In the Shadow of the Prophet: Legacy of the 1806 Eclipse

Today Zoe and Easton are unraveling a complex yet fascinating story connecting a solar eclipse in 1806 to a future president, Chief Anderson's ascension to Chiefdom, and a pan-indigenous movement led by a Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa- the man that many remember as 'The prophet.' They won't be alone however. Our curator of Native American history and life, Sara Schumacher, is back with us, setting the historical stage and teaching us who the fascinating figures that make up this story are and how they got here. Later on, the former Assistant Chief of the Delaware Tribe of Indians in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, and was a longtime cultural ambassador and Historical Interpreter here at Conner Prairie, Mike Pace, makes his podcast debut to recount his experiences as a member of the Lenape nation and explore the long-term impacts that the often overlooked indigenous population have on our state of Indiana as well as our nation.

Our sources:

Badger, Joseph and Day, Henry Noble. A Memoir of Rev. Joseph Badger. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan, September 2009.

Drake, Benjamin. 1841. Life of Tecumseh. Cincinnati: Anderson, Gates & Wright.

Eggleston, Edward, and Lillie Eggleston Seelye. 1878. Tecumseh and the Shawnee Prophet. New York: Dodd, Mead & Company.

Mason, Augustus L. 1904. True Stories of Our Pioneers. E.A. Merriam.

McDonnell, Micheal A., 2015, Masters of Empire: Great Lakes Indians and the Making of America, New York: Hill and Wang, a division of Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. 

Kinietz, W. Vernon, and Erminie Voegelin. Shawnese Traditions: C. C. Trowbridge's Account. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Museum of Anthropological Archaeology, 1939. https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11395092. PDF. *

* This is a work created by an unreliable author with a singular source to represent a vast nation of people. Black Hoof himself has biases that may leak into the work as well. He would have no reason not to mention the 1806 eclipse and the Prophet but since we can’t read Trowbridge’s notes we don’t know if Black Hoof mentioned it and Trowbridge left it out or if it was never mentioned at all. Also sensationalizes ritual cannibalism which rarely occurred amongst the Shawnee and even rarer post-contact.