Episode Details

Tecumseh built the largest Native American military confederation since Pontiac, uniting tribes from the Great Lakes to the Gulf Coast against American expansion. His vision of a unified Indigenous nation came closer to success than any before or since, and it collapsed at the Battle of the Thames in 1813.

This episode traces his campaign to halt westward expansion and asks what North America might have looked like had his confederation held.

• How he built a pan-tribal alliance across thousands of miles
• His brother Tenskwatawa and the religious movement that fueled recruitment
• The alliance with the British during the War of 1812
• His death at the Thames and the collapse of Indigenous resistance east of the Mississippi