Tecumseh was a native american shawnee leader who fought against the united states during the war of 1812. He was known for his passionate oratory, and tecumseh quotes remain widely circulated today. Tecumseh’s words are a reminder of the courage and fortitude of the shawnee people, and offer inspiration to those who strive for justice and peace. Here are some of tecumseh’s most inspirational quotes.
Tecumseh Quotes Highlighting His Bravery, Passion, And Faith
☑ “When you rise in the morning, give thanks for the light, for your life, for your strength. Give thanks for your food and for the joy of living. If you see no reason to give thanks, the fault lies in yourself.” ― Tecumseh
☑ “When your time comes to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled with fear of death, so that when their time comes they weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way. Sing your death song, and die like a hero going home.” ― Tecumseh
☑ “Show respect to all people, but grovel to none.” ― Tecumseh
“Prepare a noble death song for the day when you go over the great divide.” ― Tecumseh
☑ “Always give a word or sign of salute when meeting or passing a friend, or even a stranger, if in a lonely place.” ― Tecumseh
☑ “Let us form one body, one heart, and defend to the last warrior our country, our homes, our liberty, and the graves of our fathers.” ― Tecumseh
☑ “A single twig breaks, but the bundle of twigs is strong.” ― Tecumseh
☑ “Live your life that the fear of death can never enter your heart.” ― Tecumseh
☑ “From my tribe I take nothing, I am the maker of my own fortune.” ― Tecumseh
☑ “When the legends die, the dreams end; there is no more greatness.” ― Tecumseh
Tecumseh Quotes To Encourage And Motivate
☑ “You, too, will be driven away from your native land and ancient domains as leaves are driven before the wintry storms. Sleep not longer, O Choctaws and Chickasaws, in false security and delusive hopes. Our broad domains are fast escaping from our grasp.” – Tecumseh
☑ “The white usurpation in our common country must be stopped, or we, its rightful owners, be forever destroyed and wiped out as a race of people. I am now at the head of many warriors backed by the strong arm of English soldiers. Choctaws and Chickasaws, you have too long borne with grievous usurpation inflicted by the arrogant Americans.” ― Tecumseh
“The Great Spirit is angry with all men that tell lies.” ― Tecumseh
☑ “Before the palefaces came among us, we enjoyed the happiness of unbounded freedom and were acquainted with neither riches, wants, nor oppression.” ― Tecumseh
☑ “I have made myself what I am. And I would that I could make the red people as great as the conceptions of my own mind when I think of the Great Spirit that rules over us all.” ― Tecumseh
☑ “Since my residence at Tippecanoe, we have endeavored to level all distinctions, to destroy village chiefs, by whom all mischiefs are done. It is they who sell the land to the Americans.” ― Tecumseh
☑ “I am Shawnee! I am a warrior! My forefathers were warriors. From them, I took only my birth into this world.” ― Tecumseh
☑ “Love your life, perfect your life, beautify all things in your life. Seek to make your life long and its purpose in the service of your people.” ― Tecumseh
☑ “Sell a country?! Why not sell the air, the great sea, as well as the earth? Did not the Great Spirit make them all for the use of his children?” ― Tecumseh
☑ “We gave them forest-clad mountains and valleys full of game, and in return what did they give our warriors and our women? Rum, trinkets, and a grave.” ― Tecumseh
Tecumseh Quotes And Sayings
☑ “Here is how the Americans have treated us well: They have killed many Shawnee, many Winnebagoes, many Miamis, many Delawares, and have taken land from them. When they killed them, no American ever was punished, not one.” ― Tecumseh
☑ “Every year, our white intruders become more greedy, exacting, oppressive, and overbearing. Every year, contentions spring up between them and our people, and when blood is shed, we have to make atonement, whether right or wrong, at the cost of the lives of our greatest chiefs and the yielding up of large tracts of our lands.” ― Tecumseh
“Abuse no one and nothing, for abuse turns the wise ones to fools and robs the spirit of its vision.” ― Tecumseh
☑ “When the white men approach you the yawning earth shall swallow them up. Soon shall you see my arm of fire stretched athwart the sky. I will stamp my foot at Tippecanoe, and the very earth shall shake.” ― Tecumseh
☑ “The Great Spirit made all things. He gave the white people a home beyond the great waters. He supplied these grounds with game, and gave them to his red children; and he gave them strength and courage to defend them.” ― Tecumseh
☑ “Where today are the Pequot? Where are the Narragansett, the Mohican, the Pcanet, and other powerful tribes of our people? They have vanished before the avarice and oppression of the white man, as snow before the summer sun.” ― Tecumseh
☑ “Trouble no one about their religion; respect others in their view, and demand that they respect yours.” ― Tecumseh
☑ “Let us form one body, one heart, and defend to the last warrior our country, our homes, our liberty, and the graves of our fathers.” ― Tecumseh
☑ “Brothers, we must be united; we must smoke the same pipe; we must fight each other’s battles; and more than all, we must love the Great Spirit.” ― Tecumseh
☑ “When Jesus Christ came upon the Earth, you killed Him. The son of your own God. And only after He was dead did you worship Him and start killing those who would not.” ― Tecumseh
Tecumseh Quotes To Inspire You To Live Your Life
☑ “Brothers, we are friends; we must assist each other to bear our burdens. The blood of many of our fathers and brothers has run like water on the ground, to satisfy the avarice of the white men.” ― Tecumseh
☑ “War now! War forever! War upon the living! War upon the dead! Dig their very corpses from the grave. Our country must give no rest to a white man’s bones. This is the will of the Great Spirit.” ― Tecumseh
☑ “The way, and the only way, to stop this evil is for all the red men to unite in claiming a common and equal right in the land, as it was at first, and should be yet; for it was never divided, but belongs to all for the use of each.” ― Tecumseh
☑ “The red men have borne many and great injuries; they ought to suffer them no longer. My people will not; they are determined on vengeance; they have taken up the tomahawk; they will make it fat with blood; they will drink the blood of the white people.” ― Tecumseh
☑ “If you see no reason for giving thanks, the fault lies only in yourself…” ― Tecumseh
☑ “The white people have no right to take the land from the Indians because the Indians had it first.” ― Tecumseh
☑ “We, ourselves, are threatened with a great evil; nothing will pacify them but the destruction of all the red men.” ― Tecumseh
☑ “The white men despise and cheat the Indians; they abuse and insult them; they do not think the red men sufficiently good to live.” ― Tecumseh
☑ “Burn their dwellings! Destroy their stock! Slay their wives and children! The Red Man owns the country, and the Pale-faces must never enjoy it.” ― Tecumseh
☑ “Let the white race perish. They seize your land; they corrupt your women; they trample on the ashes of your dead! Back, whence they came, upon a trail of blood, they must be driven.” ― Tecumseh
More Tecumseh Quotes
☑ “I would not then come to Governor Harrison to ask him to tear up the treaty, and to obliterate the landmark, but I would say to him, ‘Sir, you have the liberty to return to your own country.” ― Tecumseh
☑ “The white men aren’t friends to the Indians… At first, they only asked for land sufficient for a wigwam; now, nothing will satisfy them but the whole of our hunting grounds from the rising to the setting sun.” ― Tecumseh
☑ “Will we let ourselves be destroyed in our turn without a struggle, give up our homes, our country bequeathed to us by the Great Spirit, the graves of our dead, and everything that is dear and sacred to us? I know you will cry with me, ‘Never! Never!” ― Tecumseh
☑ “Accursed be the race that has seized on our country and made women of our warriors. Our fathers, from their tombs, reproach us as slaves and cowards. I hear them now in the wailing winds…The spirits of the mighty dead complain. Their tears drop from the weeping skies.” ― Tecumseh
☑ “The whites have driven us from the sea to the lakes. We can go no further… unless every tribe unanimously combines to give a check to the ambition and avarice of the whites they will soon conquer us apart and disunited and we will be driven from our native country and scattered as autumn leaves before the wind.” ― Tecumseh
“Someday I will embrace our brother tribes and draw them into a bundle and together we will win our country back from the whites.” ― Tecumseh
☑ “My people wish for peace; the red men all wish for peace; but where the white people are, there is no peace for them, except it be on the bosom of our mother.” ― Tecumseh
☑ “And of that, I might make the destiny of my red people, of our nation, as great as I conceive to in my mind, when I think of Weshemoneto, who rules this universe!” ― Tecumseh
☑ “Brothers, the white people are like poisonous serpents: when chilled they are feeble and harmless but invigorate them with warmth and they sting their benefactors to death.” ― Tecumseh
☑ “My father! The sun is my father, and the earth is my mother, and on her bosom, I will recline.” ― Tecumseh
Tecumseh Quotes On War And Death
☑ “When the legends die, the dreams end; there is no more greatness.”
☑ “Abuse no one and no thing, for abuse turns the wise ones to fools and robs the spirit of its vision.”
☑ “So live your life that the fear of death can never enter your heart. Trouble no one about their religion; respect others in their view, and demand that they respect yours.”
☑ “When it comes your time to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled with the fear of death, so that when their time comes they weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way.”
☑ “Sing your death song and die like a hero going home.”
☑ “Always give a word or sign of salute when meeting or passing a friend, or even a stranger, if in a lonely place.”
☑ “Prepare a noble death song for the day when you go over the great divide.”
☑ “If you see no reason for giving thanks, the fault lies only in yourself.”
☑ “Love your life, perfect your life, beautify all things in your life. Seek to make your life long and its purpose in the service of your people.”
☑ “When you rise in the morning, give thanks for the light, for your life, for your strength. Give thanks for your food and for the joy of living.”
Historical Quotes By Tecumseh
☑ “Where are the Narragansett, the Mohican, the Pokanoket, and many other once powerful tribes of our people? They have vanished before the avarice and the oppression of the White Man, as snow before a summer sun.”
☑ “You never see an Indian come, do you, and endeavor to make the white people divide up?”
☑ “We gave them forest-clad mountains and valleys full of game, and in return what did they give our warriors and our women? Rum, trinkets, and a grave.”
☑ “Let us form one body, one heart, and defend to the last warrior our country, our homes, our liberty, and the graves of our fathers.”
☑ “The Great Spirit made all things…He supplied these grounds with game, and gave them to his red children; and he gave them strength and courage to defend them.”
☑ “The white man says, there is freedom and justice for all. We have had “freedom and justice,” and that is why we have been almost exterminated. We shall not forget this.”
☑ “Brothers, we must be united; we must smoke the same pipe; we must fight each other’s battles; and more than all, we must love the Great Spirit.”
☑ “The white people send runners amongst us; they wish to make us enemies that they may sweep over and desolate our hunting grounds, like devastating winds, or rushing waters.”
☑ “The white people came among us feeble; and now we have made them strong, they wish to kill us, or drive us back, as they would wolves and panthers.”
☑ “I am Shawnee! I am a warrior! My forefathers were warriors. From them I took only my birth into this world. From my tribe I take nothing. I am the maker of my own destiny!”
☑ “No tribe has the right to sell, even to each other, much less to strangers.”
☑ “My father! The sun is my father, and the earth is my mother, and on her bosom I will recline.”
☑ “We can go no further… unless every tribe unanimously combines to give a check to the ambition and avarice of the whites they will soon conquer us apart and disunited and we will be driven from our native country and scattered as autumn leaves before the wind.”
☑ “Sell a country! Why not sell the air, the clouds and the great sea, as well as the earth? Did not the Great Spirit make them all for the use of his children?”
☑ “When Jesus Christ came upon the Earth, you killed Him. The son of your own God. And only after He was dead did you worship Him and start killing those who would not.”
☑ “You are always driving the red people this way! At last you will drive them into the Great Lake, where they can neither stand nor walk.”
☑ “We shall show to those who sold that they had no rights to the claim they set up, and we shall see what will be done to those chiefs who did sell the land to you.”
☑ “We want freedom from the white man rather than to be integrated.”
☑ “You try to make differences between them.”
☑ “Our Great Father, over the great waters, is angry with the white people, our enemies. He will send his brave warriors against them; he will send us rifles, and whatever else we want.”
☑ “The white people, who are trying to make us over into their image, they want us to be what they call ‘assimilated’, bringing the Indians into the mainstream and destroying our own way of life and our own cultural patterns.”
☑ “Brother, I wish you to give me close attention, because I think you do not clearly understand. I want to speak to you about promises that the Americans have made.”
☑ “The white men aren’t friends to the Indians… At first they only asked for land sufficient for a wigwam; now, nothing will satisfy them but the whole of our hunting grounds from the rising to the setting sun.”
☑ “Brother, after such bitter events, can you blame me for placing little confidence in the promises of Americans?”
Quotes About Tecumseh
☑ “The literature of Tecumseh far exceeds that of any other American Indian.”
☑ “Indisputably, Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa were the most significant siblings in American Indian history.”
☑ “Three Indian figures stand out in bold relief on the background of Canadian history – the figures of Pontiac, Brant, and Tecumseh.”
☑ “A more sagacious or more gallant warrior does not, I believe, exist.”
Verdict:
The tecumseh quotes are powerful and inspirational words that have stood the test of time. They reflect the wisdom and courage of a great leader and are a reminder of the importance of standing up for what you believe in.