Tecumseh's Great Earthquake

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The timing of the quakes coincided with the efforts of the Shawnee

chief Tecumseh to unite the tribes of the Ohio and Mississippi

Valleys against the incursion of the whites, and one legend grew out

of that coincidence. Tecumseh had carried his message of unity as far

south as Mississippi in the days just before the quakes began.

Frustrated with the unwillingness of some southern Native American

leaders to commit to his plan to fight a coordinated war against the

Americans, he announced that he would return immediately to Detroit.

Upon reaching Detroit, Tecumseh would stamp his feet and the earth

would tremble all the way down the river. It is not recorded whether

the foot stomping took place, but the trembling certainly did - and

almost precisely when Tecumseh had predicted.

 

Tecumseh's Great Earthquake

by Sierra <basaranca

Back in the late 18th Century, America had not moved much further

west than the east bank of the Mississippi River. Just about

everything west of the Ohio River Valley was a wilderness, and only

the bravest of souls dared trespass there. About the only white men

were the mountain men and fur trappers. It was the home of the

wildest of creatures, man or beast. Among the bravest of men were the

Shawnee, and their greatest warrior was Tecumseh. In 1811, he swore

to wipe out an entire Creek village with just the stamp of his foot,

and on 16 December of that year, his vow came true. It is the

strangest prophecy in Native American legend.

Tecumseh was the greatest Indian warrior in American history, and his

greatness was truly his own, unassisted by science or the aids of

education. He was a statesman, a warrior, and a patriot…"one of the

uncommon geniuses which spring up occasionally to produce revolutions

and overturn the established order of things." By 1846, American

historian, Henry Trumbull, had stamped him as "the most extraordinary

Indian that has appeared in history." He was learned and wise, and

was noted, even among his white enemies, for his integrity and

humanity. He was a Shawnee, but he considered himself first an

Indian, and he fought to give all Indians a national, rather than a

tribal, consciousness. His hope was to unite them in defense of a

common homeland where they might all continue to dwell under their

own laws and leadership. The fact that he failed meant considerably

more than the state of Indiana becoming a white rather than an Indian

state. It meant that all the tribes were thrown back upon their

separate resources, as they had been since the original encroachment

of the white man. More important, it ended for all time the

possibility that an Indian free state might be created within the

territory won or purchased by the United States.

Tecumseh was born Tecumtha about March 1768, and his name in the

Shawnee language can be interpreted as "panther lying in wait." The

white man pronounced it Tecumseh and understood that it

meant "shooting star." His place of birth was in one of the villages

that formed a large, straggling settlement called Old Piqua on the

bluffs above Ohio's Mad River, northeast of present-day Dayton. He

was the son of a Shawnee war chief named Puckeshinwa, who had been

born in Florida. His mother was Methoataske, probably a Creek, from

eastern Alabama.. The fact that his parents were both born far from

Ohio reflects the nomadic, restless migrations and tribal divisions

of the Shawnee, and it probably accounts for the reason why white

contemporaries failed to conceive the Shawnee as a single nation.

Tecumseh came from a large family. One brother, Cheeseekau, was born

in eastern Alabama before his parents began their long migration to

the Mad River. Along the route, two sisters and another brother were

born. Tecumseh was the fifth child, born shortly after the family

arrived in Old Piqua, and after him came another sister and two more

brothers, including the powerful Tenskwatawa, who was to become a

famous medicine man known as "the Shawnee Prophet."

The Pontiac War had just ended when Tecumseh was born, but the defeat

of the Indians had encouraged settlers to begin moving west of the

Alleghenies, and soon the Shawnees were engaged in trying to hold

their hunting grounds in Kentucky, as well as their village sites in

Ohio. Border warfare spread like wildfire, and by the time Tecumseh

was six years old, the skirmishing had erupted into a formal conflict

known as Lord Dunmore's War, between the Shawnee and the colonist of

Virginia. In the battle, both sides lost heavily, and to save his

people, Shawnee chief Cornstalk agreed to a peace. He surrendered the

Shawnee claims to lands south of the Ohio River and allowed the

Virginians to move into Kentucky.

Tecumseh received his formal training in broken white man's promises

shortly after the end of Lord Dunmore's War. Despite the fact that

Dunmore had acknowledged Indian rights to the country north of the

Ohio, frontiersmen continued to invade it, and one day a band of them

accosted Puckeshinwa in the woods and shot him in the breast. When he

did not return that night, Tecumseh and his mother went searching.

The found him dying, and learned what had happened. It filled

Tecumseh with horror and hate, and he resolved to become a warrior

like his father. A few years later, white men murdered Cornstalk, who

had become Tecumseh's idol. Cornstalk's death shocked Tecumseh and

again filled him with hatred for the white men. It loosed him upon

the land.

After the death of his father, a chief named Blackfish from the

nearby Indian town of Old Chillicothe adopted Tecumseh into his

family. Traveling back and forth between the two villages, Tecumseh

learned everything about tribal lore, personal conduct, and oratory.

In retaliation for the death of Cornstock, Blackfish started a new

war of revenge. In 1778, he invaded Kentucky, struck at some of the

settlements, and captured Daniel Boone and twenty-six other whites.

Although Boone later escaped, Tecumseh witnessed the dramatic events

of the fierce border war that raged through Kentucky and Ohio, and it

heightened his instincts against the whites. With so much fighting,

coupled with the upheaval of the American Revolution, many Shawnee

abandoned the area and fled westward across the Mississippi River to

settle in what is now Missouri. Among those who left was Tecumseh's

mother, who left her son in Ohio in the care of his older brother,

Cheeseekau.

When the American army burned Old Piqua and Old Chillicothe in 1780,

the Shawnee built another city, also called Piqua, which meant "town

that rises from the ashes," on the Miami River. By the end of the

American Revolution, the Shawnee accepted as permanent the loss of

their hunting grounds south of the river in Kentucky, but with the

flood of westward-moving settlers, all eyeing the rich land north of

the river, Tecumseh knew it was only a matter of time before there

would be trouble. He began to plan his life's work.

Tecumseh believed the only way to halt the white expansion into

Indian territory was to forge the various native tribes into a single

military alliance. In pursuit of that alliance, he traveled

tirelessly, meeting with nearly every tribe east of the Colorado

Rockies. By all accounts, he was a noble man, full of intelligence,

heroism, and charisma. Standing nearly six feet tall, he had great

energy and piercing eyes. An American army captain called him "one of

the finest looking men I ever saw."

Tecumseh managed to unite many tribes under his command and prepare

them for war, but in 1811, while he was away in the south, his

brother Tenskwatawa instigated a fatal battle. Although Tecumseh had

commanded that no military battles take place in his absence, the

Shawnee Prophet, seized by religious fervor, prophesied immunity to

the white man's weapons. Tenskwatawa incited his companions to

attack.

The battle took place on 7 November near what is now Lafayette,

Indiana. The Indians were camped at the juncture of the Wabash and

Tippecanoe rivers, and the American soldiers, under the command of

William Henry Harrison, were nearby. In the battle of Tippecanoe, the

loss of Indian lives was enough to constitute convincing refutation

of the prophet's prediction that the Great Spirit would make the

soldiers' bullets fall harmlessly at the feet of the Indians.

During Tecumseh's journeys in the summer and fall of 1811, when he

left his brother in command of the forces in the north, he went to

Alabama to gain the support of the Creek Indians. At the town of

Tukabachi, on the Tallapoosa River, near what is now Montgomery, he

met with Chief Big Warrior. The two exchanged pleasantries and

objects of accord, and although Big Warrior pledged his support of

Tecumseh's endeavors, Tecumseh detected insincerity. He told Big

Warrior that he suspected the Creek chief of having white blood. He

told the Creek that he would go directly to Detroit, and when he got

there, he would "stamp on the ground with my foot and shake down

every house in Tukabachi."

Tecumseh then stormed out of Big Warrior's camp and headed northward.

When he returned home from the south, he found his forces scattered

and his dream undone. So great was the shock that he lifted his

brother up by the hair and nearly shook him to death. Tecumseh now

had little choice but to leave for Canada, where he joined the

British in their attempt to retake the Northwest Territory. He became

a brigadier general in charge of England's Indian allies, but his

cause was lost, and he died in battle during the War of 1812 (a war

which actually ended in 1815 - Tecumseh died in 1813).

After Tecumseh's departure, the Creek Indians were frightened.

Tecumseh was an imposing figure in his own right, and his brother was

widely thought of as a great prophet. The Creek were terribly afraid

that Tecumseh's prophesy would come true. His threat was not scorned

or laughed off. Instead, full of dread, the Creek counted down the

days that it would take Tecumseh to return to Detroit.

Early in the morning of 16 December 1811, the Creek village of

Tukabachi came crashing to the ground, while the inhabitants ran

about shouting wildly that Tecumseh had reached Detroit. Not only

that, but the Mississippi River ran backward, fissures opened in

Missouri, buildings shook in Atlanta, the ground rolled like the sea

in Illinois, landslides swept the countryside of Arkansas, windows

rattled in Washington, D.C, chimneys fell down in St. Louis,

furniture slid across floors in Cincinnati, and church bells rang in

Louisville. For on that date, the day that Tecumseh returned to

Detroit, was the day on which the Midwest was mightily shaken by a

sudden slippage of the Earth's plates. It was the first day for the

series of shocks cumulatively known as the New Madrid earthquake, the

largest recorded earthquake in North American history.

Today, across the state of Oklahoma, the dispersed descendants of the

Shawnee chief's warriors live among other and more numerous tribes,

forgotten by most Americans. But Tecumseh's prophecy to the Creek

people has never been forgotten. Tecumseh was the greatest of all the

American Indian leaders, a majestic human being who might have given

all the Indians a nation of their own…if they had only believed.