Anglo-Saxon and Creek blood ran in the veins of TECUMSEH.[A] It has
been stated that his paternal grandfather was a white man, and that his
mother was a Creek. The better opinion, however, seems to be, that he
was wholly a Shawanoe. On this point we have the concurrent authority
of John Johnston, late Indian agent at Piqua; and of Stephen Ruddell,
formerly of Kentucky, who for near twenty years was a prisoner among
the Shawanoes. They both possessed ample opportunities for ascertaining
the fact, and unite in asserting that Puckeshinwa, the father of
Tecumseh, was a member of the Kiscopoke, and Methoataske, the mother,
of the Turtle tribe of the Shawanoe nation.

[Footnote A: The Indian orthography of this name is Tecumtha, but the
public have been so long under a different impression, that no attempt
has been made in this work to restore the original reading.]

The parents of Tecumseh removed from Florida to the north side of the
Ohio, about the middle of the eighteenth century. The father rose to
the rank of a chief, and fell in the celebrated battle of the Kanawha,
in 1774, leaving six sons and one daughter. Of these, one or two were
born at the south, the others within what now constitutes the state of
Ohio. They will be briefly noticed in the order of their birth.

Cheeseekau, the eldest, is represented to have taken great pains with
his brother Tecumseh, laboring not only to make him a distinguished
warrior, but to instil into his mind a love of truth, and a contempt
for every thing mean and sordid. Cheeseekau fought by the side of his
father in the battle of Kanawha; and, some years afterwards, led a
small band of Shawanoes on a predatory expedition to the south,
Tecumseh being one of the party. While there, they joined some
Cherokees, in an attack upon a fort, garrisoned by white men. A day or
two before the attack, Cheeseekau made a speech to his followers, and
predicted that at such an hour, on a certain morning, they would reach
the fort, and that he should be shot in the forehead and killed; but
that the fort would be taken, if the party persevered in the assault,
which he urged them to do. An effort was made by his followers to
induce him to turn back, but he refused. The attack took place at the
time predicted, and Cheeseekau fell. His last words expressed the joy
he felt at dying in battle; he did not wish, he said, to be buried at
home, like an old woman, but preferred that the fowls of the air should