Don Wildman

You know, often folks wonder, why did these tribes, why did these nations work together?

You know, there were so many of them.

Why didn't they just get together and fight the Americans?

Well, this is actually where this begins.

Tecumseh, who deserves an episode on his own, he's an amazing person.

He was coordinating this intertribal resistance movement from the beginning against this American invasion.

And you mentioned Fort Wayne.

There's a number of these forts throughout this region, of course.

So this attack or this resistance will be coordinated between these these things.

And interestingly, they were communicated using a kind of code, right?

The wampum belts is very sophisticated planning behind this.

These were small beads from they're made from shells that are strung together.

And, you know, they're used ritualistically anyway to record histories and so forth.

But he was using these to communicate messages, secret messages between tribes in order to coordinate attacks.

Right.

This is a very controversial moment.

I mean, some call this a massacre.

And I just want to go over a few of the facts that you cited there.

The morning of the evacuation from the fort, there were 500 Native fighters, Potawatomi and Native allies.

They attack a convoy of 92.