repu
tation in the legal profession both in Tennesssee and in the District of Columbia.
Authorities: Appleton, Cyclopsedia of American Biography, 1894; Royce, Cherokee
Nation, in Fifth Annual Report Bureau of Ethnology, 1888; documents in American
stale Papers, Indian Affairs, i and ii.
(33) Tecumtha (p. 87): This great chief of the Shawano and commander of the
allied northern tribes in the British service was born near the present Chillicothe, in
western Ohio, about 1770, and fell in the battle of the Thames, in Ontario, October
. i - : His name signifies a " flying panther" -i. e., a meteor. He came of fight-
ing -i. n'k g I even in a tribe distinguished for its warlike qualities, his father ami
elder brother having been killed in battle with the whites. His mother is said to have
diedamong the Cherokee. Tecumtha is firsl heard of as taking part in an engagement
with the Kentuckians when about twenty \ ears old, and in a few years he had secured
recognition as the ablest leader among the allied tribes. It is sai<l that he took part
in every important engagement with the Americans from the time of Harmar's defeat
in 1790 until the battle in which he lost his life. When about thirty years of age he
iceived the idea .if uniting the tribes northwest of the ( >lii> >. as Pontiac had united
them before, in a great confederacy to resist the further advance of the Americans,
taking the stand that the whole territory between the Ohio and the Mississippi
belonged to all these tribes in common and that no one tribe had tin-