Tecumseh's Curse, Part One: Rise of The Prophet

Published Feb 13, 2024, 8:41 PM

Did the legendary Shawnee chief Tecumseh really lay a curse on US Presidents? In the first part of this special two-part series, Ben, Noel and Max dive deep into Tecumseh's origin, his mission to unite Native peoples against the ruthless expansion of the new United States -- all to learn why so many people believe every president elected in a year ending with zero dies in office.

Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much for tuning in. Let's hear it for the man the myth, the guy who has never actually given out a curse. Super producer mister Max Williams.

Max claps with two hands. Williams, Welcome back to.

The clap Max, I have a secondhand again, and Ben, no curse is given out that you know of?

Yeah, right, right, Well, is a curse really a curse if you don't know about it? That's a question. Aren't you supposed to, like actively say to somebody, I have cursed you. You're therefore you don't have to. But I guess one thing about curses is, you know, there's the placebo effect of it, all right, if somebody tells you you've been cursed, then you get in your head about it and manifest the curse yourself without maybe they're even having to be any nefarious dark forces at work at all.

Yeah, that's the thing a curse does have. You know, the best definition of magic I've ever seen is weaponized psychology. And in that case, then a curse would work. If we were to say I Ben Bullen, curse you Noel Brown. Through that kind of lens of psychology, then the person being cursed would have to know about it for it to have some sort of effect. But if we take the psychology out, if we say we just believe in curses, then the person who is cursed or has the consequences doesn't have to know what's going on at all. They could be totally innocent. They just walked into the wrong tomb.

I recently started rewatching Rome, the HBO series. You know about Julius Caesar and all of that, And there is a part in the series where Julius Caesar scorns a female admirer. Essentially, there's a political thing that's caused it to be inconvenient having this relationship, so he basically sends her a packing and then there's a really intense scene where she curses him like in writing, like while saying out loud, I curse your liver, your blood, your bones, your body. And then you know, has her hand servant take this cursed piece of paper and put it in some kind of special depository. But Julius Caesar does not need to know about it. And as far as this character is concerned the curse? Sure has hell worked? Because you know, really bad things happened to Julius Caesar. Was it because of the curse? Unclear?

This this reminds me of Gladiator, which has been on my mind because I recently on the road, I have too much time to watch a lot of TV. But on the room I watched Napoleon, and.

What do you think? I did not like it?

Okay, only because only because it was very clear to me that this is Yo King Phoenix playing Napoleon. Sure, so that's it. Didn't it didn't feel like I love that guy's an actor. I just I don't know. The battle scenes were good, but the the historical inaccuracies pile up over time.

But who are we to knock it?

There are stories about Napoleon and curses too, and that time he got totally punked.

By a pack of rabbits.

But today I love that story. I mean too, I was thinking I was talking about that with some French folks. I got in an argument about Napoleon in Paris and it ended well because of the rabbits. But anyway, so we are talking about curses today. We're going to talk about a curse that You may have heard, fellow ridiculous historians, but you may not know much about it. Like many of us us who attended public school, you may have simply heard the name to Cumsa's curse and never really understood where it came from, it was a real thing, etc. And it all goes back to the fact that the president of the United States throughout history and especially now is one of the most important, one of the most powerful people in the world. That means a lot of folks love you, but that also means a lot of people hate your guts.

Just on principle. Yeah. Max points out that due to a very small sample size, relatively small speaking, forty six people to have held the job, eight of those individuals have died while in office, and one might argue that those odds are pretty significant in favor of dying in office.

Yeah. Yeah, podcasters have a slightly safer ratio. We could say, only slightly, only slightly. It's hard in these streets, but yeah, I always think about that too. You know, the tremendous level of stress that the potus has.

It's it's sad, it's to a degree, it's.

Kind of heartbreaking when you can see how being president for just four years absolutely wrecks your body.

You know, before and after pictures, saying it reminds me of a lot of those history accounts. So you'll see on Instagram and stuff where it'll be like, you know, young men before they go off to war, and then a photograph of them after, and you see these just like you know, these severe, hardened kind of lines and just gaunt kind of expressions, very similar to what happens at the end of a four year term of being presidents. It's it is, it is a battle. It is its own kind of war. Absolutely.

I mean, it gives you that thousand league stare, which is a scary thing to see in real life. And you know, okay, so let's let's start with our guy to comes up. He is a famous Shawnee chief. He has the dream of the United Native Federation, and the historical lore like the gather around the campfire type stories assure us that he is responsible for a curse. But to understand the story of that curse, we need to learn a little bit more about our guy, mister T, who I'll only call mister T once just because it's funny.

I reserve the right to call him that once myself.

Okay, good, that's acceptible these terms, and then we'll have a third mister T on Maxi's behalf if he wants to. Uh, all right, there it is. Okay, No, you've got the last one left.

Do you know mister T was apparently terrified of flying? I think yeah, character on the show. Yeah yeah, yeah, okay, so does that kind of smells mister T? No me referring to mister the actual mister T from the A team.

I think the spirit of we're not doing Strickland rules then about that.

I don't know what that is.

That's where if you say a certain name three times, a certain individual appears. Yeah, I'm not playing that game. Although I just saw the new art for the Beetlejuice sequel that's happening.

Yeah, it exists. I've seen some people kind of nagging it. You don't know. So many people will make like fan art for movies that are in development, and some of them are so good, you're like, is that the one? This to me had the air of fan art about it, and not even like particularly awesome fan art, right right.

Well, it's also it's been interesting to me because the original Beetlejuice sequel was supposed to be set in Hawaii, which is definitely choice. Anyway, there's nothing to do with it. We'll do a history of Beetlejuice like later.

Well, what we do have with mister T, and that is that Mister T that this is my use there is that you've got multiple spellings of this guy's name, which is pretty cool, and even that could result in different pronunciations. You've got to come to sea also spelled to come tha. If you got a lift, you know, then you've got to come to come fay or to come tha with thha. What we do know is he was born in seventeen sixty eight, southeast of Old Chillicothe, Old Chilicothe, That's what I'm going to say. That is north of what is today Xenia, Ohio.

And he had a very difficult life, to be quite honest. Growing up was not easy for him. His father was killed by a group of white folks in seventeen seventy four. His mother, who was a Muskogee, left him when he was seven years old to journey with part of her community to Missouri and.

So to come.

So was left to be raised by his older siblings. And this often happens in times of instability. You know, the oldest sister, the oldest brother has to function as the guardian, the parent figure. So to come to is it comes to grows up under the supervision of his one of his older sisters to come pace, and she trains him in the She teaches him what it means to be Shawnee, the moraise, the values, the social codes. And then alongside that, his brother, one of his brothers, teaches him the art of woodcraft and hunting, how to live rough, survive in the wild.

That's right, that's a cheesy cow. So he learned some pretty solid outdoorsman type skills in addition to having a pretty solid backbone and a moral compass, so all the makings of a of a great man. He was then adopted by a Shawnee chief, Blackfish Uh, and he grew to become a young man with several other foster brothers who were in fact white whom Blackfish had actually captured but appeared to have treated with some level of dignity.

You know what, I just hit me, We're really close to President's Day. I almost thought it was President's Day, but that's like, what next week? It's the third. It's one of those third day of the month kind of things.

Third Monday, I'm going on a quick little vacation up at Charleston and see some friends up there and I'll explain them. I'm like, yeah, I have Monday off for President's Day. And what is President's Day? I'm like, so, it's what.

I think it's.

Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, and George Washington all have a birthday in February, right or close to it. I think one of the might actually be born at the end of January or something like that. But it's like, hey, these three guys were born around this time have a day off, which is just like, as I say to people, I'm not going to argue against my job giving me a free day off.

Jefferson is in April. I think, yeah, Wow, Okay, maybe Jefferson doesn't.

Matter at all in this He doesn't matter at all to us history or to holidays. Well we'll get to Jefferson in a second, but yeah, I just want to shout that out. So as this comes out, the happy President's Day to all who celebrate.

I guess I don't know, how do you celebrate president. How does one celebrate your favorite president? Maybe put on a powdered wig of funny hat, give a speech you know, I don't know.

Yeah, take over some takeover some other people's lands, Okay, sure to soon brand. In fact, if it comes to like you're saying, he is definitely anti American soldiers and settlers, and there's very good reason for this. But he still had that Shawnee code, so he didn't want to uh commit what we would call war crimes. He thought it was right and ethical to fight American soldiers on the battlefield, but he wouldn't stand for them being tortured, for being burned at the stake, drawn and quartered. And when he saw, for instance, when he saw some compatriots preparing to burn a guy alive, he went absolutely nuts to a ham on them. And they, to be fair, they didn't stop torturing prisoners, but they stopped torturing prisoners in front of him because of his code. And for the years after the Revolutionary War, he was like a one man get a army.

He dropped some serious shaming on those guys and they reacted. It would seem I mean, and he had an air of legitimacy and authority about him. People paid attention when he said stuff you know when and that that code he kind of transmitted to anyone who he encountered. So after the Revolutionary War to come, so was a, like you said, kind of a one man show, a bit of a marauding one man Garia army, fighting in various skirmishes against the Whites in the old Northwest and helping out with the Cherokees in the South. He was the youngest of this particular band of folks that he was a part of. But again for a lot of the reasons that we've already listed thus far, was chosen to be the leader because of his just absolute charisma and chops on the battlefield. So he continued to fight in small actions as with the source that we're looking at refers to them as in the South, and he became friends with the Creek Indians, a relationship that would later help him to form an alliance.

Yeah, yeah, and this alliance will be incredibly important. And we see, you know, times of war and chaos make for strange bedfellows. So there's very much a sense that these guys are uniting against a larger, more dangerous power, right, and they're going to put their differences aside for a time. Unfortunate during these days, to Comes to loses two of his brothers, including his brother Chiesikou, who taught him the the arts of living in the wild. Chisikau dies in seventeen ninety two fighting in the South with Cherokee compatriots, and then to Comes his brother Sawasikaw was killed in Ohio in seventeen ninety four. And these deaths are a big reason that are a big part of the reason that to Comes opposed the so called peace chiefs. They're the community leaders who wanted to push for a peaceful resolution with the nascent American forces.

Yeah, which is interesting because I mean, he he did seem like he was someone who understood had a balance between you know, war and peace, and that there was a time for war and there was a time for peace. He wasn't like an outright hawkish, you know type dude. But he also wasn't like a dovish type. He isn't somewhere in the middle. He was very pragmatic. So Blue Jacket, who was a Shawnee chief of note with his time in seventeen ninety four, was amassing forces warriors to meet the US Army on their turf under Major General Anthony Wayne. This Blue Jacket actually summoned to comesome. He called for him to return to Ohio. However, it would seem that the general wasn't looking for a fight, was actually hoping to make a deal instead.

Yeah, we're again, we're getting some of this from our good friends that Encyclopedia Britannic. Here's how they put it. When the leading chiefs of the Old Northwest gathered at Wayne's call in Greenville in Ohio to come to held aloof and when the Treaty of Greenville was negotiated in August seventeen ninety five, he refused to RECOGNI. He roundly attacked the peace chiefs who sideway land that he contended they did not own. So he's saying the land is like the air and the water, it's the common possession of all the Native people in the native communities here. This is the institution of communal ownership of land policy. That's one of his big platforms. And he is a really great public speaker. Even his enemies, like the American soldiers, acknowledged that, and they said you know, we don't agree with him, but this guy's basically like the Native American version of Henry Clay and he.

Which was much more of a compliment at this time.

Which was much more of a compliment at this time because at this time Henry Clay is still on the rise in Kentucky.

He's still got that new car. Smell well, Ben. It reminds me a lot of an episode that we recently did on Stuff they Don't Want You to Know. And then the term is escaping me now, but what was that term bent about the idea of land that is unclaimed or terrannulius terrannulius, and is within that conversation, the idea of ownership of land was like kind of front and center in that episode of Stuff they Don't Want You to Know. And this is a great example of like two sides that have a fundamental disagreement or different view on the concept of who owns land, not only in terms of like, you know, who owns it like in practice, but just conceptually who owns land? How do how does one own land? How can land be you know, the property of an individual or group? Right?

And what we discover in that episode, which you. Absolutely. Hopefully it will be out by the time you hear this, folks, but absolutely check out that show, uh, because we gain a new appreciation for the power and danger of flags. As weird as that sounds, it's one for the vexillologists in your life. Yeah, you're absolutely right. This idea of land is a surprisingly complicated question because the need for it is so universal, and human history really is an agglomeration of rationalizations for taking land from someone else. And he still has other brothers. This is where we take a little bit of a turn to come to himself. Seems like a pretty righteous, maybe kind of humble dude, but his brother is a little bit of a little bit of a different case. And this actually comes up in a great science fiction fantasy series by Orson Scott Card called Alvin Maker.

Oh, this kind of appears in that one.

It's a great It's weird that it hasn't been made into a film series yet, but it's really good.

Isn't or Scott Card a little problematic? Yeah, he's a terrible person. Yeah, I thought, okay, but you know, sometimes you gotta take the good with the bat when it comes to fiction, especially when it comes to folks that aren't around anywhere. You got to kind of take your battles a little bit, you know, maybe just throw throw them all out. Oh orses, scout cards alive. And he is terrible, terrible Yeah on purpose, Okay, on purpose? Well to your point, been about this title of the prophet, right, Oh yeah, this this stems from a vision that he claims to have had something of a you know, the the golden tablets being passed down from on high type vision from from an entity he refers to as the Master of life. Ah, yes, yeah.

And so in Indiana, these two brothers to come to in ten Squatawa, they get together, they build a town and they name it profits Town. And the community that they build could be portrayed by some as a cult because they were they were very much into rejecting the normalization of what they saw as white customs. Sure, they wanted to get rid of that. They wanted to cut the culture war off.

At the pass. And he's operating under these orders or instructions from an entity that you know, no one else can directly communicate with. Now, that is also a pretty pretty solid argument for a call. When you have a guy who's saying I've got the goods, I've got the intel. No one else is capable of having it, and I'm the one that's going to interpret it and pass it down to you, my followers, right exactly.

And this is you know, this is classic cult umami. That's just how it works. He he has this mysticism that appeals to people in the Native communities. At this point, you know, almost everybody in a Native community, regardless of their tribe, has been adversely affected by the expansion of again the Nissans American state. And they've lost loved ones, They've been in wars, they've seen horrors visited upon their communities, civilians of warriors alike. So this message is coming at the right time. Unite against the Unite for the greater good, against this common evil.

Common enemy.

And so as this community continues to grow more and more and more skyrocketing to comes to starts to dream bigger, and he says, you know, one day, if these trends continue, there will be a world wherein our community is large enough and strong enough to stop the Americans from expanding. He said, We're gonna band together, We're going to start a Native confederation. And so he goes leveraging his superb oratory oratory skills, he travels throughout the land. He goes to speak with Ozark communities in New York, he goes from Iowa to Florida, and he's gaining recruits.

The entire way.

And he's saying, if I can get everybody to agree despite their differences in time, then I can stop what's happening to our native land.

And he might have. If things had gone.

Differently, history would have taken a very different direction. But something happened while he was on the road.

That's right, while he was on one of his missions. The governor at that time of the Indiana Territory, a man by the name of General William Henry Harrison you may have heard of. He led a militia of over a thousand men who marched on profits town, which led to what an event that would later be would later be immortalized in a very popular slogan. It became a rallying point politically, better or worse, the Battle of tippe Canoe, Yes yes, which.

You may recognize from some later political slogans. The Battle of typic Canoe is fought between these US soldiers and Native American warriors on the banks of a river called the keth Tippi Canunk, which is right there in the middle of central Pennsylvania. And this occurs in the context of the Treaty of Fort Wayne, which is an agreement signed in eighteen oh nine that said, hey, if you're a Native American tribe or community in Indiana, you have to sell three million acres of land to the US government. And because of this, to comes at this time. It's Chief of the Shopping or one of the chiefs.

He takes his.

Confederation of Native American tribes united and he says, let's come here. Let's combat this absolute deluge of pioneers and settlers coming into land. And that leads the that leads Governor Harrison to destroy the Shawnee Village Profits Town. And when Harrison gets there, it's November sixth, eighteen eleven, he sees one of Tenskawatawa's the one of the Profits followers, waving a white flag pretty much the universal sign for parlay, surrender, or negotiation. They requested a ceasefire, and they said, look, before anything goes sideways, Harrison and to Comsa, you guys should sit down and you should talk about what's going on. But to Kumsa is not in town.

He's not there. Unfortunately, he is away from Profitstown. He is on another one of his missions to recruit warriors from members of the what are referred to as the Five Civilized Tribes, who were also seeing the same kind of aggression being focused upon their lands, you know, folks marching upon them, or at the very least the threat of that kind of intervention. So everyone was looking to, you know, folks like Takumesa for advice, you know, for guidance, and this idea of banding together and forming alliances became very, very attractive.

Yeah, and Harrison says, okay, Profit they call you, I'll agree to your terms. And he turns his guys around. They go to a hill about a mile away from Profetstown on the Bank's Burnett Creek, and Harrison doesn't think this is a real ceasefire, because what the prophet says is, look, let's just hold here until my brother can get here, and you guys can talk.

This through, have your parlay.

And Harrison is thinking with the cleverness of a snake, and he's saying, oh, sure, trick him into a ceasefire and then murder them in the night. That's absolutely what I would do. And so he says, guys, don't chill out at camp. We need to maintain a watch. We need a defensive position.

But that's also something that to comes to, wouldn't wouldn't sign on for he is vinely inspired. That's a really good point. And yeah, it is very interesting the relationship between Tecumsa and Tenskoatawa, Tenscatawa operating under on these divine instructions. And you know, when we know that, when that can happen, people can go off the rails pretty quickly and get a little high on their own supply or you know, drink their own kool aid to use another culty related aphorism. Whereas to come to what is really driven by that code? You know that he was taught, he was really driven by the idea of not being a war don't do war crimes. Yeah, yeah, but someone else who might see, you know, if I do it, it isn't war crimes because I am divinely guided exactly. That's problematic.

I'm doing what the Master of Life told me to do.

Master of life he knows best. Therefore, if I do this on his command. This isn't this isn't a bad thing, but it comes on the other hand, it's operating under much more real world uh, sets of of you know, mores and values.

There's a deepness to it like that. The differences between their philosophies and their relationships are with the world are what make them such a good team. But ultimately it also leads to their downfalls.

It's true. And I was reading a little bit on the side just about how to come to largely you know, used his brother, and again Max point on off there that they might not have even been brothers. They were more just like brothers in arms.

And like how everybody Atlanta's exactly but to that like to come to was adopted to.

And that's right, and very unclear the actual you know, lineage, the blood lineage, but Takamsa was it was pretty clear. What was clear is that he was using this power that his you know, that his brother had for political purposes, not necessarily in a snakelike way, just in like a you know, this is helpful, This is going to get us some feet in the door, right, you know, and and help us a mask some followers. And if it's all for the greater good of the tribes and of the people. You know, of our people, then so be it.

And ten Skuatawa, however, is also not above capitalizing on Tekumsa's absence. Because Tkmsa is gone from Prophetstown, Tinskatawa has the reins of control. He's proxy ruler. And even though to comes to said, look, we cannot face American forces until we have our numbers beefed up. Even though tens Katawa is very well aware of this because of his divine inspiration, he stands out on this rock ledge that overlooks Profits Town. It's called Profits Rock today, by the way, and he starts singing war songs, chanting incantations, and he promises the people there's a true fact. He promises his followers that these spells, these prayers I am making, they will protect you from the US bullets. And so when Harrison wakes the next morning, we don't know how well or how long he's slept, but at dawn he gets up and his entire camp a mile away on that hill is surrounded by ten Squatawa's warriors, and they are ready to go. If you want to learned a lot about the back and forth of how the battle actually occurred, and it looked like it was anyone's game for quite some time. Go to American Battle Trust, a great resource that Max found that has you know, this is like the kind of stuff you study at war college. It might put a lot of people to sleep, but it's like a blow by blow analysis of what happened.

And we know that around this time, I think we're starting to see Native tribes having some form of firearm, but it's certainly not to the same degree that the American forces would have. They weren't fighting, you know, rifles one to one with like spears and bows and arrows, but they certainly did not have the same level and stockpile of weaponry that their opponents had.

No, Yeah, you're absolutely right, And the entirety of the fighting last for about two hours. It might surprise a lot of people that for this kind of close up fighting, or even when you get to hand to hand, those battles don't actually last a very long time. It's tremendously taxing on the physical body.

You kind of wonder too, though, if Harrison was like, maybe we shouldn't just make this a massacre, because I still am hoping perhaps to parlay with the comesa down the line, and if I you know, absolutely annihilate his folks, even though it's because his broad did a bad thing and you know, went down a weird path. I don't know that would be a good thing big picture, I don't know what you got. That's just a deestimation on.

My Unfortunately, what I think without knowing the interior mind of Harrison, we can say that he looked like he was willing to play ball in the beginning, but his march he already had a deficit of trust, right, and he clearly he did not consider Native Americans people. He yeah, let's yeah, let's not tread too lightly on this guy being like some super woke historical figure.

He was just like you know, his peers and that and that was but he was shrewd. So he was gonna capitalize on these things and perhaps play the game acting as though he was gonna parlay with them. I think he gave them one real good faith chance. I think that's right, and this was this was it being squandered on their part.

I think he would have given to come to the chance, to come to the table, to tell to come, Tom, I'll let you leave without killing your people.

That's right.

I think that's as high as he.

Would have gone.

It would have been like, yeah, you don't have to go home, but you can't stay here, and then say well, this is our home, and he'd be like ah about that though.

And even this sense of quote unquote respect or admiration for Takomsta and his like oratory abilities probably didn't extend much further than like these folks looking at him as like being like a slightly you know, better dressed member of a sub human species, you know what I mean.

Yeah, And let's also remember that his violence against Native Americans is a big reason Harrison later becomes president.

People love that. People were all about it.

We're all about it. It was like it was like his version being able to juggle. But you know, genocide. It does sound like he's giving them a chance to gtfo right, and he doesn't want to lose soldiers because the US is still recovering after the bloody Revolutionary War. He also would like to not du atrocities if he could dodge it, but his opinion on that is pretty ambivalent.

History will prove.

So they have this one chance. They have this deficit of trust. Tenskaatawa acts out of line, he violates the chain of command and as a result, and we're not saying magic's not real, but his magic doesn't work right. As a result, Harrison is hardened against Profitstown. He wanted it to be peacefully abandoned, but now he's all gas, no breaks, He just defends in the fight tense. Katawa's forces are are set against him now because they believe the guy. But those those spells did not protect them from bullets.

They got shot, they.

Died, they got made. They come back and they're like, you are a snake oil salesman.

Can you picture the montage of this in the movie where you as the audience are like, no, no, don't do it, don't get off that ledge. What are you doing. You're sentencing your people to death at the very least, and absolute annihil at the most.

Unfortunately, this happens in This happens more recently too in history, in different conflicts on the African continent, including like Zulu Wars and in the Boxer Rebellion in China, there have been these charismatic figures who claim that through magic, they can make you immune to bullets and spoiler. At no point in history has any one of those spells ever worked. I'm trying to be really fair again, I'm saying they haven't worked yet. I don't know whether magic's real, but the track record for bulletproofing through incantation is just terrible at this point. And so Native Americans are abandoning Profits Town. The vast majority of them are gone very quickly because they think tens Katawa is a con artist or a failure. On November eighth, eighteen eleven, Harrison comes into the mostly abandoned Profits Town and he burns it to the ground before marching back to one of the major Indiana towns at the time. Vincent's, is that how I would say it?

I think that's right. Yeah, maybe e Vincen's if we're going to be Italian about it, but tell us yeah.

But it comes to finally gets to Profits Town three months later, and he just sees ruins. They're not even smoking at this point, the fires have died again.

Sorry to compare everything to movie production, but I can picture that too. He's coming back, he's done his due diligence, and they really crap the bed while he was gone. And look at look at the records they've left behind in their wake. Ineomorcone begins to play a million I'm sorry. These pop cultural references are are valuable for a reason, because, you know, the history if nothing at the end of the day, is storytelling, you know.

So it comes to is dreams of creating creating a Native American confederation with Prophetstown as its capital. Those dreams are dashed, and he says, you know what, this doesn't matter though, I am still going to fight against this poisonous American expansion. And so he again he's very smart, right, he can smell what's in the wind, he can see the signs forming, and he sees that he calls it. He sees that there's going to be a war between the Americans and the British. They still hate each other. Right, it's not a smart guy.

He's reading the room, right, He's like seeing the big picture.

And so he doesn't know that historians will call it the War of eighteen twelve, but he knows it's on the way, and so he gets with He gets his surviving followers. They go to Fort Malden on the Canadian side of the Detroit River, and they join up with the British and these guys at this point all his followers. They are battle hard and they've been traumatized. They're not played around, so they are a huge factor in the British victory.

There.

The British and the Native American forces captured Detroit and they also capture two thousand, five hundred US soldiers.

It's a coup, like they really is. Yeah. After this victory, to come takes off on another one of his long journeys to you know, gather forces, you know, from the various tribes, which did result in the uprising of the Alabama Creek tribe, and that was in response to his stirring you know rhetoric. The Chicka Saws, Choctaws and Cherokees, however, were not feeling to come to as vibes nearly as much. And at this point I just think this is very interesting. You know, he is he is a big picture kind of dude. He is able to kind of see what is needed to get the job done, and sometimes that means joining forces with folks who may look like your enemy. He actually joins up with the British General Henry A. Proctor in invading Ohio and you know again, common enemy, and together they take over Fort Miggs and they hold it. And William Henry Harrison at this point is on the Maumie River just above Toledo, where, based on a kind of a strategic gambit by Tecumsa, he intercepts and destroys a brigade of Kentucky soldiers under Colonel William Dudley.

Yeah, and this is this is quite a clever move on to comsa's part because it cuts off support that would have enabled Harrison to continue the conflict. However, this is a mixed bag victory because they don't capture the actual fort. They have to retreat. There is a guy gives Harrison time to make a counter attack despite the damage that's been done. On October fifth, eighteen thirteen, British and Native forces are routed, They're kicked out, they're runoff. Harrison wins control of the area. Tacumsa is killed in action. His body is carried away from the conflict area. He's buried in a secret grave, and just like the grave of Djengis Khan, this burial place has never been discovered and we still don't know much about his death. We don't know who killed him. We don't know how he died necessarily. All we can say for sure is that this real sleeves bag named Richard M. Johnson later becomes Vice President of the United States because of his tall tail. He claims that he had killed Tecumsa, and no one can disprove it. People don't really believe him, I think, but no one could disc prove it. But it's a very convenient way to build a legend around yourself. Now at this point you're probably wondering, ridiculous historians, what happened to Tenskawatawa the Prophet. Well, he had already lost his prestige because it turned out the spells he cast did not work. He had fled to Canada and he had a creative split with Tecumsa and to come didn't really account for him in his plants because he was no longer an effective propagandist, which is really how he functioned the whole way through. He lived until eighteen thirty four, and he died in Kansas, in a town called Argentine, Kansas. We didn't mention this, by the way, but one of the reasons he is known as the prophet is because he appeared to accurately predict a solar eclipse in eighteen oh six, So he did make the call there. But also I would point out that Native American communities for thousands of years across North and South America, they had a pretty good grasp of the patterns of the heavens. So it's kind of sure. It's kind of like saying, hey, it's going to be five pm after four point thirty, and people are like, this guy's a genius.

And also like a broken clock is right twice a day. That kind of thing, you know, when you have people that are looking to you to confirm whether or not you've got some sort of powers of sight, and then you get one thing right and that's the one you kind of play up. You know. Yea reminds me of like Nostra damas and things like that, where you know, he definitely had some things that you know, played pretty close to the truth, but also when you interpret it in different ways, it was kind of just some fancy talk.

Yeah, kind of like how Alice Jones was right about Bohemian Grove. That's right, Like, you know, we're aware of that, but that doesn't mean everything they say is true.

That's exactly right. But oftentimes, you know, if you have zealous followers, they will point to that thing as proof positive that you are you know, what you say you are, and that you are some sort of messiah.

And if you read more about the profit, what you'll see is that he was a propagandist. He was very much quote unquote about that life. He wanted to reject to these the normalization, like I said, of various quote unquote white cultural things, said, you know, guys, stop drinking, which is great because alcoholism was and is a huge danger to Native communities. He said, look, we just wear clothing from animal skins and furs like we always did.

No individual can own land.

And then he also had some more problematic stuff like don't inter marry with any Europeans. Also, we should burn witches. Ooh, okay, that last one.

That one didn't well, did it?

No?

Yeah?

I wonder where he put when he was like listing off his things. Did he just start trying? Did he put witches at the end?

Did he put the witches before, like animal first? So he says, like booz booze is bad. You know, we can't own the land.

We should burn the witches and you know what, I think.

I think it was a mid game slip in as well.

Yeah, should we also slam in the back of our dragula? Yes, yes, we speaking ditches and burning witches while we're at it. You know, I'm just sorry. I never Rob Zombies in my Power Man is. Oh yeah, no, Rob. They were very prop They're very in the same wheel. Actually, I think the power Man five thousand dude is Rob Zombie's like cousin or brother. It's like his younger brother. I think that's right. Yeah, well, let's let's verify this because they're on nineteen ninety nine nostalgia for you guys at the tail end of an episode. We've promised curses, y'all. We've promised curses. But as Max pointed out off air, you got to talk about the man before you can get to the curse, because he also has to die in order for this curse to kind of start to percolate.

And that is Spider One, the frontman of Powerman five thousand, younger brother of Rob Zombie. I feel like they're in it to coomsa Tenska Watawa situation. Yes, a little more wholesome, you got there, But they're probably just a great hang on Thanksgiving, you know what I mean. I bet they sure they see my chill dudes, So you're right, nol. We had to give you the first part the true real world events, and we hope you join us this Thursday, because later this week we're going to get to the real juicy stuff. In the next episode of Ridiculous History, Part two of Takamsa's Curse, we're going to dive into the idea of the curse here in specific, curses in general, and the examples of the curse that the examples of the curse that apparently, according to true believers, continue to haunt us. Presidents this day. Spoiler William Henry Harrison is the first guy who gets the curse.

Yeah to comment, that's for sure. Yeah, definitely the heel of our story here. But speaking of our story, huge thanks to super producer and research associated straordinary Max Williams for all of your incredible work on this research brief. We're looking forward to getting into part two. Max's brother actual brother by blood in fact, Alex Williams, who composed our theme.

Yeah, Hey, Max, Between you and Alex, who's the Tenskawatawa, who's the takumso I'm Takumsa.

He's definitely the prophet, even though I am the younger brother.

I feel like though that's the kind of question when I asked siblings, everybody will want to be tacumso clearly right.

I don't know, Alex is weird. He might want to be the prophet.

Okay loves underdog And thanks also to Jonathan Strickland ak the Quister. That's just two times who've said the name.

Thanks to A. J.

Jacobs, the Puzzler will be returning or may eaves Jeffcoat Christopher hassiotis did good. Folks over at Encyclopedia Britannica. We've got a history of them coming up along the way, and thanks to you know, I'm excited for part two.

Same here. We'll see you next time, folks. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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History is beautiful, brutal and, often, ridiculous. Join Ben Bowlin and Noel Brown as they dive int 
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