A history of the last great Native American war in North America.
At the dawn of the nineteenth century, Native American dominance of the Northwest Territory was threatened by a series of treaties designed to open the land to US settlement. In response, a coalition of tribes launched what would come to be known as Tecumseh’s War, named after the charismatic Shawnee war chief who was the guiding force behind the Native confederacy.
Often treated today as an adjunct to the War of 1812, Tecumseh’s War deserves to be disentangled from that conflict and studied in its own right. As author Donald R. Hickey shows, at stake was nothing short of the future of Native Americans in the heart of North America. With the might of the British behind them, it was the last time that Native Americans stood any realistic chance of defending their lands and their freedom.
The history of this pivotal conflict features larger-than-life figures including Tecumseh, Tenskwatawa "the Prophet," and Black Hawk on the Native side; and Thomas Jefferson, William Henry Harrison, and Richard M. Johnson on the US side. The defeat of the American Indians coupled with the British decision to abandon them in peace negotiations with the United States had catastrophic consequences for the Indian nations by opening the Old Northwest to a flood of white settlers.
Tecumseh’s War
is military history at its finest, placing the Native American struggle against white settlement in North America front and center.