Disaster at Tippecanoe (2)

So, instead of the tactical draw/strategic disaster of OTL, the Prophet wins big. The frontier army is routed, Governor Harrison is killed.

Now what?

This is not an altogether good thing from Tecumseh's POV. Yes, he wanted a war against the whites. But not yet! He very much wanted to bring the powerful Southern tribes in first, and also to get a firm guarantee of support from the British.

Also, *Tippecanoe going to be a big boost to the prestige of his brother, the Prophet... and the Prophet, while a wonderful orator, is a mediocre general and no diplomat at all. In short, this has been a victory in the wrong place, at the wrong time, and under the wrong leader.

It'll help when the first pair of New Madrid earthquakes strike, less than a month after the battle. Tecumseh's prophecies, however vague or specific, have now been justified. Still, he's going to be facing a very challenging strategic situation when he gets back to the Prophet's Town.

In the short run... a red wave of anti-settler violence along much of the frontier. Dozens, maybe hundreds of whites killed in the Illinois and Indiana Territories; thousands more flee for their lives. In the south, the Cherokee move from pro-American to neutral. They're not going to join Tecumseh's pan-tribal confederation, but they won't actively help the whites either. And the Creek Red Stick movement flares a few weeks earlier and stronger than iOTL. So, by January 1812 much of the frontier, from Lake Michigan down to Alabama, is aflame.

I suspect that, after the initial shock has worn off, all this just makes the War Hawks shriek louder than ever. Tecumseh /must/ be in British pay, after all; the mad King in London is buying American scalps, in an attempt to steal back the Northwest. So, increased pressure for war.

Tecumseh... probably goes north to negotiate with the British in December. He points to the victory as an example of what the Indians can do, and begs for money, food, and ammunition. The British are intrigued, but not yet ready to commit on a large scale; London is swinging towards placating the Americans, and the authorities in British Canada are reluctant to start a war on their own. So Tecumseh gets some food, clothes and promises, but no ammunition. He goes away gravely disappointed. (1)

From Tecumseh's POV, the best strategy in early 1812 is to negotiate for peace. After all, his movement has won a great victory, and white settlement has been rolled back over thousands of square miles. Unfortunately, Tecumseh is a coalition leader, and the tribes' blood is up. And his brother, riding high, wants a war of extermination.

So Tecumseh makes the best of a very mixed hand. He recommends an immediate attack on a small American fort. There are a dozen of these scattered along the frontier; refuges and gathering points for the whites, the loss of just one will be a tremendous psychological blow. But, Tecumseh adds, it must be a /small/ fort. Attacking a larger forts would require cannon, which the Indians do not have.

The Prophet agrees. After a long day of deliberation, the Indian leaders decide on their target: Fort Dearborn, at the bottom of Lake Michigan. (2) Take it, and the American frontier will have a sixty-mile-wide hole punched in it. White settlement in northern Indiana will simply disappear; this is a region of isolated homesteads, with no community larger than a village. And the British will see that the Indians are worthy allies, capable of effecting vast changes to the strategic landscape.

Meanwhile, in Kentucky and Ohio and Tennessee and Georgia, the militia are called out. Regular Army units stiffen them. By February 1812, a force of about 1500 men is ready to move against Prophet's Town.

Anyone find this interesting? Continue?


Doug M.

(1) OTL ammunition was the great weakness of the Indians throughout the early colonial period. Again and again, from the French and Indian War onwards, Indian tribes had to call off wars against the Americans because they simply ran out of ammo. Intelligent chiefs -- Pontiac, for instance -- stockpiled as much as possible, but with the exception of the Cherokee, none of the Indians ever developed the capability to make cartridges and shot in quantity.

(2) Fort Dearborn sat near the south end of modern Chicago, a location of fantastic strategic importance. OTL it would be abandoned early in the war of 1812 -- too small and too isolated -- and not rebuilt until 1816.
 
Shawnee Dawn- The Native American war of Indpendence

Tecumsah would have gone on to rally more nations to his side. However the question that should be raised is what would have happened if Isaac Brock had survived Queenston heights. Brock valued Tecumsah as an ally, Procter didn't and was a lacklustre General. Had Tecumsah continued to rally the nations there might have been an alliance with the crown resuled in a victory for Britain resulting in an Indian state in the Mid West halting western expansion. The crown had been arming Cree and Shawnee nations to stop white settlers encroaching on their land (actually it was for more ulterior motives but the nations wanted the guns) which was one of the causes of the War of 1812. Britain showed some loyalty by granting political asylum to Sitting Bull and his people after the Battle of the Little Big Horn. Unfortunately Procter didn't
 
Let's say that the war to repel the white settlers is successful in the Great Lakes. Does anyone really believe that Great Britain would just let the Indians have the land for themselves once the Americans are pushed out?
 
Let's say that the war to repel the white settlers is successful in the Great Lakes. Does anyone really believe that Great Britain would just let the Indians have the land for themselves once the Americans are pushed out?

Britain was allied with the Cherokee and Mohawk nations in the white settlers revolt in 1776. The Delawares fought for the settlers and look where it got them and the Hurons allied themselves with the French. One of the grievances of the settler was the crown restricting settlements west of the Appalacians as Britain wanted friendly relations with the Indians. However Britain didn't want to stop settlement merely to license it. If there was an agreement with most of the USA East of the Appalacians intact, Britain might have wanted a buffer state for a while whilst trying the methods used in Canada to gain land from the Indians i.e cheating rather than warfare. However Tecumsah might not have been satisfied with either Canada or the USA coasatl states surviving. Maybe there would have been an American Idian mutiny
 
A NA victory at Tippecanoe would indeed change history... for a while, at least. But it wouldn't cease all American efforts to expand. With heavy immigration, a rapidly expanding population, and the fact that the US technically owns the LA territory, recently purchased from France, the pressure to expand west was enormous. Sooner or later, something has to give. Either the Americans are going to keep raising armies and eventually overwhelm the natives, or Britain is going to have to invade and defeat the US completely and absolutely and force their will on the country. One lost battle isn't going to solve the whole question...
 
I've got an interesting book from the Loyalist side in the ARW which suggests that one major problem for the Indians was that they were consistently given inferior powder and no evidence exists that this ever changed.

A British brigadier actually did comparisons during the ARW and concluded that the powder sold to the Indians had less than 40%(!) of the power of standard British Army powder.


The ability of Tecumseh's forces to defeat the Kentucky militia alone is quite dubious, as Kentucky would have both outnumbered and outgunned his forces.

The most likely result is an expansion of the US Army before the War of 1812 begins. In OTL it had expanded to @6500 since 1807 and only @2500 and the potential was greater. The US had population and wealth comparable to the Dutch so a standing army of 50,000 was possible. Now, if the War of 1812 begins and the US has several thousand more regulars the British are likely to remember Tecumseh as stirring up a hornet's nest at the worst possible moment.

More likely they simply sell out Tecumseh, seeing the slaughter of his forces as diverting the US from a foolish adventure in Canada in 1812 and the US doesn't do anything foolish once the word of Napoleon's disaster in Russia arrives.
 
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