Tecumseh
Recognized formally as a Person of National Historic Significance, Tecumseh holds a place among those whose lives have been judged to have shaped history in ways that warrant continued acknowledgment — a designation that returns attention to the facts of his life as a Shawnee leader.
Born in Chillicothe in 1768, Tecumseh was a citizen of the Shawnee nation who served throughout his life as a traditional leader and chief. That role defined his public identity across the decades he lived, from his origins in Chillicothe through the years in which he carried the responsibilities that fell to those who held such a position within their nation. He died on October 5, 1813, at Moravian Indian Reserve 47, having lived forty-five years in the capacity of chief and leader among his people.
The award of Person of National Historic Significance offers the clearest external measure of how Tecumseh has been regarded beyond his own time. It is a concrete recognition, one that does not rest on sentiment but on a formal determination that his role as a Shawnee traditional leader merits lasting acknowledgment. His life, running from 1768 to 1813 and rooted in the Shawnee nation, is the foundation on which that designation stands.
Quotes by Tecumseh
Tecumseh's insights on:
You, too, will be driven away from your native land and ancient domains as leaves are driven before the wintry storms. Sleep not longer, O Choctaws and Chickasaws, in false security and delusive hopes. Our broad domains are fast escaping from our grasp.
Every year, our white intruders become more greedy, exacting, oppressive, and overbearing. Every year, contentions spring up between them and our people, and when blood is shed, we have to make atonement, whether right or wrong, at the cost of the lives of our greatest chiefs and the yielding up of large tracts of our lands.
Before the palefaces came among us, we enjoyed the happiness of unbounded freedom and were acquainted with neither riches, wants, nor oppression.
The white usurpation in our common country must be stopped, or we, its rightful owners, be forever destroyed and wiped out as a race of people. I am now at the head of many warriors backed by the strong arm of English soldiers. Choctaws and Chickasaws, you have too long borne with grievous usurpation inflicted by the arrogant Americans.
Sell a country?! Why not sell the air, the great sea, as well as the earth? Did not the Great Spirit make them all for the use of his children?
Brothers, we must be united; we must smoke the same pipe; we must fight each other’s battles; and more than all, we must love the Great Spirit.
Brothers, we must be united; we must smoke the same pipe; we must fight each other's battles; and more than all, we must love the Great Spirit.
When Jesus Christ came upon the Earth, you killed Him. The son of your own God. And only after He was dead did you worship Him and start killing those who would not.
Where today are the Pequot? Where are the Narragansett, the Mohican, the Pcanet, and other powerful tribes of our people? They have vanished before the avarice and oppression of the white man, as snow before the summer sun.
Where today are the Pequot? Where are the Narragansett, the Mohican, the Pokanoket, and many other once powerful tribes of our people? They have vanished before the avarice and the oppression of the White Man, as snow before a summer sun. Will we let ourselves be destroyed in our turn without a struggle, give up our homes, our country bequeathed to us by the Great Spirit, the graves of our dead and everything that is dear and sacred to us? I know you will cry with me, 'Never! Never!'