Tecumseh And The Prophet

The first biography of the great Shawnee leader in more than twenty years, and the first to make clear that his misunderstood younger brother, Tenskwatawa, was an equal partner in the last great pan-Indian confederacy against the United States.

Until the Americans killed Tecumseh in 1813, he and Tenskwatawa were the co-architects of the broadest pan-Indian confederation in United States history. Over time, Tenskwatawa has been dismissed as a talentless charlatan and a drunk. But award-winning historian Peter Cozzens now shows us that while Tecumseh was a brilliant diplomat and war leader--admired by the same white Americans who attempted to appropriate Indian land--it was Tenskwatawa who unified disparate tribes of the Old Northwest with a powerful doctrine of religious and cultural revitalization. No other Native American leaders enjoyed a wider following, and none would ever pose a graver threat to the nation's westward expansion than Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa.

Bringing to life a crucial but overlooked era in America's past, Cozzens paints in vivid detail the violent world of the Old Northwest, when settlers spilled across the Appalachians to bloody effect in their haste to exploit lands won from the British in the War of Independence--but not from their rightful Indian owners. Tecumseh and the Prophet presents the untold story of the Shawnee brothers who retaliated against this threat--the two most significant siblings in Native American history, who, Cozzens helps us understand, should be writ large in the annals of America.