http://www.indigenouspeople.net/shawnee.htm
Shawnee Literature
“So live your life that the fear of death can never enter your heart.
Trouble no one about their religion; respect others in their view, and
Demand that they respect yours. Love your life, perfect your life,
Beautify all things in your life. Seek to make your life long and
Its purpose in the service of your people.
Prepare a noble death song for the day when you go over the great divide.
Always give a word or a sign of salute when meeting or passing a friend,
Even a stranger, when in a lonely place. Show respect to all people and
Bow to none. When you arise in the morning, give thanks for the food and
For the joy of living. If you see no reason for giving thanks,
The fault lies only in yourself. Abuse no one and nothing,
For abuse turns the wise ones to fools and robs the spirit of its vision.
When it comes your time to die, be not like those whose hearts
Are filled with fear of death, so that when their time comes
They weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again
In a different way. Sing your death song and die like a hero going home.”
Tecumseh (/tɛˈkʌmsə/; March 1768 – October 5, 1813) was a Native American leader of the Shawnee and a large tribal confederacy (known as Tecumseh’s Confederacy) which opposed the United States during Tecumseh’s War and the War of 1812. Tecumseh has become an iconic folk hero in American, Aboriginal and Canadian history.
Tecumseh grew up in the Ohio Country during the American Revolutionary War and the Northwest Indian War, where he was constantly exposed to warfare. With Americans continuing to encroach on Indian territory after the British ceded the Ohio Valley to the new United States in 1783, the Shawnee moved farther northwest. In 1808, they settled Prophetstown in present-day Indiana. With a vision of establishing an independent Native American nation east of the Mississippi under British protection, Tecumseh worked to recruit additional tribes to the confederacy from the southern United States. During the War of 1812, Tecumseh’s confederacy allied with the British in The Canadas (the collective name for the colonies of Upper Canada and Lower Canada), and helped in the capture of Fort Detroit. American forces killed Tecumseh in the Battle of the Thames, in October 1813. With his death, his confederation disintegrated. Some tribes simply stopped fighting. Accordingly, the British deserted their Indian allies at the peace conference that ended the War of 1812. As a result, the dream of an independent Indian state in the Midwest vanished, and American settlers took possession of all the territory south of the Great Lakes, driving the Indians west or into reservations.
“In defiance of the white warriors of Ohio and Kentucky, I have traveled through their settlements, once our favorite hunting grounds. No war-whoop was sounded, but there is blood on our knives. The Pale-faces felt the blow, but knew not whence it came. Accursed be the race that has seized on our country and made women of our warriors. Our fathers, from their tombs, reproach us as slaves and cowards. I hear them now in the wailing winds. The Muscogee was once a mighty people. The Georgians trembled at your war-whoop, and the maidens of my tribe, on the distant lakes, sung the prowess of your warriors and sighed for their embraces. Now your very blood is white; your tomahawks have no edge; your bows and arrows were buried with your fathers. Oh! Muscogees, brethren of my mother, brush from your eyelids the sleep of slavery; once more strike for vengeance; once more for your country. The spirits of the mighty dead complain. Their tears drop from the weeping skies. Let the white race perish. They seize your land; they corrupt your women; they trample on the ashes of your dead! Back, whence they came, upon a trail of blood, they must be driven. Back! back, ay, into the great water whose accursed waves brought them to our shores! Burn their dwellings! Destroy their stock! Slay their wives and children! The Red Man owns the country, and the Pale-faces must never enjoy it. War now! War forever! War upon the living! War upon the dead! Dig their very corpses from the grave. Our country must give no rest to a white man’s bones. This is the will of the Great Spirit, revealed to my brother, his familiar, the Prophet of the Lakes. He sends me to you. All the tribes of the north are dancing the war-dance. Two mighty warriors across the seas will send us arms. Tecumseh will soon return to his country. My prophets shall tarry with you. They will stand between you and the bullets of your enemies. When the white men approach you the yawning earth shall swallow them up. Soon shall you see my arm of fire stretched athwart the sky. I will stamp my foot at Tippecanoe, and the very earth shall shake.”
—Tecumseh’s Speech at Tuckaubatchee, 1811
Tecumseh (in Shawnee, Tekoomsē, meaning “Shooting Star” or “Panther Across The Sky”, also known as Tecumtha or Tekamthi) was born about March 1768. His birthplace, according to popular tradition, was Old Chillicothe[7] (the present-day Oldtown area of Xenia Township, Greene County, Ohio, about 12 miles (19 km) east of Dayton). As Old Chillicothe was not settled by the Shawnee until 1774, it is believed that Tecumseh may have been born in a different “Chillicothe” (in Shawnee, Chalahgawtha), which was the tribe’s name for its principal village, wherever it was located. Tecumseh is believed to have been born in Chillicothe along the Scioto River, near the present-day city of Chillicothe, Ohio, or, maybe, in another village the Kispoko had erected not far away, along a small tributary stream of the Scioto, where his family moved just before or not long after his birth.
When Tecumseh was a boy, his father Puckshinwa was “brutally murdered” by white frontiersmen who had crossed onto Indian land in violation of a recent treaty, at the Battle of Point Pleasant during Lord Dunmore’s War in 1774. Tecumseh resolved to become a warrior like his father and to be “a fire spreading over the hill and valley, consuming the race of dark souls.”
At age 15, after the American Revolutionary War, Tecumseh joined a band of Shawnee who were determined to stop the white invasion of their lands by attacking settlers’ flatboats traveling down the Ohio River from Pennsylvania. In time, Tecumseh became the leader of his own band of warriors. For a while, these Indian raids were so effective that river traffic virtually ceased.
“No tribe has the right to sell, even to each other, much less to strangers…. Sell a country! Why not sell the air, the great sea, as well as the earth? Didn’t the Great Spirit make them all for the use of his children?
The way, the only way to stop this evil is for the red man to unite in claiming a common and equal right in the land, as it was first, and should be now, for it was never divided.”
We gave them forest-clad mountains and valleys full of game, and in return what did they give our warriors and our women? Rum, trinkets, and a grave.
Brothers — My people wish for peace; the red men all wish for peace;but where the white people are, there is no peace for them, except it be on the bosom of our mother. Where today are the Pequot?
Where today are the Narrangansett, the Mohican, the Pakanoket,
and many other once powerful tribes of our people?
| Curse of Tippecanoe
The name Curse of Tippecanoe (also known as Tecumseh’s Curse, the Presidential Curse, Zero-Year Curse, the Twenty-Year Curse, or the Twenty-Year Presidential Jinx) is used to describe the regular death in office of Presidents of the United States elected or re-elected in years divisible by twenty, from William Henry Harrison (elected in 1840) through John F. Kennedy (1960). Ronald Reagan, elected in 1980, was shot and survived; George W. Bush (2000) survived an attempt on his life unharmed. Tecumseh: paragraphs written by students Tecumseh: His Role in the Cause and Conduct of the War of 1812 |
WHEN I SLEEP
When I sleep
I dream of my people;
In battles long ago.
I see their pain,
Their anger,
Their sorrow.
“I CRY IN MY SLEEP”
The Spirit of our people
Who lived long ago,
Still lives.
“BUT ONLY IN OUR DREAMS”
By: H. M. Sisler, Jr., Shawnee
Stories/Documents
Prior to the Green Corn Festival was the Ceremony held when the first green corn shoots appeared. For the Festival, chanting shamans and warriors circled a cooking fire, carrying cornstalks. These first ears were boiled, removed from the pot, and tied to four tepee-like poles above the fire, as a sacred offering to the Great Spirit. The first ashes were buried, then a large new fire was kindled, cooking corn for the entire village to share in the ensuing feast and dance.
No one of the Shawnee people was allowed to eat any corn, even from his own field, until the proper authority was given. When some corn was ready to be eaten, the one who had the authority announced the date for the Corn Feast and Dance.
On this occasion, great numbers of roasting ears were prepared, and all the people ate as freely as they desired. After this feast, everyone could have what he wished from that particular field.
This was probably the most highly esteemed Peace Festival among the Shawnees and other corn-growing tribes. It might properly be called the First Fruits Festival, similar to the First Roots Festival and the First Berries Festival held annually by many tribes.
Another Corn Feast was held in the fall, but not so universally as the one when the first corn was ready to be eaten. The first one of each year was held at planting time. It was a feast to secure the blessing of the Great Spirit, so that they might have a bountiful crop.
All of these were religious festivals, and all were accompanied by chants and dancing.
Constitution of the United Tribe of Shawnee Indians
United Tribe of Shawnee Indians
P.O. Box 505
Shawnee Reserve 206
De Soto, Kansas 66018
913-583-3236
Jimmie D. Oyler, Principal Chief
Absentee-Shawnee Tribe of Indians of Oklahoma
Eastern Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma
Address for Tribal Offices:
Kenneth Blanchard, Governor
Absentee-Shawnee Exec. Committee
2025 S. Gordon Cooper Drive
Shawnee, OK 74801-9381
405-275-4030
George J. Captain, Chief
Eastern Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma
P.O. Box 350
Seneca, MO 64865
417-776-2435
Absentee-Shawnee Executive Committee
P.O. Box 1747
Shawnee, OK 74801
405-275-4030
“Trouble no man about his religion,
respect his views and demand he respect ours.”
KEEPING AN INDIAN CULTURE ALIVE
Twenty men and women, some with feathers dangling from coal-black hair, some with moccasins as footwear, step purposefully in a circle around a barren pole they say reaches to the sky.
In pairs, they walk in cadence with the rhythmic beating of a drum, oblivious to the panoramic views the lofty pasture affords them of the surrounding forested mountains — exploding in brilliant hues of red and yellow — and the river valley below.
From distant vantage points in the ridges that fortress the Youghiogheny River, these conspicuous people might lead you to believe you’ve slipped into another century, when the Shawnees roamed these parts, hunting and fishing.
But this is the late 20th century, and, yes, the Shawnees are again here, atop a mountain overlooking Friendsville, celebrating the Fall Bread Dance, a post-harvest observance that is the last of the traditional summer ceremonies.
These forgotten nomadic Indians — identified more with Oklahoma than the Western Maryland mountains — occasionally surface, as they did last week when a Virginia businessman announced plans to interest the Shawnee in a proposed gambling casino and hotel atop a mountain overlooking Cumberland in neighboring Allegany County.
The Shawnees were among the many bands — no one apparently knows for sure how many — of Indians who lived in and roamed what is now Maryland. Among the better-known were the Nanticoke of the Eastern Shore and the Piscataway of the Western Shore of the Chesapeake Bay.
“Maryland was a stopover for a lot of tribes,” says Archie Lynch, a spokesman for the Native American Center in Baltimore.
Heavy colonization forced the Indians to disperse. The Shawnees migrated from the Maryland mountains to the Ohio Valley and, eventually, to Kansas and Oklahoma.
Some Shawnees remained in and around Garrett County, however, because of marriages to colonists, and their families have lived in the hollows and on the mountains ever since.
Just how many Shawnees once roamed these parts or how many descendants remain is speculative, though.
“We don’t know. Nobody knows,” says Chief Joseph Raincrow, head of the Yougiogaheny River Band of Shawnee Indians, which re-established itself in these mountains in the early 1980s.
“We’re not very big in terms of numbers,” he says. “But the potential is big. There are a lot of eligible Shawnee people in the area who are not involved.”
Chief Raincrow was selected by the band as chief. The group –which has about 200 members from across the nation and Canada — was formed as part of a band in Ohio in 1980, but later separated.
The band’s efforts at re-establishing the Shawnees in Maryland has been aided by Jim “Pappy” Ross Sr., who donated four acres of his farm to the Shawnee band a decade ago. Mr. Ross, 76, is a descendant of the Shawnees and of the town’s founding family, the Friends, who came to the Youghiogheny River valley in the early 1700s.
The Shawnees, Mr. Ross says, allowed the Friends to live on the east side of the river and hunt and fish in the valley. The Indians taught the Friends how to survive on the frontier.
“I thought something should be done to show our appreciation,” says Mr. Ross, whose 120-acre farm abuts the Shawnee tract. “This was their territory. I thought it was better to give it to them than let it get in the hands of some developer and ruin it.”
The modern-day Shawnees, led by Chief Raincrow, a retired administrator and American Indian adviser at American University in Washington, return throughout the year in their station wagons and four-wheel-drive vehicles to set up tents and pop-up trailers for spring planting and fall harvest ceremonies, weddings and naming of the children ceremonies.
“We are living as Indians there,” says Chief Raincrow, an Ohio native who moved to Maryland about 35 years ago and now lives in Bethesda. “That’s the idea — living the way our people used to when they lived there a long time ago.”
The site, which is just above Interstate 68, also is the center of government for the band, Chief Raincrow says. An octagonal house has been erected there.
“We have dedicated the land as a sacred ceremonial site,” Chief Raincrow says.
Ceremonies are conducted during the spring, summer and fall. About 60 people — some from as far away as Ohio and New Jersey — turned out one weekend this month for the Fall Bread Dance, which included a hunting foray into the woods, where a deer was taken, cleaned and roasted all day over a fire for a tribal feast.
They come here to celebrate and learn their heritage.
“When I was young, I used to run out in the woods — I would hear someone calling my name,” says Mike Fink, a 19-year-old Mohawk from Germantown. “It was a calling to my heritage. Other Indians will tell you the same thing.”
Mr. Fink has been welcomed into the Youghiogheny camp even though he is a Mohawk, a traditional enemy of the Shawnees. But even non-Indians are often invited and welcomed, and tourists are drawn out of curiosity off the interstate.
Chief Raincrow, a widower who declines to give his age, travels the country and around the world to lecture about Indians, their history, culture and spirituality.
He has degrees in theology, education, history and political science.
“People have all kinds of strange ideas about what Indians are suppose to look like,” Chief Raincrow says. “Americans think that reservations are synonymous with Indians. But that’s not the case. Most Indians never saw a reservation.”
The Shawnees who come here work in professional and blue-collar jobs. The come with their husbands, wives and children. They sometimes wear traditional woodland garb at these gatherings, sometimes jeans and cowboy hats, often decorated with Indian belts, feathers and ribbons.
Herb Clevenger, a 39-year-old owner of a body shop near Friendsville, frequently attends the Shawnee ceremonies. He believes he is a descendant of Shawnee and Delaware Indians.
“What I’m all about is a traditional Eastern woodland Indian,” he says. “People don’t realize the different cultures within Indians. They tend to think only of Western Indians.”
Being here is a matter of maintaining the culture.
“This is how we take care of our people,” says Joe Far Raven, who has come from Cincinnati. “I’ve been Shawnee all my life. There is no way around it. You live your culture, your heritage.”
Indigenous Peoples Literature 
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