When Harrison defended the Treaty of Fort Wayne on the grounds that the chiefs who signed it had authority to do so, Tecumseh’s response was that they did not — that they had sold what they did not own, and that the sale was therefore invalid.

The Americans could not accept this argument, because accepting it would have invalidated the entire legal basis for their land acquisitions.

But the argument was not simply a negotiating position.

Tecumseh believed it, and he organized his entire political project around it.

The practical corollary was equally clear: if the land belongs to all, then the defense of the land must also involve all.

Individual resistance — the Shawnee resisting the Americans alone, or the Potawatomi, or the Kickapoo — had failed repeatedly because the Americans could overwhelm any single nation or small group of nations.