Tecumseh

Tecumseh (C. 1768 - October 5th 1813) was an Amerindian chief of the tribe of the Shawnee S. Its name means “flying arrow”.

Tecumseh was born in Old Picqua in the area from current the Springfield in the Ohio. With died of his father, it is high with his brothers by his older sister and the chief Blackfish, because his/her mother of origin Creek chooses to turn over in her tribe in the south.

It is implied in many raids and skirmishes during the last years of the Guerre of American independence of 1780 with 1783.
It leads its tribe in the war of the Indians of the North-West ( Northwest indian war 1790-1795), but is beaten by the general Anthony Wayne with the Bataille of Fallen timbers the August 20th 1794. At the end of this war he refuses to sign the Traité of Greenville which authorizes the sale of the Indian grounds to the White. He settles then along the river Wabash.

Federation of the Indian tribes

He tries to form with the assistance of his brother Tenskwatawa, “the Prophet”, a federation of the Indian tribes, Canada with the Florida, in order to resist in advance inexorable of the colonists on the Indian grounds. Tenskwatawa is persuaded that the arrival of the White is a punishment sent by the supreme divinity. The seism of December 15th, 1811 in the valley of the the Mississippi does nothing but reinforce this vision millenarist of the conquest of America.

But Tecumseh is not able to persuade the various tribes to overcome their ancestral differences or their hatreds, and the defeat of Tenskwatawa, with the Bataille of Tippecanoe in November 1811 vis-a-vis William Henry Harrison destroys his work and its hopes. It joins together an army of 3000 men belonging to 32 different tribes with Prophet' S town in 1813. Then it then leads its tribe to Canada where it joined the British forces.

Engagement in the war of 1812

It is then named general sergeant in the British army and fights against the United States at the time of the Guerre of 1812. He dies in the Bataille of the river Thames the October 5th 1813 in the area of the Lake Érié, beaten in his turn by W.H. Harrison. He chooses to face the enemy whereas these English allies prefer to beat a retreat. Its body would never have been found, and the exact circumstances of its death were always maintained secret by its people.
This victory is then used by Harrison for his electoral campaign.

Anecdotes

Many things were said and written on Tecumseh, which cannot all be proven, in particular that it would have been educated in a Christian religious school and that it would have been Franc-maçon.

Curse of Tecumseh

One also tells that it would have launched a Malédiction on all the Heads of American States, to start with his adversary, future president Harrison; he would have sworn on a hill, in 1811, a fine tragedy with all the US presidents elected at the time one year comprising one zero in his writing:

William Henry Harrison: Elected in 1840, he dies of a pneumonia one month after his election.
Abraham Lincoln: Elected official 1860, dies assassinated in 1865.
James Garfield: Elected in 1880, is assassinated by an unemployed, in 1881.
William McKinley: Re-elected in 1900, reached by two balls drawn by an anarchist, on September 6th, 1901, he dies of the continuations of his wounds one week days afterwards.
Warren Gamaliel Harding: Elected in 1920, is victim of a pneumonia, in 1923, during a return voyage of Alaska.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Re-elected in 1940 (its third re-election), he dies after his fourth re-election into 1945 of a brain hemorrhage.
John Fitzgerald Kennedy: Elected in 1960, he is assassinated in 1963, in Dallas.

Nevertheless, Ronald Reagan, which was elected in 1980, died only in 2004.

Even if its stature were amplified at electoral ends by its winner, Tecumseh does not remain about it less one talented tactician and a chief who was loved of his people and was respected by the other tribes.

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