Tenskwatawa

Ten-sqúat-a-way (painted by George Catlin in 1830 ).

Tenskwatawa even Elskwatawa ( German  Open Door ), originally Lalawethika ( German  The rattle / The noise maker ) (* 1775 , † 1836 in the state of Kansas ) was a chief and shaman of Shawnee - Indians . He is the brother of the well-known Indian leader Tecumseh (1768-1813), who tried to build an Indian alliance and was killed in the British-American War . Tenskwatawa became known as "The Prophet" or the "Shawnee Prophet".

Early years

The One-Eyed Prophet (Portrait of Charles Bird King)

Because his father died before he was born and his mother left the family shortly afterwards, Tenskwatawa grew up as an orphan . He was considered a good-for-nothing and an outsider. He had no particular success as a hunter or as a fighter. He lost an eye in a hunting accident. He was a constant target of ridicule and addicted to alcohol.

The religious leader

That changed suddenly in 1805 when he had a series of great visions. Tenskwatawa became a preacher and called for a return to traditional life. He banned his followers from European food, clothing and all factory products, monogamy and the consumption of alcohol. He initiated some witch hunts of Indian Christians and called for the "worship of the earth". This probably moved his brother Tecumseh to the oldest documented mention of a " mother earth " in a speech to white listeners in 1812. The number of his followers grew rapidly and he temporarily became an Indian religious leader.

The Indian settlement of Tippecanoe, where Tenskwatawa lived, developed into the center of the religious movement. The place was renamed Prophetstown in his honor .

Decline

With the Battle of Tippecanoe in 1811, Tenskwatawa suddenly lost his reputation as a religious leader and never regained it. This was not only due to the defeat of the Indians and the expulsion from Prophetstown, but also to the false predictions of Tenskwatawa, for example his prophecy of the invulnerability of the Indians in this battle.

literature

• R. David Edmunds: The Shawnee Prophet. 1985
• Benjamin Drake: The Life of Tecumseh and His Brother The Prophet. Reprint of the 1858 edition, University Press of the Pacific, 2002.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online: TENSKWATAWA
2. ↑ Christian F. Feest : Animated Worlds - The religions of the Indians of North America. In: Small Library of Religions , Vol. 9, Herder, Freiburg / Basel / Vienna 1998, ISBN 3-451-23849-7 , pp. 56–57.

Web links

• Literature by and about Tenskwatawa in the catalog of the German National Library