lf, Tenskwatawa
realized the degrading effect of petty superstition and the terror and
injury the medicine men were able to bring upon the simple-minded
Indians who believed in their charms and spells. He denounced the
practice of sorcery and witchcraft as against the will of the Great
Spirit.

Many of the Prophet's teachings were such as we should all approve of.
Wishing to purify the individual and family life of the Indians, he
forbade men to marry more than one wife, and commanded them to take care
of their families and to provide for those who were old and sick. He
required them to work, to till the ground and raise corn, and to hunt.

Some of his teachings were intended to make the Indians as a people
independent of the white race. The Great Spirit, said Tenskwatawa, had
made the Indians to be a single people, quite distinct from the white
men and for different purposes. The tribes must therefore stop fighting
with one another and must unite and live peaceably together as one
tribe. They must not fight with the white men, either Americans or
British. Neither must they intermarry with them or adopt their customs.
The Great Spirit wished his red children to throw aside the garments of
cotton and wool they had borrowed from the whites and clothe themselves
in the skins of wild animals; he wished them to stop feeding on pork and
beef, and bread made from wheat, and instead to eat the flesh of the
wild deer and the bison, which he had provided for them, and bread made
from Indian corn. Above all, they must let alone whisky which might do
well enough for white men, but was never intended for Indians.

Furthermore, Tenskwatawa taught the Indians that a tribe had no right to
sell the land it lived on. The Great Spirit had given the red people the
land that they might enjoy it in common, just as they did the light and
the air. He did not wish them to measure it off and build fences around
it. Since no one chief or tribe owned the land, no single chief or tribe
could sell it. No Indian territory therefore could be sold to the white
men without the consent of all tribes and all Indians.

The words of the Prophet were eagerly listened to. Indians came from far
and near to hear him. Some were so excited by what he said against
witchcraft that they put to death those who persisted in using charms
and pronouncing incantations.

[Illustration: ECLIPSE OF THE SUN]

The sayings and doings of the Shawnee Prophet soon attracted