This Day in Canadian History (The British Ally With Tecumseh)

July 11, 1808—At Fort Amherstburg, the Lieutenant-Governor of Upper Canada, Francis Gore, reached out to one thousand Indian warriors and one hundred of their chiefs—careful not to launch them on the warpath against Americans, mind you, but urging them to stay “on your guard against any attempt that may be made by any enemy whatever to disturb the peace of your Country.”

Gore expected to see Tenskwatawa (The Prophet), a Shawnee who had sought to unite Indians—and thereby provoke American distrust and anger—by insisting that tribal land was held in common and therefore could not be sold to whites piecemeal, without the consent of all Indians. A short, ugly man whose life had been turned around by a mystical vision in which the “Master of Life” had urged him to lay aside the ways of the white man (e.g., alcohol, guns, iron cookware, and glass beads), The Prophet would have been a handful all by himself.

Instead, Gore met The Prophet’s older brother, Tecumseh, whose translated name, “Shooting Star,” gives only the most cursory idea of his actual—and potentially even greater—influence on the future shape of North America.

I came upon the Gore-Tecumseh meeting in The Invasion of Canada, 1812-1813, by Pierre Berton, the late Canadian journalist-historian whose books ought to be better known in the U.S.—especially for anyone who wants to understand our neighbors to the north.

The comparatively little I knew about the formidable Indian chief was gleaned from the outdoor spectacle Tecumseh!, which I saw about 20 years ago in Chillicothe, Ohio, with my oldest brother and my sister-in-law. After all this time, however, the details of his life had gotten a bit fuzzy. Berton’s narrative represented an excellent refresher course on his life, as well as on the War of 1812, a war with as much military and administrative mismanagement as any in American history.

Gore knew practically nil about Tecumseh, but after the meeting wrote that he found him to be “a very shrewd intelligent man.” And well Gore might think so, since, among all the chiefs gathered to listen to the white man, only Tecumseh was prepared to go to war with the Anglos to the south. He’d been doing so for the past quarter-century, as a matter of fact.

A good thing Tecumseh only had another five years to live—few Native-Americans (few Anglo-Americans, for that matter) combined tactical brilliance in battle with such a grand yet sensible overall strategic vision. It was his life’s mission to forge a confederation of Indians—a successor organization to Pontiac’s—that would oppose the whites from Upper Canada down to Florida and, if possible, win back their ancestral homelands.

As Gore assessed the situation in his province, he knew he would need the help of Tecumseh and his brother—sooner rather than later. In Upper Canada three out of five settlers were transplanted Americans. These weren’t ideologically driven emigrants, such as, say, Vietnam-era draft resisters—they tended to be economically motivated. Their allegiance was uncertain at best, downright suspect at worst. The British in Canada would need every one of Tecumseh’s highly motivated Indian allies not just in battle but to help bolster the thinly populated forts.

Lt. Gov. Gore was going all out to prepare for the worst. In the last year, in the wake of the U.S. outcry over the impressments of 6,000 men from American ships, he fully expected hostilities to break out soon. Over the next two years, he accomplished the following:

* he checked to make sure the Indians had enough rations
* he secured authority for militia units to serve outside their province in the event of war or insurrection
* he arranged for them to receive adequate provisions

Contrast Gore with what the Americans were doing south of their border—especially President Thomas Jefferson:

* Not wanting war, he signed the ruinous Embargo Act, which called for ceasing trade with any European power that interfered with American ships. It ruined American shipping without bringing either France or Britain to heel.
* Believing that small was beautiful, he embarked on a massive program of gunboat building instead of the larger, Federalist-backed vessels such as the U.S.S. Constitution. It was fine in theory, except that even in their own native, smaller waters, the firepower of the gunboats was no match against a frigate. (Irony of ironies: Jefferson did not believe adding slightly to the national debt, but very much did so when it came to his own affairs).
* Even when war came, in August 1812 (nearly four years after he left office), Jefferson wrote friend William Duane that that capturing Quebec would be “a mere matter of marching” for the Americans. This ignored the disastrous Richard Montgomery-Benedict Arnold assault on the city during the Revolution, not to mention what would happen when that small-is-beautiful militia force that Jefferson loved wouldn’t fight on foreign soil.

Most of all, Jefferson was unaware of how his own land policies were alienating the tribes. A secret message he sent Congress in 1803 called for more trading houses among the Indians, “leading them thus to agriculture, to manufactures, and civilization.” Note the condescension.

More hard-headed than Jefferson, Tecumseh was reluctant to trust the assurances of any white man—even one such as Gore. The Indian was ready to attack the Americans, Gore wrote to his superior, Sir James Craig, but only if “their father the king should be in earnest and appear in sufficient force they would hold fast by him.”

Tecumseh’s caution was understandable: the British had closed the gates on their Indian allies at Fort Miami after Anthony Wayne defeated them at the Battle of Fallen Timbers in 1794. The Indian warrior’s worst fears would come true five years after his encounter with Gore at the Battle of the Thames, when British soldiers fled the battlefield, leaving Tecumseh and his braves to fight on alone.

They say Tecumseh died from an American bullet; I say it was from a heart broken by the realization that shiftless allies had doomed his dream of a confederation once again.

On the other hand, the British ended up much the better for their encounter with the chieftain. The presence of so many intimidating Indian warriors early in the conflict did much to ensure that Upper Canada would remain relatively quiescent until British forces--toghether with their distrustful allies--could decide the fate of the province on the battlefield. The American dream of annexing Canada was ended. Luckily, the British made enough mistakes later in the way to ensure that the young American republic would not be dismembered--until we almost did it to ourselves nearly 50 years later.