They were the sons of noted fathers. Benjamin Harrison, the father of Lieutenant Harrison, had been a famous patriot and a signer of the Declaration of Independence in 1776. Puck-ee-shin-wah, the father of Tecumseh, also had been a patriot—he had died for his nation in the battle of Point Pleasant, in 1774, when Chief Cornstalk fought for liberty.
At the Fallen Timbers, Lieutenant Harrison was an aide to General Wayne; young Tecumseh was an aide to Blue-jacket. The two did not meet, but their trails were soon to join.
The name Tecumseh (pronounced by the Indians "Tay-coom-tha") means "One-who-springs" or "darts." It was a word of the Shawnees' Great Medicine Panther clan, or Meteor clan; therefore Tecumseh has been known as "Crouching Panther" and "Shooting Star."
He was born in 1768 at the old Shawnee village of Piqua, on Mad River about six miles southwest of present Springfield, Ohio. His mother may have been a Creek or Cherokee woman, who had come up from the South with some of the Shawnees. The Shawnees were a Southern people, once. The mother's name was Me-tho-a-tas-ke.
Tecumseh had five brothers and one sister. Two of his brothers were twins, and at least two, besides his father, fell in battle while he was still young.
He had not been old enough to go upon the war trail with his father and Head Chief Cornstalk; but his elder brother Chee-see-kau went, and fought the Long Knives at Point Pleasant. When he came back he took little Tecumseh in charge, to train him as a warrior.
When Tecumseh was nineteen, he and Chee-see-kau, with a party of other braves, went upon a long journey of adventure south to the Cherokee country of Tennessee. It is said that the mother, Me-tho-tas-ke, already had left, to return to the Cherokees. Likely enough the two brothers planned to visit her.
They swung far into the west, to the Mississippi, and circled to the Cherokees. Here Ohee-see-kau was killed, while helping the Cherokees fight the whites.
He was glad to die in battle—"I prefer to have the birds pick my bones, rather than to be buried at home like an old squaw."
Tecumseh stayed in the South three years, fighting to avenge his brother, who had been a father to him, and whose spirit still urged him to be brave. He got home to Ohio just in time. In league with the Little Turtle Miamis, War Chief Blue-jacket's Shawnees had defeated the American general Harmar, and every warrior was needed.