Tecumseh: The Last Warrior (1995)

October 1813, Canada. Tecumseh's band treks away from Detroit.  The situation is bleak but Tecumseh (Jesse Borego) is confident that they will defeat the Long Knives (Americans) tomorrow.  His sister, Starwatcher, is less confident.  She soon recollects what had brought them to this place.

March 1768, Ohio.  Tecumseh was born as a star streaked across the sky.  This was a great omen and his father named him for the Panther in the Sky.  All agreed he had a great future as a warrior.

October 1774, Ohio.  Tecumseh's father has gone to fight the Long Knives in Virginia.  While his father is away, Tecumseh has a nightmare/vision in which his father is killed.  He sees the face of his father's killer and it stays with him.

Some years later, Tecumseh's mother departs to the west, leaving her children.  Tecumseh will not go, as his father told him never to surrender land to the Long Knives.  In time, he is old enough to go to war with his older brother, Chiksika.  Though he fled in fear from his first battle, Tecumseh proved to be a natural warrior in his next.  As the years progress, Tecumseh becomes a respected warrior who fights beside Chiksika and Blue Jacket (Holt McCallany), a white man who didn't want to live among the whites.  They fight on the side of the British during the American Revolution

1794, The Battle of Fallen Timbers.  Before the battle, Tecumseh viewed General Wayne through a looking glass.  They would shoot this general during the battle.  However, he also saw another man who had the face of his father's killer.  The night before the battle, Chiksika declares that he will be killed and Tecumseh should carry on.  As prophesized, Chiksika died.  Worse, Blue Jacket signed the Treaty of Greenville.

Tecumseh had lived long enough to see the way of things.  Each time the Indians signed a treaty for peace, it promised only a few such years before more encroachments led to further treaties that surrendered more land.  The Long Knives played the tribes against each other.  He must unite the tribes to resist further encroachment.  It would require years.  His younger brother, Tenskwatawa, had become a prophet and drew others to him.  Here was the glue that might bind the tribes into a great confederacy.

William Henry Harrison (David Clennon) saw the threat of Tecumseh's plan.  To him, America must expand and Tecumseh was an obstacle to be overcome.  When the two met, Tecumseh saw the face of his father's killer in person.  Though the two conversed and nearly came to blows, they could resolve nothing.  A war was the only path forward.

The movie is surprisingly faithful to history.  The dates and events are generally correct.  Chiksika died two years before Fallen Timbers.  Harrison was indeed an aide to General Wayne during the Fallen Timbers campaign but was only an infant when Tecumseh's father was killed.  Clearly, this was just a vision to tie the long running conflict together at the end.  The man who claimed to have killed Tecumseh, Richard Johnson, gets a brief cameo.  The movie shows that only Tecumseh's band faced the American army at the Battle of the Thames.  In fact, 700 British troops were also present, though the red coats and the Indians formed up separate from each other.  Tecumseh's forces were stationed in marshy woods, not open fields.  As shown, dragoons and mounted riflemen would have trampled the Indians.

Too much time is covered in the film, giving only brief glimpses of his life as the years pass.  This covers a 45-year period!  How about starting with the meeting of Tecumseh and Harrison in 1810 and concluding with the Battle of Thames in 1813.  Yeah, that compresses things nicely and shows Tecumseh at his peak.

Entertaining and educational.  Recommended.

Tippecanoe and Tyler Too

In 1840, William Henry Harrison was running for president.  As such, a biography was published about his life.

The Life and Times of William Henry Harrison, by S. J. Burr.

The book is just over 300 pages, which includes 29 chapters on his life and a 30-page appendix with correspondence written by Harrison or received by him from notable figures.  Of course, Harrison was 67 years old during the 1840 campaign and would expect to have a very full biography.  However, it does seem to focus on certain parts of his life while offering almost no insight to others.

Chapter 1 offers the essentials of his parentage, birth, education, and joining the military.  He was appointed as an ensign by none other than President Washington!

Chapters 2 through 7 detail the Northwest Indian War (1785 to 1795).  Harrison served as an aide-de-camp to General Anthony Wayne and doesn't arrive on scene until latter half of 1791, in Chapter 3.  Yes, Chapter 2 is background for the war.

Chapters 8 through 14 detail his time as the Governor of Indiana (1801 to 1812).  He had been appointed to the post (it was a territory, not a state).

Chapters 15 through 17 cover the events surrounding the Battle of Tippecanoe.  This 1811 battle would become the slogan for his presidential campaign almost 3 decades later.

Chapters 18 through 25 are concerned with the War of 1812.  Harrison was a Major General in the west during the war and won the Battle of Thames in Canada.

Chapters 26 through 28 cover his life from 1816 to 1840.  His career in the Congress (1816 to 1819), Ohio Senate (1819 to 1821), US Senate (1825 to 1828) and posting as an ambassador to Columbia (1829) are the highlights.  Such impressive highlights that his censure by an Ohio paper for one of his votes somehow dominates a chapter.

The last chapter sums up his career and character.  Also, there is a tale where his carriage was mobbed by his fans in 1836.  Yes, he was a rockstar before rockstars existed.

In 1840, his campaign slogan was 'Tippecanoe and Tyler too!'  John Tyler was his running mate.

The biography reads very much like the campaign document that it is.  Here is a modern-day Cincinnatus who is called out of his retirement to save the Republic.