The death of his father in conflict with American settlers shaped everything that followed.

His mother left for Missouri with some of the Shawnee who were moving west — the centrifugal pressure of American expansion was already pushing some Shawnee groups toward the Mississippi and beyond.

Tecumseh was raised primarily by his older sister, Tecumapease, who appears in the historical record as a woman of considerable intelligence and influence who helped shape her younger brother’s character.

Tecumseh grew up in the border warfare that characterized the Ohio Valley in the final decades of the eighteenth century.