After Fallen Timbers

I. Treaty of Greenville

A. Signing the Treaty--After the defeat of the Indian Confederacy at Fallen Timbers, Bluejacket (the senior Shawnee war Chief) negotiated a treaty with the United States in which he agreed that the Shawnee would cede about half of Ohio to the government for white settlement--although he had no authority to do so (peace negotiations were suppose to be the province of civil chiefs).

1. Terms of the Treaty--The Shawnee were limited largely to the northwestern Ohio quadrant, and were also suppose to by paid a stipend of $1000 a year, which was suppose to allow them to buy food and other trade goods, to make up for the restricted area they could now hunt.

B. Keeping the Peace--As had the British government before it, the United States was now responsible for ensuring that white settlers in the region respected the treaty right granted to Native Americans. This proved to be an impossible task, largely because these white settlers refused to recognize that Native Americans had any rights they were obligated to recognize.

2. Unequal justice--Conflict remained rampant along the frontier, as both Native Americans and white settlers continued the practice of seeking revenge when they felt they were being wronged; but while Native Americans sought revenge on the perpretators of a particular act, for white setters any handy native would do. Seeking redress in white courts also proved futile, as the juries there refused to find any white guilty of any crime against a Native American.

II. Native Methods of Coping with the New Reality

A. Accommodationists--With the limited resources most native peoples now had, they had to seek new ways of living within the bounds forced on them by whites.

1. Black Hoof's settlement at Wapakonetta--Black Hoof, a former war chief of the Mekoche clan, sought to remain in Ohio by adopting white methods of agriculture and settlement. Among the terms of the Treaty of Greenville was a promise by the US government to provide native peoples with the implements to farm land, as well as animals and techical know-how. Black Hoof petitioned the government for this assistance in 1802; not until 1806, however, did the US government actually follow through with any action on this matter. William Kirk, a Quaker, taught the natives the European method of planting, helped them begin to construct a sawmill, and made plans to construct a gristmill, as well. Kirk was deficient in bookkeeping skills, however, and despite both native and area white pleas, was dismissed from his position the following year.

B. Separatists--since white contact in the interior of North America, some Shawnee had moved west beyond the Mississippi in an attempt to keep the whites distant from themselves. As hostilities between natives and whites increased, more Shawnee followed this practice, so that by the time of greatest prominence of Tecumseh and the Prophet, more Shawnee lived west of the Mississippi than in their traditional homes in Ohio.

1. Tecumseh's Village--Rather than sign the Greenville Treaty, Tecumseh took his small band of followers and moved west, choosing to establish a village near a group of Lenai Lenape on the White River, near present-day Anderson, Indiana. This moved them approximately 75 miles further west--close enough where Lalawethika could still obtain whisky from white traders.

III. The Emergence of the Shawnee Prophet

A. Lalawethika's Conversion experience--In the spring of 1805, Lalawethika collapsed into a trance so profound that his family though he had died, and began preparing his body for burial. In the midst of these preparations, however, Lalawethika awakens, and after recovering somewhat begins to relate the vision that he had.

B. Lalawethika's Vision--Lalawethika claimed in his vision to have been visited by the Great Spirit, who escorted him to the afterlife to demonstrate for Lalawethika the fate of all native peoples who did not do as the Great Spirit wished.

1. Burning of bodies--those natives who did not repent from their wicked was would descend to a place where their bodies would be burned to ashes several times.

2. Drinking molten lead--next, very wicked natives would would proceed to a second house, where they were forced to drink molten lead until their bowels seized up, causing very serious pain.

3. Redemption--after enduring this torture, these evil native peoples were able to join those that had lived who had lived exemplary lives in  much more pleasant surroundings, where the hunting was easy and the cornfields huge.

C. Lalawethika's Theology--Lalawetika claimed that the Great Spirit had showed him the fate that he and others faced if they did not repent and begin to live their lives in the proper fashion.

1. Return to proper ways of living--According to Lalawethika, the Great Spirit wished for his native peoples to return to their traditional ways of living, and to forsake most of the new materials and methods they had acquired since their contact with whites.

a. Hunting--Native peoples were to give up hunting animals for their pelts, and to instead return to more traditional methods of only killing what they needed to eat. This would also necessitate the proper treatment of animals that had to be killed for this purpose. They were required to give up guns for hunting, and return to the use of the bow and arrow. Natives were also forbidden from selling the food they killed, and also from sharing this food with whites, except under the most dire of circumstances.

b. Clothing--Native peoples were to return to clothing themselves from the hides and furs they acquired hunting for food. This was, of course, part of the radical break native peoples were suppose to make between themselves and the whites.

c. Spiritual life--Native peoples were suppose to pray only to the Great Spirit, give up shamanistic practices (like witchcraft). Native peoples were also informed that the Great Spirit prefer his people to practice monogamy, and to marry only with other native peoples. Those already in a mixed-race situation were suppose to leave those relationships and any children that resulted and move back among their own people.

D. The Witchcraft Crisis Among the Lenai Lenape--Tenskawatawa (as he was now known)--had only been preaching for a short time when he was called upon to find witches among the nearby Lenai Lenape people.

1. Witches--in Native societies, witches could work for both good and evil--although Tenskwatawa preached that all witchcraft was evil. The nearby Lenai Lenape village was in the midst of a power struggle between the traditional elderly leaders of the village in 1808 who were willing to make accommodations to co-exist with the whites, and young warriors, who insisted that the best practice was to end all relationships with them. At the beginning of the crisis, an unnamed woman (possibly a disciple of the Prophet) had been identifying witches, but she suddenly withdrew her services, and Tenskwatawa was asked to fill this void. After identifying several witches, who were subsequently killed, Tenskwatawa continues to identify witches for them, but the further turmoil in the village results from fewer of the identified being slowly tortured to death. It is this incident that brought Tenskwatawa to the attention of Indiana Territory governor William Henry Harrison.