by Andrea Capps-Henke

The last decades of the eighteenth century were not a hopeful time for many of the Indian tribes of the Old Northwest.  The end of the Revolutionary War ushered in a new era for everyone on the North American continent.  For the Americans, the end of the war meant the birth of a new government and a flourishing of new opportunities.  For the British it created the need to reevaluate their position in the New World.  For many American Indians, the end of the war meant a complete shift in their outlook for the future.  Many of these tribes had fought with the British during the Revolution.  Following the Treaty of Paris in 1783, Indians discovered that not only had their ally not won the war, but the British had ceded the territory west of the Appalachians to the Americans with no effort to protect Indian lands.  New American settlers began to crowd into what Indians considered their own territory, clearing land for farms, making game scarce, and bringing diseases the Indians could not resist.  Traditional Indian cultures began to fail in the face of multiple hardships like loss of land, scarce food, and disease. 

Into this world, a set of triplets was born during early 1775 at Old Pique, a Shawnee village in western Ohio.  One of these triplets did not survive past childhood; another was killed at the Battle of Fallen Timbers in 1794.  The third of these triplets was named Lalawethika, and he was born into hardship and misfortune.  His father, Puckeshinwa, the leader of the Kispototha branch of the Shawnee tribe, was killed at the Battle of Point Pleasant before the triplets were born.  His mother, Methoataske, a woman of Creek descent, left her children in 1779 either to return to her Creek relatives or to go further west.    

Lalawethika and his siblings, including an older brother named Tecumseh, were taken in by their older sister.  She and her husband took a great interest in Tecumseh and he learned how to hunt well and to be a warrior.  Lalawethika, whose name meant “Noisemaker” was never properly trained in these skills, and tried to compensate for these deficiencies by boasting and bragging about what he did know.  This trait, accompanied as he grew older by a taste for alcohol, did not earn him many friends or much respect.  To add to his character deficiencies, Lalawethika was disfigured during a childhood accident when he was blinded in his right eye. 

During the winter of 1804-05, the Shawnee were beset by new tragedy as an unknown illness swept through their villages and took many lives.  In April, as spring was transforming the awful winter into memory, an even bigger transformation happened in the life of Lalawethika’s and the course of Shawnee history.  One night sitting in his wigwam, Lalawethika reached to light the tobacco for his pipe.  As he did so, he gasped and fell to the ground.  His wife was convinced he was dead, but before funeral preparations could be finished, he awoke with a tale to tell.  He said that the Master of Life had given him a vision which instructed him to spurn all aspects of white culture.  Only through a return to traditional values could the Shawnee people survive.  Lalawethika changed his name to Tenskwatawa or “the Open Door” and began a new spiritual movement for the Shawnee and other tribes in the Northwest Territory.

Indians throughout the area flocked to this new movement, drawn together by the chaos surrounding them.  Tenskwatawa developed a system of religious and social doctrines, as his brother Tecumseh cultivated new political and military alliances.  Because of Tenskwatawa’s growing reputation and the new respect he was given, he was given the title “The Prophet.”

The military governor of the Indiana Territory during this time was General William Henry Harrison.  Harrison heard about this new revitalization of Indian culture and tried to undercut The Prophet’s growing influence by demanding a show of divine power.  The Prophet answered this challenge by declaring to his followers that “the darkness of the night (will) cover us…when the sun has climbed to its highest point.”  On June 16, 1806, The Prophet’s predicted solar eclipse occurred, and Harrison’s challenge served to strengthen The Prophet’s cause. 

Harrison and Tenskwatawa’s interactions did not end there.  In mid-August of 1808, Tenskwatawa visited Vincennes and met with Harrison in person for the first time.  The Prophet declared that “I had no other intention but to introduce, among the Indians, those good principles of religion which the white people profess.”  The Governor was partially placated by this effort of Tenskwatawa to appear as if he only wanted peace all around.  However, between that visit and Tenskwatawa’s next visit to Vincennes in June 1809, Governor Harrison discovered through spies that the Prophet’s village near present-day Lafayette, IN was a center for anti-American sentiment and activity.  Harrison dismissed The Prophet as a “great scoundrel” after these meetings, and all semblance of goodwill between the two men disappeared. 

The next time the two met was at Harrison’s encampment on a hill across a creek from Prophetstown.  Tecumseh was away from the settlement on a diplomatic visit, and in his absence The Prophet declared that his incantations would protect the Indians from any injury from the white man’s bullets.  In the early morning of November 7, 1811, that encampment site became the site of the Battle of Tippecanoe.  Within the space of a few hours, Harrison’s troops had defeated The Prophet and his followers.  The Prophet was discredited, and the strong Indian confederacy he and Tecumseh had envisioned was abandoned. 

The Prophet was a man created by his environment and shaped by the times he grew up in.  Having once been a symbol of Indian tribal degeneration as a poor hunter who could not provide for his family and who was at the mercy of the white man’s “fire water,” he later started the movement back to traditional values.  The boy born Lalawethika transformed into The Prophet; and transformed the separate Indian people of the Northwest into a tribal coalition that believed collectively in a vision for their future.  While Tenskwatawa later died in Kansas a forgotten figure, he was once the catalyst for one of the greatest Indian alliances of all time.