Thousands gathered in Moraviantown and Tecumseh’s monument to celebrate the life and sacrifice of the great Shawnee warrior and leader Tecumseh this past weekend.
Tecumseh ( March 1768 – October 5, 1813) was a Native American leader of the Shawnee and a large tribal confederacy (known as Tecumseh’s Confederacy) which opposed the United States during Tecumseh’s War and the War of 1812. Tecumseh has become an iconic folk hero in American, Aboriginal and Canadian history.
Tecumseh grew up in the American Revolutionary War and the Northwest Indian War, where he was constantly exposed to warfare. With Americans continuing to encroach on Indian territory after the British ceded the Ohio Valley to the new United States in 1783, the Shawnee moved farther northwest. In 1808, they settled Prophetstown in present-day Indiana. With a vision of establishing an independent Native American nation east of the Mississippi under British protection, Tecumseh worked to recruit additional tribes to the confederacy from the southern United States.
During the War of 1812, Tecumseh’s confederacy allied with the British in The Canadas (the collective name for the colonies of Upper Canada and Lower Canada), and helped in the capture of Fort Detroit. American forces killed Tecumseh in the Battle of the Thames, in October 1813. His confederation fell apart, the British deserted their Indian allies at the peace conference that ended the War of 1812, the dream of an independent Indian state in the Midwest vanished, and American settlers took possession of all the territory south of the Great Lakes, driving the Indians west or into reservations. (Wikipedia)
visit the Treaty Canoe website at www.treatycanoe.ca
As a side note, after Tecumseh was killed, his warriors, not wanting his body to be taken by the Americans as a trophy, carried his body away from the battle site where the city of Chatham now stands, and buried Tecumseh in a secret place known only to those who buried him. It`s quite possible that somewhere, under the pavement and concrete of Chatham, lies this noble warrior and ally to the British Crown who showed its appreciation for the sacrifices of Tecumseh and his followers by abandoning them to the scourges of the Americans. History repeats itself even to this day as the Crown has repeatedly turned its back on us leaving us to the mercy of successive Canadian governments who have forsaken the Royal Proclamation of 1763.