painted by noted frontier artist George Catlin
before dying at his village in November 1836.
See also
Little Turtle; Tecumseh
Bibliography
Buff, Rachel. “Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa: Myth, Histo-
riography, and Popular Memory.” Historical Reflec-
tions21 no. 2 (1995): 277–299; Cave, Alfred A. “The
Failure of the Shawnee Prophet’s Witch Hunt.” Eth-
nohistory42 (1995): 445–475; Clifton, James, ed. Star
Woman and Other Shawnee Tales.Lanham, MD: Uni-
versity Press of America, 1984; David, Gregory E.
“Thinking and Believing: Nativism and Unity in the
Age of Pontiac and Tecumseh.” American Indian
Quarterly16 (1992): 309–335; Dowd, Gregory. Spir-
ited Resistance: The North American Struggle for
Unity, 1745–1815.Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Uni-
versity Press, 1992; Edmunds, R. David. The Shawnee
Prophet.Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983;
Jacobs, Lyn R. “Native American Prophetic Move-
ments of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries.”
Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Syracuse University,
1995; Starkey, Armstrong. European and Native
American Warfare, 1675–1815.Norman: University
of Oklahoma Press, 1998; Sugden, John.Tecumseh: A
Life.New York: Henry Holt, 1998; Willig, Timothy D.
“Prophetstown on the Wabash: The Native Spiritual
Defense of the Old Northwest.” Michigan Historical
Review 23 (1997): 115–158.TOJO, HIDEKI
Tojo, Hideki
(December 30, 1884–December 23, 1948)
Japanese General; Prime Minister
A
n efficient bureaucrat and a skilled po-
litical infighter, Tojo personified Japan’s
spirit of militant nationalism. He was
determined to expand the empire at any cost,
even at the risk of war with the United States.
For his unflinching embrace of aggression he
was summarily branded a war criminal.
Hideki Tojo was born in Tokyo on Decem-
ber 30, 1884, into an old samurai family. His
father, an accomplished army general, en-
rolled him in the Imperial Military Academy,
and he graduated with honors in 1905. Fol-
lowing a decade of competent service, Tojo
was selected to attend the prestigious Army
Staff College in 1914. He next spent several
years in Switzerland and Germany as a mili-
tary attaché, and he also taught at the Army
Staff College in 1924. Tojo rose to colonel
while serving within the Ministry of the Army
and also headed the prestigious First Infantry
Regiment in 1928. The Great Depression hit
Japan with a resounding impact the following
year, and its budding democracy was under-
mined by burgeoning militarism and national-
ism. In this highly charged political atmos-
phere, militant factions within the army began
agitating for greater control of national policy,
especially in light of the 1931 annexation of
Manchuria. Tojo cast his lot with the so-called
Control faction, which pressed for army mod-
ernization and a more aggressive foreign
policy stance. Thereafter, he became closely
identified with prowar elements, determined
to establish Japanese hegemony over Asia by
force.
Tojo rose to major general in 1933, but po-
litical dominance by the competing and more
moderate Imperial Way faction relegated him
to a succession of minor posts. In 1935, this
faction managed to exile him to the distant
Kwantung Army in Manchuria, as head of the
Kempei Tai (secret police). However, he in-
gratiated himself with the government loyal-
ists by arresting several Imperial Way conspir-