The bicentennial of the War of 1812 will be widely commemorated in Canada, but not so much in the United States. A good part of the credit, or blame, for this disparity, depending on your side of the border, belongs to the great Shawnee war leader Tecumseh.
Battle of Tipperance. Kutz and Allison print, 1889. Image Courtesy of the Library of Congress
Battle of the Thames and the death of Tecumseh, by the Kentucky mounted volunteers led by Colonel Richard M. Johnson, 5th Oct. 1813. Lithograph c1833. Image Courtesy of the Library of Congress
United States propaganda before and during the War of 1812 focused on Britain's military alliances with frontier tribes and its alleged involvement in atrocities, a constant theme since the Declaration of Independence that was transferred into Northern propaganda against the Confederacy in the early years of the American Civil War. Similar atrocities by American frontiersman against noncombatant Indians were ignored. A scene on the frontiers as practiced by the humane British and their worthy allies!
The war, once an academic backwater, is now seen as a crucial event in forging three national identities – Canadian, American and the pan-tribal American Indian. Historians are paying renewed attention to the conflict on the western frontier – the Old Northwest for the United States, and Upper Canada for the British. The battles here now look like the culmination of a generation of formidable Native resistance to Euro-American encroachment.
