84 An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States
TECUMSEH
Over the following decade, more settlers poured over the Appala
chians, squatting on Indigenous lands, and even building towns,
anticipating that the US military, land speculators, and civilian insti
tutions would follow.
In the Ohio Country, the Shawnee brothers Te cumseh and Ten
skwatawa began building a concerted Indigenous resistance in the
early nineteenth century. From their organizing center, Prophet's
Town, founded in 1807, Tenskwatawa and his fellow organizers
traveled throughout Shawnee towns calling for a return to their cul
tural roots, which had been eroded by the assimilation of Anglo
American practices and trade goods, especially alcohol.1 0 Abuse of
alcohol (and drugs) is epidemic like diseases in communities sub
jected to colonization or other forms of domination, particularly
in crowded and miserable refugee situations. This is the case in all
parts of the world, not only among Native peoples of North Amer
ica. Alcohol was an item in the tool kit of colonialists who made
it readily and cheaply available. Christian missionaries often took
advantage of these dysfunctional conditions to convert, offering not
only food and housing but also discipline to avoid alcohol. But this
was itself a form of colonial submission.
Significantly, Te cumseh did not limit his vision to the Ohio
Country but also envisaged organizing all the peoples west to the
Mississippi, north into the Great Lakes region, and south to the Gulf
of Mexico. He visited other Indigenous nations, calling for unity in
defiance of the squatters' presence on their lands. He presented a
program that would end all sales of Indigenous land to settlers. Only
then would settlers' migrations in search of cheap land cease and the
establishment of the United States in the West be prevented. An alli
ance of all Indigenous nations could then manage Indigenous lands
as a federation. His program, strategy, and philosophy mark the
beginning of pan-Indigenous movements in Anglo-colonized North
America that established a model for future resistance. Joseph Brant
and Pontiac had originated the strategy in the 1780 s, but Tecumseh
and Te nskwatawa forged a pan-Indigenous framework made all the