The Prophet and the Confederacy: Tenskwatawa, Tippecanoe, and the War for Native Power

The men nearest him dragged him out of the fire by his ankles. Lalawethika, the Noisemaker, a one-eyed Shawnee with a mocking tongue and a thirst for trade rum, had stood up to speak in a smoky lodge that winter of 1805 and pitched face first into the flames. For hours he lay so still that the camp began to plan his burial. Then he sat up and told them what he had seen: two roads, a great fire, and a Master of Life who was angry with his people for drinking, dressing like Americans and selling their land.

He took a new name, Tenskwatawa, the Open Door, and within three years he and his older brother Tecumseh had drawn followers from across the Great Lakes country to Prophetstown on the Wabash. There a religious revival became a political confederacy, sworn to stop the treaty lines that kept moving west, and set against William Henry Harrison, governor of Indiana Territory, who bought nearly three million acres at Fort Wayne in 1809 from a handful of chiefs, over the brothers' objections.

In November 1811, with Tecumseh away in the South seeking allies, Harrison marched on Prophetstown, and the fight at Tippecanoe broke the prophet's authority. The war with Britain followed, and in October 1813 Tecumseh was killed at the Thames. Tenskwatawa lived on through exile in Canada, a return across the border and removal west with the Shawnee.

He had once preached that the land was not anyone's to sell. He died in 1836 on a reservation in Kansas that Washington had set aside for the Shawnee.