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Okla-homey
10/5/2007, 06:42 AM
Oct 5, 1813: Tecumseh defeated

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Tecumseh depicted in the uniform coat of a British brigadier general

194 years ago today, during the War of 1812, a combined British and Indian force is defeated by General William Harrison's American army at the Battle of the Thames in modern Ontario.

The leader of the Indian forces was Tecumseh, the Shawnee chief who organized intertribal resistance to the encroachment of white settlers on Indian lands. He was killed in the fighting.

Tecumseh was born in an Indian village in present-day southeastern Ohio and early on witnessed the devastation wrought on tribal lands by white settlers. He fought against U.S. forces in the American Revolution and later raided white settlements, often in conjunction with other tribes.

Like Scotland's William Wallace, who in the 15th century had successfully united a large coalition of fractious Scottish clans against English occupation, Tecumseh became a great orator and an intertribal war leader.

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Tecumsehan era reenactors

He is know to have traveled widely, attempting to organize a united Indian front against the United States. From his base in Ohio, he visited as far south as the Creek Confederacy in southern Alabama and east into the Carolinas where he met with Cherokee leaders. There is even evidence he made it as far west as the plains tribes to meet with Shoshone, Crow and Blackfeet.

When the War of 1812 erupted, he joined the British, and with a large Indian force he marched on U.S.-held Fort Detroit with British General Isaac Brock. In August 1812, the fort surrendered without a fight when it saw the British and Indian show of force.

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Brock

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A gift from General Brock to Tecumseh. Collected from Tecumseh's body after the fight at the Thames.

Tecumseh then traveled south to rally other tribes to his cause and in 1813 joined British General Henry Procter in his invasion of Ohio. The British-Indian force besieged Fort Meigs, and Tecumseh intercepted and destroyed a Kentucky brigade sent to relieve the fort.

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Procter

After the U.S. victory at the Battle of Lake Erie in September 1813, Procter and Tecumseh were forced to retreat to Canada. Pursued by an 3500 man American force led by the future president William Harrison, the British force of 600 regulars under Procter and 1,000 Indians under Tecumseh met the at the Thames River near Moraviantown, Ont.

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Period engraving of the fight. Who knows how accurate it is because it was done back east in some newspaper office afterwards by someone who wasn't there.

The outnumbered British were quickly defeated, and Tecumseh was killed. No one knows the disposition of his remains. The redcoat Brigadier Procter was disgraced and subsequently court martialed for allowing his force to become trapped and frankly, not putting up much of a fight. They only fired a single volley before throwing in the towel.

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No one is sure who actually killed Tecumseh, but William Harrison got the credit for bagging the most serious threat to white settlement of the area west of the Appalachians

The U.S. victory ended the Indian alliance with the British and made Harrison a national hero, ultimately propelling him "Old Rough and Ready" to the White House.

The battle gave control of the western theater to the United States in the War of 1812. Tecumseh's death marked the end of Indian resistance east of the Mississippi River, and within twenty years of his death, most of the depleted tribes were forced west to the newly created Indian Territory.

After the fight that ended serious Indian resistance, Harrison returned to civilian life; the Whigs, in need of a national hero, nominated him for President in 1840. He won by a majority of less than 150,000, but swept the Electoral College, 234 to 60.

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Harrison campaign poster

When he arrived in Washington in February 1841, Harrison let Daniel Webster edit his Inaugural Address, ornate with classical allusions. Webster obtained some deletions, boasting in a jolly fashion that he had killed "seventeen Roman proconsuls as dead as smelts, every one of them."

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President Harrison. The last of the big-time Whigs.

Before Harrison he had been in office a month, he caught a cold that developed into pneumonia. On April 4, 1841, he died - the first President to die in office - and with him died the Whig program.

BEAT TEXAS!

TUSooner
10/5/2007, 10:15 AM
Anybody who lent his name to Wm. Tecumseh Sherman can't have been all bad.

Mixer!
10/5/2007, 11:12 AM
Poking Sic'Em & Fan with your pointy stick, I see. ;)

85Sooner
10/5/2007, 05:09 PM
i'D VOTE FOR HIM TODAY:)

Okla-homey
10/5/2007, 06:11 PM
There were some things on the Whig platform that remain appealing. However, that "no importation of anything that can be made here" and absurdly high import duties to stifle said imports is kinda, well, limiting.

TUSooner
10/6/2007, 08:41 PM
Poking Sic'Em & Fan with your pointy stick, I see. ;)
It did get a rise, but he took it easy on me. :D

Rogue
10/7/2007, 07:27 AM
British and indians teaming up? Did this happen in other places?

Okla-homey
10/7/2007, 08:34 AM
British and indians teaming up? Did this happen in other places?

Serious question or sarcasm? I can't quite tell. I mean, I don't want to come off sounding like some comic book store guy who belittles others because they aren't certain which episode of Star Trek featured "tribbles" -- but it was quite common for North American tribes to be "used" (and shall I say, also "abused") by one side or both in just about every American conflict up until the Spanish-American War.

Rogue
10/7/2007, 09:16 AM
Serious question. I know that we tried to turn some tribes against one another, but not that the Brits "teamed up" with any tribes like this. It's probably well-known history Homey, I'm just now getting interested in history in recent years.

Okla-homey
10/7/2007, 09:34 AM
Serious question. I know that we tried to turn some tribes against one another, but not that the Brits "teamed up" with any tribes like this. It's probably well-known history Homey, I'm just now getting interested in history in recent years.

Good deal. Here's the thing, take the Muscogee (Creek) for example here in Oklahoma (formerly of the AL/GA/TN/FL panhandle.) They were historically aligned with the Brits from the earliest colonial period. This was due to the fact the Brits were allied in helping keep the Spanish at bay and bottled-up in peninsular Florida. The Brits traded extensively with the Creeks, principally for deerskins.

During the French and Indian War, the Creeks fought alongside their British allies.

As an aside, that deerskin trade was huge. There is pretty irrefutable historical evidence that by the time of the Revolution, the trade in deerskins had just about wiped out the whitetail population throughout the Creek's historic range.

Fast forward to the Revy. The Creeks remained allied to the Brits who promised to protect their sovereignty if the Rev was put down. Ditto War of 1812. After the Brits lost, well, we all know what happened. In a nutshell, President Andy Jackson, who had fought Creeks in the interval between the Revy and War of 1812, and again after 1812, decided the Creeks had to go..."Trail of Tears" time, despite treaties the Creeks had made with the infant US at wars end guarenteeing their right to remain in the east. Jackson is a hero to many in the US, especially up Tennessee way, but his name is mud (for good reason) among our Indian neighbors here in Oklahoma. In fact, he blew off an early US Supreme Court decision which held the Indians had the right to stay right where they were because of said treaties. Jackson commented, (paraphrasing) "fine, let Marshall (the chief justice) enforce it!"

Fast forward to the Civil War, the Confederacy made advances to the Five Tribes here in the I.T. promising them the moon if the South won its independence. The Creek Nation was split on which side to jump and there was a horrid, pretty much unchronicled civil war within the tribe itself during the four year period of the war. The larger faction fought in gray, and that is why right after the war, the Creek Nation in I.T., which had formerly extended west to the TX border was carved up and their land was concentrated in NE OK. A form of retribution by the victorious blue-clad side.

IOW, like "Mongo" in "Blazing Saddles,", Indians were "pawn in game of life" between the the giants battling for control of the continent.