumseh 'nit into practice some of his ideas for returning to the virtuous primitive condition of the Indians by prohibiting the use of whisky and other demoralizing practices introdneed by the whites. Two years later he went on a visit to the southern Indians, especially the Choctaw, Creek, Cherokee, and Seminole, and by his wonderful eloquence is considered to have kindled among them the flame that in 1813 burst into the Creek War. in his absence, however, his fol lowers were defeated on November 7, 1811, by a force under General William Henry Harrison, (See TIPPECANOE, BATTLE OF.) In the follow
ing year he joined the British at :Malden, and early in August routed a force of Ohio militia, but was defeated and wounded in the skirmish of Maguaga. Despite his defeat, however, he was commissioned a brigadier-general in the British Army, and with several hundred Indians assisted in the capture of Detroit. In January, 1813, he played an important part in the siege of Fort Meigs (q.v.), and prevented the massacre of prisoners taken in the sortie from the fort. After Perry's victory on Lake Erie Tecumseh protested against the British retreat from Malden. He accompanied the retreating army, however, and at the battle of the Thames (q.v.) was killed while bravely resisting the attack of the mounted Americans under Colonel Richard M. Johnson. Tecumseh was a man of many high qualities, with impressive manners and wonderful natural eloquence. The part he played in the War of 1812 was an exceedingly important one. Indeed, as a Canadian historian has pointed out, it is quite conceivable that had it not been for Te cumseh, the Americans would have conquered Canada. Consult: Drake, Life of Tecumseh and His Brother, the Prophet, with an Historical Sketch of the Shawnee Indians (Cincinnati, 1841) ; and Eggleston. Tecumseh and the Shaw nee Prophet (New York, 1878).