The Shawnee Prophet

by R. David Edmunds

In the early 1800s, when control of the Old Northwest had not yet been assured to the United States, the Shawnee leaders Tecumseh and his brother Tenskwatawa, the Shawnee Prophet, led an intertribal movement culminating at the Battle of Tippecanoe and the Battle of the Thames. Historians have portrayed Tecumseh, the war leader, as the key figure in forging the intertribal confederacy. In this full-length biography of Tenskwatawa, R. David Edmunds shows that, to the contrary, the Shawnee Prophet initiated and for much of the period dominated the movement, providing a set of religious beliefs and ceremonies that revived the tribes' fading power and cohesion.

Genres: History, Biography, Native American, Nonfiction, American History, Native Americans, Religion

272 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 1983

About the author

A specialist in the history of Native American people and the American West, R. David Edmunds is Professor Emeritus of American History at the University of Texas in Dallas. The author or editor of ten books and over one hundred essays, articles, and other shorter publications, Edmunds' major works have been awarded the Francis Parkman Prize, the Ohioana Prize for Biography, and the Alfred Heggoy Prize of the French Colonial Historical Society. Edmunds has written extensively upon Native American-White relations in the 18th and 19th centuries, and has served as a consultant in the production of over a dozen films or documentaries produced for PBS, the History Channel and commercial television. Edmunds has held advisory positions with numerous museums and federal agencies, and has served as an advisor to the Smithsonian Institution, The Ford Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, the National Park Service, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the ACT and LSAT testing services and The Newberry Library. During 1990-91 he served as the Acting Director of the D'Arcy McNickle Center for the History of the American Indian at the Newberry Library. He has taught at the University of Wyoming, Texas Christian University, The University of California at Berkeley, U.C.L.A. and Indiana University.

Edmunds is the past-president of both the American Society of Ethnohistory (2002-03) and the Western History Association (2006-07). In 1998, he received the Award of Merit from the American Indian Historians Association, and in 2007 he received the Jeff Dykes Award for contributions to Western History from Westerners International. Edmunds serves as a "Distinguished Lecturer" for the Organization of American Historians. His current research focuses upon the history of Native American identity, Native Americans on the Great Plains and Native American biography.

Reviews

[William Howle · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting read about Tecumseh’s less famous brother. It was interesting that he was thought dead, but came alive and had an epiphany of what the Shawnees should do. He became a holy man, who influenced other tribes. There was some writing about people who were considered witches and were then burned, which reminded me of the inquisition. He negotiated with several American leaders, and the book gave an insight into British influence on the Indian tribes during the War of 1812.

[David Nichols · Rating 4 out of 5]

In his biography of the Shawnee prophet Tenskwatawa, R. David Edmunds convincingly argues that the prophet, not his more famous brother Tecumseh, was the principal leader of the Northwest Indian resistance movement in the early nineteenth century. An alcoholic beggar in his earlier life, Lalewethika (the Prophet's given name) journeyed into the spirit world following near-fatal seizures in 1804-05. There the Master of Life, the philosopher-deity of the eighteenth-century Indian “nativist” movement,” instructed him and other Native Americans to embrace their separate racial identity, live communally with one another, eschew the trappings of white civilization, and renounce the teachings of shamans and sorcerers. The Master's message, as the now-renamed Tenskwatawa (“The Open Door”) conveyed it, proved appealing to the Delawares, Ho-Chunks, Odawas, and other Indian peoples of the Great Lakes region, who were then enduring population decline and great cultural stress. The Prophet recruited hundreds of followers over the next few years, so many that his home base of Greenville (Ohio) became overcrowded and he and his disciples had to build a new one, “Prophetstown,” in western Indiana.

Tenskwatawa's movement was initially a peaceful one – he even traded with nearby Shaker communities – but his followers never gave up their firearms. In 1809, after the controversial Fort Wayne land cession, the men of Prophetstown began to advocate violence against interloping whites and compliant chiefs. Tenskwatawa and his brother Tecumseh began to convert their previously-peaceful religious movement into a military confederacy, and in 1811, when Governor William Harrison moved to destroy Prophetstown, Tenskwatawa sent his young men out to fight, assuring them that his spiritual power would protect them. The ensuing Battle of Tippecanoe was a Pyrrhic victory for Harrison but a fatal blow to Tenskwatawa's prestige. Tecumseh assumed full control of the Northwest Indians' confederacy until his death in battle in late 1813, whereupon the insurgency collapsed. In his later years, Tenskwatawa allied himself with Lewis Cass to promote Shawnee removal to Kansas, where he died in 1836. The Prophet was forgotten for most of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries because he did not fit the stereotype of the doomed and noble savage, but his career still raises important questions about the relative usefulness of nonviolent cultural resistance and violent military insurgency. “All unarmed prophets have failed,” Machiavelli famously said, but the armed ones usually don't do very well either.

[Brian Andersen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I put off reading this book because I too bought into the folk hero status of Tenskwatawa's more famous brother Tecumseh. However, it is wonderfully sourced and he makes an excellent case that The Prophet was the first major leader of what would become his brothers confederation.
I often find that much history concentrates on political rather than the religious motivations too. Whites even considered Indians ethnically inferior to them and used Christianity as some sort of proof. The Shawnee like many people of the time also looked to the supernatural for guidance.
All in all it was a good read and provided a wealth of information on what happened to Tenskwatawa after Tippecanoe and sets some of that history straight.

[Tom Walsh]

this is astonishing. there was so much intellect, so much natural knowledge, and so much environmental protection inherent in the Native American culture. To think it was destroyed by greed and profiteering makes my head spin! The Shawnee group wanted what was promised to them: a section of America to call their own. But, like all the battles the Native Amercians fought, this too was a broken promise. This book should be required reading for American history courses.

[Jake Berlin · Rating 3 out of 5]

a look at a fascinating time in american history, if told perhaps a bit drily. still, i think edmunds generally did a good job keeping the story -- which features a lot of players, both tribes and people -- straight. made me hunger for more early american history.

[Camden · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty good! The info itself is awesome, the writing style can be a bit...condescending? Gods of Prophetstown seems better.