w, "the man with the loud voice,"
poses in the pages of history as "the prophet." The third brother was
Tecumseh, "the wild-cat that leaps upon its prey," or "the shooting
star," as the name has been translated. He is described as a tall,
handsome warrior--daring and energetic, of fluent and persuasive speech,
given to deep reflection, an implacable hater of the white man. Other
qualities he possessed which were not so common among his people. He had
perfect self-command, a keen insight into human motives and purposes,
and an exceptional capacity to frame plans and organize men to carry
them out. His crowning scheme for bringing together the tribes of
the Middle West into a grand democratic confederacy to regulate land
cessions and other dealings with the whites stamps him as perhaps the
most statesmanlike member of his race.

* Authorities differ as to the facts of Tecumseh's birth. His
earliest biographer, Benjamin Drake, holds that he was "wholly a
Shawanoe" and that he was a fourth child, the Prophet and another son
being twins. William Henry Harrison spoke of Tecumseh's mother as a
Creek.

While yet hardly more than a boy, Tecumseh seems to have been stirred to
deep indignation by the persistent encroachment of the whites upon
the hunting-grounds of his fathers. The cessions of 1804 and 1805
he specially resented, and it is not unlikely that they clinched the
decision of the young warrior to take up the task which Pontiac had
left unfinished. At all events, the plan was soon well in hand. A less
far-seeing leader would have been content to call the scattered tribes
to a momentary alliance with a view to a general uprising against the
invaders. But Tecumseh's purposes ran far deeper. All of the Indian
peoples, of whatever name or relationships, from the Lakes to the Gulf
and from the Alleghanies to the Rockies, were to be organized in a
single, permanent confederacy. This union, furthermore, was to consist,
not of chieftains, but of the warriors; and its governing body was to be
a warriors' congress, an organ of genuine popular rule. Joint ownership
of all Indian lands was to be assumed by the confederacy, and the
piecemeal cession of territory by petty tribal chiefs, under pressure
of government agents, was to be made impossible. Only thus, Tecumseh
argued, could the red man hope to hold his own in the uneven contest
that was going on.

The plan was brilliant, even though impracticable. Naturally, it did
n