OHIO STATEWIDE FILES - Know your Ohio: Tecumseh, Son of Pucksinwah [6]
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April 12, 2000
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Historical Collections of Ohio
Diaries of S. J. Kelly
Plains Dealer
Know Your Ohio
by Darlene E. Kelley
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Tecumseh, Son of Pucksinwah-- " The Shawnee War Chief " -- part 6

Confederacy and Prophecy --

Each time Tecumseh addressed one of the councils, he felt a great
exaltation as he saw how his words caught and held his listeners; how
easily, with the proper turn of a phrase, he could stir in them emotions
of anger and hate, love and pleasure, regret and sorrow. Each time he
began to speak, he was never really sure exactly what he would say, but
then the words came to him, rolling fluently from his tongue and never
failing to stir deeply all who listened.

He was much pleased with the way things had gone so far. All during
spring, summer and full of the previous year he had gone from village to
villege, journeying as far eastward as western Vermont and
Massachusetts. The past spring, as soon as he had concluded the
laughable treaty with the Cut-ta-ho-tha, he had ranged across upper and
western New York State and northwestern Pennsylvania. All of the
remaning Iroquois Confederacy had been inspired by the plan, and they
looked upon the speaker with something very akin to reverence. They had
pledged their faith and secrecy and, most important, their help when the
great sign should be given.

This great sign that Tecumseh spoke of wherever he went was always the
same. and his telling of it never failed to awe his audiences. When the
period of waiting was over, he told them, when tribal unification had
been completed, when all was in readinss, then would the sign be given ;
in the midst of the night the earth beneath would tremble and roar for a
long period. Jugs woul break, though there be no one near to touch them.
Great trees would fall, though the air be windless. Streams would change
their courses to run backwards, and lakes would be swallowed up into the
earth and other lakes suddenly appear. The bones of every man would
tremble with the trembling of the ground, and they would not mistake it.
No!
There was not anything to compare with it in the lives of their fathers
or the fathers before them since time began; when this sign came, they
were to drop to their mattocks and flash scrapers, leave their fields
and their hunting camps and their villages,and join together and move to
assemble across the lake river from the fort of Detroit.And on that day
they would no longer be Mohawks or Senecas, Oneidas or Onondagas, or any
other tribe. They would be Indians! One people united forever where the
good of one would henceforth become the good of all!

So it would be!

In 1809, the watchword of the year was suspicion. Everyone, it seemed
was suspicious of something.

Despite all the suspicions in the air, the year closed without without
open hostilities erupting anywhere. The United States, under the new
President, Jame Madison, continued to be suspicious of the British.
William Henry Harrison continued to be suspicious of Tecumseh and the
Prophet. The settlers continued to be suspicious of all Indians. And
Tenskwatawa continued to be suspicious of everything and everybody.

The Prophet's work in helping unite the tribes behind Tecumseh's
movement was, on the whole, a big disappointment to Tecumseh. These
tribes-- the Delawares, Miamis, Wyandots, and, in particular, the
Shawnees---must be convinced to join. Without their active support, the
entire grand plan mght collapse. Yet, instead of uniting them, Tecumseh
had suceeded only to alarm them driving them away with talk of immediate
attack on Vincennes and the river settlements, and by his suggestions
that the Great Spirit would destroy any who did not join in to help. It
was a maddening development and, before he set out again to visit each
of these chiefs, Tecumseh held long conferences with his younger brother
the Prophet and gave him strict orders to follow

Tenskwatawa the Prophet was to begin immediately to regain some of the
prestige he had lost during the year. He would retire alone in the woods
and there make a large number of sacred slabs which he was to tell the
assembled Indians he had made under the direction of the Great Spirit.
The directions for their constuction was specific.

Each slab was to be of the same length, thickness and taper, and each
was to be carved, on one side only, the same symbols. the slabs were to
be of red cedar and each was to be accompanied by a bundle of thin red
sticks. Each of the red sticks was to represet one moon, and, when the
bundle and slab was given to a particular chief, he would be directed to
throw away one of the red sticks at each full moon until only the slab
itself remained, at which time he must prepare for the great sign to be
given.

The symbols on the slab were to have a double meaning-- one to tell any
curious whites who might see them, the other to be the true meaning. For
the whites, these were to be described as heaven sticks-- symbols which
would guide them to a happy afterlife. The symbols, reading from bottom
to top, were family, which was the most important single factor in
everyday Indian life, the earth upon which they lived, followed by the
principal features of earth, water, lightening, trees, the four corners
of the earth, corn,fowl, and animals of the earth and air, all plant
life, the sun, the blue sky and all of these things having to be
experienced and understood before the people could reach the uppermost
symbol. Heaven.

The actual meaning of the symbolism, however, was considerable different
and much more menacing. It was for all the Indians on both sides of the
Mississippi River -- to come in a straight direction toward Detroit at
lightening speed with their weapons; coming from the four corners of the
earth, leaving behind the tending of the corn or hunting of game or
storing of grains to become united when the great sign was given so that
all the tribes might, in one movement, by peaceful means if possible,
but by warfare if necessary, take over the place of the whites which had
been unsurped from them.

To each of the southern tribes he visited, Tecumseh presented a sacred
slab, along with a bundle of the red sticks. But where once these stick
bundles had been large, now they were unusually small. The one he had
given the Cherokees a few weeks ago when they agreed to assemble under
his leadership had only four sticks. And when, three days ago, he had
concluded his talks with the Seminoles, their bundle had contained only
three sticks.  

Everywhere he went he was listened to eagerly. His fame had spread far;
few indeed were those who could not relate exploites of the great
Shawnee Chief, Tecumseh, or failed to be impressed deeply by the scope
of his amalgamation. Thus, they readily pledged themselves to join him
when the great sign came. Among with the Cherokees and Seminoles and
Lower Creeks, there were the smaller and more scattered tribes-- the
Santee and Calusas and Catawbes and the slightly larger Choctaws and
Biloxis, the Chickasaws and the Alabamas.
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to be continued in part 7--