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Tenskwatawa ~ Shawnee
Prophet |
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Tenskwatawa
The famous "Shawnee Prophet," twin brother of
Tecumseh prominent in Indian and American history immediately
before the War of 1812. His original name was Lalawéthika,
referring to a rattle or similar instrument. According to one
account he was noted in his earlier years for stupidity and
intoxication; but one day, while lighting his pipe in his cabin,
he fell back apparently lifeless and remained in that condition
until his friends had assembled for the funeral, when he revived
from his trance, quieted their alarm, and announced |
that he had been conducted to the spirit world.
In Nov. 1805, when hardly more than 30 years of age, he called
around him his tribesmen and their allies at their ancient
capital of Wapakoneta, within the present limits of Ohio, and
announced himself as the bearer of a new revelation from the
Master of Life. "He declared that he had been taken up to the
spirit world and had been permitted to lift the veil of the past
and the future, had seen the misery of evil doers and learned
the happiness that awaited those who followed the precepts of
the Indian god.
He then began an earnest exhortation, denouncing the
witchcraft practices and medicine juggleries of the tribe, and
solemnly warning his hearers that none who had part in such
things would ever taste of the future happiness. The firewater
of the whites was poison and accursed; and those who continued
its use would he tormented after death with all the pains of
fire, while flames would continually issue from their mouths.
This idea may have been derived from some white man's teaching
or from the Indian practice of torture by fire. The young must
cherish and respect the aged and infirm. All property must be in
common, according to the ancient law of their ancestors. Indian
women must cease to intermarry with white nem; the two races
were distinct and must remain so. The white man's dress, with
his flint and steel, mast be discarded for the old time buckskin
and the fire stick. More than this, every tool and every custom
derived from the whites must be put away, and the Indians must
return to the methods the Master of Life had taught them.
When they should do all this, he promised that they
would again he taken into the divine favor, and find the
happiness which their fathers had known before the coming of the
whites. Finally, in proof of his divine mission, he announced
that he had received power to cure all diseases and to arrest
the hand of death in sickness or on the battlefield"
(Drake, Life of Tecumseh). The movement
was therefore a conservative reaction against the breakdown of
old customs and modes of life due to white contact, but it had
at first no military object, offensive or defensive.
Intense excitement followed the prophet's announcement
of his mission, and a crusade continued against all suspected of
dealing in witchcraft. The prophet very cleverly turned the
crusade against any who opposed his supernatural claims, but in
this he sometimes overreached himself, and lost much of his
prestige in consequence.
He now changed his name to Tenskwátawa,
significant of the new mode of life which he had come to point
out to his people, and fixed his headquarters at Greenville,
Ohio, where representatives from the various scattered tribes of
the northwest gathered about him to learn the new doctrines. To
establish his sacred character and to dispel the doubts of the
unbelievers he continued to dream dreams and announce wonderful
revelations from time to time. A miracle which finally silenced
all objections was the prediction of an eclipse of the sun which
took place in the summer of 1806; this was followed by his
enthusiastic acceptance as a true prophet and the messenger of
the Master of Life. The enthusiasm now spread rapidly, and
emissaries traveled from tribe to tribe as far as the Seminole
and the Siksika, inculcating the new doctrines. Although this
movement took much the same form everywhere, there were local
variations in rituals and beliefs. Prominent among these latter
was a notion that some great catastrophe would take place within
four years, from which only the adherents of the new prophet
would escape. In most places
the excitement subsided almost as rapidly as it had begun, but
not before it had given birth among the Northern tribes to the
idea of a confederacy for driving back the white people, one
which added many recruits to the British forces in the War of
1812.
Its influence among Southern tribes was manifested in
the bloody Creek war of 1813. The prophet's own influence,
however, and the prestige of the new faith were destroyed by
Harrison's victory in the vicinity of the town of Tippecanoe,
where he had collected 1,000 to 1,200 converts, Nov. 7, 1811.
After the War of 1812 Tenskwatawa received a pension from the
British government and resided in Canada until 1826, when he
rejoined his tribe in Ohio and the following year moved to the
west side of the Mississippi, near Cape Girardeau, Mo. About
1828 he went with his band to Wyandotte County, Kans., where he
was interviewed in 1832 by George Catlin, who painted his
portrait., and where he died, in Nov. 1837, within the limits of
the present Argentine. His grave is unmarked and the spot
unknown. Although his personal appearance was marred by
blindness in one eye, Tenskwatawa possessed a magnetic and
powerful personality, and the religious fervor he created among
the Indian tribes, unless we except that during the recent
"ghost dance" disturbance, has been equaled at no time since the
beginning of white contact. See Mooney in 14th
Rep. B. A. E., 1896, and authorities therein cited.
The books presented are for their historical value only and
are not the opinions of the Webmasters of the site.
Handbook of American Indians,
1906
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