Open Door

Two Shawnee brothers made their mark on the Chicago-area Potawatomi in the years preceding and during the War of 1812. The older brother was named Tecumseh, and he was a great general who led a confederacy of Indian Nations in an alliance with the British. One of the tenants of Tecumseh's leadership was a call to revert to the old ways of Indian life based on a prophecy from his younger brother, Tenskwatawa, whose name meant Open Door.

 

Below are examples of how the "General" and the "Prophet" become part of the story of my fictional band of Potawatomi, even though Tecumseh was long dead and Tenskwatawa lived on a Kansas reservation by the year 1833.

 

 

Excerpt - Little Woods (Crow Moon 1833: Thunderbird)

 

Mud Paw shouted in despair at impaired hands which shook too violently to fix a snare and distorted vision that prevented reliable navigation beyond the horizon of his wigwam. Wrapped in blankets next to his dying fire, he slipped into dream. The ghost of the Shawnee chief Tecumseh rose quietly from the dust and whispered, “Take heart, Mud Paw. The spirits are pleased with your deference to the justice of your tribe. If you have the strength to defeat the evil magic, your reward will be great.”

 

Excerpt - Little Woods (Rose Moon 1833: Tradition)

 

“The new tradition sounds like the idea of a drunken sot,” Ten Whelp spat. “Will our children take all behaviors of the whites? Tecumseh’s brother Tenskwatawa preached the abandonment of white men’s ways. Now you say that Tecumseh’s spirit visited you and told you to abandon Tenskwatawa? You test my patience. If our children are to view the land as a dead thing, like the whites, then why not have them take up lying, drinking alcohol, prostitution, gambling, white men’s religion, and the theft of other people’s land? Is that what you want our people to become?”