Tecumseh and the Prophet: The Shawnee Brothers Who Defied a Nation

by Peter Cozzens Narrated by Mark Bramhall

Overview

The first biography of the great Shawnee leader in more than twenty years, and the first to make clear that his misunderstood younger brother, Tenskwatawa, was an equal partner in the last great pan-Indian alliance against the United States.

Until the Americans killed Tecumseh in 1813, he and his brother Tenskwatawa were the co-architects of the broadest pan-Indian confederation in United States history. In previous accounts of Tecumseh's life, Tenskwatawa has been dismissed as a talentless charlatan and a drunk. But award-winning historian Peter Cozzens now shows us that while Tecumseh was a brilliant diplomat and war leader--admired by the same white Americans he opposed--it was Tenskwatawa, called the "Shawnee Prophet," who created a vital doctrine of religious and cultural revitalization that unified the disparate tribes of the Old Northwest. Detailed research of Native American society and customs provides a window into a world often erased from history books and reveals how both men came to power in different but no less important ways.

Cozzens brings us to the forefront of the chaos and violence that characterized the young American Republic, when settlers spilled across the Appalachians to bloody effect in their haste to exploit lands won from the British in the War of Independence, disregarding their rightful Indian owners. Tecumseh and the Prophet presents the untold story of the Shawnee brothers who retaliated against this threat--the two most significant siblings in Native American history, who, Cozzens helps us understand, should be writ large in the annals of America.

Cover images: (left) Tecumseh, by Benson John Lossing after Pierre Le Dru, (detail). Toronto Public Library; (right) Ten-sqat-a-way, the Open Door, "Shawnee Prophet" by George Catlin (detail). Gilcrease Museum, Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Editorial Reviews

DECEMBER 2020 - AudioFile

Narrator Mark Bramhall has one of most American sounding voices one can imagine. It’s perfectly suited to this story of the Wild West of the late eighteenth century, when hundreds of thousands of white settlers poured across the Appalachian Mountains into Indian Country—Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky. At times, there’s a quaver in Bramhall’s voice as he delivers this straightforward, detailed, and extremely violent biography of the Shawnee chief Tecumseh and his younger brother, Tenskwatawa. The pair won begrudging respect from Territorial Governor William Henry Harrison and a duplicitous U.S. Government bent on taking away Native lands and moving all Native Americans west of the Mississippi. Needless to say, it didn’t turn out well. Tecumseh died in battle in 1813, and Manifest Destiny marched on. B.P. © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine

Publishers Weekly

07/13/2020

Historian Cozzens (The Earth Is Weeping) delivers an enthralling, deeply researched dual biography of Shawnee leader Tecumseh and his younger brother, Lalawethika. Born in 1768 in modern-day Ohio, Tecumseh honed his warrior skills in a series of violent encounters with white settlers. Following the Northwestern Confederacy’s defeat at the Battle of Fallen Timbers in 1794, the Shawnee lost their homeland, but Tecumseh remained in the region and consolidated his political power as a village chief. Meanwhile, Lalawethika, who lost his right eye in a childhood accident, was a heavy drinker until a series of visions in 1805 inspired him to start a spiritual and cultural revival movement aimed at building a pan-Indian alliance “capable of resisting the onrushing white frontier.” Adopting the new name Tenskwatawa, he and Tecumseh built the Prophetstown settlement as their movement’s headquarters and clashed with territorial governor (and future president) William Henry Harrison. Siding with England in the War of 1812, Tecumseh was killed at the Battle of the Thames. Tenskwatawa, his power eroded and his planned confederation shattered, died in 1835 on a reservation in Kansas. Cozzens’s cinematic narrative is steeped in Native American culture and laced with vivid battle scenes and character sketches. American history buffs will gain a new appreciation for what these resistance leaders accomplished. (Sept.)

From the Publisher

Winner of the Western Writers of America Spur Award for Best Biography
A Washington Independent Review Favorite Book
A Cowboys and Indians Editor's Pick

"Cozzens expertly mines the surprisingly varied array of sources for the brothers’ early lives; he presents the fullest picture yet of who these men were before they achieved national fame. His book balances them more than any previous retelling of the story ever has. Tecumseh and the Prophet is as close to a fully realized popular biography of Tenkswatawa as is ever likely to be written … Tecumseh and the Prophet paints in vivid colors the grandest effort of Native Americans to retain their independence – and the political and spiritual leaders who tried to make it happen.”
⁠—Steve Donoghue, Christian Science Monitor

"This... is no sentimental paean to an innocent martyr, no simplistic homage to a “noble savage”... Cozzens is a master storyteller; his books weave a wealth of intricate detail into gripping historical narrative... In this book descriptions of battles are especially enthralling; one can almost smell the gunpowder, the blood and the loamy forest floor."
⁠—Gerard DeGroot, The Times (UK)

"Tecumseh and the Prophet is a thorough profile of the notable Tecumseh and his Brother. Author Peter Cozzens sculpts his narrative deftly and compellingly. In relating the barbarity of the frontier wars, the author remains objective yet empathetic. Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa are fascinating figures, capable of greatness and leadership, yet destined for tragedy. A+ work."
⁠—Philip Zozzaro, San Francisco Book Review

"The strength of Cozzens’ book is his ability to bring to life the thrilling adventures of Tecumseh and his people. Many a war yarn gets bogged down in minutiae, but the author animates these battles by sharing the human stories behind the fighting. By ably piecing together a history that is equal parts engaging and amply sourced, Cozzens has crafted a satisfying work that leads us to sympathize with his subjects without putting his finger on the scale to prove his point."
⁠—Chris Rutledge, Washington Independent Review of Books

"Superb…  With a deft command of published and manuscript sources, Cozzens leads readers through shifting loyalties on the Canadian/American frontier and paints a sympathetic portrait of two men united in a crusade to defend a people and a vanishing way of life... Cozzens's propulsive narrative and perceptive analysis of conflicting viewpoints, Indian and Anglo, sets a new standard for future biographies.”
⁠—Western Writers of America

"Cozzens intertwines engaging prose with contemporary accounts to prove that devotion to Tecumseh’s call to repel land encroachment came in part due to the clarity of Tenskwatawa’s prophecy to abstain from alcohol and return to tribal teachings... Over 200 years after the brothers’ deaths, Americans still revere the memory of Tecumseh’s moral certainty through landmarks and schools bearing his name, but Tenskwatawa’s legacy as a spiritual leader is largely overlooked. Cozzens’ text reminds us that public memory should be amended."
⁠—Ryan Winn, Tribal College Journal

"Cozzens has a gift for depicting the intricacies of combat with both clarity and flair. ... the dual biography comes across as fair and impartial. Without sentimentality, and without overlooking the faults of its heroes, it presents a nuanced look at their attempt to halt the invasion of their lands."
⁠—Margaret Quamme, Columbus Dispatch

"Engrossing... Cozzens' biographyis solidly researched, fluently written, and bound to stand as the best history to date about the Shawnee brothers' lives and effort to rally pan-Indian resistance."
⁠—Booklist, starred

"Cozzens rightly rejects the old stories, arguing convincingly that Tenskwatawa successfully shaped a powerful spiritual doctrine out of nativist resistance."
⁠—Philip Deloria, The New Yorker

"Mr. Cozzens puts his narrative skills to great use. His compelling prose and deep research in both primary sources and histories of the period combine to place the reader on the ground with the Shawnee brothers... Sharply drawn."
⁠—Kathleen DuVal, The Wall Street Journal

"Award-winning historian Peter Cozzens admirably brings this lost world to life... Cozzens’s descriptions of Tenskwatawa’s spiritual agenda, centered on Indian independence and rejection of White culture, will remind readers that tribal leaders from Osceola to Sitting Bull attempted to preserve native culture with the weapons of war. The tragedy of their failure haunts America today."
⁠—Nancy Tappan, American History Magazine

"In 1768, the year of Tecumseh’s birth, 60,000 Native Americans in the Great Lakes and Ohio Valley stood against a white colonial population of two million. As settlers crested the Appalachians, this imbalance only got worse. Against this epic backdrop, Peter Cozzens weaves his marvelous tale of the two Shawnee brothers who stood against the storm. Tecumseh and the Prophet tells a story of nation-defining events and larger-than-life leaders, and Cozzens' nuanced portrait stands as one of the best pieces of Native American history I have read.”
⁠—S. C. Gwynne, author of New York Times best-sellers Empire of the Summer Moon, and Rebel Yell

"Cozzens... shows his skill at revealing the social and daily realities of late 18th- and early 19th-century life, including wonderfully vivid descriptions of pioneer conditions and Algonquin villages... A long overdue non-fiction account. Tecumseh's life and the wider struggle for the Great Lakes and Ohio River valley now has a current, solid work by an accomplished author."
⁠—Library Journal, starred

"An enthralling, deeply researched dual biography of Shawnee leader Tecumseh and his younger brother... Cozzens’s cinematic narrative is steeped in Native American culture and laced with vivid battle scenes and character sketches. American history buffs will gain a new appreciation for what these resistance leaders accomplished."
⁠—Publishers Weekly

"Comprehensive... Blending historical fact with solid storytelling, Cozzens delivers a nuanced study of the great warrior and his times."
⁠—Kirkus

Library Journal

★ 08/01/2020

The Shawnee leader, warrior, and orator Tecumseh (1768–1813) led a widespread intertribal resistance against the United States during the early 19th century in what is now Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, and Illinois. The clash among the nascent United States, British Canada, and Tecumseh's Native American alliance culminated in the War of 1812. The text follows the lives of Tecumseh, his brother Tenskwatawa ("the Prophet"), and their nemesis, William Henry Harrison. The frontier country between Fort Pitt (Pittsburgh) in the east to the Mississippi River in the west is well mapped with forts, Native American towns, and battle sites. While Cozzens (The Earth Is Weeping) is an experienced military and political historian, he also shows his skill at revealing the social and daily realities of late 18th- and early 19th-century life, including wonderfully vivid descriptions of pioneer conditions and Algonquin villages. Although many detailed and highly factual novelized versions of Tecumseh's life are available, such as Allan W. Eckert's Sorrow in Our Heart and James Alexander Thom's Panther in the Sky, Cozzens provides a long-overdue nonfiction account. VERDICT Tecumseh's life and the wider struggle for the Great Lakes and Ohio River valley now has a current, solid work by an accomplished author.—Jeffrey Meyer, Mt. Pleasant P.L., IA

DECEMBER 2020 - AudioFile

Narrator Mark Bramhall has one of most American sounding voices one can imagine. It’s perfectly suited to this story of the Wild West of the late eighteenth century, when hundreds of thousands of white settlers poured across the Appalachian Mountains into Indian Country—Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky. At times, there’s a quaver in Bramhall’s voice as he delivers this straightforward, detailed, and extremely violent biography of the Shawnee chief Tecumseh and his younger brother, Tenskwatawa. The pair won begrudging respect from Territorial Governor William Henry Harrison and a duplicitous U.S. Government bent on taking away Native lands and moving all Native Americans west of the Mississippi. Needless to say, it didn’t turn out well. Tecumseh died in battle in 1813, and Manifest Destiny marched on. B.P. © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine

Kirkus Reviews

2020-06-11
A comprehensive biography of the noted Native American leader and his overlooked brother.

William Henry Harrison, whose forces defeated Tecumseh at the Battle of Tippecanoe, held his opponent in such high esteem that he said, “If it were not for the vicinity of the United States, he would, perhaps, be the founder of an empire that would rival in glory that of Mexico or Peru.” As it was, writes historian Cozzens, Tecumseh forged a powerful alliance of Native peoples in the area from Wisconsin to Ohio that attempted to contain white expansion into the region. Tecumseh took many of his “pan-Indian” cues from the Ottawa war leader Pontiac and the Delaware prophet Neolin, both of whom led resistances against British incursions a generation before him. Important in this struggle was Tecumseh’s younger brother Tenskwatawa, called the “Shawnee prophet,” whom some historians—Cozzens calls out Alvin Josephy, author of The Patriot Chiefs (1961) and other works—have depicted as a “delusional charlatan.” Surely Tenskwatawa had his difficulties: He lived in his brother’s shadow, and he battled alcoholism. Yet the accomplishments of the brothers in uniting sometimes-contending Native tribes into a formidable army were the makings of a legend. It was their misfortune that the Shawnee people inhabited the “fault line between French and British interests, and as such was fated to become an imperial battleground.” Matters would grow worse with the War of 1812, when Tecumseh found an imperial ally in Britain but was killed on a battlefield in Canada—for which Harrison took undue credit. For various reasons, writes Cozzens, in the aftermath, Tenskwatawa “had fallen mightily in the fragmented Indian world that he and Tecumseh had striven to unite,” and after unsuccessful attempts to negotiate reservation land in the East, he ended his days in a small settlement of refugees that became known as Shawnee Mission, Kansas.

Blending historical fact with solid storytelling, Cozzens delivers a nuanced study of the great warrior and his times. (16 pages of color illustrations, 13 maps)

Product Details

BN ID:	2940177791043
Publisher:	Penguin Random House
Publication date:	10/27/2020
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

Prologue
 
Dawn of the Long Knives
 
Daybreak, October 10, 1774. In dense forest, a column of 700 Shawnee and Mingo warriors uncoils into a ragged, mile-long line. Unlike years past, the warriors are not stalking game. Rather, they are preparing to strike 1,200 unsuspecting Virginia militiamen camped at Point Pleasant, a craggy triangle at the confluence of the Ohio and Great Kanawha rivers, approximately 150 miles southwest of modern Wheeling, West Virginia. A carpet of red and russet leaves deadens their footfalls. The warriors wear breechclouts, which are single pieces of cloth wrapped around the hips, buckskin leggings, and moccasins. A few also sport linen hunting shirts purchased from white traders. Most carry smoothbore muskets, tomahawks, scalping knives, and bow and arrows for use if their ammunition runs out. Silver rings dangle from their noses. Huge earrings hang on distended earlobes, framing faces painted in fierce patterns of red and black.
 
The leader of the war party, the Shawnee chief Cornstalk, would prefer to be elsewhere. Although the provocation had been immense, he had called for restraint. Virginians had flouted a royal proclamation prohibiting settlement on Indian land and instead spilled across the Kanawha River into the Kanawha Valley, part of the greater Kentucky country, all of which was prime Shawnee hunting ground. “I have with great trouble and pains prevailed on the foolish people amongst us to sit still and do no harm till we see whether it is the intention of the white people in general to fall on us,” Cornstalk had told a British official, “and shall continue so to do in the hopes that matters may be settled.” But the royal governor of Virginia, the Earl of Dunmore, who himself coveted Indian land for personal profit, had no expectation of a peaceful denouement. Frontier subjects, he wrote the Crown, despised treaties made with Indians, “whom they consider but little removed from the brute creation.” So too did the Virginia aristocracy. With the spring thaw in 1774, surveyors representing George Washington, Patrick Henry, and other Tidewater elites staked large claims along the Ohio River. Waving away the royal edict against land grabs as a “temporary expedient to quiet the minds of the Indians,” Washington told his personal surveyor not to worry.
 
With the surveyors came settlers willing to wager their scalps on a scrap of land. For a time, Cornstalk succeeded in controlling his young warriors. They turned back white intruders with stern warnings but seldom harmed them. Then in April 1774 a gang of frontier ruffians butchered a small party of inoffensive Mingo men and women who had crossed the Ohio River to buy rum at a neighborhood grog shop. Other Mingoes who attempted to investigate were shot from their canoes. The dead included the sister and younger brother of the Mingo chief “Captain John” Logan, a longtime friend of the whites who, averred a pioneer who knew Logan well, represented “the best specimen of humanity, either white or red,” that he had ever met.
 
The massacre shocked the colonies and the Crown. The young Virginia aristocrat Thomas Jefferson excoriated the supposed perpetrators. Hard words and hand-wringing, however, marked the extent of the white response. When the Crown’s colonial justice proved empty, Logan sought revenge in the Indian fashion; he slayed just enough frontiersmen to even the score, taking care to exculpate the Shawnees from his bloody work. To the charred door of a ravaged cabin, Logan posted a succinct confession. “You killed my kin . . . then I thought I must kill too. The Indians is not angry [sic] only me.” Backcountry settlers saw matters otherwise. Misconstruing Chief Cornstalk’s neutrality as hostile intent, Virginia militiamen destroyed a large Shawnee village in the Ohio country. They also laid waste to six Mingo towns.
 
The die was cast. Shawnee and Mingo war parties retaliated. Frontiersmen reciprocated. Havoc and horror rent the wilderness. As the frontier crumbled, Lord Dunmore mustered the militia to deal the Indians a two-pronged thrashing. No longer able to keep the peace, Chief Cornstalk assumed the mantle of supreme Shawnee war leader. He tried to forge a broad Indian alliance, but British threats and cajolery sidelined other tribes. And so in late September, Cornstalk sallied forth with his Shawnee and Mingo force to defend their lands. Calculating that his only chance lay in defeating Dunmore’s armies before they could unite, Cornstalk turned his attention first to the command of Gen. Andrew Lewis, who was then creeping across the wilds of western Virginia toward Point Pleasant. Although outnumbered, Cornstalk had able Shawnee lieutenants, among them the rising star Puckeshinwau, already honored as both a war and a civil leader, offices the Shawnees rarely combined.
 
The Indians hated the militiamen but respected their fighting prowess. They called the Virginians the “Long Knives” because of the butcher knives and short swords that they wielded with as much skill as the Indians did the tomahawk. Like Indian warriors, the Virginians were a colorful if undisciplined lot. A few of the officers wore regular uniforms, but most were clad in the same sort of hunting shirts, leather leggings, homemade breeches, broad-brimmed hats or animal-skin caps, and moccasins as their men. Each militiaman carried a flintlock long-rifle or English musket, a bullet pouch, and powder horn carved to individual taste. In addition to knives, many also tucked tomahawks into their belts. Well schooled in Indian warfare and raging with the Kentucky land-fever, the Virginians were impatient for the fray.

This morning, however, they slumbered soundly, unaware of the approaching warriors. The night before, the Indians had slipped across the Ohio River in crude rafts beneath a cobalt sky, debouching on the rocky, timber-strewn Virginia riverbank four miles north of the militia camp. Cornstalk and his lieutenants oversaw the carefully choreographed battle preparations. Their warriors slept a few hours, leaning against trees or propped against forked poles, weapons at the ready. Hunters killed twelve deer and ritually sliced the venison under the watchful eyes of medicine men (spiritual and natural healers), who examined the roasted strips for spiritual purity before handing each warrior one piece. After eating, the men buried their blankets and shirts beneath leaves. Deploying in units of twenty, they each crammed four balls into their muskets to inflict maximum punishment at short range. They would tomahawk any survivors. Cornstalk selected the best marksmen to descend to the riverbank to pick off any Virginians desperate enough to plunge into the broad Ohio after the Indians sprang their trap.

And then his plan unraveled. At dawn, October 10, 1774, two early-rising Virginians wandered into the forest to hunt deer. Instead they ran into the Indians. One militiaman crumpled, riddled with musket balls, but the other stumbled back into camp to sound the alarm. Instantly the drums beat to arms. The backwoodsmen rolled from their blankets, examined their flints and priming, and awaited orders.
 
Feigning composure, General Lewis lit his pipe. He blew a few puffs and then ordered two colonels to lead double columns of 150 men forward to discover the source of the commotion. Both officers fell in the first Indian volley. Concealed behind the trunks of maple and pine and in the tangled underbrush of the river bottom, the warriors dropped dozens of militiamen, screaming epithets at the “sons of bitches” and “white dogs” as they fired. Lewis pushed out reinforcements, and the combatants grappled at close quarters in the smoke-choked timber. “Hide where I would,” a Virginian recalled, “the muzzle of some rifle was gaping in my face and the wild, distorted countenance of a savage was rushing towards me with uplifted tomahawk. The contest resembled more a circus of gladiators than a battle.”
 
After six hours of close combat, the two sides backed apart and traded fire from behind trees and fallen timber. Puckeshinwau and his fellow war leaders moved along the Indian line, exhorting their warriors to “lie close,” “shoot well,” and “fight and be strong.” Near sunset, General Lewis occupied a high ridge that Cornstalk had neglected to secure. Stung by bullets from above their left flank and low on ammunition, the Indians melted back into the forest and recrossed the Ohio. The Virginians contented themselves with scalping fallen warriors and collecting souvenirs.
 
It had been a bloody twelve hours. The Indians killed seventy-five Virginians and wounded another 140. Perhaps forty warriors died. Hoping to disguise their losses, the Indians rolled several of their dead into the river. The Virginians nevertheless collected thirty-two scalps. These they affixed to a post at Point Pleasant.
 
The battle claimed just one prominent Indian, the Shawnee war leader Puckeshinwau. His thirteen-year-old son Cheeseekau, not yet a warrior, had accompanied him into action. After Puckeshinwau fell mortally wounded, Cheeseekau helped ease him back over the Ohio in a driftwood raft. Before dying, Puckeshinwau reputedly admonished his young son to preserve his family’s honor, never reconcile with the Long Knives, and “in the future lead forth to battle his younger brothers” against them. Cheeseekau swore to obey. Puckeshinwau’s warriors buried their chief deep in the forest.
 
Cheeseekau had accepted a heavy burden. He had three siblings, and his now-widowed mother was pregnant with triplets. Cheeseekau’s favorite sibling, upon whom he would lavish most of his attention and who would best fulfill his father’s last wish, was his six-year-old brother Tecumseh, the “Shooting Star.”

Videos