Reviews

   History is an odd admixture.  What

we understand as historical fact is in reality a construction made of many ingredients.  History is based upon objective description, subjective reminiscence, collective memory, cultural conventions, ideological imperatives, and political exigencies.  And military history, in particular, can be especially opaque.  In the early nineteenth century, the German military theorist Carl von Clausewitz famously observed that military conflict was inevitably conducted within what he described as the “fog of war,” an uncertainty of awareness brought about by the chaos and confusion inherent in combat.  Thus, even in the best of circumstances, military historians are often denied the sharply focused recollections that form the basis of other types of historical inquiry and must rely instead on testimony illuminated, in Clausewitz’s memorable phrase, only by “twilight.”

In Don’t Give Up the Ship! Myths of the War of 1812, Donald R. Hickey, one of America’s most respected War of 1812 historians, has noted that the War of 1812, perhaps more than any other American struggle, became encrusted with a unique and persistent layer of legend, lore, and embellishment. One moment of that conflict, the end of the October 5, 1813 Battle of the Thames when the Shawnee warrior Tecumseh was killed by American troops, has seemed to inspire more than its share of historical controversy.  Specifically, historians have long debated two important aspects of that event: who killed Tecumseh; and what happened to his body?

Frank Kuron, an independent scholar from Toledo, Ohio, has attempted to answer the first of these questions in “Thus Fell Tecumseh”: The 1813 Struggle for the Northwest Territory and the Mystery Surrounding Who Killed Tecumseh, Revealed Through the Personal Accounts of the Participants.  Interestingly, Kuron’s efforts follow closely the 2005 publication of Tecumseh’s Bones, the Canadian independent scholar Guy St. Denis’s attempt to answer the second.

Kuron begins his investigation with the assertion that “I love history” (ix).  And indeed, the author’s enthusiasm for his topic permeates every page of the study. Kuron explains that when he first began to learn of the region’s history, he found out that “even the great Shawnee Indian chief, Tecumseh, traversed this area frequently during his life.” But, when Kuron read of Tecumseh’s death, the accounts were “full of contradictory claims of how, and by whose hand, he fell.  My curiosity was instantly piqued, and I just had to learn more about this controversy (x).

Kuron bases this work upon a close examination of over one-hundred primary accounts created by individuals claiming to have had first-hand knowledge of Tecumseh’s death or its immediate aftermath.  Further, Kuron does a good job of placing the events described by these accounts into the broader perspective of the War of 1812 in the Northwest.  Early chapters provide an overview of Tecumseh’s life while subsequent ones place the last years of his life squarely within the military campaigns surrounding Detroit and the Western Basin of Lake Erie during the conflict.  

Ultimately, the evidence leads Kuron to four candidates whom, in his opinion, he believes are the most likely to have killed the Shawnee leader.  Kuron’s primary suspects are: Richard M. Johnson, who led the Kentucky charge into the Indian ranks, who certainly killed an Indian later identified by some as Tecumseh, who was severely wounded in the engagement, and who in 1837 used the claim that he had killed Tecumseh to successfully bolster his political reputation as a candidate for the vice presidency; William Whitley, who was killed on the field near where Johnson was wounded and the Indian killed by Johnson found, and whom was later identified by some as firing the fatal shot; David King, who, according  to some reports, killed an Indian (not the same as the one shot by Johnson) who was later also identified as Tecumseh; and Major David Thompson, who, according to family tradition and one second-hand account reported to Lyman Draper many years after the engagement, possibly shot the Indian claimed to have been killed by David King.

Few of Kuron’s findings will be a surprise to professional historians.  In fact, Robert McAfee, a Kentuckian who participated in the battle and who wrote one of the war’s first histories suggested Johnson, Whitley, and King as the most likely perpetrators in 1816.  In recent years, John Sugden came to much the same conclusions in his book-length study of the Shawnee warrior’s death, Tecumseh’s Last Stand, written in 1985, and then reiterated those findings in his definitive biography Tecumseh: A Life (1997).  Even more recently, Donald Hickey writing in Don’t Give Up the Ship! (2006) likewise embraces generally the same conclusions.

But this book is clearly not written for professional historians.  Instead, Thus Fell Tecumseh will appeal directly to armchair historians, regional military history buffs, local historians, and all those with an abiding interest in the history of Maumee Valley.  Kuron seems absolutely at home working within the rarified environment of scattered primary source material; his analysis is methodical and his findings acute; he writes well and with conviction; and ultimately, he successfully guides his readers as together they unravel a terrific mystery characterized by dead-ends, red-herrings, and false leads and shaped for nearly two-hundred years by a remarkable set of personalities, conflicting motives, and political ambitions.  This is local history at its best.