Chapter TV 

 TECUMTHA AND TIPPECANOE 



These lands are ours. No one has a right to remove us, because we were the first 

 owners. — Tecumtha to Wells, 1807. 



The Great Spirit gave this great island to his red children. He placed the whites 

 on the other side of the big water. They were not contented with their own, but 

 (Mine t.) take ours from us. They have, driven us from the sea to the lakes — we can 

 go no farther. — Tecumtha, 1810. 



The President may sit still in his town and drink his wine, while yon and 1 will 

 have to fight it out. — Tecumtha to Harrison, 1810. 



And now we begin to hear of the prophet's brother, Tecumtha, the 

 most heroic character in Indian history. Tecumtha, "The .Meteor," was 

 the son of a chief and the worthy scion of a warrior race. Ilis tribe, 

 the Shawano, made it their proud boast that they of all tribes had 

 opposed the most determined resistance to the encroachments of the 

 whites. His father had fallen under the bullets of the Virginians while 

 leading his warriors at the bloody battle of Point Pleasant, in 1774. 

 His eldest and dearest brother had lost his life in an attack on a southern 

 frontier post, and another had been killed fighting by his side at 

 Wayne's victory in 1794. What wonder that the young Tecumtha 

 declared that his flesh crept at the sight of a white man ! 



But his w;is no mean spirit of personal revenge; his mind was too 

 uoble for that. He hated the whites as the destroyers of his race, but 

 prisoners and the defenseless knew well that they could rely on his 

 honor and humanity and were safe under his protection. When only a 

 boy — for his military career began in childhood — he had witnessed the 

 burning of a prisoner, and the spectacle was so abhorrent to his feel- 

 ings that by an earnest and eloquent harangue he induced the party 

 to give up the practice forever, in later years his name was accepted 

 by helpless women and children as a guaranty of protection even in 

 the midst of hostile Indians. Of commanding figure, nearly sis feet in 

 height and compactly built; of dignified bearing and piercing eye, 

 before whose lightning even a British general quailed; with the fiery 

 eloquence of a Clay and the clear cut logic of a Webster; abstemious 

 in habit, charitable in thought and action, brave as a lion, but humane 

 and generous withal — in a word, an aboriginal American knight — his 

 life was given to his people, and he fell at last, like his father and his 

 brothers before him, in battle with the destroyers of his nation, the 

 champion of a lost cause and a dying race. 



His name has been rendered "The Shooting Star'' and "The Panther 

 Crouching, or Lying in Wait." From a reply to a letter of inquiry 



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