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“Let us form one body, one heart, and defend to the last warrior our country, our homes, our liberty, and the graves of our fathers.” Tecumseh
1810 marked the decade of Waterloo. Beyond the glittering ballrooms of Town, the world was rapidly changing. Across the Atlantic, Shawnee leader Tecumseh was urging for pan-Indian resistance to westward expansion by white settlers (http://www.americanyawp.com/reader/the-early-republic/tecumseh-letter-to-william-henry-harrison-1810/). The speech (see previous link) to Governor William Henry Harrison at Vincennes on August 12th of 1810 was eloquent and impassioned, arguing that the land of North America belonged exclusively to the American Indians, and therefore whites had no right to sell the land.
“Once a happy race…Since made miserable by the white people, who are never contented,” Tecumseh urged for all indigenous Americans to unite against their oppressors, and mount a steely resistance against the dissolution of their lands and lives.
Tecumseh would later join with the British, being made a General, against the Americans in the War of 1812. The future 9th POTUS William Henry Harrison had an ongoing adversarial relationship with Tecumseh dating to at least 1809, when treaty negotiations in the Indiana Territory sparked Tecumseh’s mission to unite American Indians against the US.
The pair would do battle in 1810 and 1811. Tecumseh would be killed on October 5, 1813 at the Battle of the Thames in Canada.
While many Regencies focus on the European conflicts, British soldiers were also fighting on US soil from June 1812 until February 1815, nearly 30 years after the end of the American Revolutionary War, supported by brave leaders like Tecumseh.
