uct or practice associated with white civiliza-
tion and return to traditional Indian ways of
life. This entailed the elimination of European
foods, clothing, goods, and especially alcohol.
Furthermore, all property was to be held in
common, and marriage or any other interac-
tion with whites was forbidden. Once this was
accomplished, Native Americans would stop
destroying themselves, and they could also
magically make the hated Americans disap-
pear. Lalawethika then swore off alcohol and
began preaching religious revitalization to fel-
low Shawnees. He also adopted a new name,
Tenskwatawa (The Open Door), symbolic of
his new role as a mystic. In this capacity he
was determined to rescue his people from de-
bauchery.
Tenskwatawa’s message of cultural purity
was welcomed by the faltering Indians of the
Old Northwest, and they enthusiastically em-
braced it. His efforts neatly coincided with
Tecumseh’s more secular goal of establishing
a pan-Indian confederation to stop further
American encroachment. The two men en-
joyed some initial success shoring up tribal
resistance to the sale of land by corrupt
chiefs. William Henry Harrison, governor of
the Indiana Territory, watched these suc-
cesses with alarm and openly derogated the
Prophet’s powers. “If he is really a prophet,”
Harrison told them, “let him cause the sun to
stand still [or] the moon to change its course.”
However, the ploy backfired when Tensk-
watawa accurately predicted a full eclipse of
the sun on June 16, 1806. New adherents now
flocked to him.
Indian resentment crested in the 1809
Treaty of Fort Wayne, which ceded millions of
acres of Indian land to the United States, and
the brothers redoubled their efforts to resist
the sale. That year, they were responsible for
establishing a new village at the banks of the
Tippecanoe River that the whites came to call
“Prophet’s Town.” In fact, this distant enclave
served as a headquarters for Tenskwatawa to
spread his proselytizing while Tecumseh ven-
tured as far as Alabama seeking recruits for
his new alliance. The fact that this village sat
squarely on land previously sold to whites
was a deliberate challenge to Harrison’s au-
thority—and he was prepared to fight for it.
In the fall of 1811, Tecumseh left the Indi-
ana Territory and headed south to confer with
the Creek Indians. Harrison, cognizant that
Tecumseh constituted the military arm of the
movement, allowed him to depart before ad-
vancing upon Prophet’s Town with an army of
1,000 soldiers and militia. Tenskwatawa was
left in nominal control of affairs, but he had
been warned by his brother not to provoke a
fight with the whites until he returned. This
sage advice was quickly forgotten. Peaceful
emissaries were dispatched to the American
camp while Tenskwatawa began whipping up
his young braves for a fight. His magic, he as-
sured them, would prevent white bullets from
doing them harm and would make victory cer-
tain. In the early morning of November 7,
1811, the Indians skillfully approached the
sleeping Americans, intent on surprising them.
Fortunately for Harrison, his sentries fired
upon the intruders and fighting commenced.
The battle was hard-fought and victory was in
the balance for several hours, but at dawn the
Americans counterattacked and drove Tensk-
watawa’s warriors off. Moreover, Indian losses
were heavy, despite promises of magical im-
munity. Tecumseh’s return triggered an angry
confrontation between the two brothers, and
Tenskwatawa was completely discredited.
When the War of 1812 erupted the following
summer, he took no part in the fighting and
emigrated to Canada, a disgraced figure.
Tecumseh, whose dream of a pan-Indian con-
federation ended on the banks of the Tippeca-
noe, also died in the course of the war, leaving
the Indian movement leaderless.
Tenskwatawa remained in Canada on a
British pension until 1825, when he immi-
grated back to the remaining Shawnee com-
munities in Ohio. There he helped the federal
government remove his surviving people to
new homes across the Mississippi River.
Tenskwatawa then established a new village
near present-day Kansas City, Kansas, where
he lived in obscurity. He was interviewed andTENSKWATAWA