Tecumseh and Brock Read Free Page B

Tecumseh was buried near the place where he fell — of this faction, some believe his bones have since been dug up and moved elsewhere, while others say that the great chief still lies in a grave on the battlefield and that someday his bones will be unearthed and his broken thigh bone will reveal his identity. Another theory holds that Tecumseh’s body was removed from the field of battle to be buried in a grave in what is now the east end of London, Ontario. Yet another view is that Tecumseh’s body was taken from the battlefield by native warriors and was transported for burial to the native territory of St. Anne Island, located on the Ontario side of the St. Clair River, across from the state of Michigan and adjacent to Walpole Island.
    In 1931, when Wilson Knaggs and his family moved into the home of the elderly Sarah White on Walpole Island, Knaggs poked around in the attic, where he discovered a burlap bag containing human bones. When informed of the find, Mrs. White was not at all surprised. She told Knaggs that her late husband, Chief Joseph White, had placed the bones there, and that their presence was to remain a secret. Knaggs pressed further for an explanation, and Mrs. White finally told him that the bones were those of Tecumseh. 4
    According to the story, Chief White had acquired the bones from a Dr. Mitchell, who had himself obtained them from a burial site on St. Anne Island. Fearing that various parties would want to take possession of the remains, Chief White hid them around his property in a number of locations. Mrs. White had intended to go to her death without revealing her husband’s secret.
    Feeling the weight of responsibility for the find, Knaggs decided to tell the Walpole Island Soldiers’ Club, consisting of native veterans of the First World War. The veterans acted quickly. They called in experts and shared their discovery with others, some of whom were skeptical. Dr. W. B. Rutherford of Sarnia, Ontario, was called in to examine the bones and managed to assemble the skeleton of a medium-sized male. What was missing was the critical piece of evidence: the thigh bone.
    The veterans of Walpole Island held to their claim that Tecumseh had been found. Frustrated by the absence of any effort to honour Tecumseh with a monument and burial place on the island, they held a ceremony on a sunny day in August 1934. Guests from both Canada and the United States convened on Walpole Island to commemorate the life of the great leader, the discovery of his bones, and the plan to establish a burial site.
    Progress toward establishing the site proceeded slowly. Finally, on August 25, 1941, several thousand people journeyed to Walpole Island to attend a ceremony in which the great Shawnee chief’s bones were placed inside a casket made especially for the occasion. The casket was then sealed inside a stone cairn located on the northwest corner of the island, overlooking the St. Clair River. 5 As far as the veterans on Walpole Island were concerned, Tecumseh had found a resting place on native soil.

Notes

    Chapter 1: Tecumseh, the Shooting Star

Richard White, The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650–1815 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 269.
John Sugden, Tecumseh: A Life (New York: Henry Holt, 1997), 215.
Stephen Ruddell, Reminiscences of Tecumseh’s Youth (Wisconsin Historical Society, 2003), 120; online facsimile edition at http://www.americanjourneys.org/aj-155.
John Sugden, Tecumseh: A Life (New York: Henry Holt, 1997), 23.
Benjamin Drake, Life of Tecumseh, and of His Brother the Prophet; with a Historical Sketch of the Shawanoe Indians (Cincinnati: E. Morgan, 1841), 9.
Ibid.
Albert Gallatin, A Synopsis of the Indian Tribes within the United States East of the Rocky Mountains, and in the British and Russian Possessions in North America (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1836), 65–68.
Benjamin Drake, Life of Tecumseh,