Tecumseh

Portrait of Shawnee chief Tecumseh based on sketch by Benson John Lossing. Attributed to Owen Staples (Reference NPS)

My text this evening will be from the speeches of the great Shawnee chief Tecumseh, when he said: “I was born a Shawnee but I became an Indian.”

Tecumseh was born in approximately 1767 in Western Ohio, the son of a famous war chief of the Shawnee. Tecumseh’s father had worked to form an alliance between the Eastern Indian groups to present a united front against the advance of the white settlers. The Iroquois of the New York state area had been so successful at their form of unity that the founding fathers of our nation sent delegates to the Iroquois to learn how they had accomplished such a union. Some aspects of the Iroquois nation were adopted into the formation of our own United States.

When the white settlers had broken through the Iroquois lines of resistance some of the Indian tribes of the Ohio and Indiana regions began to see the need for unity in the face of opposition. Tecumseh’s father was killed in a battle when Tecumseh was only 7 years old fighting for just this type of union.

By the time he was 33 years old Tecumseh had become a major war chief in the Shawnee nation. The year was 1800 and Western expansion was sending many white settlers into the lands of the Ohio territory. When the local Indian tribes would protest the encroachment of the whites onto Indian land, the response of the whites would be to produce a treaty that had been signed by elders of the tribe on the other side of the mountain which said that all Indians would leave that region.

The whites did not seem to understand that each Indian tribe was ruled separately and by their own leaders. The whites viewed all Indians as being one massive group of people rather than separate nations divided by space, language and culture. The view of the settlers was that if one Indian group signed a treaty in a given region then that treaty should be respected by all of the Indians in that region.

By the time Tecumseh came into leadership he realized that if each Indian tribe fought the advance of the settlers individually then they would surely be wiped out. But the key to victory would be to view themselves as the white settlers viewed them. The white settlers viewed all Indians as being from the same group. They were all Indians. But the Indians could never see themselves as one group. Each tribe had their “distinctives.” Their own customs and cultures which set them apart from the tribes that surrounded them. It would be unthinkable for one Indian tribe to lay down their own culture and be viewed as a part of a larger whole.

Tecumseh realized that the key to the strength of the Indian nations would be to place the goals of their individual tribes as second to the goals of the Indian peoples as a whole. Tecumseh dreamed of a confederation of Indians where each saw himself first as Indian and only then as a member of a tribe, clan or sept.

Toward this end Tecumseh and his brother, “The Prophet,” established a training center for warriors at the juncture of the Wabash and Tippecanoe rivers and established a town called Prophetstown. There were upwards of 1000 warriors at any given time at Prophetstown being instructed on unity and trained in warfare. To say the least, this was disturbing to the governor of the Indiana territory, Gen. William Henry Harrison.

Historically we see that those movements that have prospered and made lasting changes on their culture are those that have trained their youth vigorously with the tenets of their movement. They have shaped an army out of un-guided youth, forging cadre’s out of individuals with zeal but little knowledge or experience.

Tecumseh developed the doctrine that the Native Americans were all “children of the same parents” and all owned the land in common. Thus any sale or treaty cessation of land was invalid unless all agreed. When he realized that the United States refused to recognize his principle that all Native American land was the common possession of all the Native Americans and that land could not rightly be ceded by, or purchased from, an individual tribe, Tecumseh set out to bind together the Native Americans of the Old Northwest, the South, and the Eastern Mississippi valley.

As early as 1802 he was traveling vast distances in an attempt to unite the very divided tribes of the central and Eastern United States. He traveled Wisconsin, Indiana and Ohio. He traveled through Canada, Vermont, Massachusetts, upper and Western New York State and Northwestern Pennsylvania. He contacted the remaining members of the Iroquois Confederacy and gained their respect and pledge to unite behind his plan of a united Indian peoples. He met with the Ottawa, the Chippewa , the Huron, the Delawares, the Miamis, the Wyandots, the Mohawks, the Senecas, the Oneidas, the Onondagas and the Shawnees, all of whom pledged conditional support. For nine years this type of traveling continued trying to unite the native peoples.

In 1811 Tecumseh left his brother “The Prophet” at Prophetstown with the strict orders not to engage in battle with Harrison’s forces under any circumstances until he returned, and with that Tecumseh headed South. He traveled as far South as Florida to meet with the Cherokees and the Seminoles. He gained the support of the Lower Creeks, the Santees, the Choctaws and Biloxis, the Chickasaws the Alabamas and the Upper Creeks.

Through Mississippi and Louisiana he gained the Natchez, the Yazoo, the Caddos and other smaller tribes. He traveled through Arkansas and Missouri gaining even more support but the whole plan was weakened by on simple word: Suspicion. Everyone was suspicious of everyone else.

President Madison was suspicious of the British and their involvement in this. Harrison was suspicious of Tecumseh. Many of the chiefs were suspicious of the other tribes and their chiefs (“they had known each other a long time and had ‘reason’ to be suspicious.”) The settlers were suspicious of the Indians who were in turn suspicious of the settlers (hence the reason for this whole confederation). Tecumseh was suspicious of the growing insubordination of his brother “the Prophet,” and the Prophet was suspicious of everybody and everything.

In November of 1811, while Tecumseh was still in the South working to form an alliance, “The Prophet” moved on the US forces arrayed against them near Prophetstown against the orders of Tecumseh. During the first day of battle, the casualties on both sides were nearly the same, but the Indians could not afford the number of losses they had sustained and during the night, they vanished. (In 1810 there were 10 million whites in North America and as many as 1 million of them were West of the Cumberland Gap.) Harrison crossed the Tippecanoe river and burned Prophetstown to the ground. Several years later, with John Tyler at his side, William Henry Harrison would be elected the ninth president of the United States under the banner of “Tippecanoe and Tyler Too.”

With the defeat of Prophetstown the tenuous coalition was injured, and almost dead. The individual chiefs were reluctant to give up their power over a small group of people to a larger group of Indians no matter the benefit. They chose to continue to fight as individual tribes rather than as a united front and they were eventually wiped out. The war was lost because of the confusion and further division brought in by one battle.

During the War of 1812 Tecumseh was commissioned as a General by the British and captured the city of Detroit. By 1813 the tide had turned against the British and Tecumseh retreated into Canada where he was killed in the battle of the Thames River against Harrison’s forces.

Half a century later the Western Sioux were facing a similar plight. In 1854, divided by individualism and ego, upwards of 7500 Sioux gathered at Bear Butte to discuss a united approach to the white problem. A major battle had been won which, if it had been capitalized on, could have prevented the settlers from moving farther West for another fifty years, but the Sioux would have had to change their lifestyle, abandon their independence and work together. They were not willing to do any of those. At the counsel at Bear Butte, they argued, they screamed, they pledged undying hatred to the white man and his ways (Paragraph 1, page 77 Crazy Horse and Custer, The Parallel Lives of Two American Warriors by Stephen Ambrose.)

“But there was no follow-up. Having made their vows and completed the Sun Dance, the Sioux went off their separate ways. They had not elected a head chief or indeed done anything to provide for an institutional basis for resistance. No generals were appointed, no scouts organized, no system of exchanging information set up, no provision made for arming the warriors with guns instead of bow and arrow. Nor was there any discussion on how to fight the whites. Nothing but promises.”

Everyone recognized how nice the theory was, but no one was willing to deny their tribe for the sake of the people. They could not see the need or the necessity of denying temporary personal gains for the advancement of the whole. They sought their own glory, they sought honor, they fought for prestige and were jealous when another got more than them. The biggest problem that Tecumseh faced with the Northern Creek Indians was the jealousy of the chief over what was happening in the North.

This describes perfectly the attitude of the religious rulers of Jesus’ day.

Matthew 27:18 For he (Pilate) knew it was out of envy that they had handed Jesus over to him. (NIV)

Acts 5:17-18 Then the high priest and all his associates, who were members of the party of the Sadducees, were filled with jealousy. They arrested the apostles and put them in the public jail. (NIV)

Acts 13:45 When the Jews saw the crowds, they were filled with jealousy and talked abusively against what Paul was saying. (NIV)

Acts 17:5 But the Jews were jealous; so they rounded up some bad characters from the marketplace, formed a mob and started a riot in the city. They rushed to Jason's house in search of Paul and Silas in order to bring them out to the crowd. (NIV)

It also describes the religious climate of America today. There is so much concern over denominationalism and how different we are from those who have a cross on their building just down the road, that we fail to see the larger picture of the Kingdom. We view ourselves as Baptists, Pentecostals, Methodists, C & MA, Independents, “Third Wavers,” Latter Rain, Progressives, Lutherans, Adventists, non-Adventists, Nazarenes, Catholics, Bible Church, Church of God, Assembly of God etc. etc. etc. when the world looks at us all as Christians.

“I was raised a Methodist and I don’t want anything to do with Christians.”

“My daddy was a Baptist preacher and if that is what being a Christian is supposed to be, I don’t want any part of it.”

“I got burned in business by an Assembly of God partner of mine and I determined never to partner with Christians again.”

The world sees Christians in terms of those they have known who claim to be Christians. Our first response is to try and distance ourselves from those others because “they have impure doctrine anyway. They don’t speak in tongues or they do speak in tongues. They turn the lights down low and chant. They dance like maniacs. They are so religious, they still sing out of hymnals!!”

If we are going to see this world changed, if we are going to see Utah changed, it is going to be because we have finally begun to view ourselves the way the world views us; simply, as Christians. The Indians of 200 years ago were not Christians. They did not understand the Christian concept of forgiveness. They did not see the absolute necessity of dying to personal goals for the goals of a larger Kingdom. They were offended by the chief of that other tribe for what he did to me or one of my family. They wanted the other tribe to die because of the mean things they had done or the rumors of what they had done. They viewed the success of the other tribe as a failure for themselves. They were not Christians, at least they had an excuse.

As Christians we are offended by what that pastor said or did. We are divided by our own un-forgiveness and more than willing to tell others how we have been offended. We view the actions of others with suspicion wondering what they are up to and how it will affect us. By our suspicions and refusal to forgive we continue to fight our independent battles failing to see the war that is raging around all of us.

Our founding fathers saw the need to lay down the individual demands and desires of each colony and to fight for a larger cause, a group of United States. Realizing the seriousness of their “Declaration of Independence,” one of their number stood up and said “we can either hang together, or we will assuredly hang separately.”

“I was born a Baptist, I was born a Pentecostal, I was born a Methodist, I was born an independent (whatever that is) I was born (Fill in the blank), but I became a Christian!”

There are problems in the State of Utah that could be addressed by a united front. A group of churches committed to the stability and health of the others. There are problems that could be handled with wisdom by a panel of pastors and wise laymen that would see victory and resolve in long-standing issues. There are churches splitting, running off pastors, harassing pastors, pastors and wives struggling and some splitting up, churches that are dying financially because of remoteness and lack of members. There are situations in this state that could be ministered to if a group of churches would develop ways of taking responsibility for a united battle against the strongholds of our area, ways to confront the needs of our communities and practical ways to impact front-line areas with the gospel.

Many of us have seen videos of instances of revival in different parts of the world. In all of the cases that I can remember, revival came as a result of the different tribes of Christians repenting of their individualism and independence and developing methods of working together in a common battle.

There is a day coming when the kingdoms that we have created, whether political or denominational, will crumble into The Kingdom of God.

Revelation 11:15 The seventh angel sounded his trumpet, and there were loud voices in heaven, which said: "The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he will reign forever and ever."

Revelation 5:8-10 8 And when he had taken it, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb. Each one had a harp and they were holding golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints. 9 And they sang a new song: "You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, because you were slain, and with your blood you purchased men for God from every tribe and language and people and nation. 10 You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to serve our God, and they will reign on the earth."

Revelation 7:9-10 9 After this I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb.

Revelation 19:6-8 6 Then I heard what sounded like a great multitude, like the roar of rushing waters and like loud peals of thunder, shouting: "Hallelujah! For our Lord God Almighty reigns. 7 Let us rejoice and be glad and give him glory! For the wedding of the Lamb has come, and his bride has made HERSELF ready.

The Bride has made HERSELF ready. Let’s prepare ourselves to work together as a united front.

Forgive the past. Repent of gossip and lies. Repent of believing the worst and determine to offer the “benefit of the doubt.” Fight the compulsion of suspicion and as much as is possible, live at peace with all men (Romans 12:18). Repent of our independence and self-righteous attitudes. Repent of viewing others only for what we can get out of them and how they can benefit our cause. Ask the Father to make us the servants we are called to be. The servants we are commanded to be. The servants that will make us great in the only Kingdom that will matter 1000 years from now. The Kingdom that is comprised of all of the failed kingdoms of this earth. It is the Kingdom of God established through the person of Jesus Christ.