Tecumseh

This article describes the military leader. For more meanings, see Tecumseh (disambiguation) .

Tecumseh's idealizing portrait from around 1915, watercolor over platinum print based on a woodcut by Benson J. Lossing from around 1860

Tecumseh (actually Tecumtha or Tikamthi 'The Crouching Mountain Lion '; * 1768 in Ohio ; † October 5, 1813 in Moraviantown , Ontario ) was a well-known political and military leader of the North American Indians from the Shawnee tribe , who was already a very tall man during his lifetime Enjoyed a reputation among his fellow men and is still widely received today. All his life he pursued the dream of forming a great Indian alliance that would be strong enough to stand up to the white settlers and thus force them to peace.

youth

Tecumseh's exact date of birth is unknown; he was believed to have been born in 1768 in a village on the Scioto River in Ohio.

The name Tecumseh can be translated both with “The mountain lion ducking to leap” and “I'm crossing the path” and is an indication of his membership of the Shawnee panther clan inherited from his father Pukeshinwah. Pukeshinwah was killed in the Battle of Point Pleasant between the Shawnee and Virginia militia in 1774. Tecumseh's mother Methoataaskee, perhaps a Muskogee or Cherokee , emigrated to Spanish Louisiana five years later .

Tecumseh's upbringing was taken over by his brother Cheeseekau (Chiksika) and the able Shawnee chief Black Fish after his father's death . His sister Tecumapease , an unusual woman to whom Tecumseh probably owed his exceptionally humane convictions , also had a great influence on him . During the American Revolutionary War the Shawnee were allied with the British, Tecumseh's village was attacked several times by American troops. After burning their houses and the crops, the tribe had to flee several times and founded new places - further and further away from the expanding settlements of the white settlers.

In the 1790s there were major military clashes between the colonists of European descent and a federation of tribes led by the Miamis and their chief Me-She-Kin-No-Qua - Little Turtle . The Indians, led by Little Turtle, Blue Jacket and the Shawnee fighting white man Simon Girty , defeated the whites in two battles under the generals Josiah Harmar (1790) and Arthur St. Clair .

Tecumseh took part in these battles as a young man. In the function of a scout he reported on every movement of the enemy armies, but was not personally involved in St. Clair's defeat, at least nothing is reported about it.

The almost complete annihilation of General St. Clair's army in the Battle of the Wabash River in 1791 was the greatest victory in all history that Indians had ever won over a European or American army. The white people were in deep shock; the call for revenge led the young US government to immediately issue orders to raise a new army.

In the decisive battle of Fallen Timbers in August 1794, Tecumseh fought as the leader of a small band of Shawnee, which also included his younger brother Lalawethika. The Indian coalition was defeated by General Anthony Wayne (known as "Mad Anthony"), and there was no rescue from Fort Miami in the United Kingdom, to which the Indians had taken refuge. The British did not let in the Indians allied with them. As a result of the defeat, the Indians had to give up large areas of Ohio and the northwest ; the corresponding peace treaty provided for further land gain for the advancing white settlers.

In the years that followed, Tecumseh lived near what is now Piqua , Ohio, as the leader of a small group of Indians who belonged to several tribes . He and his group later hiked on to the western arm of the White River .

In 1799 he took part in a council meeting near what is now Urbana , Ohio, to settle conflicts between Indians and Americans of European descent. There he spoke with such eloquence and urgency that the translator found it difficult to follow him; the white audience was intrigued, and witnesses to his speech described him as an extremely impressive figure. In 1803 he repeated his promise of peace in Chillicothe , Ohio, where a white settler had just been killed.

alliance

In 1805, at the urging of his younger brother Lalawethika (later Tenskwatawa ), Tecumseh settled near Greenville . There Tenskwatawa led a religious renewal movement as a prophet, which kept a distance from the Americans. This movement also found supporters outside of their own settlement. The decisive personality in the background, however, was always Tecumseh, who used his vain younger brother as a "prophet" in order to use the belief in ghosts of his Indian brothers for the purposes of his unification efforts.

From 1807 onwards, Tecumseh succeeded in transforming the religious movement into a political one in which he now openly assumed his leadership role. The main points of the movement were Indian - and not tribal - common land ownership and the stopping of land sales to white settlers by individual chiefs. Tecumseh tried to make it clear to the Indian tribes that they were first and foremost Indians and only afterwards members of a certain tribe. This view, however, overwhelmed most of the chiefs.

In the following years he campaigned in Ohio, Michigan , Indiana and Illinois among the local tribes for his confederation and asked the British in Canada for political and logistical support. In August 1810 he declared himself the recognized leader of all Indians to William Henry Harrison , governor of the Indiana Territory . In the coming year he visited the Cherokee , Muskogee , Choctaw , Chickasaw and Seminoles in the southeast of the continent, but had only success with the Muskogee . Overall, his project failed due to the disagreement of the tribes and their inability to see that only a common struggle of all Indians offered the long-term perspective of stopping the land grabbing of the white settlers and securing Indian territory.

During Tecumseh's journey to the southern tribes, the US Army, under the command of the future President William Henry Harrison , attacked the Alliance city under the leadership of the strategically incapable Tenskwatawa in the Battle of Tippecanoe , which led to its complete destruction.

The last few years

In the British-American War of 1812, Tecumseh and his Indian alliance fought a.o. a. with the Chiefs Roundhead (Stiata), Main Poc, Walk in the Water and Naiwash on the British side. The unbelievable initial successes of the British-Indian coalition under General Brock and Tecumseh (capture of Fort Mackinac and Detroit and other fortified places) as well as the defeat of the Americans at Frenchtown in January 1813 very likely prevented the conquest of Canada by American troops and thus another historical development with further expansion of the United States.

After the death of Major General Sir Isaac Brock at the Battle of Queenston Heights on October 13, 1812, this able soldier, who had the full respect of Tecumseh, was replaced by Major General Henry Procter . However, Procter lacked personal courage and experience on the battlefield, he acted hesitantly, indecisively and did not listen to the advice of the strategically brilliant Tecumseh. After the war, Procter was certified ineptitude and cowardice in his English homeland.

During the siege of Fort Meigs, Tecumseh and William Henry Harrison met each other. Strong relief troops for Fort Meigs under Colonel Dudley were almost completely wiped out and 600 men were killed or captured. There was also an argument between Tecumseh and Procter, who did not prevent the slaughter of defenseless prisoners by Indians. Upon his arrival, Tecumseh prevented the massacre from proceeding by virtue of his authority. The following dialogue ensued with Procter, who excused his inactivity with the words: “Your warriors cannot be ordered.” Then Tecumseh: “Go! You are unable to command men! Go and put on women's skirts. "(" Begone, you are not fit to command men! Go and put on petticoats. ")

Despite this success, Fort Meigs could not be captured, and the fortress also defied constant bombardment. Harrison directed the defense prudently. After Barclay's defeat by Perry in the sea ​​battle on Lake Erie , the British-Indian coalition's supply route was destroyed. The coalition had to give up Detroit and other conquered places as well as its own fortresses such as Ford Malden and Amherstburg. Despite accusations from Tecumseh, Procter repeatedly avoided a battle with the Americans under Harrison. Incapable as he was, he squandered the potential of the British Army. Constant small losses of men and artillery weakened the increasingly demoralized troops lastingly.

Only an ultimatum from Tecumseh, combined with the threat of defection to Harrison, brought Procter to surrender in the battle of the Thames River . The Americans decided the battle with a single furious cavalry charge. After a single volley had been fired, the poorly positioned British line broke up in wild flight, General Procter first and foremost; not even the only British cannon was fired. According to various reports, the British had 12 to 18 dead and 22 to 36 wounded at this point in time. Tecumseh's Indian alliance continued fighting for about an hour, until news of Tecumseh's death led to the cessation of fighting on the Indian side; he had been shot in battle. This destroyed the last chance the Indian peoples had to keep a remnant of their own territory in America. From 1813 the resistance of the Indians could only delay the conquest of the country and its expulsion or destruction.

Artistic processing

The German writer Erhard Wittek wrote under the pseudonym Fritz Steuben from 1930 to 1939 a cycle of novels with the title and the main hero of the same name Tecumseh . The novel Tecumseh dates from 1956 . Vision of Glory (title of the German edition: Tecumseh. Red man's fame and legacy ) by the American Glenn Tucker .

The DEFA turned an Indian film titled Tecumseh - The superiority inferior , who came to the GDR cinemas 1,972th

The German artist Klaus Dill painted a 12-part Tecumseh cycle, which was shown in an exhibition at the Baden-Württemberg State Photo Agency in Stuttgart in 1999.

Trivia

The middle name of US General William Tecumseh Sherman was given to him at birth because of his father's great admiration for the Indian leader.

After William Henry Harrison, elected President of the United States in 1840 , died after just one month in office, all presidents, including John F. Kennedy, who were elected president in a year ending with zero, happened to die in office or were murdered . This series was Tecumseh's Curse ( Tecumseh's Curse or Curse of Tippecanoe called): 1860 Abraham Lincoln , 1880 James A. Garfield , 1900 William McKinley , 1920 Warren G. Harding , 1940 Franklin D. Roosevelt and 1960, John F. Kennedy . Only Ronald Reagan , elected in 1980, put an end to this series.

Literature (including fiction)

• Gregory Evans Dowd: A Spirited Resistance. The North American Indian Struggle for Unity, 1745-1815 (= The Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science. Volume 109, 4). Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore MD u. a. 1992, ISBN 0-8018-4236-0 .
• Benjamin Drake: The Life of Tecumseh and His Brother The Prophet. Anderson, Gates & Wright, Cincinnati OH 1858 (Reprint. University Press of the Pacific, Honolulu HI 2002).
• Herbert CW Goltz: Tecumseh . In: Dictionary of Canadian Biography . tape 5: 1801-1820 . University of Toronto Press, Toronto 1983, ISBN 0-8020-3398-9 ( English , French ).
• R. David Edmunds: Tecumseh and the Quest for Indian Leadership. Little Brown, Boston MA et al. a. 1984, ISBN 0-316-21169-9 .
• Allan W. Eckert : A Sorrow in our Heart. The Life of Tecumseh. Bantam Books, New York NY u. a. 1993, ISBN 0-553-08023-7 .
• Bill Gilbert: God Gave us This Country. Tekamthi and the First American Civil War. Atheneum, New York NY 1989, ISBN 0-689-11632-2 .
• Stephan Maninger: Tecumseh. Red Napoleon of the New World. (1768-1813). In: Stig Förster , Markus Pöhlmann , Dierk Walter: (Ed.): Warlords of world history. 22 historical portraits. CH Beck, Munich 2006, ISBN 3-406-54983-7 , pp. 202-216.
• Fritz Steuben : Tecumseh - The Flying Arrow. Franckh, Stuttgart 1930; as well as another 7 volumes.
• John Sugden: Tecumseh. A life. Holt, New York NY 1997, ISBN 0-8050-4138-9 .
• John Sugden: Tecumseh's Last Stand. University of Oklahoma Press, Norman OK et al. a. 1985, ISBN 0-8061-1944-6 .
• Stefan Wogawa: Tecumseh. The life of the famous chief (1768–1813) and the DEFA film of the same name from 1972. THK Verlag, Ilmenau 2014, ISBN 978-3-945068-02-1 .

Movie

• Tecumseh by Hans Kratzert (director), with Gojko Mitić in the lead role. GDR, 1972, 109 min.
• Larry Elikann (Director): Tecumseh - The Last Warrior . TV film, USA, 1995, 92 min.
• Chris Eyre, Ric Burns (Director): We're here to stay! Chief Tecumseh's vision. Documentation with game scenes, USA, 2009, 52 min.

Web links

Commons : Tecumseh  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Tecumseh in the catalog of the German National Library
• Tecumseh! , the drama.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Portrait of Tecumtha (c. 1808). Toronto Public Library, accessed on July 19, 2014 (information on both the watercolor and the underlying woodcut).