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          LEADERS
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                                       SHAWNEE

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            "Shawnee" by David Wright
                    @ www.davidwrightart.com

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This listing of Shawnee leaders is mostly alphabetical by their Shawnee Name.
The exceptions are the last two listings of Tenskwátawa and Tecumseh.

   Weyapiersenicah, Bluejacket, was probably born about the middle of the 18th century, he became a powerful Shawnee chief. One of his descendants, when telling Bluejacket's story to a whiteman, claimed that Bluejacket was a white. DNA tests have been run on many of Bluejacket's descendants completely disproving that story. He was the principal leader of the Shawnee and allied tribes in the battle with Gen. Wayne on 20 Aug., 1794, at Presque Isle, Ohio. In the fight with Gen. Harmer in 1790 he co-commanded with Little Turtle. In the battle with Wayne, Bluejacket commanded alone. Little Turtle was opposed to further warring and urged the acceptance of the offers of peace, but was over ruled by Bluejacket. After the defeat of the Indians, Bluejacket was present at the conference at Greenville, Ohio, and signed the treaty of 1795. He also signed the Treaty of Ft Industry, Ohio, July 4, 1805. It is probable that he died soon after this date, as there is no further notice of him. His descendants carry the name and continue to be leaders in the tribe.

    Hokoleskwa (c.1720 – November 10, 1777) known as Cornstalk  was an important 18th century leader. His name meant "blade of corn". Cornstalk and the rest of the Shawnee people migrated into present-day Ohio in the 1730s, pushed by European encroachment into their traditional lands. He and his tribesmen participated in many battles against the English settlers of Virginia, Kentucky, and Ohio. His death came at a time when he had been at peace with the whites. His effort to warn the fort of impending plans of massacre by militant natives defines the reputation of this Native American hero. Historians can only speculate on Cornstalk’s early years. He may have been born in present-day Pennsylvania. At some time his people migrated to the Ohio Country, near present day Chillicothe, as the Shawnee gave ground in the face of expanding English settlement. During the French & Indian War (1754–63) Cornstalk and the Shawnee sided with the French. They feared that English settlers would rapidly expand into the Ohio Country if they were not stopped. As part of the more general conflict known as Pontiac's Rebellion (1763), Cornstalk led raiding parties into western Virginia, hoping to drive the English away from Shawnee territory. In June 1763, Cornstalk led a band of about 60 of his tribesmen into Greenbrier County, in present-day West Virginia. On June 26, by pretending friendship, he gained the confidence of the settlers at Muddy Creek. When their defenses were down, his warriors killed them all. Among the dead were the families of Frederick Sea, Joseph Carrol and Salty Yolkum. The next day, Cornstalk repeated his deception at the Clendenin Settlement, near the current site of Lewisburg, where his warriors killed more than 50 settlers. Colonel Henry Bouquet defeated the Shawnee in 1764. To ensure that the natives would sign a peace treaty ending the rebellion, Bouquet seized several hostages, including Cornstalk. The Shawnee agreed not to take up arms against the English again.    During the next decade, fighting occurred again between the English and the Ohio natives. Cornstalk tried to ease the tensions, but with the arrival of more white settlers, his urging peace put him in the minority. By the spring of 1774, violence was constant. On May 3, 1774, a group of English colonists killed eleven Mingo. Logan, a leader of the Mingo in the Ohio Country. Upon hearing of the murders, many Mingo and Shawnee demanded retribution. Some, like Cornstalk, urged conciliation. Cornstalk and most Shawnee promised to protect English fur traders in the Ohio Country from retaliatory attacks, since the traders were innocent. Logan, however, was not easily convinced. Shawnee and Mingo chiefs permitted him to attack British colonists south of the Ohio River, who had killed his family members. Logan took approximately two dozen warriors to exact revenge. He traveled into western Pennsylvania. There, his followers killed thirteen settlers before returning back across the Ohio River. Captain John Connolly, commander of Fort Pitt, immediately prepared to attack the Ohio Country natives. Lord Dunmore, the governor of Virginia, offered his colony's assistance. Dunmore hoped to prevent Pennsylvania's expansion into modern-day West Virginia and Kentucky by placing Virginia militiamen in those regions. He also hoped to benefit his colony opening the lands to English settlement. In August 1774, Pennsylvania militia entered the Ohio Country and quickly destroyed seven Mingo villages, which the Indians had abandoned as the soldiers approached. At the same time, Lord Dunmore sent 1,000 men to the Little Kanawha River in modern-day West Virginia to build a fort and attack the Shawnee. Cornstalk, who had experienced a change of heart about the white colonists as the soldiers invaded the Ohio Country, dispatched nearly 1,000 Shawnee to drive Dunmore's force from the region. The forces met on October 10, 1774, in what became known as the Battle of Point Pleasant. After several hours of intense fighting, the English drove Cornstalk's followers north of the Ohio River. Dunmore, with a separate force, followed the Shawnee across the river. Upon nearing Shawnee villages on the Pickaway Plains, Dunmore stopped and asked the Shawnee to discuss a peace treaty. The Shawnee agreed. While negotiations were under way, however; Colonel Andrew Lewis and a detachment of Virginia militia crossed the Ohio River and destroyed several Shawnee villages. Fearing that Dunmore intended to destroy them, the Shawnee immediately agreed to terms before more blood was shed. Under this new treaty, the Shawnee agreed to the previous Treaty of Fort Stanwix (1768) in which they gave up ownership of all lands east and south of the Ohio River. This was the first time that natives who lived in the Ohio Country agreed to relinquish some of their land. In addition, the Shawnee promised to return all white captives and to refrain from attacking English colonists traveling down the Ohio River.

     Cornstalk abided by this treaty for the rest of his life, but most Shawnees did not. By 1777, the Shawnee Indians again planned to drive the white settlers from the region. This time they did so at the urging of British soldiers, with the Ohio Shawnee, Thomas McKee with the Ohio Delaware and British officer Henry Hamilton of Fort Detroit, the other frontier Indians, who sought assistance in defeating the colonists in the American Revolution. Cornstalk and his son, Elinipsico, went to Point Pleasant, the site of an American fort, to warn the whites of the impending attack. The Americans took the natives hostage. Shortly thereafter, news reached Point Pleasant that, the Shawnee had ambushed and killed an American soldier. Seeking vengeance, the colonists killed Cornstalk, his son, and other Natives in American custody. Cornstalk was originally buried at Fort Randolph. In 1840 his grave was found and the remains moved to the Mason County Courthouse grounds. When the courthouse was torn down in 1954 he was reburied at Tu-Endie-Wei State Park in Point Pleasant.

    I am including   Tenskwátawa on this page, although I would rather not. Tenskwátawa was a leader of the Shawnee, even though he caused more troubles than he solved. Tenskwátawa is the famous or infamous "Shawnee Prophet," older brother of Tecumseh, prominent in Indian and American history immediately before the War of 1812. His original name was Lalawatitheka, meaning 'The Rattle', so named because of his constant complaining and whinning. According to more than one account, he was noted in his earlier years for stupidity and intoxication. One day, he fell back apparently lifeless and remained in that condition until his friends had assembled for the funeral. When he came to and quieted the alarm among those assembled, he announced  that he had been conducted to the spirit world. 

    In Nov. 1805, when hardly more than 30 years of age, he called around him his tribesmen and their allies at their ancient capital of Wapakoneta, within the present boundaries of Ohio, and announced himself as the bearer of a new revelation from the
'Master of Life'. He declared that he had been taken up to the spirit world and had been permitted to lift the veil of the past and the future, had seen the misery caused by evil people and learned the happiness that awaited those who followed the precepts of the 'Master of Life'.

     He then began denouncing all whites, members of his own and other tribes that were taking on white culture and the "witches" of All tribes that were causing all this to happen. He warned that none who had part in such things would ever taste of the future happiness. The firewater of the whites was poison and accursed; and those who continued its use would he tormented after death with all the pains of fire, while flames would continually issue from their mouths. This idea may have been derived from some white man's teaching or from the Indian practice of torture by fire. The young must cherish and respect the aged and infirm. All property must be in common, according to the ancient law of their ancestors. Indian women must cease to intermarry with white men; the two races were distinct and must remain so. The white man's dress, with his flint and steel, must be discarded for the old time buckskin and the fire stick. More than this, every tool and every custom derived from the whites must be put away, and the Indians must return to the methods the 'Master of Life' had taught them.
 
     When they should do all this, he promised that they would again he taken into the divine favor, and find the happiness which their fathers had known before the coming of the whites. Finally, in proof of his divine mission, he announced that he had received power to cure all diseases and to arrest the hand of death in sickness or on the battlefield". The movement was therefore a conservative reaction against the breakdown of old customs and modes of life due to white contact. It had, at first, no military object, offensive or defensive.

    Intense excitement followed the prophet's announcement of his mission, and a crusade continued against all suspected of dealing in witchcraft. The prophet very cleverly turned the crusade against any who opposed his supernatural claims, but in this he sometimes overreached himself and lost much of his prestige in consequence.

     He now changed his name to Tenskwátawa which meant "The Open Door." This indicated the new mode of life which he had come to point out to his people. He set his capital at Greenville, Ohio, where representatives from the various scattered tribes of the northwest gathered about him to learn the new doctrines. To establish his sacred character and to dispel the doubts of the unbelievers he continued to dream dreams and announce wonderful revelations from time to time. A miracle which finally silenced all objections was the prediction of an eclipse of the sun which took place in the summer of 1806; this was followed by his enthusiastic acceptance as a true prophet and the messenger of the 'Master of Life'. The enthusiasm now spread rapidly, and emissaries traveled from tribe to tribe as far as the Seminole and the Siksika, inculcating the new doctrines. Although this movement took much the same form everywhere, there were local variations in rituals and beliefs. Prominent among these latter was a notion that some great catastrophe would take place within four years, from which only the adherents of the new prophet would escape. In most places the excitement subsided almost as rapidly as it had begun, but not before it had given birth among the Northern tribes to the idea of a confederacy for driving back the white people, one which added many recruits to the British forces in the War of 1812.

    Its influence among Southern tribes was manifested in the bloody Creek War of 1813. The prophet's own influence, however, and the prestige of the new faith were destroyed by Harrison's victory in the vicinity of the town of Tippecanoe, where he had collected 1,000 to 1,200 converts, Nov. 7, 1811. After the War of 1812 Tenskwátawa received a pension from the British government and resided in Canada until 1826, when he rejoined his tribe in Ohio and the following year moved to the west side of the Mississippi, near Cape Girardeau, Mo. About 1828 he went with his band to Wyandotte County, Kans., where he was interviewed in 1832 by George Catlin, who painted his portrait., and where he died, in Nov. 1837, within the limits of the present Argentine. His grave is unmarked and the spot unknown. 

    And now the other side of the story (and the side I find most credible). His message began the same as the Lenape prophet Neolin. Forty years earlier, Neolin preached a return to traditional ways, to forsake the white man's whiskey and trade goods and to prepare themselves for a great leader thaet would lead the red nations back to dominence on the continent. Unlike Neolin, Tenskwátawa did not have to wait for an Indian Messiah. He had his brother, Tecumseh! While his own people watched this sudden transformation with amazement, Tenskwátawa gathered a large following among the Shawnee and Lenape. There are many that, then and now, believed the “vision” was Tecumseh’s; that Tecumseh was the father of the idea and simply needed a spokesman, other than himself, to put the idea before the people.

    There were several down sides to Tenskwátawa’s message that do not fit with Temcumseh‘s ideas and only developed after Tecumseh left home to begin his journey to the many tribes. All his life, Tecumseh had been oppossed , even sickened by torture and senseless death and destruction. “Tenskwátawa’s Message” became very dark and violent. He preached that the Americans were children of an evil spirit, the Great Serpent. Tenskwátawa taught that there were many traitors and “Witches” among the Shawnee and their allies. It seemed that anyone who contradicted Tenkswatawa was a traitor and killed or a witch and burned. This began during his visit to the Lenape and Wyandot villages in the spring of 1806. The Lenape head chief and several Christians were burned as witches. Incidents like this happened at the Wyandot villages as well. These “Witch Hunts” turned many villages against the Prophet.

   Tenskwátawa dramatically predicted a solar eclipse in June, a portent of a war to come. Again, many attribute this to Tecumseh, who understood and read English very well and had access to English books, including almanacs. 

    -- Also Appears On The History Part 4 page --

    The most powerful phophesey of this period, which would later come true, was Tecumseh's prediction, if not direct cause of, the New Madrid Earthquakes leading up to the "War of 1812." 

     While on Tecumseh's journeys to the south to recuite warriors to his cause, Tecumseh told them that he would give them a sign to begin the rising against the Shemanese (White Man). This  sign that Tecumseh revealed wherever he spoke remained the same. His telling of it never failed to awe his audiences. He told them, that when the period of waiting was over and all the tribes united, when every thing was ready, then he would give his sign. in the midst of the night the earth beneath would tremble and roar for a long period. Jugs would 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. He told them he would stomp his feet and cause a great shaking of the earth. If they didn't attack at that time, he would repeat this until they did.
   
    On December 16, 1811 the earthquakes began. More than 200 earthquakes occured in the next few months. Several of these earthquakes were among the greatest and most devasting the North American continent has ever witnessed. The Mississippi ran backwards to its headwaters and the Ohio to Pittsburg. All along the east coast, in all the cities and towns, the earth was said to have shaken so badly that it rang even the heaviest bells in the churchs. In the immediate area, the ground was rent, released huge amounts of steam and gases. Lakes disappeared and others appeared where they had not been before.
   
    The map at the right shows all the earthquakes from 1811 through 1865. The 1811 quake is in the center of the map and almost dead center of the area in which Tecumseh had tried to recruit warriors to his cause. Incidently, Tecumseh was known to be in the area at the time.
   
    There was not anything to compare with it in the lives of the natives, nor in the lives of their fathers or their fathers before them since time began. Until 1811, according to geologists, there had not been an earthquake in the area for thousands of years.
   
    When this sign came, they were to drop their mattocks and flesh scrapers, leave their fields, their hunting camps and their villages, and join together and move to assemble across the lake from the fort of Detroit. 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! The Indians of North America were to unite in an army and drive the invading, land stealing whites off the continent. Tecumseh began voicing his prophecy a couple of years in advance of the quake. 

    It was accurate almost down to the very day it occurred.

    Tecumseh,(also Tikamthi or Tecumtha) The name shows that the owner belongs to the family of the Great Medicine Panther, as the Shawnee called a Meteor. Interpretations of his name vary. The translation, “Panther in the Sky," is probably the most appropriate. While not a chief in the conventional Shawnee sense of the word, he was accepted as one by his thousands of followers, both Shawnee and a very great number of people of other tribes.

    He was born in 1768 at the Shawnee village of Piqua on Mad river, southwest of the present Springfield, Ohio. It was destroyed by the Kentuckians in 1780. His father, a chief, was killed at the battle of Point Pleasant in 1774. Tecumseh denied the right of the U.S. Government to make land purchases from any single tribe, on the grounds that the territory, especially in the Ohio River Valley, belonged to all the tribes in common. On the refusal of the U.S. to recognize this principle, he undertook the formation of a great confederacy of all the western and southern tribes for the purpose of holding the Ohio as the permanent boundary between the two races. In pursuance of this object he or his agents visited every tribe from Florida to the head of the Missouri river. While Tecumseh was organizing in the south his plans were brought low by the premature and disastrous "Battle of Tippecanoe" under the leadership of his brother (see above) on Nov. 7, 1811. With the outbreak of the War of 1812, Tecumseh led his forces in support of the British, and was rewarded with a regular commission as brigadier general, having under his command some 2,000 warriors of the allied tribes. He fought at Frenchtown, The Raisin, Ft Meigs, and Ft Stephenson, and covered Proctor's retreat after Perry's decisive victory on Lake Erie, until, declining to retreat farther, he compelled Proctor to make a stand on Thames river, near the present Chatam, Ont. In the bloody battle which ensued the allied British and Indians were completely defeated by Harrison, Tecumseh himself falling in the front of his warriors, Oct. 5, 1813, being then in his 45th year. With a presentiment of death he had discarded his general's uniform before the battle and dressed himself in his Indian deerskin. 

    He was, without much disagreement, the most extraordinary Indian leader in history. British Major-General Sir Isaac Brock said of Tecumseh “He who attracted most my attention was a Shawnee chief, Tecumseh. A more sagacious or a more gallant warrior does not, I believe, exist. He has the admiration of everyone who conversed with him.” 

    According to at least one source, Tecumseh’s sworn enemy, William Henry Harrison, said “If it were not for the vicinity of the United States, he would perhaps be the founder of an empire that would rival in glory Mexico or Peru. No difficulties deter him. For four years he has been in constant motion. You see him today on the Wabash, and in a short time hear of him on the shores of Lake Erie or Michigan, or on the banks of the Mississippi, and wherever he goes he makes an impression favorable to his purpose.”

    There is no true portrait of him in existence, the one commonly shown as such in Lossing's "War of 1812" is shown below with a quote. This portrait is based on a pencil sketch made about 1812.

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"We must be united
We must smoke the same pipe
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And more than that, We must love the Great Spirit."
--Tecumseh --
-His appeal to other tribes to join his confederacy-
 

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