by History Buff

Created on: December 15, 2010   Last Updated: December 16, 2010

Life is full of strange coincidences and odd things that make you think twice.

History can be a fascinating topic, not just because it offers so much variety but also because some of the things that have occurred can be directly linked. Whether people just dismiss strange similarities as being just a coincidence or something more is entirely up to the reader!

One long list of similarities that have always fascinated me was the so called 'Curse of Tecumseh." Anyone familiar with this will have weighed up what the chances are of it being an actual curse or just a tall tale passed down over many years. The problem with writing it off as a tall tale ignores that history backs it up with dates - lots of them!

Chief Tecumseh (1768 - 1813) was a Native American leader of the Shawnee tribe and also of the tribal confederacy that opposed the United States during the war of 1812.

 A Wikipaedia reference states "In September 1809, William Henry Harrison, Governor of the Indiana Territory negotiated the Treaty of Fort Wayne in which a delegation of Indians ceded 3 million acres (12,000 km²) of Native American lands to the United States. The negotiations had not been authorised by the United States President, and Chief Tecumseh gained prominence through his opposition to the treaty.

In August of 1810 Tecumseh led four hundred armed warriors to Harrison's home and argued against the treaty. Harrison refused to be forced into changing the treaty and after Tecumseh starting urging his warriors to kill him he drew his sword and the town garrison moved in to protect him."

On 7 November 1811 Governor Harrison and around 1000 men fought a battle on a hill outside Prophetstown, Indiana against Tecumseh's brother Tenskwatawa and the tribal confederacy. Harrison and his men succeeded in fighting off Tenskwatawa and his men and then proceeded to burn the town. This was the battle of Tippecanoe which resulted in Tenskwatawa losing both prestige and the confidence of Tecumseh. This was supposedly the "straw that broke the camel's back" and caused Tecumseh to put a curse on Harrison and future US presidents. This has been interpreted as affecting every future president of the United States (starting with Harrison) who will die in office within each twenty-five year period.

Chief Tecumseh sided with the British against the United States during the War of 1812. He was killed in Canada on 5 October 1813 fighting with his tribes of the confederacy

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