The Dying Tecumseh

Source: Pettrich, Ferdinand, The Dying Tecumseh, marble with painted copper, 1856, Smithsonian American Art Museum, https://ids.si.edu/ids/deliveryService?id=SAAM-1916.8.1_7&max=2600.

Date: 1856

Text/Transcription:

Ferdinand Pettrich, a German-born, Italian-trained sculptor, finished The Dying Tecumseh in 1856. The marble sculpture took 20 years to complete. It depicts a reclining, heroically proportioned man, seemingly unaffected by a bullet hole in his right temple. The real-life Tekoomsē (Tecumseh), Shawnee, helped unite Native Americans in resistance to U.S. expansionism after the American Revolution. As a young man, Tekoomsē witnessed the dangers of westward expansion and the ways that intertribal conflicts hindered Native nations from building defense networks. He travelled throughout the states and territories east of the Mississippi River, organizing a Pan-Indian Federation that would block white settlers from encroaching further west. In the War of 1812 (1812-15), Tekoomsē strategically allied his forces with the British but was killed by U.S. troops in the Battle of the Thames.