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Battle of Tippecanoe
Part of Tecumseh's War/War of 1812
19th-century depiction by Alonzo Chappel
Date November 7, 1811 Location near modern Battle Ground, Indiana Result United States victory
Belligerents
Tecumseh's Confederacy	United States
Commanders and leaders
Tenskwatawa "The Prophet"	Gov. William Henry Harrison
Strength
500–700	250 US Army Regulars 100 Kentucky militia 600 Indiana Territory militia 90 Mounted riflemen
Casualties and losses
36–50 killed 70–80 wounded	37 killed in action 25 died of wounds 126 wounded

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The Battle of Tippecanoe was fought on November 7, 1811, between United States forces led by Governor William Henry Harrison of the Indiana Territory and forces of Tecumseh's growing American Indian confederation led by his brother, Tenskwatawa. In response to rising tensions with the tribes and threats of war, an American force of militia and regulars set out to launch a preemptive strike on the headquarters of the confederacy. The battle took place outside Prophetstown, at the confluence of the Tippecanoe and Wabash Rivers.

Although the Americans were victorious both tactically (as they held their ground and Prophetstown was destroyed the next morning) and strategically (the Indian confederacy never recovered), the win was costly as the Indians attacked with fewer men and sustained fewer casualties. The battle was the culmination of rising tensions in a period sometimes called Tecumseh's War, which continued until his death in 1813. The battle was an important political and symbolic victory for the American forces and a devastating blow to the confederacy which never regained the strength it had before the defeat. Public opinion in the United States blamed the uprising on British interference and Tippecanoe was one of the catalysts that resulted in the War of 1812 only a six months later.

Background

In 1800, William Henry Harrison became the governor of the newly formed Indiana Territory. Harrison sought to secure title to Indian lands in order to allow for American expansion; in particular he hoped that the Indiana Territory would attract enough settlers so that it could qualify for statehood. Harrison negotiated numerous land cession treaties with American Indians, including the the Treaty of Fort Wayne on September 30, 1809, in which Miami, Pottawatomie, Lenape and other tribal leaders sold 3,000,000 acres (approximately 12,000 km²) to the United States.

Tenskwatawa, known as the Prophet, had been leading a religious movement among the northwestern tribes calling for a return to the ancestral ways. His brother, Tecumseh, was outraged by the Treaty of Fort Wayne, and thereafter he emerged as a prominent leader. Tecumseh revived an idea advocated in previous years by the Shawnee leader Blue Jacket and the Mohawk leader Joseph Brant, which stated that American Indian land was owned in common by all tribes, and land could not be sold without agreement by all the tribes. Not yet ready to confront the United States directly, Tecumseh's primary adversaries were initially the American Indian leaders who had signed the treaty. He began by intimidating them and threatening to kill anyone who carried out the terms of the treaty. Tecumseh began to travel widely, urging warriors to abandon the accommodationist chiefs and to join the resistance at Prophetstown. Tecumseh insisted that the Fort Wayne treaty was illegitimate. In a 1810 meeting with Harrison, he demanded that Harrison nullify the treaty and warned that Americans should not attempt to settle the lands sold in the treaty. Harrison rejected his demands and insisted that the tribes could have individual relations with the United States.

In August 1811, Tecumseh again met with Harrison at Vincennes, where he assured him that the Shawnee brothers meant to remain at peace with the United States. Tecumseh then traveled to the south on a mission to recruit allies among the "Five Civilized Tribes." Most of the southern nations rejected his appeals, but a faction among the Creeks, who came to be known as the Red Sticks, answered his call to arms, leading to the Creek War, which also became a part of the War of 1812.

Harrison left the territory on business in Kentucky shortly after the meeting with Tecumseh, leaving secretary John Gibson as acting-governor. Gibson, who had lived among the Indians for many years, was quick to learn of Tecumseh's plans for war and immediately called out the territory's militia and sent emergency letters to call for the return of Harrison. By mid-September most of the militia regiments had formed. By then Harrison had returned accompanied by a small force of army regulars and took command of the militia. Harrison had already been in communication with his superiors in Washington D.C., and he had been authorized to march against the natives as a show of force, hoping that they would accept peace.

Harrison gathered the scattered militia regiments near a settlement on Maria Creek, north of Vincennes. There he was joined by the sixty man company called the Yellow Jackets, so named for their bright yellow coats, from Corydon, Indiana. He was also joined by the companies of the Indiana Rangers. From there the entire force of about 1000 men set out northward towards Prophetstown. The force consisted of about 250 army regulars from the 4th US Infantry Regiment, 100 Kentucky volunteers, and near 600 Indiana militia including two companies of the Indiana Rangers. The army reached the site of modern Terre Haute, Indiana on October 3 where they camped and built Fort Harrison while they waited for supplies to be delivered. A scouting party of Yellow Jackets was ambushed by Indians on October 10 causing several casualties and preventing the men from continuing to forage. Supplies quickly began to run low. By October 19, rations were cut and remained so until October 28 when fresh supplies arrived via the Wabash River from Vincennes. With the army resupplied, Harrison resumed his advance to Prophetstown on October 29.

Battle

As Harrison's forces approached Prophetstown late on November 6, they were met by one of the Prophet's followers waving a white flag. He carried a message from Tenskwatawa, requesting a cease fire until the next day when the two sides could hold a peaceful meeting. Harrison agreed to a meeting, but was wary of the Prophet's overture believing that the negotiations would be futile. Harrison moved his army to a nearby hill near the confluence of the Wabash and Tippecanoe Rivers. There he camped his men in battle array, and kept sentinels on duty during the night.

The hill he encamped on was the site of a Catholic mission school built to educate the surrounding tribes. On the east side of the hill was a shallow creek and the west side a very steep embankment. Because of the nature of the position, Harrison did not order any temporary works to be created around the position as was ordinarily done by encamped armies. The Yellow Jacket company, with Captain Spier Spencer in command, was posted on the southern end of the camp perimeter. The rest of the militia formed a rectangular formation along the edges of the bluff surrounding the camp. Colonel Davis Floyd commanded the militia units guarding the steep bluff on the eastern side of the formation. The regulars, commanded by Major Rodd, and the dragoons, commanded by Maj. Joseph Daviess and former congressman Capt. Benjamin Parke, were kept behind the main line in reserve.

The Prophet's followers were worried by the nearby army and feared an imminent attack. They had begun to fortify the town, but the defenses were not yet completed. During the evening, the Prophet consulted with the spirits and decided that sending a party to murder Harrison in his tent was the best way to avoid a battle. He assured the warriors that he would cast spells that would prevent them from being harmed and confuse the Americans so they would not resist. The warriors then moved out and began to surround Harrison's army looking for a way to sneak into the camp. Ben, an African-American wagon driver traveling with Harrison's army, had deserted to the Indians during the expedition. He agreed to lead a small group of warriors through the line to Harrison's tent. During the late night hours he was captured by the camp sentries, taken back to the camp and bound. He was later convicted of treason but pardoned by Harrison.

Although existing accounts are unclear about exactly how the battle began, Harrison's sentinels encountered advancing warriors in the pre-dawn hours of November 7. Around 4:30 a.m., the soldiers awoke to scattered gunshots and discovered themselves almost encircled by the Prophet's forces. Contact was first made on the northern end of perimeter, but the movement was probably intended as a diversion. Shortly after the first shots, fierce fighting broke out on the opposite end of the perimeter as the Indians charged Harrison’s line on the southern corner. The attack took the army by surprise as the Indians shouted war calls and attacked. Spencer was among the first to be killed, being shot in each thigh. Governor Harrison later recorded his death in a dispatch to Washington saying, "...Spencer was wounded in the head. He exhorted his men to fight valiantly. He was shot through both thighs and fell; still continuing to encourage them, he was raised up, and received ball through his body, which put an immediate end to his existence." Lieutenants McMahan and Berry, the other two Yellow Jacket commanding officers, were also soon wounded and killed. Without leadership, the Yellow Jackets began to fall back from the main line, retreating with the sentinels. The Indians followed the retreating unit and entered the camp. The soldiers regrouped under the command of future United States Senator, ensign John Tipton, and with the help of two reserve companies under the command of Captain Rodd, repulsed the Indians and sealed the breach in the line.

The second charge by the Indians targeted both the north and south ends of the camp, with the far southern end again being the hardest hit. Over half the American casualties were suffered among the companies on the southern end, including Captain Spencer and five other men in his company, and seven other men in the adjoining company. With the regulars reinforcing that critical section of the line, and the surprise over, the men were able to hold their position as the attacks continued. On the northern end of the camp, Major Daviess led the dragoons out on a counter charge which punched through the Indians' line before being repulsed. Most of Daviess' company retreated back to Harrison's main line, but Daviess himself was killed. Throughout the next hour Harrison's troops fought off several more charges. When the Indians began to run low on ammunition and the sun rose, revealing the small size of the Prophet's army, the Indian forces finally began to slowly withdraw. A second charge by the dragoons forced the remaining Indians to flee.

The battle lasted about two hours and Harrison lost 62 men (37 killed in action and 25 mortally wounded), while about 126 were less seriously hurt. The Yellow Jackets suffered the highest causalities of the battle, with 30% of their numbers killed or wounded. The number of Indian casualties is still the subject of debate, but it was certainly lower than that of the United States forces. Historians estimate that as many as 50 were killed and about 70–80 were wounded.

Fearing Tecumseh's imminent return with reinforcements, Harrison ordered his men to fortify the camp with works for the rest of the day. As the sentries moved back out, they discovered and scalped the bodies of 36 warriors. The following day, November 8, he sent a small group of men to inspect the town and found it was deserted except for one elderly woman too sick to flee; the rest of defeated Indian forces had evacuated the village during the night. Harrison ordered his troops to spare the woman, but to burn down Prophetstown and destroy the Indians' cooking implements, without which the confederacy would be hard pressed to survive the winter. Everything of value was confiscated, including 5,000 bushels of corn and beans. Some of the American soldiers dug up bodies from the graveyard in Prophetstown to scalp. Harrison's troops buried their own dead on the site of their camp. They built large fires over the mass grave in an attempt to conceal it from the Indians. However, after Harrison's troops departed the area, the Indians returned to the grave site, digging up many of the corpses and scattering the bodies in retaliation. It was then that the Prophet supposedly placed the curse of Tippecanoe on Harrison.

Aftermath

The day after the battle, the wounded were loaded into wagons and carried back to Fort Harrison for care. Most of the militia was released from duty and returned home, but the regulars remained in the area for a brief time longer. In his initial report to Secretary Eustis, Harrison informed him of a battle having occurred near the Tippecanoe River, giving the battle its name, and that he feared an imminent reprisal attack. The first dispatch did not make clear which side had won the conflict, and the secretary at first interpreted it as a defeat. The follow-up dispatch made the American victory clear and the defeat of the Indians was more certain when no second attack materialized. Eustis replied with a lengthy note demanding to know why Harrison had not taken adequate precautions in fortifying his camp. Harrison responded that he considered the position strong enough to not require fortification. The dispute was the catalyst of a disagreement between Harrison and the Department of War that later caused him to resign from the army in 1814.

At first the newspapers carried little information about the battle to the public; they instead focused on the highlights of the ongoing Napoleonic Wars. One Louisville newspaper even printed a copy of the original dispatch and called the battle an American defeat. By December, most of the major American papers began to carry stories on the battle. Public outrage quickly grew and many Americans blamed the British for inciting the tribes to violence and supplying them with firearms. Andrew Jackson was among the forefront of men calling for war, claiming that Tecumseh and his allies were "excited by secret British agents." Other western governors called for action, William Blount of Tennessee called on the government to "purge the camps of Indians of every Englishmen to be found..." Acting on popular sentiment, the War Hawks in Congress passed resolutions condemning the British for interfering in American domestic affairs. Tippecanoe fueled the worsening tension with Great Britain, culminating in a declaration of war only a few months later.

Attacks against settlers by Native Americans quickly increased in the aftermath of the battle. Numerous settlers and isolated outposts in Indiana and Illinois Territory were targeted leading to the deaths of many civilians. Prophetstown was partially rebuilt over the next year, but was again destroyed by a second campaign in 1812. The Battle of Tippecanoe was a serious blow to Tecumseh's dream of a confederacy. When he returned, Tecumseh was angry with his brother who he had instructed to keep peace while he was away. The Prophet lost much of his prestige and influence after the defeat when his claims that the warriors could not be harmed proved untrue. Tecumseh continued to play a major role in military operations on the frontier, however, and by 1812 he had regained some of his former strength. Tecumseh's troops made up nearly half of the British army that captured Detroit from America in the War of 1812. It was not until Tecumseh's death at the 1813 Battle of the Thames that his confederation ceased to threaten American interests. When William Henry Harrison ran for President of the United States during the election of 1840, he used the slogan "Tippecanoe and Tyler Too" to remind people of his heroism during the battle.

Memorial

William Henry Harrison returned to the battlefield in 1835 to give speeches during his first presidential campaign. Part of his speech called for the creation of a memorial to preserve the battle site. John Tipton later purchased the land to preserve it. The mission school on the hill was purchased by the Methodist Church to be used a seminary school. Tipton left the battlefield to the seminary in his will and they maintained if for many years and built a larger facility at the location in 1862. In 1908, the Indiana General Assembly commissioned the creation of a 80 feet (24 m) high obelisk memorial. By the 1920s the site had became primarily a Methodist youth retreat. In 1961, a large commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the battle was held and attended by an estimated 10,000 people. In the following years the battle site became less trafficked and fell into disrepair. It was later taken over by the Tippecanoe County Historical Association who now maintains the battleground and the seminary building which houses a museum about the battle.

See also

• List of battles fought in Indiana

Notes

1. The Indiana Rangers had been formed in the early days of the territory to protect the settlers from Indian raids, but had seen little action in the previous five years.
2. Spencer County, Indiana was later named in honor of Capt.Spier Spencer for his sacrifice in the battle.
3. Daviess County, Indiana was later named in honor of Maj. Joseph Daviess' sacrifice at the battle.
4. It is inferred that Harrison feared the Indians would dig up his dead soldiers to avenge the act of Harrison's men desecrating the Prophetstown graveyard. (See: Feldman, p. 196)

Footnotes

1. ^ Tunnell, p. 134
2. ^ Langguth, p. 164
3. Owens, p. 210
4. Owens, p. 211
5. Langguth, p. 164–165
6. ^ Langguth, p. 165–166
7. ^ Langguth, p. 167
8. Owens, p. 212
9. ^ Langguth, p. 168
10. ^ Owens, p. 214
11. Funk, p. 27
12. Funk, p. 28
13. Owens, p. 216
14. Funk, p. 29
15. ^ Owens, p. 219
16. ^ Owen, p. 217
17. Dillon, p. 471
18. Funk, p. 30
19. ^ Owen, p. 218
20. Funk, p. 30
21. ^ Langguth, p. 169
22. Sugden, pp. 235–236
23. Edmunds, p. 115
24. ^ Funk, p. 30
25. Funk, p. 31
26. Owens, p. 219–220
27. Owens, p. 220
28. Owens, p. 221
29. ^ Owens, p. 222
30. Owens, p. 223
31. Lungguth, p. 214
32. Carnes, p. 41
33. "Tippecanoe Battlefield History". Tippecanoe County Historical Association. Retrieved 03-07-200-. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)

References

• Carnes, Mark C.; Mieczkowski, Yanek (2001). The Routledge Historical Atlas of Presidential Campaigns. New York, NY: Routledge. ISBN 0415921392.
• Dillon, John Brown (1859). "Letters of William Henry Harrison". A History of Indiana. Bingham & Doughty.
• Edmunds, David R (1983). The Shawnee Prophet. Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press. ISBN 0-8032-1850-8.
• Feldman, Jay (2005). When the Mississippi Ran Backwards. Simon and Schuster. ISBN 0743242785.
• Funk, Arville (1969, revised 1983). A Sketchbook of Indiana History. Rochester, Indiana: Christian Book Press. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |year= (help)CS1 maint: year (link)
• Langguth, A. J. (2006). Union 1812:The Americans Who Fought the Second War of Independence. New York: Simon & Shuster. ISBN 0743226189. {{cite book}}: Check |isbn= value: checksum (help)
• Owens, Robert M. (2007). Mr. Jefferson's Hammer:William Henry Harrison and the Origins of American Indian Policy. Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press. ISBN 9780806138428.
• Tunnell, IV, H.D. (1998). To Compel with Armed Force: A Staff Ride Handbook for the Battle of Tippecanoe. Fort Leavenworth, KS: Combat Studies Institute, U.S. Army Command and General Staff College. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
• Sugden, John (1999). Tecumseh: A Life. New York: Macmillan. ISBN 0805061215.

External links

• "Battlefield History". Tippecanoe County Historical Association. Retrieved 2009-02-24.

v t e Indiana Territory in the War of 1812
People	William Henry Harrison Zachary Taylor Tecumseh John Tipton William Wells Indiana Rangers
Places	Eel River Fort Knox Fort Wayne Fort Vallonia Pigeon Roost
Battles/raids	Fort Harrison Fort Wayne Mississinewa Spur's Defeat Tipton's Island
See also: Tecumseh's War and Battle of Tippecanoe

v t e History of Indiana
Early history	Clovis Adena Hopewell Mississippian Beaver Wars European contact La Salle Expeditions French Rule
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• 1811 in the United States
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• Shawnee tribe
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