Battle of Tippecanoe (1811): Harrison and Tecumseh's Confederacy

The Battle of Tippecanoe was fought before dawn on 7 November 1811 near Prophetstown, a large Native town at the junction of the Tippecanoe and Wabash rivers in Indiana Territory. Warriors inspired by the Shawnee religious leader Tenskwatawa attacked the camp of an American army led by Governor William Henry Harrison. Harrison’s men held on and then destroyed the town, but the battle deepened the conflict that soon merged with the War of 1812.

Background: land and resistance

After the American Revolution, settlers pushed steadily into the Ohio valley and the Great Lakes region. Through a series of treaties, often signed by a few chiefs under heavy pressure, Native nations lost millions of acres. Harrison, governor of Indiana Territory from 1800, negotiated many of these cessions.

In 1805 Tenskwatawa, a Shawnee who had experienced a series of visions, began preaching a message of spiritual renewal. He urged Native people to reject alcohol and many American goods and customs and to unite. His elder brother Tecumseh turned the movement into a political and military confederacy, arguing that Native land belonged to all the nations in common and that no single group could sell it.

In 1808 the brothers founded Prophetstown, which attracted followers from many nations, including Shawnee, Potawatomi, Kickapoo, Ho-Chunk, Wyandot and others. The Treaty of Fort Wayne in September 1809, by which several nations ceded roughly 2.5 to 3 million acres in present-day Indiana and Illinois, enraged Tecumseh. In tense meetings with Harrison at Vincennes in 1810 and 1811, he warned that the confederacy would not accept the sale.

Harrison’s march

In the summer of 1811 Tecumseh travelled south to seek support among the Creek, Choctaw and other southern nations, leaving Tenskwatawa in charge with instructions to avoid war. Harrison, who regarded Prophetstown as a dangerous centre of British influence, saw an opportunity.

With the approval of the federal government, he assembled a force of roughly 1,000 men, including regulars of the 4th US Infantry and militia and volunteers from Indiana and Kentucky. Marching up the Wabash, they built Fort Harrison near present-day Terre Haute in October and arrived near Prophetstown on 6 November 1811. After a brief parley, both sides agreed to talk the next day, and Harrison camped on a patch of higher ground near the town.

The battle

During the night, Tenskwatawa and the warriors in the town decided to strike first. Accounts differ on his exact role, but tradition holds that he assured the fighters that his spiritual power would protect them. Before dawn on 7 November, several hundred warriors, commonly estimated at around 500 to 700, attacked the American camp from several sides.

Harrison’s men had slept with their weapons ready, and although the attack caused confusion, they formed lines and held the perimeter. Fighting lasted about two hours in the dark and early light. When the warriors’ ammunition ran low and daylight exposed them, they withdrew. Among the American dead was Joseph Hamilton Daveiss, a prominent Kentucky lawyer serving as a volunteer officer.

On 8 November Harrison’s troops entered Prophetstown, found it abandoned and burned it, destroying large stores of food before marching back to Vincennes.

Casualties

Harrison’s army suffered about 62 killed or mortally wounded and more than 120 wounded, a high proportion of his force. Native losses are less certain; estimates usually range from about 36 to 50 or more killed, with an unknown number wounded.

Consequences

Tenskwatawa’s reputation suffered badly, since his promises of protection had failed. Many warriors returned to their home villages, and Prophetstown was later partly rebuilt. Tecumseh returned early in 1812 to find his confederacy weakened but not destroyed.

The battle also hardened opinion in the United States. Many Americans, especially in the West, blamed British agents in Canada for arming Native resistance, and this fed the demand for war with Britain. When the War of 1812 began, Tecumseh allied himself with the British and helped capture Detroit in August 1812. He was killed at the Battle of the Thames in Upper Canada on 5 October 1813, a defeat that ended the confederacy as a major force.

Harrison became a national figure, nicknamed Old Tippecanoe. In 1840 he won the presidency with the slogan “Tippecanoe and Tyler Too”, but he died of illness a month after his inauguration in 1841.

Myths and facts

Myth: Tecumseh led the warriors at Tippecanoe. He was hundreds of miles away in the South; his brother Tenskwatawa was at Prophetstown.

Myth: Tecumseh placed a curse on US presidents. The so-called curse of Tippecanoe, linking Harrison’s death to later presidents who died in office, is a twentieth-century legend with no historical basis.

Timeline

• 1805: Tenskwatawa begins preaching his message of renewal.
• 1808: Tenskwatawa and Tecumseh found Prophetstown.
• 1809, 30 September: The Treaty of Fort Wayne cedes Native lands in Indiana and Illinois.
• 1810, August: Tecumseh confronts Harrison at Vincennes.
• 1811, 6 November: Harrison’s army camps near Prophetstown.
• 1811, 7 November: Warriors attack Harrison’s camp at dawn; the Battle of Tippecanoe.
• 1811, 8 November: Harrison’s troops burn the abandoned Prophetstown.
• 1813, 5 October: Tecumseh is killed at the Battle of the Thames.

Why it matters

The Battle of Tippecanoe was a turning point in the struggle of Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa to stop American expansion into the Old Northwest. It weakened their movement, pushed it into the British alliance of 1812 and helped launch Harrison’s political career, while foreshadowing the wider dispossession of Native nations that followed, including in the lands of the Louisiana Purchase to the west.