Dying+Tecumseh,+The

Date: modeled ca. 1837-1846, carved 1856
 * [[image:https://s3.amazonaws.com/saam.media/files/styles/x_large/s3/images/1916/1916.8.1_1a.jpg?itok=y6VYuBId width="385" height="218" link="@https://americanart.si.edu/artwork/the-dying-tecumseh-19670"]] || Title: **The Dying Tecumseh**

Artist: **Ferdinand Pettrich** Born: Dresden, Germany 1798 Died: Rome, Italy 1872

Medium: marble with painted copper alloy tomahawk Dimensions: 36 5/8 x 77 5/8 x 53 3/4 in. (93.1 x 197.2 x 136.6 cm.) Smithsonian American Art Museum Transfer from the U.S. Capitol

Accession: 1916.8.1 || Tecumseh was a Shawnee chief, known for organizing a confederacy of Indian nations in the Old Northwest between 1805 and his death eight years later. He urged local tribes to resist white purchase of Indian land and to continue communal ownership of property-- ideas that made him an Indian nationalist and leader of enduring fame. Even whites recognized his greatness, but his death, tragic as they made it out to be, signaled the inevitablility of white advance. He allied with the British during the War of 1812. At the Battle of the Thames in 1813, the English army deserted Tecumseh's forces, leaving them extremely vulnerable. Tecumseh was wounded in the leg by an American rifle and then killed because her urged his men to continue on without him. The exact circumstances of his death, including the identity of the marksman, are unknown.
 * Exhibition Label: **

Pettrich loosely based this sculpture on the classical image of the //Dying Gaul//-- a defeated leader bravely facing death. Ferdinand Pettrich's marble, which creates for Tecumseh the role of a dying Roman general, passes judgement on all Indian "heroes" who died in battle against whites. The ir courage and skill, Pettrich maintains, were devoted to the wrong cause. Their deaths argues not for Indian rights but for the triumph of expansionism.

“…in the history of the United States…there are some mistakes concerning the accounts of the Indians, particularly the accounts of our brave Tecumseh, as it is claimed that he was killed by a soldier named Johnson, upon whom they conferred the honor of having disposed of the dreaded Tecumseh. Even pictured out as being coming up with his tomahawk to strike a man who was on horseback, but being instantly shot dead with the pistol. Now I have repeatedly heard our oldest Indians, both male and female, who were present at the defeat of the British and Indians, all tell a unanimous story, saying that they came to a clearing or opening spot, and it was there where Tecumseh ordered his warriors to rally and fight the Americans once more and in this very spot one of the American musket balls took effect in Tecumseh's leg so as to break the bone of his leg, that he could not stand up. He was sitting on the ground when he told his warriors to flee as well as they could, and furthermore said, 'One of my leg is shot off! But leave me one or two guns loaded; I am going to have a last shot. Be quick and go!' That was the last word spoken by Tecumseh. As they look back, they saw the soldiers thick as swarm of bees around where Tecumseh was sitting on the ground with his broken leg, and so they did not see him any more; and, therefore, we always believe that the Indians or Americans know not who made the fatal shot on Tecumseh's leg, or what the soldiers did with him when they came up to him as he was sitting on the ground.”

Blackbird, Andrew J., //History of the Ottawa and Chippewa Indians of Michigan//. (Ypsilanti, MI: The Ypsilantian Job Printing House) 1887. Archived at the Library of Congress


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