Shawnee Prophet

Assessment.

Tenskwatawa is less well known today than his brother Tecumseh, who led the Shawnee people and other western tribes in a series of wars against the United States. Tecumseh may have been the greater political and military leader, but it was actually Tenskwatawa who initiated the resistance to the federal government with his unique religious vision in the early 1800s.

Renewal and Resistance.

Tenskwatawa was born around 1775 to a Shawnee father, Puckeshinewa, and a Creek mother, Methoataske. Originally called Lalawethika (the Noisemaker), he was raised among his father's people but failed to distinguish himself in his youth. His life changed with a spiritual experience in 1805, and he took a new name, Tenskwatawa, "the Open Door," which signaled the role he began to carve for himself. He felt renewed by a series of revelations he received from the "Master of Life" while being taken...