Panel 21

Listen, Father! The Americans have not yet defeated us by land; neither are we sure they have done so by water—we therefore wish to remain here and fight our enemy . . . —Tecumseh to the British, Tippecanoe, 1811, Panel 21, 1956, Inscription: [illegible] TIPPECANOE — [WESTWARD?] PUSH, Jacob Lawrence, from Struggle: From the History of the American People, 1954–56, Collection of Harvey and Harvey-Ann Ross, © 2019 The Jacob and Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence Foundation, Seattle / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

Look Closer

This engraving of a painting by Alonzo Chappel is in the pages of Lawrence’s 1953 source The Story of America in Pictures illustrating the Battle of Tippecanoe. An expansive view of Tecumseh’s forces besieged by the American military, it is a scene of entrenched battle. Lawrence, in contrast, positions the viewer in the midst of a the fight in which no one has yet fallen.

Battle of Tippecanoe, engraving illustrated in Alan C. Collins, The Story of America in Pictures, Doubleday & Company, 1953. Photo by Bob Packert/PEM

Read Closer

In 1813, Shawnee Chief Tecumseh delivered this speech to British General Henry A. Proctor shortly before the Battle of the Thames in Canada. He implores the British to stay and fight for the lost Native land they had pledged to help reclaim. Lawrence conflated this speech with Tecumseh’s loss at Tippecanoe in 1811, which precipitated the steady decline of his confederation but not his resolve to continue to fight the Americans for his lands.

Excerpt from Edward Eggleston and Elizabeth Eggleston Seelye, Tecumseh and the Shawnee Prophet (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1878)
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