Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
Speaker 1: the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much
Speaker 1: for tuning in. Let's hear it for the man the myth,
Speaker 1: the guy who has never actually given out a curse.
Speaker 1: Super producer mister Max Williams.
Speaker 2: Max claps with two hands. Williams, Welcome back to.
Speaker 3: The clap Max, I have a secondhand again, and Ben,
Speaker 3: no curse is given out that you know of?
Speaker 2: Yeah, right, right, Well, is a curse really a curse
Speaker 2: if you don't know about it? That's a question. Aren't
Speaker 2: you supposed to, like actively say to somebody, I have
Speaker 2: cursed you. You're therefore you don't have to. But I
Speaker 2: guess one thing about curses is, you know, there's the
Speaker 2: placebo effect of it, all right, if somebody tells you
Speaker 2: you've been cursed, then you get in your head about
Speaker 2: it and manifest the curse yourself without maybe they're even
Speaker 2: having to be any nefarious dark forces at work at all.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's the thing a curse does have. You know,
Speaker 1: the best definition of magic I've ever seen is weaponized psychology.
Speaker 1: And in that case, then a curse would work. If
Speaker 1: we were to say I Ben Bullen, curse you Noel Brown.
Speaker 1: Through that kind of lens of psychology, then the person
Speaker 1: being cursed would have to know about it for it
Speaker 1: to have some sort of effect. But if we take
Speaker 1: the psychology out, if we say we just believe in curses,
Speaker 1: then the person who is cursed or has the consequences
Speaker 1: doesn't have to know what's going on at all. They
Speaker 1: could be totally innocent. They just walked into the wrong tomb.
Speaker 2: I recently started rewatching Rome, the HBO series. You know
Speaker 2: about Julius Caesar and all of that, And there is
Speaker 2: a part in the series where Julius Caesar scorns a
Speaker 2: female admirer. Essentially, there's a political thing that's caused it
Speaker 2: to be inconvenient having this relationship, so he basically sends
Speaker 2: her a packing and then there's a really intense scene
Speaker 2: where she curses him like in writing, like while saying
Speaker 2: out loud, I curse your liver, your blood, your bones,
Speaker 2: your body. And then you know, has her hand servant
Speaker 2: take this cursed piece of paper and put it in
Speaker 2: some kind of special depository. But Julius Caesar does not
Speaker 2: need to know about it. And as far as this
Speaker 2: character is concerned the curse? Sure has hell worked? Because
Speaker 2: you know, really bad things happened to Julius Caesar. Was
Speaker 2: it because of the curse? Unclear?
Speaker 1: This this reminds me of Gladiator, which has been on
Speaker 1: my mind because I recently on the road, I have
Speaker 1: too much time to watch a lot of TV. But
Speaker 1: on the room I watched Napoleon, and.
Speaker 2: What do you think? I did not like it?
Speaker 1: Okay, only because only because it was very clear to
Speaker 1: me that this is Yo King Phoenix playing Napoleon. Sure,
Speaker 1: so that's it. Didn't it didn't feel like I love
Speaker 1: that guy's an actor. I just I don't know. The
Speaker 1: battle scenes were good, but the the historical inaccuracies pile
Speaker 1: up over time.
Speaker 2: But who are we to knock it?
Speaker 1: There are stories about Napoleon and curses too, and that
Speaker 1: time he got totally punked.
Speaker 2: By a pack of rabbits.
Speaker 1: But today I love that story. I mean too, I
Speaker 1: was thinking I was talking about that with some French folks.
Speaker 1: I got in an argument about Napoleon in Paris and
Speaker 1: it ended well because of the rabbits. But anyway, so
Speaker 1: we are talking about curses today. We're going to talk
Speaker 1: about a curse that You may have heard, fellow ridiculous historians,
Speaker 1: but you may not know much about it. Like many
Speaker 1: of us us who attended public school, you may have
Speaker 1: simply heard the name to Cumsa's curse and never really
Speaker 1: understood where it came from, it was a real thing, etc.
Speaker 1: And it all goes back to the fact that the
Speaker 1: president of the United States throughout history and especially now
Speaker 1: is one of the most important, one of the most
Speaker 1: powerful people in the world. That means a lot of
Speaker 1: folks love you, but that also means a lot of
Speaker 1: people hate your guts.
Speaker 2: Just on principle. Yeah. Max points out that due to
Speaker 2: a very small sample size, relatively small speaking, forty six
Speaker 2: people to have held the job, eight of those individuals
Speaker 2: have died while in office, and one might argue that
Speaker 2: those odds are pretty significant in favor of dying in office.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, podcasters have a slightly safer ratio. We could say,
Speaker 1: only slightly, only slightly. It's hard in these streets, but yeah,
Speaker 1: I always think about that too. You know, the tremendous
Speaker 1: level of stress that the potus has.
Speaker 2: It's it's sad, it's to a degree, it's.
Speaker 1: Kind of heartbreaking when you can see how being president
Speaker 1: for just four years absolutely wrecks your body.
Speaker 2: You know, before and after pictures, saying it reminds me
Speaker 2: of a lot of those history accounts. So you'll see
Speaker 2: on Instagram and stuff where it'll be like, you know,
Speaker 2: young men before they go off to war, and then
Speaker 2: a photograph of them after, and you see these just
Speaker 2: like you know, these severe, hardened kind of lines and
Speaker 2: just gaunt kind of expressions, very similar to what happens
Speaker 2: at the end of a four year term of being presidents.
Speaker 2: It's it is, it is a battle. It is its
Speaker 2: own kind of war. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: I mean, it gives you that thousand league stare, which
Speaker 1: is a scary thing to see in real life. And
Speaker 1: you know, okay, so let's let's start with our guy
Speaker 1: to comes up. He is a famous Shawnee chief. He
Speaker 1: has the dream of the United Native Federation, and the
Speaker 1: historical lore like the gather around the campfire type stories
Speaker 1: assure us that he is responsible for a curse. But
Speaker 1: to understand the story of that curse, we need to
Speaker 1: learn a little bit more about our guy, mister T,
Speaker 1: who I'll only call mister T once just because it's funny.
Speaker 2: I reserve the right to call him that once myself.
Speaker 1: Okay, good, that's acceptible these terms, and then we'll have
Speaker 1: a third mister T on Maxi's behalf if he wants to. Uh,
Speaker 1: all right, there it is. Okay, No, you've got the
Speaker 1: last one left.
Speaker 2: Do you know mister T was apparently terrified of flying?
Speaker 2: I think yeah, character on the show. Yeah yeah, yeah, okay,
Speaker 2: so does that kind of smells mister T? No me
Speaker 2: referring to mister the actual mister T from the A team.
Speaker 3: I think the spirit of we're not doing Strickland rules
Speaker 3: then about that.
Speaker 2: I don't know what that is.
Speaker 1: That's where if you say a certain name three times,
Speaker 1: a certain individual appears. Yeah, I'm not playing that game.
Speaker 1: Although I just saw the new art for the Beetlejuice
Speaker 1: sequel that's happening.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it exists. I've seen some people kind of nagging it.
Speaker 2: You don't know. So many people will make like fan
Speaker 2: art for movies that are in development, and some of
Speaker 2: them are so good, you're like, is that the one?
Speaker 2: This to me had the air of fan art about it,
Speaker 2: and not even like particularly awesome fan art, right right.
Speaker 1: Well, it's also it's been interesting to me because the
Speaker 1: original Beetlejuice sequel was supposed to be set in Hawaii,
Speaker 1: which is definitely choice. Anyway, there's nothing to do with it.
Speaker 1: We'll do a history of Beetlejuice like later.
Speaker 2: Well, what we do have with mister T, and that
Speaker 2: is that Mister T that this is my use there
Speaker 2: is that you've got multiple spellings of this guy's name,
Speaker 2: which is pretty cool, and even that could result in
Speaker 2: different pronunciations. You've got to come to sea also spelled
Speaker 2: to come tha. If you got a lift, you know,
Speaker 2: then you've got to come to come fay or to
Speaker 2: come tha with thha. What we do know is he
Speaker 2: was born in seventeen sixty eight, southeast of Old Chillicothe,
Speaker 2: Old Chilicothe, That's what I'm going to say. That is
Speaker 2: north of what is today Xenia, Ohio.
Speaker 1: And he had a very difficult life, to be quite honest.
Speaker 1: Growing up was not easy for him. His father was
Speaker 1: killed by a group of white folks in seventeen seventy four.
Speaker 1: His mother, who was a Muskogee, left him when he
Speaker 1: was seven years old to journey with part of her
Speaker 1: community to Missouri and.
Speaker 2: So to come.
Speaker 1: So was left to be raised by his older siblings.
Speaker 1: And this often happens in times of instability. You know,
Speaker 1: the oldest sister, the oldest brother has to function as
Speaker 1: the guardian, the parent figure. So to come to is
Speaker 1: it comes to grows up under the supervision of his
Speaker 1: one of his older sisters to come pace, and she
Speaker 1: trains him in the She teaches him what it means
Speaker 1: to be Shawnee, the moraise, the values, the social codes.
Speaker 1: And then alongside that, his brother, one of his brothers,
Speaker 1: teaches him the art of woodcraft and hunting, how to
Speaker 1: live rough, survive in the wild.
Speaker 2: That's right, that's a cheesy cow. So he learned some
Speaker 2: pretty solid outdoorsman type skills in addition to having a
Speaker 2: pretty solid backbone and a moral compass, so all the
Speaker 2: makings of a of a great man. He was then
Speaker 2: adopted by a Shawnee chief, Blackfish Uh, and he grew
Speaker 2: to become a young man with several other foster brothers
Speaker 2: who were in fact white whom Blackfish had actually captured
Speaker 2: but appeared to have treated with some level of dignity.
Speaker 1: You know what, I just hit me, We're really close
Speaker 1: to President's Day. I almost thought it was President's Day,
Speaker 1: but that's like, what next week? It's the third. It's
Speaker 1: one of those third day of the month kind of things.
Speaker 3: Third Monday, I'm going on a quick little vacation up
Speaker 3: at Charleston and see some friends up there and I'll
Speaker 3: explain them. I'm like, yeah, I have Monday off for
Speaker 3: President's Day. And what is President's Day? I'm like, so,
Speaker 3: it's what.
Speaker 2: I think it's.
Speaker 3: Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, and George Washington all have a
Speaker 3: birthday in February, right or close to it. I think
Speaker 3: one of the might actually be born at the end
Speaker 3: of January or something like that. But it's like, hey,
Speaker 3: these three guys were born around this time have a
Speaker 3: day off, which is just like, as I say to people,
Speaker 3: I'm not going to argue against my job giving me
Speaker 3: a free day off.
Speaker 2: Jefferson is in April. I think, yeah, Wow, Okay, maybe
Speaker 2: Jefferson doesn't.
Speaker 1: Matter at all in this He doesn't matter at all
Speaker 1: to us history or to holidays. Well we'll get to
Speaker 1: Jefferson in a second, but yeah, I just want to
Speaker 1: shout that out. So as this comes out, the happy
Speaker 1: President's Day to all who celebrate.
Speaker 2: I guess I don't know, how do you celebrate president.
Speaker 2: How does one celebrate your favorite president? Maybe put on
Speaker 2: a powdered wig of funny hat, give a speech you know,
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, take over some takeover some other people's lands, Okay,
Speaker 1: sure to soon brand. In fact, if it comes to
Speaker 1: like you're saying, he is definitely anti American soldiers and settlers,
Speaker 1: and there's very good reason for this. But he still
Speaker 1: had that Shawnee code, so he didn't want to uh
Speaker 1: commit what we would call war crimes. He thought it
Speaker 1: was right and ethical to fight American soldiers on the battlefield,
Speaker 1: but he wouldn't stand for them being tortured, for being
Speaker 1: burned at the stake, drawn and quartered. And when he saw,
Speaker 1: for instance, when he saw some compatriots preparing to burn
Speaker 1: a guy alive, he went absolutely nuts to a ham
Speaker 1: on them. And they, to be fair, they didn't stop
Speaker 1: torturing prisoners, but they stopped torturing prisoners in front of
Speaker 1: him because of his code. And for the years after
Speaker 1: the Revolutionary War, he was like a one man get
Speaker 1: a army.
Speaker 2: He dropped some serious shaming on those guys and they reacted.
Speaker 2: It would seem I mean, and he had an air
Speaker 2: of legitimacy and authority about him. People paid attention when
Speaker 2: he said stuff you know when and that that code
Speaker 2: he kind of transmitted to anyone who he encountered. So
Speaker 2: after the Revolutionary War to come, so was a, like
Speaker 2: you said, kind of a one man show, a bit
Speaker 2: of a marauding one man Garia army, fighting in various
Speaker 2: skirmishes against the Whites in the old Northwest and helping
Speaker 2: out with the Cherokees in the South. He was the
Speaker 2: youngest of this particular band of folks that he was
Speaker 2: a part of. But again for a lot of the
Speaker 2: reasons that we've already listed thus far, was chosen to
Speaker 2: be the leader because of his just absolute charisma and
Speaker 2: chops on the battlefield. So he continued to fight in
Speaker 2: small actions as with the source that we're looking at
Speaker 2: refers to them as in the South, and he became
Speaker 2: friends with the Creek Indians, a relationship that would later
Speaker 2: help him to form an alliance.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and this alliance will be incredibly important. And
Speaker 1: we see, you know, times of war and chaos make
Speaker 1: for strange bedfellows. So there's very much a sense that
Speaker 1: these guys are uniting against a larger, more dangerous power, right,
Speaker 1: and they're going to put their differences aside for a time.
Speaker 1: Unfortunate during these days, to Comes to loses two of
Speaker 1: his brothers, including his brother Chiesikou, who taught him the
Speaker 1: the arts of living in the wild. Chisikau dies in
Speaker 1: seventeen ninety two fighting in the South with Cherokee compatriots,
Speaker 1: and then to Comes his brother Sawasikaw was killed in
Speaker 1: Ohio in seventeen ninety four. And these deaths are a
Speaker 1: big reason that are a big part of the reason
Speaker 1: that to Comes opposed the so called peace chiefs. They're
Speaker 1: the community leaders who wanted to push for a peaceful
Speaker 1: resolution with the nascent American forces.
Speaker 2: Yeah, which is interesting because I mean, he he did
Speaker 2: seem like he was someone who understood had a balance
Speaker 2: between you know, war and peace, and that there was
Speaker 2: a time for war and there was a time for peace.
Speaker 2: He wasn't like an outright hawkish, you know type dude.
Speaker 2: But he also wasn't like a dovish type. He isn't
Speaker 2: somewhere in the middle. He was very pragmatic. So Blue Jacket,
Speaker 2: who was a Shawnee chief of note with his time
Speaker 2: in seventeen ninety four, was amassing forces warriors to meet
Speaker 2: the US Army on their turf under Major General Anthony Wayne.
Speaker 2: This Blue Jacket actually summoned to comesome. He called for
Speaker 2: him to return to Ohio. However, it would seem that
Speaker 2: the general wasn't looking for a fight, was actually hoping
Speaker 2: to make a deal instead.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we're again, we're getting some of this from our
Speaker 1: good friends that Encyclopedia Britannic. Here's how they put it.
Speaker 1: When the leading chiefs of the Old Northwest gathered at
Speaker 1: Wayne's call in Greenville in Ohio to come to held
Speaker 1: aloof and when the Treaty of Greenville was negotiated in
Speaker 1: August seventeen ninety five, he refused to RECOGNI. He roundly
Speaker 1: attacked the peace chiefs who sideway land that he contended
Speaker 1: they did not own. So he's saying the land is
Speaker 1: like the air and the water, it's the common possession
Speaker 1: of all the Native people in the native communities here.
Speaker 1: This is the institution of communal ownership of land policy.
Speaker 1: That's one of his big platforms. And he is a
Speaker 1: really great public speaker. Even his enemies, like the American soldiers,
Speaker 1: acknowledged that, and they said you know, we don't agree
Speaker 1: with him, but this guy's basically like the Native American
Speaker 1: version of Henry Clay and he.
Speaker 2: Which was much more of a compliment at this time.
Speaker 1: Which was much more of a compliment at this time
Speaker 1: because at this time Henry Clay is still on the
Speaker 1: rise in Kentucky.
Speaker 2: He's still got that new car. Smell well, Ben. It
Speaker 2: reminds me a lot of an episode that we recently
Speaker 2: did on Stuff they Don't Want You to Know. And
Speaker 2: then the term is escaping me now, but what was
Speaker 2: that term bent about the idea of land that is
Speaker 2: unclaimed or terrannulius terrannulius, and is within that conversation, the
Speaker 2: idea of ownership of land was like kind of front
Speaker 2: and center in that episode of Stuff they Don't Want
Speaker 2: You to Know. And this is a great example of
Speaker 2: like two sides that have a fundamental disagreement or different
Speaker 2: view on the concept of who owns land, not only
Speaker 2: in terms of like, you know, who owns it like
Speaker 2: in practice, but just conceptually who owns land? How do
Speaker 2: how does one own land? How can land be you know,
Speaker 2: the property of an individual or group? Right?
Speaker 1: And what we discover in that episode, which you. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: Hopefully it will be out by the time you hear this, folks,
Speaker 1: but absolutely check out that show, uh, because we gain
Speaker 1: a new appreciation for the power and danger of flags.
Speaker 1: As weird as that sounds, it's one for the vexillologists
Speaker 1: in your life. Yeah, you're absolutely right. This idea of
Speaker 1: land is a surprisingly complicated question because the need for
Speaker 1: it is so universal, and human history really is an
Speaker 1: agglomeration of rationalizations for taking land from someone else. And
Speaker 1: he still has other brothers. This is where we take
Speaker 1: a little bit of a turn to come to himself.
Speaker 1: Seems like a pretty righteous, maybe kind of humble dude,
Speaker 1: but his brother is a little bit of a little
Speaker 1: bit of a different case. And this actually comes up
Speaker 1: in a great science fiction fantasy series by Orson Scott
Speaker 1: Card called Alvin Maker.
Speaker 2: Oh, this kind of appears in that one.
Speaker 1: It's a great It's weird that it hasn't been made
Speaker 1: into a film series yet, but it's really good.
Speaker 2: Isn't or Scott Card a little problematic? Yeah, he's a
Speaker 2: terrible person. Yeah, I thought, okay, but you know, sometimes
Speaker 2: you gotta take the good with the bat when it
Speaker 2: comes to fiction, especially when it comes to folks that
Speaker 2: aren't around anywhere. You got to kind of take your
Speaker 2: battles a little bit, you know, maybe just throw throw
Speaker 2: them all out. Oh orses, scout cards alive. And he
Speaker 2: is terrible, terrible Yeah on purpose, Okay, on purpose? Well
Speaker 2: to your point, been about this title of the prophet, right,
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, this this stems from a vision that he
Speaker 2: claims to have had something of a you know, the
Speaker 2: the golden tablets being passed down from on high type
Speaker 2: vision from from an entity he refers to as the
Speaker 2: Master of life. Ah, yes, yeah.
Speaker 1: And so in Indiana, these two brothers to come to
Speaker 1: in ten Squatawa, they get together, they build a town
Speaker 1: and they name it profits Town. And the community that
Speaker 1: they build could be portrayed by some as a cult
Speaker 1: because they were they were very much into rejecting the
Speaker 1: normalization of what they saw as white customs. Sure, they
Speaker 1: wanted to get rid of that. They wanted to cut
Speaker 1: the culture war off.
Speaker 2: At the pass. And he's operating under these orders or
Speaker 2: instructions from an entity that you know, no one else
Speaker 2: can directly communicate with. Now, that is also a pretty
Speaker 2: pretty solid argument for a call. When you have a
Speaker 2: guy who's saying I've got the goods, I've got the intel.
Speaker 2: No one else is capable of having it, and I'm
Speaker 2: the one that's going to interpret it and pass it
Speaker 2: down to you, my followers, right exactly.
Speaker 1: And this is you know, this is classic cult umami.
Speaker 1: That's just how it works. He he has this mysticism
Speaker 1: that appeals to people in the Native communities. At this point,
Speaker 1: you know, almost everybody in a Native community, regardless of
Speaker 1: their tribe, has been adversely affected by the expansion of
Speaker 1: again the Nissans American state. And they've lost loved ones,
Speaker 1: They've been in wars, they've seen horrors visited upon their communities,
Speaker 1: civilians of warriors alike. So this message is coming at
Speaker 1: the right time. Unite against the Unite for the greater good,
Speaker 1: against this common evil.
Speaker 2: Common enemy.
Speaker 1: And so as this community continues to grow more and
Speaker 1: more and more skyrocketing to comes to starts to dream bigger,
Speaker 1: and he says, you know, one day, if these trends continue,
Speaker 1: there will be a world wherein our community is large
Speaker 1: enough and strong enough to stop the Americans from expanding.
Speaker 1: He said, We're gonna band together, We're going to start
Speaker 1: a Native confederation. And so he goes leveraging his superb
Speaker 1: oratory oratory skills, he travels throughout the land. He goes
Speaker 1: to speak with Ozark communities in New York, he goes
Speaker 1: from Iowa to Florida, and he's gaining recruits.
Speaker 2: The entire way.
Speaker 1: And he's saying, if I can get everybody to agree
Speaker 1: despite their differences in time, then I can stop what's
Speaker 1: happening to our native land.
Speaker 2: And he might have. If things had gone.
Speaker 1: Differently, history would have taken a very different direction. But
Speaker 1: something happened while he was on the road.
Speaker 2: That's right, while he was on one of his missions.
Speaker 2: The governor at that time of the Indiana Territory, a
Speaker 2: man by the name of General William Henry Harrison you
Speaker 2: may have heard of. He led a militia of over
Speaker 2: a thousand men who marched on profits town, which led
Speaker 2: to what an event that would later be would later
Speaker 2: be immortalized in a very popular slogan. It became a
Speaker 2: rallying point politically, better or worse, the Battle of tippe Canoe,
Speaker 2: Yes yes, which.
Speaker 1: You may recognize from some later political slogans. The Battle
Speaker 1: of typic Canoe is fought between these US soldiers and
Speaker 1: Native American warriors on the banks of a river called
Speaker 1: the keth Tippi Canunk, which is right there in the
Speaker 1: middle of central Pennsylvania. And this occurs in the context
Speaker 1: of the Treaty of Fort Wayne, which is an agreement
Speaker 1: signed in eighteen oh nine that said, hey, if you're
Speaker 1: a Native American tribe or community in Indiana, you have
Speaker 1: to sell three million acres of land to the US government.
Speaker 1: And because of this, to comes at this time. It's
Speaker 1: Chief of the Shopping or one of the chiefs.
Speaker 2: He takes his.
Speaker 1: Confederation of Native American tribes united and he says, let's
Speaker 1: come here. Let's combat this absolute deluge of pioneers and
Speaker 1: settlers coming into land. And that leads the that leads
Speaker 1: Governor Harrison to destroy the Shawnee Village Profits Town. And
Speaker 1: when Harrison gets there, it's November sixth, eighteen eleven, he
Speaker 1: sees one of Tenskawatawa's the one of the Profits followers,
Speaker 1: waving a white flag pretty much the universal sign for parlay, surrender,
Speaker 1: or negotiation. They requested a ceasefire, and they said, look,
Speaker 1: before anything goes sideways, Harrison and to Comsa, you guys
Speaker 1: should sit down and you should talk about what's going on.
Speaker 1: But to Kumsa is not in town.
Speaker 2: He's not there. Unfortunately, he is away from Profitstown. He
Speaker 2: is on another one of his missions to recruit warriors
Speaker 2: from members of the what are referred to as the
Speaker 2: Five Civilized Tribes, who were also seeing the same kind
Speaker 2: of aggression being focused upon their lands, you know, folks
Speaker 2: marching upon them, or at the very least the threat
Speaker 2: of that kind of intervention. So everyone was looking to,
Speaker 2: you know, folks like Takumesa for advice, you know, for guidance,
Speaker 2: and this idea of banding together and forming alliances became very,
Speaker 2: very attractive.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and Harrison says, okay, Profit they call you, I'll
Speaker 1: agree to your terms. And he turns his guys around.
Speaker 1: They go to a hill about a mile away from
Speaker 1: Profetstown on the Bank's Burnett Creek, and Harrison doesn't think
Speaker 1: this is a real ceasefire, because what the prophet says is, look,
Speaker 1: let's just hold here until my brother can get here,
Speaker 1: and you guys can talk.
Speaker 2: This through, have your parlay.
Speaker 1: And Harrison is thinking with the cleverness of a snake,
Speaker 1: and he's saying, oh, sure, trick him into a ceasefire
Speaker 1: and then murder them in the night. That's absolutely what
Speaker 1: I would do. And so he says, guys, don't chill
Speaker 1: out at camp. We need to maintain a watch. We
Speaker 1: need a defensive position.
Speaker 2: But that's also something that to comes to, wouldn't wouldn't
Speaker 2: sign on for he is vinely inspired. That's a really
Speaker 2: good point. And yeah, it is very interesting the relationship
Speaker 2: between Tecumsa and Tenskoatawa, Tenscatawa operating under on these divine instructions.
Speaker 2: And you know, when we know that, when that can happen,
Speaker 2: people can go off the rails pretty quickly and get
Speaker 2: a little high on their own supply or you know,
Speaker 2: drink their own kool aid to use another culty related aphorism.
Speaker 2: Whereas to come to what is really driven by that code?
Speaker 2: You know that he was taught, he was really driven
Speaker 2: by the idea of not being a war don't do
Speaker 2: war crimes. Yeah, yeah, but someone else who might see,
Speaker 2: you know, if I do it, it isn't war crimes
Speaker 2: because I am divinely guided exactly. That's problematic.
Speaker 1: I'm doing what the Master of Life told me to do.
Speaker 2: Master of life he knows best. Therefore, if I do
Speaker 2: this on his command. This isn't this isn't a bad thing,
Speaker 2: but it comes on the other hand, it's operating under
Speaker 2: much more real world uh, sets of of you know,
Speaker 2: mores and values.
Speaker 1: There's a deepness to it like that. The differences between
Speaker 1: their philosophies and their relationships are with the world are
Speaker 1: what make them such a good team. But ultimately it
Speaker 1: also leads to their downfalls.
Speaker 2: It's true. And I was reading a little bit on
Speaker 2: the side just about how to come to largely you know,
Speaker 2: used his brother, and again Max point on off there
Speaker 2: that they might not have even been brothers. They were
Speaker 2: more just like brothers in arms.
Speaker 1: And like how everybody Atlanta's exactly but to that like
Speaker 1: to come to was adopted to.
Speaker 2: And that's right, and very unclear the actual you know, lineage,
Speaker 2: the blood lineage, but Takamsa was it was pretty clear.
Speaker 2: What was clear is that he was using this power
Speaker 2: that his you know, that his brother had for political purposes,
Speaker 2: not necessarily in a snakelike way, just in like a
Speaker 2: you know, this is helpful, This is going to get
Speaker 2: us some feet in the door, right, you know, and
Speaker 2: and help us a mask some followers. And if it's
Speaker 2: all for the greater good of the tribes and of
Speaker 2: the people. You know, of our people, then so be it.
Speaker 1: And ten Skuatawa, however, is also not above capitalizing on
Speaker 1: Tekumsa's absence. Because Tkmsa is gone from Prophetstown, Tinskatawa has
Speaker 1: the reins of control. He's proxy ruler. And even though
Speaker 1: to comes to said, look, we cannot face American forces
Speaker 1: until we have our numbers beefed up. Even though tens
Speaker 1: Katawa is very well aware of this because of his
Speaker 1: divine inspiration, he stands out on this rock ledge that
Speaker 1: overlooks Profits Town. It's called Profits Rock today, by the way,
Speaker 1: and he starts singing war songs, chanting incantations, and he
Speaker 1: promises the people there's a true fact. He promises his
Speaker 1: followers that these spells, these prayers I am making, they
Speaker 1: will protect you from the US bullets. And so when
Speaker 1: Harrison wakes the next morning, we don't know how well
Speaker 1: or how long he's slept, but at dawn he gets
Speaker 1: up and his entire camp a mile away on that
Speaker 1: hill is surrounded by ten Squatawa's warriors, and they are
Speaker 1: ready to go. If you want to learned a lot
Speaker 1: about the back and forth of how the battle actually occurred,
Speaker 1: and it looked like it was anyone's game for quite
Speaker 1: some time. Go to American Battle Trust, a great resource
Speaker 1: that Max found that has you know, this is like
Speaker 1: the kind of stuff you study at war college. It
Speaker 1: might put a lot of people to sleep, but it's
Speaker 1: like a blow by blow analysis of what happened.
Speaker 2: And we know that around this time, I think we're
Speaker 2: starting to see Native tribes having some form of firearm,
Speaker 2: but it's certainly not to the same degree that the
Speaker 2: American forces would have. They weren't fighting, you know, rifles
Speaker 2: one to one with like spears and bows and arrows,
Speaker 2: but they certainly did not have the same level and
Speaker 2: stockpile of weaponry that their opponents had.
Speaker 1: No, Yeah, you're absolutely right, And the entirety of the
Speaker 1: fighting last for about two hours. It might surprise a
Speaker 1: lot of people that for this kind of close up fighting,
Speaker 1: or even when you get to hand to hand, those
Speaker 1: battles don't actually last a very long time. It's tremendously
Speaker 1: taxing on the physical body.
Speaker 2: You kind of wonder too, though, if Harrison was like,
Speaker 2: maybe we shouldn't just make this a massacre, because I
Speaker 2: still am hoping perhaps to parlay with the comesa down
Speaker 2: the line, and if I you know, absolutely annihilate his folks,
Speaker 2: even though it's because his broad did a bad thing
Speaker 2: and you know, went down a weird path. I don't
Speaker 2: know that would be a good thing big picture, I
Speaker 2: don't know what you got. That's just a deestimation on.
Speaker 1: My Unfortunately, what I think without knowing the interior mind
Speaker 1: of Harrison, we can say that he looked like he
Speaker 1: was willing to play ball in the beginning, but his
Speaker 1: march he already had a deficit of trust, right, and
Speaker 1: he clearly he did not consider Native Americans people. He yeah,
Speaker 1: let's yeah, let's not tread too lightly on this guy
Speaker 1: being like some super woke historical figure.
Speaker 2: He was just like you know, his peers and that
Speaker 2: and that was but he was shrewd. So he was
Speaker 2: gonna capitalize on these things and perhaps play the game
Speaker 2: acting as though he was gonna parlay with them. I
Speaker 2: think he gave them one real good faith chance. I
Speaker 2: think that's right, and this was this was it being
Speaker 2: squandered on their part.
Speaker 3: I think he would have given to come to the chance,
Speaker 3: to come to the table, to tell to come, Tom,
Speaker 3: I'll let you leave without killing your people.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 3: I think that's as high as he.
Speaker 2: Would have gone.
Speaker 1: It would have been like, yeah, you don't have to
Speaker 1: go home, but you can't stay here, and then say well,
Speaker 1: this is our home, and he'd be like ah about
Speaker 1: that though.
Speaker 2: And even this sense of quote unquote respect or admiration
Speaker 2: for Takomsta and his like oratory abilities probably didn't extend
Speaker 2: much further than like these folks looking at him as
Speaker 2: like being like a slightly you know, better dressed member
Speaker 2: of a sub human species, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And let's also remember that his violence against Native
Speaker 1: Americans is a big reason Harrison later becomes president.
Speaker 2: People love that. People were all about it.
Speaker 1: We're all about it. It was like it was like
Speaker 1: his version being able to juggle. But you know, genocide.
Speaker 1: It does sound like he's giving them a chance to
Speaker 1: gtfo right, and he doesn't want to lose soldiers because
Speaker 1: the US is still recovering after the bloody Revolutionary War.
Speaker 1: He also would like to not du atrocities if he
Speaker 1: could dodge it, but his opinion on that is pretty ambivalent.
Speaker 2: History will prove.
Speaker 1: So they have this one chance. They have this deficit
Speaker 1: of trust. Tenskaatawa acts out of line, he violates the
Speaker 1: chain of command and as a result, and we're not
Speaker 1: saying magic's not real, but his magic doesn't work right.
Speaker 1: As a result, Harrison is hardened against Profitstown. He wanted
Speaker 1: it to be peacefully abandoned, but now he's all gas,
Speaker 1: no breaks, He just defends in the fight tense. Katawa's
Speaker 1: forces are are set against him now because they believe
Speaker 1: the guy. But those those spells did not protect them
Speaker 1: from bullets.
Speaker 2: They got shot, they.
Speaker 1: Died, they got made. They come back and they're like,
Speaker 1: you are a snake oil salesman.
Speaker 2: Can you picture the montage of this in the movie
Speaker 2: where you as the audience are like, no, no, don't
Speaker 2: do it, don't get off that ledge. What are you doing.
Speaker 2: You're sentencing your people to death at the very least,
Speaker 2: and absolute annihil at the most.
Speaker 1: Unfortunately, this happens in This happens more recently too in history,
Speaker 1: in different conflicts on the African continent, including like Zulu
Speaker 1: Wars and in the Boxer Rebellion in China, there have
Speaker 1: been these charismatic figures who claim that through magic, they
Speaker 1: can make you immune to bullets and spoiler. At no
Speaker 1: point in history has any one of those spells ever worked.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to be really fair again, I'm saying they
Speaker 1: haven't worked yet. I don't know whether magic's real, but
Speaker 1: the track record for bulletproofing through incantation is just terrible
Speaker 1: at this point. And so Native Americans are abandoning Profits Town.
Speaker 1: The vast majority of them are gone very quickly because
Speaker 1: they think tens Katawa is a con artist or a failure.
Speaker 1: On November eighth, eighteen eleven, Harrison comes into the mostly
Speaker 1: abandoned Profits Town and he burns it to the ground
Speaker 1: before marching back to one of the major Indiana towns
Speaker 1: at the time. Vincent's, is that how I would say it?
Speaker 2: I think that's right. Yeah, maybe e Vincen's if we're
Speaker 2: going to be Italian about it, but tell us yeah.
Speaker 1: But it comes to finally gets to Profits Town three
Speaker 1: months later, and he just sees ruins. They're not even
Speaker 1: smoking at this point, the fires have died again.
Speaker 2: Sorry to compare everything to movie production, but I can
Speaker 2: picture that too. He's coming back, he's done his due diligence,
Speaker 2: and they really crap the bed while he was gone.
Speaker 2: And look at look at the records they've left behind
Speaker 2: in their wake. Ineomorcone begins to play a million I'm sorry.
Speaker 2: These pop cultural references are are valuable for a reason, because,
Speaker 2: you know, the history if nothing at the end of
Speaker 2: the day, is storytelling, you know.
Speaker 1: So it comes to is dreams of creating creating a
Speaker 1: Native American confederation with Prophetstown as its capital. Those dreams
Speaker 1: are dashed, and he says, you know what, this doesn't
Speaker 1: matter though, I am still going to fight against this
Speaker 1: poisonous American expansion. And so he again he's very smart, right,
Speaker 1: he can smell what's in the wind, he can see
Speaker 1: the signs forming, and he sees that he calls it.
Speaker 1: He sees that there's going to be a war between
Speaker 1: the Americans and the British. They still hate each other. Right,
Speaker 1: it's not a smart guy.
Speaker 2: He's reading the room, right, He's like seeing the big picture.
Speaker 1: And so he doesn't know that historians will call it
Speaker 1: the War of eighteen twelve, but he knows it's on
Speaker 1: the way, and so he gets with He gets his
Speaker 1: surviving followers. They go to Fort Malden on the Canadian
Speaker 1: side of the Detroit River, and they join up with
Speaker 1: the British and these guys at this point all his followers.
Speaker 1: They are battle hard and they've been traumatized. They're not
Speaker 1: played around, so they are a huge factor in the
Speaker 1: British victory.
Speaker 2: There.
Speaker 1: The British and the Native American forces captured Detroit and
Speaker 1: they also capture two thousand, five hundred US soldiers.
Speaker 2: It's a coup, like they really is. Yeah. After this victory,
Speaker 2: to come takes off on another one of his long
Speaker 2: journeys to you know, gather forces, you know, from the
Speaker 2: various tribes, which did result in the uprising of the
Speaker 2: Alabama Creek tribe, and that was in response to his
Speaker 2: stirring you know rhetoric. The Chicka Saws, Choctaws and Cherokees, however,
Speaker 2: were not feeling to come to as vibes nearly as much.
Speaker 2: And at this point I just think this is very interesting.
Speaker 2: You know, he is he is a big picture kind
Speaker 2: of dude. He is able to kind of see what
Speaker 2: is needed to get the job done, and sometimes that
Speaker 2: means joining forces with folks who may look like your enemy.
Speaker 2: He actually joins up with the British General Henry A.
Speaker 2: Proctor in invading Ohio and you know again, common enemy,
Speaker 2: and together they take over Fort Miggs and they hold it.
Speaker 2: And William Henry Harrison at this point is on the
Speaker 2: Maumie River just above Toledo, where, based on a kind
Speaker 2: of a strategic gambit by Tecumsa, he intercepts and destroys
Speaker 2: a brigade of Kentucky soldiers under Colonel William Dudley.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this is this is quite a clever move
Speaker 1: on to comsa's part because it cuts off support that
Speaker 1: would have enabled Harrison to continue the conflict. However, this
Speaker 1: is a mixed bag victory because they don't capture the
Speaker 1: actual fort. They have to retreat. There is a guy
Speaker 1: gives Harrison time to make a counter attack despite the
Speaker 1: damage that's been done. On October fifth, eighteen thirteen, British
Speaker 1: and Native forces are routed, They're kicked out, they're runoff.
Speaker 1: Harrison wins control of the area. Tacumsa is killed in action.
Speaker 1: His body is carried away from the conflict area. He's
Speaker 1: buried in a secret grave, and just like the grave
Speaker 1: of Djengis Khan, this burial place has never been discovered
Speaker 1: and we still don't know much about his death. We
Speaker 1: don't know who killed him. We don't know how he
Speaker 1: died necessarily. All we can say for sure is that
Speaker 1: this real sleeves bag named Richard M. Johnson later becomes
Speaker 1: Vice President of the United States because of his tall tail.
Speaker 1: He claims that he had killed Tecumsa, and no one
Speaker 1: can disprove it. People don't really believe him, I think,
Speaker 1: but no one could disc prove it. But it's a
Speaker 1: very convenient way to build a legend around yourself. Now
Speaker 1: at this point you're probably wondering, ridiculous historians, what happened
Speaker 1: to Tenskawatawa the Prophet. Well, he had already lost his
Speaker 1: prestige because it turned out the spells he cast did
Speaker 1: not work. He had fled to Canada and he had
Speaker 1: a creative split with Tecumsa and to come didn't really
Speaker 1: account for him in his plants because he was no
Speaker 1: longer an effective propagandist, which is really how he functioned
Speaker 1: the whole way through. He lived until eighteen thirty four,
Speaker 1: and he died in Kansas, in a town called Argentine, Kansas.
Speaker 1: We didn't mention this, by the way, but one of
Speaker 1: the reasons he is known as the prophet is because
Speaker 1: he appeared to accurately predict a solar eclipse in eighteen
Speaker 1: oh six, So he did make the call there. But
Speaker 1: also I would point out that Native American communities for
Speaker 1: thousands of years across North and South America, they had
Speaker 1: a pretty good grasp of the patterns of the heavens.
Speaker 1: So it's kind of sure. It's kind of like saying, hey,
Speaker 1: it's going to be five pm after four point thirty,
Speaker 1: and people are like, this guy's a genius.
Speaker 2: And also like a broken clock is right twice a day.
Speaker 2: That kind of thing, you know, when you have people
Speaker 2: that are looking to you to confirm whether or not
Speaker 2: you've got some sort of powers of sight, and then
Speaker 2: you get one thing right and that's the one you
Speaker 2: kind of play up. You know. Yea reminds me of
Speaker 2: like Nostra damas and things like that, where you know,
Speaker 2: he definitely had some things that you know, played pretty
Speaker 2: close to the truth, but also when you interpret it
Speaker 2: in different ways, it was kind of just some fancy talk.
Speaker 1: Yeah, kind of like how Alice Jones was right about
Speaker 1: Bohemian Grove. That's right, Like, you know, we're aware of that,
Speaker 1: but that doesn't mean everything they say is true.
Speaker 2: That's exactly right. But oftentimes, you know, if you have
Speaker 2: zealous followers, they will point to that thing as proof
Speaker 2: positive that you are you know, what you say you are,
Speaker 2: and that you are some sort of messiah.
Speaker 1: And if you read more about the profit, what you'll
Speaker 1: see is that he was a propagandist. He was very
Speaker 1: much quote unquote about that life. He wanted to reject
Speaker 1: to these the normalization, like I said, of various quote
Speaker 1: unquote white cultural things, said, you know, guys, stop drinking,
Speaker 1: which is great because alcoholism was and is a huge
Speaker 1: danger to Native communities. He said, look, we just wear
Speaker 1: clothing from animal skins and furs like we always did.
Speaker 2: No individual can own land.
Speaker 1: And then he also had some more problematic stuff like
Speaker 1: don't inter marry with any Europeans. Also, we should burn witches. Ooh, okay,
Speaker 1: that last one.
Speaker 2: That one didn't well, did it?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: I wonder where he put when he was like listing
Speaker 1: off his things. Did he just start trying? Did he
Speaker 1: put witches at the end?
Speaker 2: Did he put the witches before, like animal first? So
Speaker 2: he says, like booz booze is bad. You know, we
Speaker 2: can't own the land.
Speaker 3: We should burn the witches and you know what, I think.
Speaker 1: I think it was a mid game slip in as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, should we also slam in the back of our dragula? Yes, yes,
Speaker 2: we speaking ditches and burning witches while we're at it.
Speaker 2: You know, I'm just sorry. I never Rob Zombies in
Speaker 2: my Power Man is. Oh yeah, no, Rob. They were
Speaker 2: very prop They're very in the same wheel. Actually, I
Speaker 2: think the power Man five thousand dude is Rob Zombie's
Speaker 2: like cousin or brother. It's like his younger brother. I
Speaker 2: think that's right. Yeah, well, let's let's verify this because
Speaker 2: they're on nineteen ninety nine nostalgia for you guys at
Speaker 2: the tail end of an episode. We've promised curses, y'all.
Speaker 2: We've promised curses. But as Max pointed out off air,
Speaker 2: you got to talk about the man before you can
Speaker 2: get to the curse, because he also has to die
Speaker 2: in order for this curse to kind of start to percolate.
Speaker 1: And that is Spider One, the frontman of Powerman five thousand,
Speaker 1: younger brother of Rob Zombie. I feel like they're in
Speaker 1: it to coomsa Tenska Watawa situation. Yes, a little more wholesome,
Speaker 1: you got there, But they're probably just a great hang
Speaker 1: on Thanksgiving, you know what I mean. I bet they
Speaker 1: sure they see my chill dudes, So you're right, nol.
Speaker 1: We had to give you the first part the true
Speaker 1: real world events, and we hope you join us this Thursday,
Speaker 1: because later this week we're going to get to the
Speaker 1: real juicy stuff. In the next episode of Ridiculous History,
Speaker 1: Part two of Takamsa's Curse, we're going to dive into
Speaker 1: the idea of the curse here in specific, curses in general,
Speaker 1: and the examples of the curse that the examples of
Speaker 1: the curse that apparently, according to true believers, continue to
Speaker 1: haunt us. Presidents this day. Spoiler William Henry Harrison is
Speaker 1: the first guy who gets the curse.
Speaker 2: Yeah to comment, that's for sure. Yeah, definitely the heel
Speaker 2: of our story here. But speaking of our story, huge
Speaker 2: thanks to super producer and research associated straordinary Max Williams
Speaker 2: for all of your incredible work on this research brief.
Speaker 2: We're looking forward to getting into part two. Max's brother
Speaker 2: actual brother by blood in fact, Alex Williams, who composed
Speaker 2: our theme.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Hey, Max, Between you and Alex, who's the Tenskawatawa,
Speaker 1: who's the takumso I'm Takumsa.
Speaker 3: He's definitely the prophet, even though I am the younger brother.
Speaker 1: I feel like though that's the kind of question when
Speaker 1: I asked siblings, everybody will want to be tacumso clearly right.
Speaker 2: I don't know, Alex is weird. He might want to
Speaker 2: be the prophet.
Speaker 1: Okay loves underdog And thanks also to Jonathan Strickland ak
Speaker 1: the Quister. That's just two times who've said the name.
Speaker 2: Thanks to A. J.
Speaker 1: Jacobs, the Puzzler will be returning or may eaves Jeffcoat
Speaker 1: Christopher hassiotis did good. Folks over at Encyclopedia Britannica. We've
Speaker 1: got a history of them coming up along the way,
Speaker 1: and thanks to you know, I'm excited for part two.
Speaker 2: Same here. We'll see you next time, folks. For more
Speaker 2: podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
Speaker 2: wherever you listen to your favorite shows.