Tecumseh, b.

Tecumseh (b. Tecumtha) (?1768–1813) Shawnee chief; born on the Mad River near present-day Springfield, Ohio. One of the most sophisticated Native American opponents of the encroaching United States, Tecumseh was a highly skilled warrior, orator, and statesman who advocated "civilized" resistance. He was undoubtedly influenced by the fact that his father and two brothers were killed while fighting American colonists. In 1795 he refused to sign the Treaty of Greenville, which ceded much of present-day Ohio to American settlers. In the late 1790s, he became involved with a white woman named Rebecca Galloway, with whom he studied many prominent works of Western civilization; as a condition of marriage, however, she insisted he give up his Indian ways, and the relationship ended. In 1808 he established, with his brother Tenskwatawa, known as the Shawnee Prophet, a pan-Indian headquarters on the banks of the Tippecanoe River (now known as Prophet's Town, Ind.). Tecumseh spent the next several years attempting to build an alliance, based on the idea of a common ownership of land, among dozens of tribes in the trans-Appalachian west. In 1811, with Tecumseh away, the unfinished alliance suffered a profound setback when Indiana Territory Governor William Henry Harrison defeated Tenskwatawa's forces at Tippecanoe. But Tecumseh persisted and during the War of 1812 he persuaded thousands of Indians to join with the British; given the rank of brigadier general, he commanded his own and other troops brilliantly, but his dream of an independent Indian nation died with him at the Battle of the Thames.