“I was the border man’s friend. Many times I have saved him and his people from harm. I never warred with you, but only to protect our wigwams and lands. I refused to join your paleface enemies with the red coats. I came to the fort as your friend and you murdered me. You have murdered by my side, my young son…. For this, may the curse of the Great Spirit rest upon this land. May it be blighted by nature. May it even be blighted in its hopes. May the strength of its peoples be paralyzed by the stain of our blood.”
These were the words of the great Shawnee Chief Cornstalk. He and his son were murdered while attempting to negotiate a peace with the white settlers of Point Pleasant. They were killed because some other natives had killed soldiers out hunting, and so vengeance was sought within the fort by the officers. The issue, of course, was that Cornstalk had not come there to make war but to try to prevent war. In the bloodlust that followed, the white men had succeeded in killing a peacemaker instead of a warmonger. The final words, before the death of Cornstalk we might imagine to be uttered by God in vengeance over the death of his own son. Indeed, for those who do not accept the sacrifice and abide by it, this is precisely the sort of vengeance that is visited upon them. The white settlers who claimed to abide by Jesus should have known this. It is clear, however, that they were not behaving by that example. The natives, on the other hand, were behaving more like that example without it would seem, the full benefit of the understanding of that situation. The Natives were acting like another blood sacrifice for this land for the white settlers, yet the white settlers were supposed to already have had a sacrifice. Who then was the bigger betrayer?
Tecumseh would have known all these facts as acting tribal chief of the Shawnee. Furthermore, there was a mitigating factor present that may well have meant that the alleged savages were far from such a label even in the prejudicial views of the white men.
There was a sect of spiritual witnesses who were known as the Moravians. Their beliefs were described as Christian, and indeed they were persecuted on behalf of trying to make sure natives were treated fairly. Their own people had several times been massacred along with the Shawnee and Delaware. Tecumseh was aware of this issue:
“In 1810, Tecumseh reminded William Henry Harrison, “You recall the time when the Jesus Indians of the Delawares lived near the Americans, and had confidence in their promises of friendship, and thought they were secure, yet the Americans murdered all the men, women, and children, even as they prayed to Jesus?”” https://nativeheritageproject.com/2012/12/19/the-moravians-the-shekomeko-indians-and-the-gnadenhutten-massacre/
To Tecumseh, whatever this Jesus matter was did not seem to be saving the natives when it came to other so-called Christians massacring them. If anything, it felt to them freedom-limiting since it changed their Native ways drastically and did not seem to elicit a response from the white settlers of higher levels of compassion and mercy. Indeed, the Moravians themselves were attacked for “not letting nature take its course” which, in this case, meant genocide.
The issue of Christianity for Tecumseh, then, was settled. Whether or not he knew of all the killing done in the name of Christianity in Europe, he had seen enough of it in his own land for him to discredit the legitimacy of the teaching. Indeed, Jesus was supposed to have been more dove-like. What he was seeing was hawk-like to an extreme. The fruits of the spirit proclaimed to not jibe with what he was witnessing. What conclusion would anyone form under that circumstance?
Nonetheless, YHVH wished to witness to Tecumseh and the entire Shawnee by extension. The Natives had heard from the Great Spirit and they were provided a prophet through Tecumseh. What Tecumseh had discovered, though, is even with all the signs many of the Natives would still not join together. Perhaps the curse of Cornstalk was reaching further than even Cornstalk would have wished it to. Perhaps it is the nature of mortal man to forever doubt the word of God when it is instilled into a man. And perhaps for Tecumseh, the ways of war were too alluring to hear the call of peace in the way that Jesus was supposed to have set as an example. The whole world was upside down, and the great shaking was not far away. The Moravians had been killed along with many Christianized Indians. The small hedge of protection–the peacemakers–had been butchered one too many times. The continent would soon been engulfed in the flames of war.
JoA