86 An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States
Nations. The Shawnee leader informed Harrison that he was leaving
for the South to bring the Muskogees, Choctaws, and Chickasaws
into the alliance.
Harrison, now convinced that Tecumseh's brother Tenskwatawa,
the Prophet, was the source of the renewed Indigenous militancy,
reasoned that destroying Prophet's Town would crush the resistance.
It would present a clear choice to the many Indigenous people who
supported the militant leaders: cede more land to the United States
and take the money and trade goods, or suffer further annihilation.
He decided to strike in Te cumseh's absence. Having served as Gen
eral Wayne's aide-de-camp in the Fallen Timbers attacks, Harrison
knew how to keep his regular army forces from being ambushed. He
assembled Indiana and Kentucky rangers-seasoned Indian killers
-and some US Army regulars. At the site of what is today Terre
Haute, Indiana, the soldiers constructed Fort Harrison on Shaw
nee land-a symbol of their intention to remain permanently. The
people in Prophet's Town were aware of the military advance, but
Te cumseh had warned them not to be drawn into a fight, because
the alliance was not yet ready for war. Tenskwatawa sent scouts to
observe the enemy's movements. The US forces arrived on the edge
of Prophet's Town at dawn on November 6, r8u. Seeing no alter
native to overriding his brother's instructions, Te nskwatawa led an
assault before dawn the following morning. Only after some two
hundred of the Indigenous residents had fallen did the troops over
power them, burning the town, destroying the granary, and looting,
even digging up graves and mutilating the corpses. This was the fa
mous "battle" of Tippecanoe that made Harrison a frontier hero to
the settlers and later helped elect him president.13
The US Army's destruction of the capital of the alliance outraged
Indigenous peoples all over the Old Northwest, prompting fight
ers of the Kickapoos, Winnebagos, Potawatamis, and even Creeks
from the South to converge on a British garrison at Fort Malden in
Canada to obtain supplies with which to fight. Contrary to the false
US assumption that Te cumseh was a mere tool of the British, he had
been unwilling to enter into a British alliance because Europeans
had proved so unreliable in the past. But now he spoke for unified
and coordinated Indigenous-led war on the United States that the