The
introduction of intoxicating liquors among the savages by white traders
and speculators had widely spread demoralization, with consequent
disease and death.
English emissaries made the savages to believe that all these evils had
been brought upon them by the encroachments of the Americans; and in the
spring of 1811, it became evident that a league was forming among the
tribes for the extermination of the frontier settlers.
Tecumseh, the Shawnee chief, shrewd, crafty and intrepid, endeavored to
emulate Pontiac, the great Ottowa chief, in the formation of an Indian
confederacy in the Northwest, for making war upon the United States. He
had a shrewd twin brother, called the prophet, whose mysterious
incantation and predictions and pretended visions and spiritual
intercourse had inspired the savage mind with great veneration for him
as a wonderful "medicine man." He and Tecumseh possessed almost
unbounded influence over the Delawares, Shawnees, Wyandots, Miamis,
Kickapoos, Winnebagoes and Chippewas.
The celebrated Shawnee chief Tecumseh, according to Drake, was born a
few years before the Revolution, at the Indian village of Piqua, on Mad
River, about six miles below the site of Springfield, Clark County,
Ohio. His tribe removed from Florida about the middle of the last
century. His father, who was a chief, fell at the bloody battle of Point
Pleasant, in 1774.
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