OHIO STATEWIDE FILES OH-FOOTSTEPS Mailing List Issue 152 *********************************************************************** USGENWEB NOTICE: These electronic pages may NOT be reproduced in any format for profit or presentation by other organization or persons. Persons or organizations desiring to use this material, must obtain the written consent of the contributor, or the legal representative of the submitter, and contact the listed USGenWeb archivist with proof of this consent. The submitter has given permission to the USGenWeb Archives to store the file permanently for free access. http://www.usgwarchives.net/ *********************************************************************** OH-FOOTSTEPS-D Digest Volume 00 : Issue 152 Today's Topics: #1 Fw: Bio History -- Know Your Ohio ["Maggie Stewart" To: OH-FOOTSTEPS-L@rootsweb.com Message-ID: <15c001bfb58b$6889b4c0$0300a8c0@local.net> Subject: Fw: Bio History -- Know Your Ohio -- Tecumseh, son of Pucksinwah. [6] Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit ----- Original Message ----- Contributed for Use in USGenWeb Archives by Darlene E. Kelley ****************************************************** Historical Collections of Ohio Know Your Ohio by Darlene E. Kelley ****************************************************** 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. ***************************************************** to be continued in part 7-- ______________________________ ------------------------------ X-Message: #2 Date: Thu, 4 May 2000 01:36:09 -0400 From: "Maggie Stewart" To: OH-FOOTSTEPS-L@rootsweb.com Message-ID: <15c201bfb58b$6a781740$0300a8c0@local.net> Subject: Fw: Bio History -- Know Your Ohio-- Tecumseh, son of Pucksinwah. [8] Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit ----- Original Message ----- Contributed for Use in USGenWeb Archives by Darlene E. Kelley ***************************************************** Historical Collections of Ohio Know your Ohio by Darlene E. Kelley **************************************************** Tecumseh, Son of Pucksinwah -- " The Shawnee War Chief " -- part 8-- At 2:30 A.M. December 16,1811, the earth shook-- In the south of Canada, in the village of the Iroquois, Ottawa, Chippewa and Huron, it came as a deep and terrifying rumble. Creek banks caved in and huge trees toppled in a continuous crash of snapping branches. In all of the Great Lakes, but especially Lake Michigan and Lake Erie, the waters danced and great waves broke erratically on the shores, though there was no wind. In the western plains, there was a fierce grinding sound and a shuddering, which jarred the bones and set teeth on edge. Earthen vessels split apart and great herds of bison staggered to their feet and stampeded in abject panic. To the south and west, tremendous boulders broke loose on hills and cut swaths through the trees and brush to the bottoms. Rapidly running streams stopped and eddied, and some of them abuptedly went dry and the fish that lived in them flopped away their lives on the muddy or rocky beds. To the south, whole forests fell in incredible tangles. New streams sprang up where none had been before. In the Upper Creek village of Tuckabatchee, every dwelling shuddered and shook, and then collapsed upon itslf and its inhabitants. To the south and east, palm trees lashed about like whips, and lakes emptied of their waters, while ponds appeared in huge declivities which suddenly dented the surface of the earth. All over the land, birds were roused from their roosting places with screams of fright and flapping wings. Cattle bellowed and kicked, lost their footing, and were thrown to the ground where they rolled about, unable to regain their balance. In Kentucky, Tennessee and the Indian Territory, settlers were thrown from their beds, heard the timbers of their cabins wrench apart, and watched the bricks crumble into heaps of debris masked in choking clouds of dust. Bridges snapped and tumbled into the rivers and creeks. Glass shattered, fences and barns collapsed and fires broke out. Along steep ravines, the cliffside slipped and filled their chasms, and the country was blanketing with a deafening roar. In the center of all this, in the area where the Ohio River meets the Mississippi, where Tennessee,Kentucky, Arkansas, Missouri, and Illinois come together, fantstic splits appeared in the ground and huge tracts of land were swallowed up. A few miles from the Mississippi. near the Kentucky-Tennesee border, a monstrous section of ground sank as if some gigantic foot had stepped on the soft earth and mashed it down. Water gushed forth in fantasic volume and the depression became filled and turned into a large lake, to become known as Reelfoot Lake. The whole midsection of the Mississippi writhed and heaved and tremendous bluffs toppled into the muddy waters. Entire sections of land were inundated, and others that had been riverbed were left high in the air. The Mississippi itsef turned and flowed backwards for a time. It swirled and eddied, hissed and gurgled, and at length, when it settled down, the face of the land had changed. New Madrid was destroyed and the tens of thousands of acres of land, including virtually all that was owned by Simon Kenton, vanished forever and what remained was ugly and austere. Such was the great sign of Tecumseh. This was the earthquake which occurred where no tremor had ever been recorded before. Where there was no scientific explanation for such a thing happening. Where no one could possibly have anticipated or predicted that an earthquake could happen. No one except Tecumseh. And though they were only a small percentage of those who had pledged themselves to do so, neverless quite a number of warriors of various tribes gathered up their weapons an set out at once to join the amazing Shawnee chief near Detroit. The earthquake of December 16 was only a starter. It lasted, intermittently, for two terrior filled days and at the end of that time, the atmosphere was so choked with dust and smoke that for a week afterwards, the sunshone sickly reddish-bronze through an ugly haze. The second earthquake struck on January 23, and the third hit four days later. And finally, on February 13, came the last and worst of them-- a hideous grinding and snapping which last for only an hour, but caused about as much damage as the other three combined. This was powerful medicine-- more powerful than the Indians had ever seen. Those who had deserted Tecumseh now begn to reconsider. although most were in no hurry to rejoin the Shawnee chief, the inclination was there, if, as Tecumseh had predicted, there would be war with the whites, why not make the most of it right where they were? And so began the hostilities., Tecumseh joined forces with the British against the Americans at the outset of the war of 1812. After American, Oliver Hazard Perry defeated the British fleet at the Battle of Lake Erie on September 10, 1813, Harrison began pursueing Tecumseh into Southern Canada, and won a decisive victory on October 5, 1813. In the morning -- October 4-- advance troops from Harrison was again closing on them and some minor instances of firing occurred. Tecumseh broke camp and with the exception of a small number of warriors left to spy on Harrison's movements, put the remaining warriors of his party-- now numbering of about five hundred-- into movement, waiting until every man of his party was out of danger before following. Desite the anger he was showing in regard to Proctor, Tecumseh seemed actually to be enjoying being engaged again in serious fighting and with the knowledge that there was more to come. The Indians had set up their camp along the Thames and now,well into the night, Tecumseh had just uttered the prediction of his own death on the marrow--- ****************************************************** to be continued in final part 9-- ______________________________ ------------------------------ X-Message: #3 Date: Thu, 4 May 2000 01:34:06 -0400 From: "Maggie Stewart" To: OH-FOOTSTEPS-L@rootsweb.com Message-ID: <15c101bfb58b$69aeacc0$0300a8c0@local.net> Subject: Fw: Bio History -- Know your Ohio -- Tecumseh, son of Pucksinwah. [7] Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit ----- Original Message ----- Contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by Darlene E. Kelley ****************************************************** Historical Collections of Ohio Know your Ohio by Darlene E. Kelley ****************************************************** Tecumseh, Son of Pucksinwah ---"The Shawnee War Chief " --part 7. Occasionally one or another of the tribes would require a show of proof from Tecumseh ---some small sign to show that he was, indeed, under the auspices of the Great Spirit. In most cases, minor prophecies sufficed, such as in the case of the Seminoles. When they had hesitated to join him, he told them that in two days there would come to Florida's Coast an ocean vessel which would be filled with arms and supplies for the Seminoles. They assembled at the pont he indicated, and at dawn the given day, they discovered a British ship at anchor in the bay and its smaller boats coming ashore laden with gifts of guns and powder and tomahwks, cloth and jewelry and foodstuffs. There was no further hesitancy among the Seminoles to join Tecumseh. Now the great Shawnee leader was beginning his swing northwestward through the Alabama country to seek the important alliance formation with the powerful Upper Creek nation. From there he would move west, heading into the Mississippi land and Louisiana, then again northward on the west side of the mother of rivers to Missouri again. And along the way, he would stop to win over the Natchez and Yazoo, the Tawakonias and Caddos and others. But first the Upper Creeks, Big Warrior, principal chief of the Upper Ceeks, listened with a diapproving frown as Tecumseh told his people of his great plan, its near culmination and the part he wished them to play in it. There could be no doubt of his jealousy of this Shawnee who could come from hundreds of miles away and sway his people so swiftly with his reputation and his elocution. Great numbers of the Upper Creeks had come to this village Tuckabatchee located on the Tallapoosa River to hear the chief, but no matter how earnestly and convincing Tecumseh spoke, Big Warrior refused to pledge his people. Sensing his jealously, Tecumseh became scornful. He looked first at the large crowd, and then he swung his gaze to Big Warrior. " Your blood is white!' he said, " You have taken my talk and the sticks and the wampum and the hatchet, but you do not mean to fight. I know the reason. You do not believe the Great Spirit has sent me. You shall know, I leave Tuckabatchee directly and shall go to Detroit. When I arrive there, I will stamp on the ground with my foot, and shake down every house in Tuckabatchee!" Impressed in spite of himself, Big Warrior thereupon agreed to come and join the amaigamation -- if and when the houses of Tuckabatchee all fell down. Tecumseh nodded. The Upper Creeks would come. What now could stop this mighty force he had joined together? All of the tribes, Tecumseh told these followers, had received bundles of red stick. All had one of those sticks left. In six days a preliminary sign would be given to the tribes. It would be a sign under which he had been born and named. A great star would flash across the heavens and this would indicate that Tecumseh was still guided by the hand of the Great Spirit. The sign would be clearly visible to all the tribes, and when it came, they were to take the last red stick and cut it into thirty equal pieces. Each day thereafter, one of these pieces was to be burned in the light of the dawn. But the thirtieth piece was to be burned in the midst of the night, and when the last of these had been burned, then would come the great sign of which he had personally told them all. And when this sign came, all who believed in Tecumseh and in the future of the Indian nation would take up ther weapons and strike out at once for the British fort that was called Malden, located on the north side of the head of the lakes that was called Erie. On Saturday, November 16, 1811, under a crisp cloudless sky, the Indians crouched. No fires had been lighted, lest this drive away or interfere with the sign. There was no moon this night, and the stars twinkled with almost tangible brighness in their deep black background. With blankets held over their heads to hold back the bite of the cold air, the Indians waited. In southern Canada, from the falls of the Niagara to the great Lake-of-the-Woods, they watched.In western New York and Pennsylvania, they watched. In Ohio and the Indiana Territory and in the land that pushed north beween the two great lakes and in the land to the west of the lakes, they watched. Along the Mississipi and Missouri, and even farther west, they watched. In Tennessee and Alabama and Mississippi country, they watched. And the principal chief of each of each tribe held in his hand the final red stick of his bundle. Just before the midnight of the night it came--- a great searing flash from out of the southwest; incredibly awe-inspiring. And the heads of a thousand, ten thousand, a hundred thousand Indians swiviveled to watch its fiery progress across the heavens until it dsappeared in the Northeast. And they were deeply moved by it. Many of the chiefs broke their sticks over their knees and threw them away and rid their fear in anger. But there were some who retired to their weigiwas or teepees or hogans, lay the red stick upon the ground before the fire, and carefully measured, marked it off with a bit of charcoal, and cut it into thirty equal lengths. And then they waited, Monday, December 16, 1811, at 2:30 A.M. the earth shook.---- **************************************************** To be continued in part 8-- -------------------------------- End of OH-FOOTSTEPS-D Digest V00 Issue #152 *******************************************