Tecumseh

There are not many historical sources that talk about Tecumseh’s wives or how many children he had. However, it is speculated that he married a Native American woman, with whom he had a son, Mahyawwekawpaese.

It is believed that he divorced his first wife and married another Native American woman called Mamate and that they had a son together called, Naythawaynah. It has often been mentioned in texts that Mamate died in childbirth, while other sources indicate that she went on to become the mother of many more children.

He was killed during the Battle of the Thames on October 5 1813.

Tecumseh was born in a Shawnee Indian village in March 1768 in Ohio. As he grew up during the American Revolutionary War and the Northwest Indian War, he was exposed to war from a very young age.

In 1774, his father, Pukeshinwah, was killed in Lord Dunmore’s War and many villages were ransacked and pillaged during this war. At the age of 15, after the American Revolutionary War, he joined a posse of Shawnee peoples, who were determined to stop the white invasion.

After the battle, his family moved to the parish of Chillicothe, which was destroyed in 1779 by Kentucky militia. The family moved a second time, but that too was destroyed by the white settlers.

The third time, the family moved to the village of Standing Stone, which was attacked in 1782. Following this attack, they finally moved to a new Shawnee settlement near Bellefontaine, Ohio.

He accompanied his brother, Cheeseekau, a Shawnee warrior, on many wars to fight the white settlers. During a raid, Cheeseekau was slain and Tecumseh was made the leader of a small Shawnee group, eventually becoming the leader of other pillaging parties.

He returned to Ohio in 1790 and after that, he took part in several battles including the Fallen Timbers battle that took place four years later. The Indians were beaten by the Americans, which concluded the Northwestern Indian Wars working to the advantage of the Americans.

He settled in Ohio with his brother, Tenskwatawa, who later became a religious leader. In 1808, along with his brother and followers, he left the area and they moved northwest, founding the village of Prophetstown. Here, Tecumseh hoped to recruit a confederacy involving other Indian tribes to fight off the white expansion.

In 1809, William Henry Harrison proposed the Treaty of Fort Wayne, offering large bribes to Native Americans to retreat from their lands, taking three million acres of their lands in return. Tecumseh’s open hostility to the treaty marked his advent as a powerful spearhead.

In 1810, he led four hundred equipped warriors from Prophetstown to provoke Indiana governor, Harrison. He began rabble-rousing the warriors to kill Harrison, who in order to defend himself, pulled his sword.

The Battle of the Thames, which took place in 1812, was a war between the United States and Great Britain, who were allies of the Native American confederacy, particularly the Shawnee chief, Tecumseh. Although the Americans won the battle, this is regarded as one of the greatest battles that Tecumseh and his 500 native warriors fought even though the British retreated in the middle of the war. Tecumseh and his men continued to fight, displaying extreme valor and bravery. It is believed that the Native American chief was killed in this battle.