The Virginians knew little about the Ohio Country, so they hired surveyor-frontiersman Christopher Gist to explore the country and to help establish trading relationships with the Indians. Gist liked what he found. On February 17, 1751, he wrote in his journal:
… rich fine and Level Land, well Timbered with large Walnut, Ash, Sugar Trees, Cherry Trees etc, it is well watered with a great Number of little Streams or Rivulets, and full of beautiful natural Meadows, covered with wild Rye, Blue Grass and clover, and abounds with Turkeys, Deer, and Elks and most sorts of Game particularly Buffaloes, thirty or forty of which are frequently seen feeding in one meadow: In short nothing but Cultivation to make it a most delightful Country — The Ohio and all the large Branches are said to be full of fine Fish …
This was what the Ohio Company wanted to hear. The land could be sold, settled, and cultivated as rich farms. The Company arranged more surveying and initiated land sales with hopes of becoming rich. The colonists saw this as a necessary and natural progression for their new country. Land sales brought important revenues to build the country and enrich many individuals. Little thought was given to the Indian nations who occupied the land. They were considered a lower form of life, indolent and incapable of making the fullest use of the resources that God had provided them.
The Indian view of life could not have been more opposite to that of the colonists. They had everything they needed, and couldn’t comprehend why the colonists wanted to accumulate more and more goods that could not be carried into the spirit world. They saw white expansion into their land as an extreme danger, for one simple reason: They lived in balance with nature, small numbers of people living off a limited amount of resources; too many people would tilt the balance, deplete the resources, and everyone would be hungry.
The Indian cycle of living was friendly to the environment. In spring, trees were tapped for syrup, men fished the streams, and women planted small garden plots and gathered herbs and plants from the forest. In summer, crops of berries, ginseng, and other roots and tubers were gathered. Fall brought vegetables from the gardens, and more food from the forests, such as mushrooms. Late fall and winter were the meat hunting seasons. This cycle allowed small groups of people to live off the land without extinguishing its resources. The Indians knew that large groups of settlers knocking down forests to create large farms would upset the cycle.
The French in Canada were alarmed when they heard of the Ohio Company’s plans. From their New World along the St. Lawrence, the French had struck out in all directions to explore the wilderness of North America and to establish an ambitious fur trade. They were the first non-Indians into the Ohio Country. The British colonists stayed close to their Atlantic seaboard homes while the French tramped and canoed the West. They believed they had earned the right to the lands below Lake Erie. So they strengthened their claims by dispatching five hundred troops into the region and building forts to enforce their presence.
The French moves sparked the French and Indian War, years of vicious battles between Britain and France for control of North America. It pretty much ended in September 1759, when British general James Wolfe defeated the Marquis de Montcalm on the Plains of Abraham at Quebec City. A year later the British captured Montreal, and in 1763 the two countries signed the Treaty of Paris, giving Britain all of New France, including the Ohio Country, which encompassed the future states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Michigan.
The Shawnee supported the French in the war because the French understood the Indians better than most Europeans, and generally treated them as allies, rather than pawns. The Shawnee feared that if the British defeated the French, settlers from the Thirteen Colonies would pour over the Appalachians into the Ohio Country and destroy the Indian way of life. Much to their surprise, King George III had the same fears. In October 1763, Britain passed a Royal Proclamation closing all Indian territories west of the Appalachians to the colonists. It also placed all Indians under the protection of the king.
George III and his advisers were not simply being nice to the Indians. The British king wanted to improve the fur trade in North America and he needed the Indians for that. Also, he wanted his colonists, showing signs of rebellion against him, corralled along the Atlantic seaboard where they could be better regulated. The Ohio Company, its deal with King George superseded, was now without lands to sell and was forced out of business. This appeared to be good fortune for the Shawnee and other Indian nations in the Ohio Country. The threat of a white invasion from the east was suspended, and 1768, the year of Tecumseh’s birth, promised a time of calm with hope for a peaceful future.
Without war, Shawnee life was reasonably carefree. The land, as long as it remained relatively unpopulated, provided adequate food and shelter. Life was a constant struggle against nature, but the Indians had centuries of experience and the Shawnee were intelligent and industrious. Women and girls nurtured gardens, collected food, stoked fires, made clothes, and tended to the maintenance of the bark or hide wigwams. Men gambled, smoked, talked, and tended to weapons and tools — and made war. In autumn, families dispersed, travelling to winter hunting grounds where the men sought out the animals needed for food, clothing, tools, and trade.
The child Tecumseh was as free as the animals his elders pursued. His life was outside — running, swimming, learning to build tools and weapons, such as the bow and arrow. He and his pals practised hunting and played war games. Decades later, Tecumseh’s war play was described by Stephen Ruddell, a white youth captured by the Shawnee:
During his boyhood he used to place himself at the head of the youngsters and divide them … he would make them fight sham battles in which he always distinguished himself by his activity, strength, and skill.
Ruddell was another white boy who grew up with the Shawnee after they snatched him during a raid on Ruddell’s Station, a small settlement in Kentucky. He and Tecumseh became blood brothers, sharing war games, and later hunting expeditions and real war.
The war games were important for Shawnee boys because their destiny was not to live in peace. The frontier was always alive with war talk, if only squabbles between tribes or small skirmishes between the Indians and intruders on their territory.
King George’s proclamation protecting the Ohio Country and its Indians did not last long. The year Tecumseh was born, the Iroquois Six Nations Confederacy, which had claimed the Ohio Country since the 1600s, sold part of it to the colonists for ten thousand pounds. Other tribes protested that the land belonged to all Indians and it was not up to the Iroquois alone to sell it. Not long after the sale, the Shawnee watched a new procession of surveyors and settlers from the Thirteen Colonies float down the Ohio River to open new settlements. The colonists, who had started to call themselves Patriots or Americans, ignored the King’s proclamation. This was no big deal for them because they no longer tolerated King George and his laws from abroad. Differences between the new Americans and the British set off the American Revolution, which began as Tecumseh approached the age of reason.
The Revolution impacted all tribes south of Lake Erie, directly and dramatically. The breakaway colonists were expansionists who wanted the Indian lands west of the Appalachians. The British, although they had broken promises before, offered some hope of protection against this expansion if they could put down the American revolt. They needed allies against the upstart Americans, so they gave the Indians guns and supplies, and while reminding them of King George’s promised protection, incited them into raids on American settlements.
In the summer of 1774, Tecumseh’s sixth year, the Shawnee boy’s life and the future of his people was decided. Colonists in Virginia, taking control of the new lands given up by the Iroquois, decided to crush any Indian resistance, which included the Shawnee. The Indians called the Virginians “Long Knives” or “Big Knives,” because of the long swords carried by colonial military officers, and later the name was applied to all Americans. The Long Knives marched on the Ohio Country, determined to destroy the Shawnee villages along the Scioto.
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