Tecumseh
Tecumseh (c. 1768–1813), Shawnee chief and leader of an Indian confederation.Born when the Shawnee Indians were fighting to defend their Kentucky and Ohio lands, Tecumseh lost his father at the Battle of Point Pleasant (1774), a brother in the American Revolutionary War, and another in the wars that followed. He fought against Josiah Harmar (1790), Arthur St. Clair (1791), and Anthony Wayne (1794). He refused to sign the Treaty of Greenville (1795), which ceded most of Ohio to the United States, and in the next decade emerged as the leading opponent of American expansion.
In 1805, following a vision, Tecumseh's brother, Tenskwatawa, began to preach a return to traditional ways and rejection of white influences. Tecumseh broadened and directed the religious movement into a multitribal confederation opposed to further land cessions. A gifted orator, he carried his message of Indian unity from...
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