The British Alliance And What It Could Not Provide

The limitations of Tecumseh’s British alliance deserve specific attention because they illuminate a fundamental strategic weakness in his project.

Tecumseh needed the British as partners, but the British were not committed to Native sovereignty as an end in itself.

They were committed to their own strategic interests, which happened to overlap with Native resistance to American expansion during the War of 1812 but which did not align with Native independence in any deep or permanent way.

The British had already demonstrated this in the Peace of Paris in 1783, which ended the Revolutionary War.