Informant38

Shawnee Traditions�Tenskwatawa The Shawnee Prophet:
"Such speculation has no basis in Shawnee culture and grows out of an extremely negative view of the Shawnee Prophet. Along with the fanciful linguistic interpretations comes such imaginative behavioral conclusions as he was the 'smallest' and last of a set of triplets, another totally ingenious concept grounded not in fact but in the fancy of a white author's mind. Once the framework for viewing the Prophet as a sinister and evil charlatan was in place, the opportunity for such flights of imagination was boundless. In fact, an early story, put out by the frontiersman Simon Kenton in 1806, was that the three surviving brothers, Tecumseh, Tenskwatawa, and Kumskaka were triplets, and Tecumseh was the youngest. This blunder is still with us, though Tecumseh is generally removed from the list and his place often filled by his elder brother Sauwaseekau. We now know, in fact, that no named brother was one of the triplets because we have it since 1939 with the recovery of the Trowbridge manuscript written from the lips of the Prophet himself that the other triplets died shortly after birth. If they were named at all, it has been lost to history. Simon Kenton can not be blamed entirely as only three brothers were alive during the crucial years leading up to the War of 1812, and Simon Kenton knew them all. Along with the story that the Prophet, who was the dominant figure at this time, was one of a set of triplets, it would not be a difficult leap of imagination to assign the known figures as the triplets.
Having dispensed with the rattle problem, do we now have a snake problem? Whites must quickly catch the cultural significance of snakes from the viewpoint of the Shawnee before their minds leap to unwarranted conclusions. To a Shawnee, a name implying snakes would not stamp the character of the Prophet as sneaky, mean, or sinister -- though it could allude to preternatural or mystic powers that are inherent in the character of snakes. The Shawnee held great respect for snakes, naming them generically as maneto 'sacred power', a word that could be used as appropriately to name the Great Spirit as well as a general name for the snake."
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Tenskwatawa (The Prophet)
Native Americans
The National Portrait Gallery
{To which the school textbook publisher Harcourt Brace has somehow attached itself}