
Tecumseh (March 1768-5 October 1813) was a Shawnee chief and the leader of Tecumseh's Confederacy, a group of Native Americans in Ohio and the frontier regions to the northwest of the United States, from 1805 to 1813. Tecumseh's confederacy was defeated at the Battle of Tippecanoe in 1811 and the ensuing War of 1812, despite an alliance with Great Britain.
Biography[]
Tecumseh was born in March 1768 near Chillicothe, Ohio on the Scioto River, and he grew up during the American Revolutionary War and Northwest Indian War, which forced his Shawnee tribe to move further west. Tecumseh and his brother Tenskwatawa founded Prophetstown in Indiana, and the brothers fought against the United States. Tecumseh recruited several tribes to his confederacy to fight against the expanding Americans, and his brother was defeated by William Henry Harrison's American army at the Battle of Tippecanoe in 1811. In 1812, Tecumseh allied with Great Britain at the start of the War of 1812 in order to contain the expansion of the United States towards the west, and he delivered a powerful speech to his men before attacking Fort Detroit and helping in its capture by the British. Despite some victories against the Americans with the assistance of the British, Tecumseh was brought to battle at Moravian of the Thames near Chatham-Kent, Ontario. The British abandoned him at that battle, and he was mortally wounded by a gunshot to the chest. His second-in-command Billy Caldwell was the last man to see him alive, and his death ended his confederacy.