Great Plains Studies, Center for
Date of this Version
1990
Abstract
Increasingly historians who write about leadership in the American Indian resistance movements argue that the typical leader was not the standard war chief. R. David Edmunds in his books on the Shawnee brothers Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa focuses not on their military acumen but on their unique diplomatic and political skills. Similarly, Joseph B. Herring's biography of Kenekuk, the Kickapoo prophet, reveals a rare blend of leadership skills that Kenekuk employed to unite the Vermillion band, first in Illinois and then in Kansas. Using a variety of stratagems, Kenekuk, sometimes with reason and other times with bluster, fenced with politicians and government bureaucrats to delay removal from ancestral lands. The band stayed on in Illinois much longer than might otherwise be expected. He understood the white settlers' mentality, and attempted to inculcate attitudes among his followers that might gain at least temporary approval of the whites. When the band did remove, its western settlements quickly became showpieces of hard-work and sobriety.
Comments
Published in Great Plains Quarterly SUMMER 1990 .Copyright 1990 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska—Lincoln.