Tecumseh's Prophecy: The New Madrid Earthquake
Posted: Friday, November 25, 2011
by Jack H. Schick
The Great Comet of 1811 was first spotted in on March 25th by Honore Flaugergues. It was too low in the sky to be noticed much until August. By September it was seen around the globe. It was visible to the naked eye for 260 days, a record not surpassed until 1997, by Comet Hale-Bopp. C/1811 F1, as the comet is known, is estimated to have had a head 15 million miles wide and a tail 100 million miles long. At its peak brightness in October, it had an apparent magnitude of ‘0’ making it brighter than all but a few objects in the sky. Scientists believe that the comet visits our solar system every 3,065 years.
When the Mississippi River Valley experienced a series of earthquakes of unprecedented severity many were convinced that the End Time had come. The three main New Madrid (MAD-rid), quakes: December 16, 1811; January 23, and February 7, 1812, were centered on what is now the southeast Missouri ‘boot heel.’ All were 8.0 or greater on the modern measurment scale. By late April, when things finally began to settle down, there had been over 2,000 recorded tremors. At least six of them were in the 7.0-7.5 range. A huge area was affected by the quakes, over a million and a half square miles from Mexico to Canada; from New York and Carolina to the upper Missouri River country. If the area had been more populated, the destruction and death toll would have been catastrophic.
There was a brief religious revival in America as a result of the coming of the Great Comet and the earthquakes, but the world did not end. We are not so superstitious about comets these days, and modern seismologists have explored the New Madrid fault zone in depth, have explained the events and have plotted the fractures that resulted from the 1811-12 quakes. However, Native American legends insist that the comet was an omen foretelling the coming of Tecumseh. His name means ‘Panther Across the Sky’ or 'Shooting Star' in Shawnee. Indians claimed that the quake was caused when the great war chief, stamped his foot on the ground at Detroit fulfilling the prophecy he made to tribes of the American South.
The Shawnee were driven west by Euro-American expansion beyond the Appalachians. Tecumseh (1768-1813), grew up in the Ohio Country during the American Revolutionary War and the Northwest Indian War. Tecumseh’s village was attacked at least five times by colonists or the American Army between 1774 and 1783. His father was killed in one of the raids. Tecumseh vowed to resist the whites unto death.
After the British ceded the Ohio Valley to the United States in 1783, encroachment on Indian territories intensified. The Shawnee were pushed further west, settling in what is now Indiana in 1808. By then Tecumseh had become a respected warrior chief. Since he was a teen, he had envisioned a united confederacy of tribes and the formation of a Native American nation that would halt the westward expansion. He negotiated with, and gained tentative support from the British, who were angry with American because of their encroachment into parts of Canada.
Tecumseh had considerable success in the north, enlisting the Potawatomi, Kickapoo, Winnebago, Miamis and other tribes into his confederation. In August of 1811, he traveled south to meet with the Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, Seminole and Cherokee tribes. If they joined him, uniting with those of the north to fight the Americans, he believed the expansion could be stopped. He used the happenstance of the Great Comet to bolster his mythical standing as a charismatic, prophetic leader.
In late September, Tecumseh appeared at the Creek Confederacy’s annual council at the Indian town of Tuckhabatchee in what is now Alabama. Thousands of people were there, including white traders and government officials and all the important chiefs. Tecumseh made a dramatic entrance. A chronicler said: “Tecumseh, at the head of his party, marched into the square. They were entirely naked, except for their [breechcloths] and ornaments. Their faces were painted black and their heads adorned with eagle plumes, white buffalo tails [were dragged behind] suspended by bands which went around their waist….Their appearance was hideous, and their bearing pompous and ceremonious.”
Refusing to speak in the presence of U.S. Indian agents, it was more than a week before Tecumseh met in council with the southern tribal leaders. According to an observer Tecumseh distributed gifts then spoke for hours giving a “vehement narration of the wrongs imposed by the white people on the Indians, and an exhortation for the latter to resist them.” He warned that, when the whites had turned all the forests and hunting grounds into farms, they would enslave the red man in the same way they had enslaved the blacks. He urged the tribes to return to their traditional ways and beseeched them to approve no more land cessions.
He asked the tribes to join his confederation and to to be patient, to not fight the whites until all the tribes had been united and the time was right. Then, all would strike simultaneously. He promised aid from the British. He pointed to the Great Comet and told them that he, the ‘Panther Across the Sky,’ was sent by the Great Spirit. The comet had reached its brightest during his stay at Tuckhabatchee, so many were convinced by the omen, but his talk met with only mixed success.
Frustrated by indifferent responses by some of the important Creek chiefs, Tecumseh angrily left the council. Before he departed he gave the leaders a “withering look” and said: “Your blood is white. You have taken my talk and the sticks (tobacco) and the wampum and the hatchet, but you do not mean to fight. I know the reason. You do not believe the Great Spirit has sent me. You shall know. I leave [here] directly and shall go straight to Detroit. When I arrive there, I will stamp my foot on the ground and shake down every house in Tuckhabatchee.”
The Creeks, according to legend, began counting the days, figuring the time it should take Tecumseh to reach Detroit. At about 2:15 a.m. on December 16th, the date they calculated for Tecumseh’s arrival, there was a sudden, loud rumbling. It was followed by noise that was described as similar to “the discharge of heavy artillery.” Then the earth began moving violently. Buildings shook and jumped. Trees were uprooted. There was a “complete saturation of the atmosphere with sulphurious vapor.” And, in fulfillment of Tecumseh’s prophecy, Tuckhabatchee was leveled. Every house in the Creek village collapsed into ruins, as did thousands of others throughout the Mississippi Valley.
It was the first of the New Madrid earthquakes—the most powerful series of quakes to ever hit the United States. 200 years later, we believe we know why the earth shook that day, why the ground cracked open and new lakes were formed, why the Mississippi ran backwards and changed its course. Today, we think we know what comets are made of and where they come from. We perhaps display arrogance, though, pretending to understand the means and methods of the Great Spirit. There is much yet undiscovered in both Heaven and Earth.
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Top-level comments on this article: (4 total)This is such an interesting article, Jack and it gave me some great perspective on how inaccurate our gloom and doom scenarios always are. I guess humans often make the mistake of believing they know all there is to know, and believe they're predicting reality where in fact they're just finding a rationalization for their fears. I agree, there's much undiscovered.Thanks for reading and commenting
Hi Jack.
Very interesting article. Covered a lot of territory and came back around to make a good point.
Hugs,
DianneThanks for reading and commenting
Mr. Schick deserves praise and appreciation for his usual scholarly approach. Full of lots of history and lore.
The years immediate subsequent starting with 1816 held a whole lot more of natural calamity and historical implication. The Tamboran Volcanoe in Indonesia which caused the Year Without a Summer and led to a super cold winter to inspire the writing of Frankenstein, Feminism. Marx and Dickens were born this year, dealing with the true abuse of the poor the industrial revolution and a little thing called Communism. The early 1800's gave birth to the New World through the agony of social destruction, war, famine and tremendous lack and upheavel. This conflagration, earthquake, volcanoes, comets and confusion gave place to the world of industrialization. It left a whole lot of people in a state of wonder. "There are more things in heaven and earth that are dreamed of in our philosophies".
Mr. Schick comes through again!Thanks for reading and commenting, as usual.
I really enjoyed this, Jack. I love history and this was fascinating! I often wonder if we know as much as we think we do. :) Thanks againThanks for reading and commenting. I liked it too. I felt good at the end. Thanks for promoting it.
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