Society for Historians of the Early American Republic The Shawnee Prophet, Tecumseh, and Tippecanoe: A Case Study of Historical Myth-Making Author(s): Alfred A. Cave Reviewed work(s): Source: Journal of the Early Republic, Vol. 22, No. 4 (Winter, 2002), pp. 637-673 Published by: University of Pennsylvania Press on behalf of the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3124761 . Accessed: 27/08/2012 09:00 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. University of Pennsylvania Press and Society for Historians of the Early American Republic are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Journal of the Early Republic. http://www.jstor.org THE SHAWNEE PROPHET, TECUMSEH,AND TIPPECANOE:A CASE STUDY OF HISTORICAL MYTH-MAKING Alfred A. Cave History has not been kind to the Shawnee Prophet Tenskwatawa. Admiringand sentimentalwhites transformedhis elder brother,the warrior Tecumseh, into an icon within a few years after his death at the Battle of the Thamesin 1813. By 1820, a writerin the IndianaSentinel could declare "everyschool boy in the Union now knows thatTecumseh was a greatman. He was truly great-and his greatnesswas his own, unassistedby science or the aid of education.As a statesman,a warrior,and a patriot, take him all in all, we shall not look on his like again."But whites generally also shared the judgment of Benjamin Drake, whose 1841 biography of Tecumseh labeled the Prophet a "crafty imposter," shrewd, cunning, superstitious, fanatical, cowardly and cruel, utterly lacking in those qualities of courage, grace and magnanimitythat elevated his warrior brother to greatness. As writers throughoutthe nineteenth century and duringmuch of the twentiethelaborated and embellished Drake' s portrayal of the Shawnee brothers,there emerged full blown a study in opposites: Noble Tecumseh, Vicious Tenskwatawa,the Good Indianand the Bad. It is indicative of the pervasiveness of Drake's stereotypes that a Canadian playwrightsixty years afterthe publicationof Drake'sbiography presented the spectacleof a sadistic schemingProphet who in defiance of Tecumseh's orders burned white prisoners at the stake and dreamednot only of the exterminationof all whites but of deposing Tecumseh himself.1 Alfred A. Cave, authorof Jacksonian Democracy and the Historians (1964), The Pequot War(1996), and numerousarticles on the ethnohistoryof earlyAmerica, is professor of history at the Universityof Toledo. An earlierversion of this paperwas read at a seminar at the MacNeil Center for Early American Studies at the University of Pennsylvania in September2000 and at a seminarof the Fellows of the HumanitiesInstitute at the University JOURNALOF THE EARLY REPUBLIC,22 (Winter2002). © 2002 Society for Historiansof the EarlyAmerican Republic. 638 JOURNALOF THE EARLY REPUBLIC With few exceptions, historians and biographersfound the Prophet deficient not only in characterbut also in ability, repeatinga story popular among whites in the early nineteenth century that maintained that Tenskwatawa'steachings and revelations were not his own, but had been dictated to him by his gifted older brother. In Alan Ekert's popular and highly unreliable1992 biographyof Tecumseh,the Prophetis portrayedas an ineffectualand inept tool whose physicalugliness matchedthe deformity of his characterand soul. Eckert's Prophetis a vicious, one-eyed drunkof "disturbinglymalevolent appearance.""One of his ears," the novelist wrote, "hada lobe twice as long as the other, and when he smiled, his thin lips crookedup on the rightbut down on the left." Superstitiousand cruel, he representedthe worst in Native-Americanculture.2 AnthropologistDavid Hurst Thomas notes that "the twin imagery of Noble and BloodthirstySavage" in the past "led to a near-universal failure to appreciatethe intricacies and textures of actual Native American life." With the rise of the discipline many have termed " ethnohistory" in the second half of the twentieth century, those categories have fallen into disrepute.Thus it is not surprisingthat the Eckertimage of the Prophetwas both dated and discreditedlong before he published his quasi-biography. of Toledo in October 2000. The author thanks the participantsin the seminars and the anonymousJournal of the Early Republic readersfor their very helpful comments. Indiana Sentinelquoted in Glenn Tucker,Tecumseh: Vision of Glory (Indianapolis, 1956), 325; Benjamin Drake, Life of Tecumsehand of His Brother the Prophet; with a Sketchof the Shawanoe Indians (Cincinnati, 1841), 88, 228-34; CharlesMair, Dreamland and Other Poems & Tecumseh:A Drama (1901; rep., Toronto, 1974). For anothervery harshstage portrayalof Tenkswatawa,see George Jones, Tecumseh,and the Prophet of the West: An Historical Israel-Indian Tragedy in Five Acts (New York, 1844). A typical example of the overall prevalenceof Drake'sjudgment of Tenskwatawais found in a later nineteenth-centurybiography of Tecumsehand the Prophet,which declaredthe lattera man "who was neither courageous, truthful or above cruelty." Edward Eggleston and Lillie Eggleston Seeyle, Tecumseh and the Shawnee Prophet: Including Sketches of George Rogers Clark, Simon Kenton, WilliamHenry Harrison, Cornstalk,Blackhoof, Bluejacket, the Shawnee Logan, and Others Famous in the Frontier Warsof Tecumseh's Time (New York, 1878), 113. Drake's research notes are preserved in the Tecumseh Papers/Draper Manuscripts,State HistoricalSociety of Wisconsin. A microfilmedition of those papersis available. They reveal Draper's excessive reliance on the recollections and judgments of Anthony Shane and his wife. For an overview of the treatmentof Tecumseh in American historiography,see TerryRugley, "Savageand Stateman:Changing Historical Interpretations of Tecumseh,"Indiana Magazine of History, 85 (Dec. 1989), 289-311. On the Prophet, Rachel Buff, "Tecumsehand Tenskwatawa:Myth, Historiographyand PopularMemory, HistoricalReflections: ReflexionsHistoriques, 21 (Summer1995), 277-99, is suggestivebut far from complete. 2 Alan Eckert,A Sorrow in Our Heart: TheLife of Tecumseh(New York, 1992), 420, 426. THE SHAWNEE PROPHET,TECUMSEH, AND TIPPECANOE 639 The first historianto sort fact from fabricationand restore the Prophetto a centralrole in the leadershipof the pan-Indianmovement was HerbertC. Goltz in two theses writtenin 1966 and 1974. Unfortunately,neither were published.R. David Edmunds'sThe Shawnee Prophet (1983) was far more influential. Edmunds demonstrated that "it was Tenskwatawa, not Tecumseh,who providedthe basis for Indianresistance" through the power of his preaching. Following Edmunds's lead, other revisionists, newly sensitive to the spiritualroots of insurgency,have agreedthat the Prophet's vision andeloquence inspired and defined the movement.The Prophet,they conclude, was its founderand first leader. His presumedsubordination to Tecumseh reflected earlierwriters' lack of understandingof the natureof the pan-Indianuprisings of the early nineteenthcentury.3 Curiously,with a single exception,the newer accountsof the role of the Shawnee Prophet have left one major part of the old story untouched: Tenskwatawa'spresumed disgrace at the Battle of Tippecanoe in 1811. Both textbooks and specialized histories still generally maintain that the Prophet's blundering and cowardice in that engagement cost him the respect of his followers and the leadershipof the movement, which was presumably then taken over by Tecumseh who transformedit from a religious crusadeinto a pragmaticpolitical alliance. The pervasivenessof this view can best be appreciatedby consideringthis passage in Edmunds's biographyof the Prophet: The battle of Tippecanoe was less an Americanvictory than a personal defeat for Tenskwatawa.... His medicine was broken.No longer would he play a major role in the struggle against the Long Knives. ... Now Tecumsehwould completely dominate the Indianresistance movement. In the years ahead, the Prophet would become an outcast, a fallen pontiff clinging to his brother'scoattails. 3 David HurstThomas, Skull Wars:Kennewick Man, Archaeology, and the Battlefor Native AmericanIdentity (New York, 2000), 10; HerbertGoltz, "Tecumseh,The Man and the Myth" (M.A. thesis, University of Wisconsin, 1966); "Tecumseh,the Prophetand the Rise of the NorthwesternIndian Confederation" (Ph.D. diss., Universityof WesternOntario, 1974); R. David Edmunds,The ShawneeProphet (Lincoln, NE, 1983), 142. For examples of the new emphasis on the Prophet'sleadership, see RichardWhite, TheMiddle Ground: Indians, Empiresand Republics in the GreatLakes Region, 1650-1815 (New York, 1991), 469-516; GregoryEvans Dowd, A SpiritedResistance:The North American Indian Struggle for Unity, 1745-1815 (Baltimore, 1995), 122-46; and John Sugden, Tecumseh(New York, 1998). Sugden's biographyis the most comprehensiveand reliable work on Tecumsehand the Prophetpublished to date. 640 JOURNALOF THE EARLY REPUBLIC Other revisionist historians also echo that long-standing judgment. A recent, well regardedpopular biography of Tecumsehclaims that, afterthe battle of Tippecanoe,the Prophet"was