Help me please please Tecumseh’s Speech to Harrison in August of 1810

Beginning in 1808, the Shawnee leader Tecumseh travelled throughout the United States gathering supporters and allies to form a native confederacy that could resist westward expansion by white settlers. In August 1811, Tecumseh met with Governor William Henry Harrison to discuss the recent treaties, land purchases, and violence throughout the Indiana territories. At their meeting, Tecumseh spoke for a large group of natives along the Great Lakes. While Tecumseh continued to negotiate peace and unity between native tribes, Harrison petitioned the U. S. government for more soldiers, and made plans to intimidate and break up the confederacy.


Houses are built for you to hold councils in. Indians hold theirs in the open air. It is true I am a Shawnee. My forefathers were warriors. Their son is a warrior. From them I take only my existence; from my tribe I take nothing. I am the maker of my own fortune; and oh! that I could make that of my red people, and of my country, as great as the conceptions of my mind, when I think of the Spirit that rules the universe. I would not then come to Governor Harrison to ask him to tear apart the treaty and to obliterate the landmark; but I would say to him: "Sir, you have liberty to return to your own country."

You wish to prevent the Indians from doing as we wish, which is to unite and consider their lands as a common property of the whole. You take the tribes aside and advise them not to come into this agreement. You want by your distinctions of Indian tribes, to make them war with each other. You never see the Indians work to make the white people do this. You are continually driving the red people, when at last you will drive them into the great lake [Lake Michigan], where they can neither stand nor work.

Since my residence at Tippecanoe, we have endeavored to stop this, to destroy village chiefs, by whom all mischiefs are done. It is they who sell their land to the Americans. Brother, this land that was sold, and the price given for it, was only done by a few. In the future we are prepared to punish those who propose to sell land to the Americans. If you continue to purchase them, it will cause war among the different tribes, and, at last I do not know what will be the consequences among the white people.

Brother, I wish you would take pity on the red people and do as I have requested. If you do not give up the land and do cross the boundary of our present settlement, it will be very hard and produce great trouble between us.

The way, the only way to stop this evil, is for the red people to unite in claiming a common and equal right in the land, as it was -- for it was never divided, but belongs to all. No tribe has the right to sell, even to each other, much less to strangers. Sell a country?! Why not sell the air, the great sea, as well as the earth? Did not the Great Spirit make them all for the use of his children?

How can we have confidence in the white people? We have good and just reasons to believe we have ample grounds to accuse the Americans of injustice, especially when such great acts of injustice have been committed by them upon our race, of which they seem to have no manner of regard, or even to reflect. Everything I have told you is the truth. The Great Spirit has inspired me.

Brother, I was glad to hear what you told us. You said that if we could prove that the land was sold by people who had no right to sell it, you would restore it. I will prove that those who did sell did not own it. Did they have a deed? A title? NO!

You say that proves someone owns land. Those chiefs only spoke a claim, and so you pretended to believe their claim, only because you wanted the land. But the many tribes with me will not agree with those claims. They have never had a title to sell, and we agree this proves you could not buy it from them. If the land is not given back to us, you will see, when we return to our home from here, how it will be settled. It will be like this:

We shall have a great council, at which all tribes will be present. We shall show to those who sold that they had no rights to the claims they set up, and we shall see what will be done to those chiefs who did sell the land to you. I am not alone in this determination, it is the determination of all the warriors and red people who listen to me.

Questions:

What did Tecumseh say Harrison was free to do?
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What is Tecumseh accusing Harrison and the Americans of trying to do to the tribes?
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Who is selling the land to the Americans? Why does he say this is not right?
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Why did Tecumseh say that White people had no right to take Native American’s land?

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What do you think will happen to the people who sold/gave land to the Americans?
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