(1995): 277–299; David, Gregory E. “Thinking and
Believing: Nativism and Unity in the Age of Pontiac
and Tecumseh.” American Indian Quarterly 16
(1992): 309–335; Dean, Lewis S. “Tecumseh’s
Prophecy: The Great New Madrid Earthquakes of
1811–1812 and 1843 in Alabama.”Alabama Review
47, no. 3 (1994): 163–171; Dowd, Gregory. Spirited
Resistance: The North American Struggle for
Unity, 1745–1815.Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Uni-
versity Press, 1992; Eckert, Allan W. A Sorrow in
Our Heart: The Life of Tecumseh.New York: Ban-tam, 1992; Edmunds, R. David. Tecumseh and the
Quest for Indian Leadership.Boston: Little, Brown,
1984; Frechoff, William F. “Tecumseh’s Last Stand.”
Military History16 (1996): 30–37; Gilbert, Bill. God
Gave Us This Country: Tekamthi and the First
American Civil War.New York: Atheneum, 1989;
Sugden, John.Tecumseh: A Life.New York: Henry
Holt, 1998; Sugden, John. Tecumseh’s Last Stand.
Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1985; Van
Hoose, William H. Tecumseh: An Indian Moses.Can-
ton, OH: Daring Books, 1984.TENSKWATAWA
Tenskwatawa
(ca. 1768-ca. November 1836)
Shawnee Prophet
P
rior to the War of 1812, Tenskwatawa
led a religious revitalization that swept
Native American villages of the Old
Northwest. He called for the abolition of
white ways among his people, but his mysti-
cal call lost its potency following the Battle of
Tippecanoe.
Lalawethika (Loud Voice) was born near
present-day Chillicothe, Ohio, probably
around 1768. He was one of two surviving
triplets born to Puckeshinwa, a Shawnee war
chief, and his Creek Indian wife, Meth-
oataske. His brother, the famous Tecumseh,
may have been the other surviving twin.
Lalawethika’s family was hard-hit in 1774
when his father was killed fighting under
Chief Cornstalkat the battle of Point Pleas-
ant. Lalawethika was raised by relatives, and
his transition to adulthood was awkward. Un-
like Tecumseh, he failed to distinguish him-
self as either a warrior or a hunter. Lala-
wethika also apparently put out one of his
own eyes in a hunting accident. Unpopular
among fellow Shawnees, he adapted to isola-
tion by heavy drinking, thereby acquiring fur-
ther degradation as a drunken braggart.
Fighting was not his queue, either, and he
failed to gain attention during the victories of
Blue Jacket and Little Turtleover Josiah
Harmar and Arthur St. Clair in the early
1790s. In defense of his own reputation,
Tecumseh prevailed upon him to participate
in the 1794 campaign against Gen. Anthony
Wayne, which culminated in the crushing In-
dian defeat at Fallen Timbers. The ensuing
Treaty of Greenville evicted most Native
Americans from the Ohio Valley, and by 1798
Lalawethika had followed his brother to new
villages in the Indiana Territory.
The ensuing decade was particularly harsh
for northeastern woodland Indians like the
Shawnees. Deprived of traditional hunting
grounds and beset by disease, alcoholism,
and the encroachment of white civilization,
traditional tribal leaders were unable to
check the spread of chaos in their dwindling
communities. Lalawethika continued living a
dissolute existence, contributing very little to
his tribe, until he underwent a life-changing
experience in 1805. One day while in a
drunken stupor, he experienced the first of
several mystical visions destined to change
his life—and that of his people. In them the
“Creator of Life” told him to reject any prod-