Tenskwatawa ~ Shawnee Prophet

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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.

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Handbook of American Indians, 1906

Index of Tribes or Nations | Indian Tribes 1880

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