of the white race; his skill as a hunter
and valor as a warrior; above all his wonderful eloquence and thorough
knowledge of all the Indian treaties of the past, gave Tecumseh an
influence and authority among the tribes far beyond that of any of the
braves or sachems of that day. If at the first his imagination had not
dared to scale the heights of power, he later boldly threw aside all
disguise, and by his powerful advocacy of a communistic ownership of all
the Indian lands by the tribes in common, he aimed both a blow at the
ancient authority claimed by the Indian chieftains, and at the validity
of every treaty ever negotiated between the two races of men. The sum
and substance of Tecumseh's doctrine is thus succinctly stated by Judge
Law: "That the Great Spirit had given the Indians all their lands in
common to be held by them as such and not by the various tribes who had
settled on portions of it--claiming it as their own. That they were
squatters having no 'pre-emption right,' but holding even that on which
they lived as mere 'tenants in common' with all the other tribes. That
this mere possession gave them no title to convey the land without the
consent of all. That no single tribe had the right to sell, that the
power to sell was not vested in their chiefs, but must be the act of the
warriors in council assembled of all the tribes, as the land belonged to
all--no portion of it to any single tribe."

If these tenets were to hold, it was clear that any authority claimed by
the chiefs to represent their respective tribes in the sale or barter of
any of the Indian domain was without foundation; that any treaty not
negotiated and ratified by a common council of all the warriors of all
the tribes, was null and void; that Wayne's Treaty of 1795 was nullum
pactum; that the claim of the white settlers to any of the lands north
of the Ohio was without force, and that they were trespassers and mere
licensees from the beginning. The doctrine thus enunciated was not
entirely new. Joseph Brant had claimed that the land was the common
property of the tribes, but he had never declared that the sanction of
all the warriors was necessary to a conveyance. But the plausible
eloquence of Tecumseh, coming at a time when the star of the red man was
setting; when every passing day witnessed the encroachment of the white
settlers, gave a new ray of hope to the fainting tribes. The warriors,
carried away by the dreams and incantations of t