Becoming America - An Exploration of American Literature from Precolonial to Post-Revolution, 2018a

BECOMING AMERICA
REVOLUTIONARY AND EARLY NATIONAL PERIOD LITERATURE
forces were attacked and defeated by Harrison at the Battle of Tippecanoe (1811).
Harrison would later successfully use this victory over the Native Americans when
running for president, with John Tyler as his vice-president, under the slogan
“Tippecanoe and Tyler, too!”
After Tippecanoe, Tecumseh failed in subsequent attempts to unite tribes to
defend their way of life against the whites. He fought with the British in the War of
1812 and was killed in the Battle of the Thames, near Thamesville, Ontario.
Tecumseh’s Speech to the Osages was recorded in John Dunn Hunter’s (1798–
1827) Memoirs of a Captivity among the Indians of North America (1823). Dunn
claimed to have heard this deeply-moving speech when he was ten years old. He
lived as an Osage captive for fourteen years, publishing his memoir seven years
after his release. Authentic or not, it is not unusual for a Native American’s words
or speech to be ltered (as this speech is) through whites.
3.17.1 Speech to the Osages
(1811, published 1823)
http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/tecumosages.html
3.17.2 Reading and Review Questions
1. Why does Tecumseh repeat the word “brothers,” and to what eect?
2. By what means does Tecumseh create a sense of unity among the
disparate tribes listening to his speech?
3. How does Tecumseh dierentiate Native Americans from white people,
and to what eect?
4. What temptations do the white people oer that Tecumseh exhorts
Native Americans to resist?
5. On what grounds and by what means does Tecumseh foresee Native
Americans’ victory over white people?
3.18 CHEROKEE WOMEN
On September 8, 1787, Katteuha and three other Cherokee women sent a letter
to Benjamin Franklin, then the Pennsylvania governor and delegate to the
Constitutional Convention, asking him to encourage peace between their nations.
In the matrilineal Cherokee social structure, women held considerable familial,
economic, and political power. They had control over children and property, and
they had key roles in councils and ceremonies. The highest position a Cherokee
woman could attain was that of ghighua or Beloved Woman, and it is that position
that entitles Ketteuha to act as Cherokee ambassador to the nascent United States.
Women’s power within the tribe was grounded in their connection to nature and
childbirth; the latter is particularly emphasized in Katteuha’s construction of her
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