Shawnee Indian political leader and war chief Tecumseh (1768-1813) came of age amid the border warfare that ravaged the Ohio Valley in the late 18th century. He took part in a series of raids of Kentucky and Tennessee frontier settlements in the 1780s, and emerged as a prominent chief by 1800. Tecumseh transformed his brother’s religious following into a political movement, leading to the foundation of the Prophetstown settlement in 1808. After Prophetstown was destroyed during the Battle of Tippecanoe, the Shawnee chief fought with pro-British forces in the War of 1812 until his death in the Battle of the Thames.
Born at Old Piqua, on the Mad River in western Ohio, Tecumseh grew to manhood amid the border warfare that ravaged the Ohio Valley during the last quarter of the eighteenth century. In 1774, his father, Puckeshinwa, was killed at the Battle of Point Pleasant, and in 1779 his mother, Methoataske, accompanied those Shawnees who migrated to Missouri. Raised by an older sister, Tecumpease, he accompanied an older brother, Chiksika, on a series of raids against frontier settlements in Kentucky and Tennessee in the late 1780s. He did not participate in the defeat of Gen. Josiah Harmar (1790), but led a scouting party that monitored Gen. Arthur St. Clair’s advance (1791) and fought at Fort Recovery and Fallen Timbers (1794). Embittered by the Indian defeat, he did not attend the subsequent negotiations and refused to sign the Treaty of Greenville (1795).
