Tecumseh

And in the Old Northwest, a remarkable movement had emerged to resist American expansion.

The alliance was led by the Shawnee leader Tecumseh.

Tecumseh understood something that few indigenous leaders had been able to comprehend.

The Americans were not simply fighting individual nations.

They were steadily advancing against indigenous people across an enormous area.

If each indigenous people fought alone, eventually each would be defeated alone.

But if they could unite, they might be able to create something capable of stopping American expansion.

Tecumseh therefore attempted to build a confederation stretching across much of the interior.

Unlike in 1836, the Whig Party organization had evolved and would prove a more difficult rival than the 1840 election, with General William Henry Harrison running against Van Buren alongside John Tyler.

Harrison was a hero of the War of 1812, having defeated the Confederacy, led by charismatic Native American Chief Tecumseh at the Battle of Tippecanoe in 1811 and the Battle of the Thames in 1813.

In the 1836 presidential election, he had been the most successful of the three Whig candidates by winning 73 electoral votes and seven states.

In addition to their previous characterization of Van Buren as a corrupt and unprincipled establishment politician, the Whigs portrayed him as out of touch with the common people as a result of his failure to effectively deal with the economic depression, nicknaming the president Martin Van Ruin.

Uh, the 1804 treaty.

I think it was Tecumseh.

Tecumseh.It- And this- The breakdown of this treaty eventually led to the Black Hawk War.

A, Andrew Jackson, B, William Henry Harrison, Z- C, Zachary Taylor, or D, Henry Clay.

You get a guess first.

And the last time The United States invaded Canada in the 1800s.

Canada almost fell if it wasn't for the Mohawk warriors led by Tecumseh, who mustered 60,000 soldiers at that time, something that Canada can't do now.

and faced off with the American forces at the Niagara Falls and defeated them.

Unfortunately, Tecumseh was hung at the end after saving Canada by the Canadian government.

So when you look at Australia, Australia probably has the same kind of military as Canada.

It has more Navy than Canada, but what can it do if it's faced by an American invasion? There's nothing that it can do, really.

this made the english mad and the troops in illinois did their best to stir up ill-will and hate for the white men who did not side with them and the king's cause but ere that time the french and the indians were good friends the priests who spoke their tongue taught some of the red men how to read and write and told them of our lord, and got not a few of them to join the church.

They saw how the priest could heal the sick, bind up wounds, or set a leg as well as pray, so they gave them the name of big medicine chiefs.

It was at the time of St. Louis was laid out that France gave all her lands on the east side of the Mississippi to Great Britain, and that on the west to Spain.

But the folks were all French, for the Spanish did not come here to live and did not fight hard to rule.

not so with the French in Illinois.

They did not like the English rule, and left their homes to join their luck with the Missouri folks and their old commander, St. Ange de Belrive, who was the chief till 1770, when Spain at last put a man of their own race in his place.

On such good terms were the French and the Red Men that the chiefs of tribes came in state to call on the French commander.

In 1769, the great Ottawa chief, Pontiac, came to smoke a friend's pipe and eat of his salt, and chat with Saint-Ange de Belle-Rive at st louis from here he went to a feast at pahokia when he was slain by one of the koskoskia tribe of red men it was found out that one of the english traders had put the indian up to do the deed the koskoskias had to pay for it all the same for the rage of the Atuas was so great that they knew no rest till the last of the tribe was swept from the land.

I think what's so fascinating about him is you kind of mentioned, you know, where does his loyalties lie? What is he trying to accomplish throughout his life? And I think it changes throughout his life.

What's really interesting about him and other indigenous, North American indigenous, I should say, leaders that we've looked at like Tecumseh and Louis Rial.

their world is already kind of changed or it's they they know what's coming because they can see it already happening for joseph brand he's born in 1742 so we're talking like well before america's even a country he's not even going to see canada become a country so these are things where he's like okay well the british are here we're very much in a colonial setup and there's a new world coming and i'm probably going to embrace some of it but when he dies he's And that kind of second wave of indigenous leaders are coming.

They're growing up in a world where it's like, oh, this wave has already come and it's coming really fast.

And this is where Brandt becomes very kind of disenchanted with British policy and indicates a more openness to negotiating directly with the U.S.

But in practice, most Six Nations refused to trust the Americans, fearing that further settlements were going to encroach on the sovereignty of their lands.

Yeah, and it's good foreshadowing because that's exactly what happens when we talked about Tecumseh.

That is his entire thing is fighting the Americans to make sure that they don't continue to encroach West.

Black Hawk was leader of the British Band of the Sauk with a large village, said to number about 500 families, situated near the mouth of the Rock River in Illinois.

His people were known as the British Band because of their known sympathies with the English, and also since Black Hawk and his warriors had fought with Tecumseh and the British against the Americans in the War of 1812.

White settlers began squatting on Black Hawk's land as early as 1823, despite the fact that according to treaty, the Indians were not required to give up their land until land offices had been set up, an event which had not yet occurred.

The Indians' cornfields were fenced in, wigwams were burned, and the women mistreated.

At any season of the year, however, the limpid spring that has not ceased to flow for centuries will serve to indicate the spot.

Standing then at the brink of this spring in the Mohawk Valley, let the reader cast a look backward and over the intervening space of two hundred years to the days of Tecumseh.

Let it be understood, however, that while the imaginative faculty is thus to be called into play, it is not for the contemplation of an imaginative but of a real character.

For whatever sidelights may color the narrative, they are used to bring out, not to impair, the picture.

Many details of time and place, of manners and customs, of dress and the arts of industry, will be woven into an actual scene rather than given in a tedious enumeration.

The scene about to be described, and others which follow depicting the early life of Tecumseh, are not to be found actually recorded in so many words in the history of her life and times.

Yet they must have occurred, for they are based on the known facts of her life as related in various official and private documents, together with such inferences only as may fairly and reasonably be drawn from those facts when brought under the strong light of contemporaneous records.

Above the spring at Fonda on the high plateau where is now the well-tilled farm stood two centuries ago the log-built palisades of ancient Caughnawaga.

That summer, the summer of 1812, the British captured Fort Mackinac in Michigan.

The British and their allies in the Iroquois Confederacy, led by Tecumseh, captured more than 1,000 American soldiers at Fort Detroit.

And at a place called Chicago, an Indian word meaning onion field, Potawatomi warriors ambushed a surrendering American garrison and killed 68 people.

In about 15 years, that field would become a city, and the Americans who started it would change the first G in the name to a C and drop the U at the end of the word to pronounce it Chicago.