General Harrison and Anthony Shane, so far as it is known, were the only persons in the American army who were personally acquainted with Tecumseh.  It is possible that some of the friendly Indians, commanded by Shane, may have known him; but it does not appear that any of them undertook to identify the body after the battle was over.  Shane was under the impression, on the evening of the action, that he had found the body of Tecumseh among the slain; but, as Mr. Wall testifies, expressed himself with caution.  General Harrison himself was not, on the following day, enabled to identify with certainty the body of this chief, as appears from the testimony of a member of the general’s military family, which we here quote, as having a direct bearing on the question under consideration: 

“I am authorised,” says colonel Charles S. Todd,[A] “by several officers of general Harrison’s staff, who were in the battle of the Thames, to state most unequivocally their belief, that the general neither knew nor could have known the fact of the death of Tecumseh, at the date of his letter to the war department.  It was the uncertainty which prevailed, as to the fact of Tecumseh’s being killed, that prevented any notice of it in his report.  On the next day after the battle, general Harrison, in company with commodore Perry and other officers, examined the body of an Indian supposed to be Tecumseh; but from its swollen and mutilated condition, he was unable to decide whether it was that chief or a Potawatamie who usually visited him at Vincennes, in company with Tecumseh; and I repeat most unhesitatingly, that neither commodore Perry nor any officer in the American army, excepting general Harrison, had ever seen Tecumseh previously to the battle; and even though he had recognized the body which he examined to be that of the celebrated chief, it was manifestly impossible that he could have known whether he was killed by Johnson’s corps, or by that part of the infantry which participated in the action.  No official or other satisfactory report of his death, was made to him by those engaged on that part of the battle ground where he fell.  It was not until after the return of the army to Detroit, and after the date of general Harrison’s despatches,[B] that it was ascertained from the enemy, that Tecumseh was certainly killed; and even then the opinion of the army was divided as to the person by whose hands he fell.  Some claimed the credit of it for colonel Whitley, some for colonel Johnson; but others, constituting a majority, including governor Shelby, entertained the opinion that he fell by a shot from David King, a private in captain Davidson’s company, from Lincoln county, Kentucky.  In this state of the case, even had the fact of Tecumseh’s death been fully ascertained, at the date of general Harrison’s letter, it would have been manifestly unjust, not to say impracticable, for the commander-in-chief to have expressed an opinion as to the particular individual to whose personal prowess his death was to be attributed."[C]