From you in your career. Thank you. Thank you. Booktv continues now on cspan2, television for serious readers. Welcome everybody to a house divided coming to from Abraham Lincoln book shop in chicago. Thank you very much for joining us today. My name is bjorn skaptason, and i will be the administrator for todays program. I just have a little bit of information to cover before we start. First of all the book were discussing today on house divided is tecumseh and the prophet the shawnee brothers who defied a nation and author of the book is Peter Cozzens and you going to meet peter in just a moment when he gets talking with Daniel Weinberg, the host of your show. For someone to tell you something about tecumseh and the prophet. Comes to us from alfred aiken off published and we thank them from publishing the book and helping katie peter on the program with us today. The cost of the book is 35 and it can be ordered from our website. Those of you who are watching this on the live stream, on facebook live, i will put a link to the order form in the Comment Section of the program and you can click through an order yourself a signed First Edition of it at any time. Today, october 27, 2020, is the release date for the book. Were declaring this a release party and we thank Peter Cozzens a for signing a special date of release bookplate. That means books that you order from us on this program will be a limited edition. I can tell how many books are going to be in that limited edition. That is up to you. However many books you order through this program you will get a signed limitededition bookplate from Abraham Lincoln book shop. This program will be rebroadcast on Television Later by cspan, and we thank cspan for participating in this program. I have one of the piece of information. Please leave your questions for Peter Cozzens in the comments section of this facebook post. Well do a q a after one hour comes when approximately 345 approximate 4 45 central time we will begin taking questions. But feel free to leave your question in the Comment Section of the facebook feed at any time. I think that checks off everything on my list, dan. So without further ado let me introduce your host for today who introduced the author, Daniel Weinberg of Abraham Lincoln book shop. Thank you, be on. Welcome to everyone. I was in the broadcast duties of the bookshop but there was a technical problem, some in another office instead. We can still see each other if you each other, and thats the object of this. Peter cozzens walked into my shop is what, 15, 16 year old back in the day in the 70s, and look where you are now, pete. What you have done. You have served as a captain in the army. Used in your career in the Foreign Service how many counsels have you been a . I was in embassy and amal, peru, costa rica and in mexico. Thank you for your service to us. You were awarded by the way the american Foreign Service association highest honor, the william rivkin award given annually to one Foreign Service officer for moral courage, integrity. All of that certain issue, and a so happy to be with you again. Thank you so much. You have been on the Advisory Council of the lincoln price in your author or editor of 16 books on american civil war, and indian wars of the American West. Your last book you were here with us, the earth is weeping, the epic story of the indian wars for the American West, is one that we still have and should be with this book on anyones bookshelf for the indian experience, the native experience in the entire United States. His latest book as bjorn just said is tecumseh and the prophet the shawnee brothers who defied a nation. Its 537 pages with terrific color illustrations. Well get to that in a moment. Its 35 and today if you order it you will get one that we are now calling a limited edition, otherwise we will have bookplates signed that will be inserting if youre watching this after todays program. The colorful illustrations, i want to show you a few. Please tell us of them briefly when we get to them. Just show what they are. Here is one of tecumseh, and they are all color. How did you get your publisher for all color in this book . To tell you the truth, it blew me away. It was their decision, the art director said he has given us so much pictures wouldnt do them justice to do them in black and white. They went the extra mile, extra expense for this illustration and i just, i dont like if you dont like to write alicia got a book with great pictures. Terrific. I cant say it is a picture book but it really makes it feel like that certainly. Also there are many wonderful maps throughout. Did you produce the maps . Who made the maps . We will see a few of them a little later on. I found them a great help in understanding the book and where you are because theyre so many players. Thank you. I provided background maps, maybe four or five samples and a indicator what i wanted on each map but ive always been a believer, you can never have too many maps, that they are critical and so i was able to prevail on the publisher to produce 14 maps for the book that i hope covered every possible area of interest in the course of the story. And i think they are crucial to understand because its difficult sometimes to know where everything is in modernday maps without seeing it in yours. Your last book as we talked about was the earth is weeping. In that you presented a cultural, Indian Culture west of the mississippi. Did you find the native culture in this book eat of the mississippi much different . Significantly different and that was a surprise to me. Significantly different in one particular way that greatly assisted tecumseh and tenskwatawa and their predecessors in building an intertribal alliances. And that is to say that once you got past the great conflict of the 17th century, and by the time the United States was born, the tribes east of the mississippi generally and particularly north of the ohio got along pretty well. They were not inherently a warrior culture in the way the tribes, in the American West work. It was much easier for them to formalize because there was not great animosity. They were not fighting over limited resources like the buffalo. These were tribes that were both agricultural and supplemented that with funding. It was plentiful deer population and we had agriculture. As the nature of the culture they were much less much more readily formed alliances than the tribes in the west. This is a dual biography and a little more challenging but i found it fascinating the way you put the two together. Theres also a number of battles in here, and you a good battle the story and make it exciting for the reader. You went into the inking culture and as well into politics of the Indian Culture, and also politics between all the players that were involved. There were numbers of them and will get to that. Your sources, quickly briefly but i want to get into the book. Your sources what sources were best for both felt like site and how biased with a perhaps and, of course, the indian side, i assume they were oral. Tony about the sources. What works best for you . One source that was critical for tecumseh early life, and that is a biography written by a fellow named Stephen Ruddell who is captured by the shawnee in a raid in kentucky when he was 12. He was captured and he was adopted into the shawnee tribe and became the adopted brother of tecumseh and they became very close. He was with tecumseh for a better part of 15 years and fought with them on raids against kentucky and rate of the ohio river and saw the maturation of tecumseh until his late 20s when rundell decided to return to kentucky, return to white society, become a minister. Although he and tecumseh remain friends even after that and visited one another. And he left a wonderful journal i think is very honest, very straightforward about tecumseh early life. That was about the sources also tenskwatawa, the prophet, in the 1820s, to the think of it of michigan territory, he related a great deal about shawnee culture, the indians way of life, traditions, religion, that was taken down by the private secretary. That was an extremely valuable source. And the british records, British Indian agent, Turkish Military were valuable to. I did a lot of work to the canadian archive. And tecumsehs utterances and conferences which american lives were very useful. There were some great material from missionaries who visited their village. I didnt have the wealth of primary sources that i had for the earth is weeping because the father back to going time, the scanner scare should they. I felt i had enough to really tease out the story and i hope both these men to life as human beings. We have many artifacts, and although this is not tecumseh but since you brought up ruddell, here is 1832 pamphlet that the home sisters were taken just before the black hawk war in 1832. I suppose this was something well get into the culture of maybe, one way to get into one part of the culture. How often were whites taken by indians out east and brought up as indians, even though ruddell then returned to the white culture . How often did this occur . It was very frequent, very common. Thats another way which the Indian Tribes east of the mississippi differed from the tribes in the west who tended not to take, to take captives and raisin in the society. Basically in the eastern woodland Indian Culture, the shawnee and others, it was very common, when you captured children and again as old as 12, 13, 14, sometimes even older to raise them as members of your society. Particularly among adults, very common to raise, to integrate women into the cultures. And even adult men were on occasion they were tortured and killed to avenge the loss of shawnee warriors for the warriors of other woodland tribes were killed in engagements, and that was the prerogative of the women of the tribes, thumbs up or thumbs down on them. But they more often than not were adopted into tribes through a ritual cleansing process, among those who are adopted into the shawnee were daniel boone when he was in his 20s, he was captured and adopted in the tribe id later escape. Interestingly, and i will wrap this up, when the british made peace with the eastern woodland tribes out of money at war, one of terms was the tribes would return their white captives to colonial society, and very few wanted to be repatriated. Most of them tend to prefer living among the indians. I have a lot of stories about numerous whites who are adopted into these tribes and lived part of their lives in the tribes and left a excellent records of the time among the indians. You gave a great tool of information. I want to quickly get into what the origins were of the shawnee. There were algonquin tribes and you devote a chapter to the way of life and the social, that tecumseh and the prophet grew up within. What was that, very briefly, what was that they grew up in . I know the shawnee were not a very cohesive try. They had five divisions. Right. Their origins are in ohio but they fled ohio when the iroquois sweat most of the algonquin people out of the ohio valley. It wasnt until the mid1700s that the shawnee reunited in southern ohio. They were a Fraternal Society as opposed to some of the southern tribes. A mans worth was judged by his prowess as a lawyer and a Hunter Company even though the tribes did not make war with one another come to the extent the tribes in the west did. They did conduct raids back and forth for horses for this or that. As a man your judged by your prowess, generally as aware, hunter and provided for your family. And the women were judged by how well you married, by how well your husband did as a provider. It was a culture that was semisedentary. They practiced agriculture and a wide variety of foods. Again, unlike what was there political makeup . There were five divisions, traditionally among the shawnee and each division traditionally was supposed to provide one aspect of leadership, one division, one provided were leaders, another division of e type provided your religious leaders. Another was known for being the providers of the shamans here but in practice though, those divisions kind of melded, and as time went by those differences became less important. Although your membership in a division did the fine you to a degree defined to a degree in your fraternal client. You had divisions, five divisions then you had numerous clans that were based on common paternal descendent. Your clan loyalty was first and foremost. Then your loyalty to your division, angrily to the shawnee overall was third in terms of importance. You have in your appendix numerous, 30 odd tribes that you put in there, some being divisions of the shawnee, which was very helpful to know whom they were within the book. I went back there a number of times to remind myself who they were. Thank you. You said were powerful enough that they were arbiters of indian strife. How did that occur . They were originally the most powerful algonquin tribes, but they were badly decimated in were sequenced the iroquois. But they maintain in their status, i dont member precisely how the intertribal negotiations with but they maintain their status as a called the keeper of the great fire, keeper of the Great Council fire. They would set the time and place of intertribal gatherings, intertribal counsels. When disputes arose between tribes, tribes generally would defer. Again that something that separates the eastern tribes in western tribes is they did not exist out on the planes or elsewhere in the west. That was unique to the tribes of the old northwest, the midwest. I think their status arrived from the days when they were the tehran, the most powerful among the algonquins. Theres a number of Power Centers in this book, the americans, the british, french, tecumseh and the prophet who came together many times, the pottawatomie and other indian leaders such as five metals in one. Having all these different Power Centers, as i see them, explain some of the ups and downs that tecumseh putting together this confederacy which were going to get you right after this. It was an indian maxim. I know it says everyman his own sheep. Was a kind of a fatal flaw in that regard for the confederacy, every tribe being its own chief . I dont want to put up a spoiler alert but that was a significant flaw. On the one in the early spoke just how strong becomes his character was another charismatic he was also it spoke very highly of just how compelling tenskwatawas religious and social doctrines were, that the indians of other tribes willingly subordinated themselves to both these men. Neither of them had any institutional or other means of compelling obedience from other tribes, much less their own people. The tribal leaders who did follow them, again they faced the same situation within their own tribes, so there was no compulsion. It was really eventually nearly 6000 indian warriors who follow tecumseh and tenskwatawa at the apex of the life did so voluntarily because they believed it was in their best interest to do so. Not because of any institutional pressure for them to do so or any punishment if they choose not to. There was a nativist religion fervor. Maybe you can explain its origins. How did the prophet advanced it . How widespread did it become . Was the origin perhaps a mistake early on of an early prophet . Did tenskwatawa use. Pgh yes absolutely. Thats a point i make in the book that tenskwatawa, although he undoubtedly was a most influential and in mechanisticd even more so than who gave rise to the ghosts ghost standt with becky was without a doubt the most influential indian prophet. He did not, that was a long tradition of prophecy among the east woodland tribes. When back to the 1600s. Going back he drew upon those influences. He was on record as calling himself the indian pontiac. Pontiac put a great deal of his success in drawing on the religious doctrine. He interpreted through his military and political purposes, and tenskwatawa then drew on both of their experiences. So he assimilated all these im sorry. I just want ask if tecumseh true on pontiac as well . Very much so. Pontiac, i mean, tales of exploits certainly worth told around campfires when both of these men were boys. They were only, the pontiacs war was only, was less than generation removed from the use of both these men. It was very much present in their lives. They both acknowledged the debt they owed the pontiac. Tenskwatawa brought a lot of novel things into his religious and social creative native violence in. He did draw considerably on prior profits. Were their dueling profits at all at this time in the east . There were. None that directly affected tenskwatawas much be on the first days of his ministry, for lack of a better word. There were a couple of delaware women who call themselves prophets that they eventually gave way to tenskwatawas. There was a mohican prophet but he limited himself to proselytize among the mohicans. Tenskwatawas willie never had a rival. Yet protege he had a protege who was in ottawa and proselytize and interpreted tenskwatawas doctrine. He had no real competitor in his time. Lets get into the characters of these two main characters in your book. William Henry Harrison spoke of tecumseh. We will get to in a moment as well, quite the lovingly. He spoke of their character traits. How did those traits serve him well . I know he had to learn to speak english early on, and that must have helped him. What was it about some of the traits he had . Harrison testament to tecumseh he wrote in a letter to secretary for he was so impressed with tecumseh he said if it were not for the presence of the United States, tecumseh easily could give rise to an empire as great as that of indian peru or of the aztecs of mexico. He was very impressed with him. Tecumseh was sort o