Peter Cozzens - The Warrior and the Prophet: The Shawnee Brothers Who Defied a Nation

THE WARRIOR AND THE PROPHET

ALSO BY PETER COZZENS

The Earth Is Weeping:

The Epic Story of the Indian Wars for the American West

Shenandoah 1862:

Stonewall Jacksons Valley Campaign

The Army and the Indian,

vol. 5 of Eyewitnesses to the Indian Wars, 1865-1890

The Long War for the Northern Plains,

vol. 4 of Eyewitnesses to the Indian Wars, 1865-1890

Conquering the Southern Plains,

vol. 3 of Eyewitnesses to the Indian Wars, 1865-1890

The Wars for the Pacific Northwest,

vol. 2 of Eyewitnesses to the Indian Wars, 1865-1890

The Struggle for Apacheria,

vol. 1 of Eyewitnesses to the Indian Wars, 1865-1890

The New Annals of the Civil War

(editor, with Robert I. Girardi)

Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, vol. 6 (editor)

Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, vol. 5 (editor)

General John Pope: A Life for the Nation

The Military Memoirs of General John Pope

(editor, with Robert I. Girardi)

The Darkest Days of the War: The Battles of Iuka and Corinth

The Shipwreck of Their Hopes: The Battles for Chattanooga

This Terrible Sound: The Battle of Chickamauga

No Better Place to Die: The Battle of Stones River

Published by arrangement with Alfred A. Knopf,

a division of Penguin Random House LLC.

First published in Great Britain in 2021 by Atlantic Books,

an imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd.

Copyright Peter Cozzens, 2020

The moral right of Peter Cozzens to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Hardback ISBN: 978-1-83895-149-8

E-book ISBN: 978-1-83895-150-4

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Composed by North Market Street Graphics, Lancaster, Pennsylvania

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For Eric

A wind blew west over the Atlantic, driving before it a frothy foam or scum. It blew this scum, which was evil and unclean, upon the shore of the American continent, and the scum took form. The form that it took was that of a white manof many white people, both men and women; wherever the scum lodged on the shore of the continent, it took this form.

TENSKWATAWA, the Shawnee Prophet, to his followers

The being within, communing with past ages, tells me that once, nor until lately, there was no white man on this continent; that it then all belonged to red men, children of the same parents, placed on it by the Great Spirit that made them, to keep it, to traverse it, to enjoy its productions, and to fill it with the same race, once a happy race, since made miserable by the white people who are never contented but always encroaching.

The way, and the only way, to check and to stop this evil, is for all the red men to unite in claiming a common and equal right in the land, as it was at first, and should be yet; for it never was divided but belongs to all for the use of each. For no part has a right to sell, even to each other, much less to strangersthose who want all and will not do with less.

TECUMSEH in council with Gov. William Henry Harrison

Gov. William Henry Harrison of the Indiana Territory was amazed. In a decade on the frontier implementing a fiercely acquisitive government land policy, he had met with scores of Indian chiefs, some defiant, others malleable. Never, however, had he encountered a native leader like the Shawnee chief Tecumseh, the man he considered his principal opponent in the fight for the Northwest, as present-day Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, and Wisconsin were then known. After a contentious council with Tecumseh in July 1811, Harrison penned a remarkable tribute to him, arguably the most effusive praise a government official ever offered an American Indian leader. Tecumseh had parried Harrisons every verbal thrust, eloquently defending his refusal to relinquish what Harrison considered one of the fairest portions of the globe, [then] the haunt of a few wretched savages.

There was nothing remotely wretched about Tecumseh, however. As Harrison told the secretary of war, The implicit obedience and respect which the followers of Tecumseh pay to him is really astonishing, and more than any other circumstance bespeaks him one of those uncommon geniuses which spring up occasionally to produce revolutions and overturn the established order of things. If it were not for the vicinity of the United States, he would, perhaps, be the founder of an empire that would rival in glory that of Mexico or Peru. Harrison marveled at the vigor with which the Shawnee chief pursued his dream of an Indian union. No difficulties deter him. His activity and industry supply the want of letters. For four years he has been in constant motion. You see him today on the Wabash and in a short time you hear of him on the shores of Lake Erie or Michigan, or on the banks of the Mississippi, and wherever he goes he makes an impression favorable to his purposes.

Harrisons testimonial encapsulates the talents of this passionate and indefatigable co-architect, with his younger brother Tenskwatawa, of the greatest pan-Indian confederation the westering American Republic would ever confront. Their movement reached across nearly half of what was then the United States, from the icy upper reaches of the Mississippi River to the steamy bottomlands of the lower Alabama River. No other Indian leaders enjoyed such a broad appeal, and none would ever pose a graver threat to American expansion than Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa. At the height of their appeal, the Shawnee brothers mustered twice as many warriors as would chiefs Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse on the Little Bighorn River some three generations later.

Fables flower where facts are few or forgotten. Myths endure when people want to believe them. So it was with the Shawnee brothers. Tecumseh would come to personify for Americans all that was great and noble in the Indian character as non-Indians (whites, in the parlance of the time) perceived greatness and nobility. The reasons for this are obvious. Tecumseh advocated a political and military alliance to oppose U.S. encroachment on Indian land. This was something that whites could readily comprehend. Tecumseh, who was first and foremost a political leader, acted as they would have acted under similar circumstances. Tenskwatawa, on the other hand, offered a divinely inspired solution to Indian land dispossession and cultural dissolution, drawing on native tradition that was beyond white understanding. Tenskwatawas person also repulsed whites. He was an unappealing, disfigured ex-alcoholic who as a boy had accidentally shot his right eye out with an arrow; a man devoid of talent or merit, a brawling mischievous Indian demagogue, according to an Indian agent who knew the Shawnee brothers intimately. The same official admired Tecumseh as the exemplar of Shawnee manhooda skilled hunter and cunning war leader, charitable, and an orator of rare eloquence. In a similar manner, history, biography, and folklore all came to deify Tecumseh and demonize his brother.