Tecumseh's War: The Battle of Tippecanoe is fought near present-day Battle Ground, Indiana, United States.
The Battle of Tippecanoe ( TIP-ee-k-NOO) was fought on November 7, 1811, in Battle Ground, Indiana, between American forces led by then Governor William Henry Harrison of the Indiana Territory and Native American forces associated with Shawnee leader Tecumseh and his brother Tenskwatawa (commonly known as "The Prophet"), leaders of a confederacy of various tribes who opposed European-American settlement of the American frontier. As tensions and violence increased, Governor Harrison marched with an army of about 1,000 men to attack the confederacy's headquarters at Prophetstown, near the confluence of the Tippecanoe River and the Wabash River.
Tecumseh was not yet ready to oppose the United States by force and was away recruiting allies when Harrison's army arrived. Tenskwatawa was a spiritual leader but not a military man, and he was in charge. Harrison camped near Prophetstown on November 6 and arranged to meet with Tenskwatawa the following day. Early the next morning warriors from Prophetstown attacked Harrison's army. They took the army by surprise, but Harrison and his men stood their ground for more than two hours. After the battle, Harrison's men burned Prophetstown to the ground, destroying the food supplies stored for the winter. The soldiers then returned to their homes.
Harrison accomplished his goal of destroying Prophetstown. The win proved decisive and garnered Harrison the nickname of "Tippecanoe". Meanwhile, the defeat dealt a fatal blow for Tecumseh's confederacy and, though comeback attempts were made, it never fully recovered. So popular was Harrisons nickname that the Whigs turned "Tippecanoe and Tyler too" into the slogan and a popular song for Harrison and his running mate John Tyler's 1840 presidential campaign.
Tecumseh's War or Tecumseh's Rebellion was a conflict between the United States and Tecumseh's Confederacy, led by the Shawnee leader Tecumseh in the Indiana Territory. Although the war is often considered to have climaxed with William Henry Harrison's victory at the Battle of Tippecanoe in 1811, Tecumseh's War essentially continued into the War of 1812 and is frequently considered a part of that larger struggle. The war lasted for two more years, until 1813, when Tecumseh and his second-in-command, Roundhead, died fighting Harrison's Army of the Northwest at the Battle of the Thames in Upper Canada, near present-day Chatham, Ontario, and his confederacy disintegrated. Tecumseh's War is viewed by some academic historians as the final conflict of a longer-term military struggle for control of the Great Lakes region of North America, encompassing a number of wars over several generations, referred to as the Sixty Years' War.