Status Updates From Tecumseh and the Prophet: T...

Life on the frontier is brutal. An account of a captive settler getting cooked alive and a prisoner getting scalped and flayed, staying alive for a full day after,made me close the book for the day. For Shawnee, life of the mid 1700s is marked by constant migration amid encroachment by expansionist Iroquois and border wars with American settlers. The Quakers were chill but ineffective at curbing the spread of rum.

It's fascinating -- having grown up reading Orson Scott Card's "Tales of Alvin Maker," I already had a view of Tenskwa-Tawa as an inspiring visionary figure... I'd heard of Takumsaw before, but only as a war leader, and never in the context of his brother until Card's books. But if this book is to be believed, the prevailing (inaccurate) narrative for generations was that Tenskwa-Tawa was a pathetic, venal loser.