In the spring of 1808, Tecumseh and the prophet removed to a tract of land on the Tippecanoe, a tributary of the Wabash, where the latter continued his efforts to induce the Indians to forsake their vicious habits, while Tecumseh was visiting the neighboring tribes and quietly strengthening his own and the prophet’s influence over them.  The events of the early part of the year 1810 were such as to leave but little doubt of the hostile intentions of the brothers.  The prophet was apparently the most prominent actor, while Tecumseh was in reality the mainspring of all the movements, backed, it is supposed, by the insidious influence of British agents, who supplied the Indians gratis with powder and ball, in anticipation, perhaps, of hostilities between the two countries, in which event a union of all the tribes against the Americans was desirable.  Tecumseh had opposed the sale and cession of lands to the United States, and he declared it to be his unalterable resolution to take a stand against the further intrusion of the whites upon the soil of his people.

So menacing had the Indians become in the Spring of 1810, that General W.H.  Harrison, a son of Benjamin Harrison, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, and then governor of the Territory of Indiana, invited the brothers to a council at Vincennes, in August.  Tecumseh appeared with four hundred well-armed warriors.  The inhabitants were greatly alarmed at this demonstration of savage military power.  Harrison was cool and cautious, while the bearing of the chief was bold and haughty.  He refused to enter the place appointed for holding the council saying: 

“Houses were built for you to hold councils in; Indians hold theirs in the open air.”  He then took a position under some trees in front of the house, and, unabashed by the large concourse of white people before him, he opened the business with a speech marked by great dignity and native eloquence.  When he had concluded, one of the governor’s aids said to him, through an interpreter, as he pointed to a chair by the side of General Harrison: 

“Your father requests you to take a seat by his side.”

The chief drew his blanket around him and, standing erect, said, with a scornful tone: 

“My father!  The sun is my father, and the earth is my mother; on her bosom I will recline;” and he seated himself on the ground.

The chief declared it his intention to form a confederacy for the purpose of preventing any further cessions of lands to the white people, and to recover what had been ceded.

“Return those lands,” he said, “and Tecumseh will be the friend of the Americans.  He likes not the English, who are continually setting the Indians on the Americans.”  The governor replied that the lands had been received from other tribes, and that the Shawnees had no business to interfere.  Tecumseh sprang to his feet, cast off his blanket and, with violent gestures, pronounced the governor’s