| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 104.3

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 104.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

John Sugden. Tecumseh: A Life. (A John Macrae Book.) New York: Henry Holt. 1997. Pp. xi, 492. $34.95.

John Sugden has been a student of Tecumseh and the Shawnee for three decades and has examined "an enormous body of documentation, much of it previously unknown" (p. x). The result, he assures us, is "the first book on Tecumseh to be grounded in thorough research into the history and historical culture of Tecumseh's people, the Shawnees" (p. x). This is not Sugden's first book on Tecumseh. In 1985, his Tecumseh's Last Stand appeared, a work that concentrated on the last few weeks of its subject's life. This time Sugden has produced a full-fledged life and times. 1

The author undertook a daunting task, as very few details of Tecumseh's life before 1800 are known with any certainty. Indeed, he does not emerge from the shadow of his brother, the Shawnee Prophet, until about 1805, a fact that has discouraged other biographers from more than brief speculation about his early life. Nevertheless, Sugden attempts to provide that which has eluded others, although even he admits to relief when he moves beyond "the twilight world between myth and history" (p. 84) that obscures about two-thirds of Tecumseh's life. Then he can reduce his dependence on terms (perhaps, maybe, probably, likely, and must have) that telegraph his lack of solid data. The cumulative effect of their frequent use does not inspire confidence in the reader and goes a way toward explaining why earlier biographers provided so little on Tecumseh's early years. . . .

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