Valley, sitting below the heavily forested Appalachian Foothills, offered the Shawnee the closest thing to paradise. There were open fertile places to plant food crops and the tobacco used for spiritual, medicinal, and cultural purposes. The forests provided life-giving animals including bears, cougars, deer, elk, wild turkeys, wolves, bobcats, and millions of birds — in particular the passenger pigeon, destined for extinction. The river itself was a transport corridor for their elm-bark canoes.
It was a very different land from what we know two hundred years later. The forests were primeval, the rivers and lakes pure, and the only signs of human occupation were footpaths and small habitation clearings. At the time of Tecumseh’s birth, roughly 95 percent of the Ohio Territory was covered by mature forest, compared with 30 percent today.
One person’s paradise often is another person’s envy. The wildlife, good timber, water, and fertile growing areas caught the covetous eyes of the surging population of the Thirteen British Colonies that were spread along the Atlantic Coast, east of the Appalachians. The French, who had settled Canadian lands north and east of the Great Lakes, also felt they had a stake in the Ohio Country, because of their aggressive explorations and fur trading throughout much of the New World.
The interests of both groups were known and watched nervously by the Shawnee and other Indian nations, who already knew the pain of being pushed from their homelands. The powerful Iroquois, expanding their influence and territory in the mid-1600s Beaver Wars, drove the Shawnee from their Ohio River valleys, dispersing some west, some east over the Alleghenies, and others south to the Carolinas, Georgia, Alabama, and as far as Florida. Pukeshinwau was one of these migrants, and it was in the south that he met and married Methoataaskee.
The displaced Shawnees dreamt of regrouping in a traditional homeland south of Lake Erie. One organized reunification occurred in the 1750s with some tribes drifting back to the Ohio Country. Pukeshinwau and Methoataaskee trekked north about 1759, settling along the Scioto River, likely at or near Chillicothe, about 125 miles north of where the Scioto meets the Ohio.
About the same time, the British colonists’ interest in the Ohio frontier turned to action. In 1748, some Virginians, including George Washington’s half brother Lawrence, formed the Ohio Company, with a plan to get the land west of the Appalachians from King George III of Britain and sell it to settlers for profit. The king granted them two hundred thousand acres of land near what is now the Pennsylvania-Ohio border, even though it wasn’t his to give away. It belonged to the North American Indians. The king expected the Company to distribute the land among one hundred families and to build a fort for the settler’s safety while they broke the wilderness for farms.
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
