When he witnessed such treatment, he intervened and opposed it.

This was not simply temperamental: it was a principled position that he enforced on his own followers and that contributed substantially to the respect that enemies as well as allies had for him.

The Land That Was Being Lost

To understand what Tecumseh was fighting for, you have to understand the land question that dominated North American politics in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

The Northwest Territory — the region north of the Ohio River that included what is now Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and part of Minnesota — had been the subject of intense competition for generations.