The United States of America known as the United States or America, is a country composed of 50 states, a federal district, five major self-governing territories, various possessions. At 3.8 million square miles, the United States is the world's third or fourth largest country by total area and is smaller than the entire continent of Europe's 3.9 million square miles. With a population of over 327 million people, the U. S. is the third most populous country. The capital is Washington, D. C. and the largest city by population is New York City. Forty-eight states and the capital's federal district are contiguous in North America between Canada and Mexico; the State of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east and across the Bering Strait from Russia to the west. The State of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean; the U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, stretching across nine official time zones. The diverse geography and wildlife of the United States make it one of the world's 17 megadiverse countries.
Paleo-Indians migrated from Siberia to the North American mainland at least 12,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century; the United States emerged from the thirteen British colonies established along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the colonies following the French and Indian War led to the American Revolution, which began in 1775, the subsequent Declaration of Independence in 1776; the war ended in 1783 with the United States becoming the first country to gain independence from a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, with the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, being ratified in 1791 to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties; the United States embarked on a vigorous expansion across North America throughout the 19th century, acquiring new territories, displacing Native American tribes, admitting new states until it spanned the continent by 1848. During the second half of the 19th century, the Civil War led to the abolition of slavery.
By the end of the century, the United States had extended into the Pacific Ocean, its economy, driven in large part by the Industrial Revolution, began to soar. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the country's status as a global military power; the United States emerged from World War II as a global superpower, the first country to develop nuclear weapons, the only country to use them in warfare, a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. Sweeping civil rights legislation, notably the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968, outlawed discrimination based on race or color. During the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union competed in the Space Race, culminating with the 1969 U. S. Moon landing; the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the world's sole superpower. The United States is the world's oldest surviving federation, it is a representative democracy.
The United States is a founding member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States, other international organizations. The United States is a developed country, with the world's largest economy by nominal GDP and second-largest economy by PPP, accounting for a quarter of global GDP; the U. S. economy is post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge-based activities, although the manufacturing sector remains the second-largest in the world. The United States is the world's largest importer and the second largest exporter of goods, by value. Although its population is only 4.3% of the world total, the U. S. holds 31% of the total wealth in the world, the largest share of global wealth concentrated in a single country. Despite wide income and wealth disparities, the United States continues to rank high in measures of socioeconomic performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP, worker productivity.
The United States is the foremost military power in the world, making up a third of global military spending, is a leading political and scientific force internationally. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a world map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America in honor of the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci; the first documentary evidence of the phrase "United States of America" is from a letter dated January 2, 1776, written by Stephen Moylan, Esq. to George Washington's aide-de-camp and Muster-Master General of the Continental Army, Lt. Col. Joseph Reed. Moylan expressed his wish to go "with full and ample powers from the United States of America to Spain" to seek assistance in the revolutionary war effort; the first known publication of the phrase "United States of America" was in an anonymous essay in The Virginia Gazette newspaper in Williamsburg, Virginia, on April 6, 1776. The second draft of the Articles of Confederation, prepared by John Dickinson and completed by June 17, 1776, at the latest, declared "The name of this Confederation shall be the'United States of America'".
The final version of the Articles sent to the states for ratification in late 1777 contains the sentence "The Stile of this Confederacy shall be'The United States of America'". In June 1776, Thomas Jefferson wrote the phrase "UNITED STATES OF AMERICA" in all capitalized letters in the headline of his "original Rough draught" of the Declaration of Independence; this draft of the document did not surface unti
The Pike Expedition was a military party sent out by President Thomas Jefferson and authorized by the United States government to explore the south and west of the recent Louisiana Purchase. Contemporaneous with the Lewis and Clark Expedition, it was led by United States Army Lieutenant Zebulon Pike, Jr., promoted to captain during the trip. It was the first official American effort to explore the western Great Plains and the Rocky Mountains in present-day Colorado. Pike contacted several Native American tribes during his travels and informed them of the new US rule over the territory; the expedition documented the United States' discovery of Pikes Peak. After splitting up his men, Pike led the larger contingent to find the headwaters of the Red River. A smaller group returned safely to the US Army fort in Missouri before winter set in. Pike's company made several errors and ended up in Spanish territory in present-day Southern Colorado, where the Americans built a fort to survive the winter.
Captured by the Spanish and taken into Mexico in February, their travels through present-day New Mexico and Texas provided Pike with important data about Spanish military strength and civilian populations. Although he and most of his men were released because the nations were not at war, some of his soldiers were held in Mexican prisons for years, despite US objections. In 1810, Pike published an account of his expeditions, so popular that it was translated into French and Dutch for publication in Europe. On June 24, 1806, General James Wilkinson, commander of the Western Department, ordered Lieutenant Zebulon Pike age 27, to lead an expedition to the western and southern areas of the Louisiana Purchase to map the terrain, contact the Native American peoples, to find the headwaters of the Red River. Pike left Fort Bellefontaine near St. Louis, Missouri on July 15 with a detachment of 20 soldiers and 50 Osage hostages, freed for return to their people; the expedition followed the Missouri River and the Osage River to the Osage Nation village at the present-day border of Kansas and Missouri.
On August 15, Pike parleyed with the natives. Striking northwest, the group made for the Pawnee territory on the Republican River in southern Nebraska. At the Pawnee village on September 29, Pike met with the Pawnee tribal council, he announced the new protectorship of the United States government over the territory. He instructed the Pawnee to remove a Spanish flag from their village and to fly the American flag instead; the expeditionary force struck out across the prairie for the Arkansas River. After reaching it on October 14, the party split in two. One group was led by son of the General, they traveled downstream along the length of the Arkansas to its mouth and back up the Mississippi, safely returning to St. Louis. Pike led the other, larger group upstream, toward the headwaters of the Arkansas. Upon traversing the Great Plains, Pike wrote, "This vast plains of the western hemisphere may become in time as celebrated as the sandy deserts of Africa; when Stephen Long led an expedition to the area in 1820, he labeled the area on his map as the "Great American Desert."
On November 15, Pike recorded the first sight of the distant mountain he called "Grand Peak". It has since been called Pikes Peak in his honor. Pike tried to climb the peak, hoping to get a view of the surrounding area to record on maps, the 14,000-foot summit. Pike's group ascended a lesser summit nearby—likely Mount Miller, named for Theodore Miller, one of the soldiers who accompanied Pike. With winter threatening, Pike pressed onward up the Arkansas, on December 7 the party reached Royal Gorge, a spectacular canyon on the Arkansas at the base of the Rocky Mountains. Pike next intended to travel to the headwaters of the Red River and head downstream to the Mississippi and relative safety in the lowlands. But, the company had gotten confused in its bearings, they made several blundering steps trying to find the river, they were not for hard winter weather. Heading north, the party found the South Fork of the Platte River and, following it upstream, came to what they thought were the headwaters of the Red.
Turning back downstream, they returned to the point. They had executed a large loop. Hungry and exhausted, the party headed south over the mountains. Several men were left behind, but Pike doggedly pressed on. By January 30, he and the ten men still with him came to the Rio Grande at a point near Alamosa in present-day southern Colorado and part of the Spanish empire. Pike mistook the Rio Grande for the Red River he had been seeking. Here, he built a fort and attempted to collect the rest of his men, who were strewn across miles of mountains behind him. On February 26, in the night Pike and his remaining men were captured at their fort by Spanish soldiers from nearby Santa Fe. Arresting the party as spies, the Spanish collected the rest of his men, scattered in the mountains, marched them all south; the Spanish took them through Santa Fe, El Paso to Los Coabos, the state capital of Chihuahua. Along the way, Pike's party was treated with respect and celebrated by the Mexican locals, Pike made careful notes of the military strength and civilian population.
Chihuahua's Governor Salcedo released Pike and most of his men, as they were mil
In United States history, a free Negro or free black was the legal status, in the geographic area of the United States, of blacks who were not slaves. This term was in use before the independence of the Thirteen Colonies and elsewhere in British North America, until the abolition of slavery in the United States in December 1865, which rendered the term unnecessary. Slavery was practiced in each of the European colonies at various times. Not all Africans who came to America were slaves. In the early colonial years, some Africans came as indentured servants who were freed after a set period of years, as did many of the immigrants from the British Isles; such servants became free. As early as 1619, a class of free black people existed in North America; the free Negro population increased in a number of ways: children born to colored free women mulatto children born to white indentured or free women mixed-race children born to free Indian women freed slaves slaves who escapedIn most places black workers were either house servants or farm workers.
Black labor was of economic importance in the export-oriented tobacco plantations of Virginia and Maryland, the rice and indigo plantations of South Carolina. About 287,000 slaves were imported into the Thirteen Colonies, or 2% of the more than six million slaves brought across from Africa; the great majority went to sugar colonies in the Caribbean and to Brazil, where life expectancy was short and the numbers had to be continually replenished. Life expectancy of slaves was much higher in the U. S. Combined with a high birth rate, the numbers grew as the number of births exceeded deaths, reaching nearly 4 million by the 1860 census. From 1770 until 1860, the rate of natural growth of North American slaves was much greater than for the population of any nation in Europe, was nearly twice as rapid as that of England; this was sometimes attributed to high birth rates: "U. S. slaves reached similar rates of natural increase to whites not because of any special privileges but through a process of great suffering and material deprivation".
The southern colonies imported more slaves from established English colonies in the West Indies. Like them, the mainland colonies increased restrictions that defined slavery as a racial caste associated with African ethnicity. In 1663 Virginia adopted the principle in slave law of partus sequitur ventrem: that children were born into the status of their mother, rather than taking the status of their father, as was customary for English subjects under English common law; this meant that children of slave mothers were slaves, regardless of their fathers and ethnicity. In some cases, this could result in a person being white under Virginia law of the time, although born into slavery. According to Paul Heinegg, most of the free black families established in the Thirteen Colonies before the American Revolution were descended from unions between white women, whether indentured servant or free, African men, whether indentured servant, free, or slave; these relationships took place among the working class, reflecting the more fluid societies of the time.
Because the mixed-race children were born to free women, they were free. Through use of court documents, deeds and other records, he traced such families as the ancestors of nearly 80 percent of the free Negroes or free blacks recorded in the censuses of the Upper South from 1790–1810. In addition, slaveholders manumitted some slaves for various reasons: to reward long years of service, because heirs did not want to take on slaves, or to free slave concubines and/or their children. Slaves were sometimes allowed to buy their freedom. In the mid-to-late 18th century and Baptist evangelists in the first Great Awakening encouraged slaveholders to free their slaves, in their belief that all men were equal before God, they approved black leaders as preachers. Before the American Revolutionary War, few slaves were manumitted; the war disrupted the slave societies. Beginning with Lord Dunmore, governor of Virginia, the British colonial governments recruited slaves of rebels to the armed forces and promised them freedom in return.
The Continentals also began to allow blacks to fight with a promise of freedom. Tens of thousands of slaves escaped from plantations or other venues during the war in the South; some disappeared in the disruption of war. After the war, when the British evacuated New York, they transported more than 3,000 Black Loyalists and thousands of other Loyalists to resettle in Nova Scotia and Ontario. A total of more than 29,000 Loyalists refugees were evacuated from New York City alone; the British evacuated thousands of other slaves when they left southern ports, resettling many in the Caribbean and others to England. In the first two decades after the war, the number and proportion of free Negroes in the United States rose dramatically: northern states abolished slavery all gradually, but many slaveholders, in the Upper South manumitted their slaves, inspired by the war's ideals. From 1790 to 1810, the proportion of free blacks in the Upper South rose from less than 1% to
Illinois is a state in the Midwestern and Great Lakes region of the United States. It has the fifth largest gross domestic product, the sixth largest population, the 25th largest land area of all U. S. states. Illinois is noted as a microcosm of the entire United States. With Chicago in northeastern Illinois, small industrial cities and immense agricultural productivity in the north and center of the state, natural resources such as coal and petroleum in the south, Illinois has a diverse economic base, is a major transportation hub. Chicagoland, Chicago's metropolitan area, encompasses over 65% of the state's population; the Port of Chicago connects the state to international ports via two main routes: from the Great Lakes, via the Saint Lawrence Seaway, to the Atlantic Ocean and from the Great Lakes to the Mississippi River, via the Illinois Waterway to the Illinois River. The Mississippi River, the Ohio River, the Wabash River form parts of the boundaries of Illinois. For decades, Chicago's O'Hare International Airport has been ranked as one of the world's busiest airports.
Illinois has long had a reputation as a bellwether both in social and cultural terms and, through the 1980s, in politics. The capital of Illinois is Springfield, located in the central part of the state. Although today's Illinois' largest population center is in its northeast, the state's European population grew first in the west as the French settled the vast Mississippi of the Illinois Country of New France. Following the American Revolutionary War, American settlers began arriving from Kentucky in the 1780s via the Ohio River, the population grew from south to north. In 1818, Illinois achieved statehood. Following increased commercial activity in the Great Lakes after the construction of the Erie Canal, Chicago was founded in the 1830s on the banks of the Chicago River at one of the few natural harbors on the southern section of Lake Michigan. John Deere's invention of the self-scouring steel plow turned Illinois's rich prairie into some of the world's most productive and valuable farmland, attracting immigrant farmers from Germany and Sweden.
The Illinois and Michigan Canal made transportation between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River valley faster and cheaper, new railroads carried immigrants to new homes in the country's west and shipped commodity crops to the nation's east. The state became a transportation hub for the nation. By 1900, the growth of industrial jobs in the northern cities and coal mining in the central and southern areas attracted immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe. Illinois was an important manufacturing center during both world wars; the Great Migration from the South established a large community of African Americans in the state, including Chicago, who founded the city's famous jazz and blues cultures. Chicago, the center of the Chicago Metropolitan Area, is now recognized as a global alpha-level city. Three U. S. presidents have been elected while living in Illinois: Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, Barack Obama. Additionally, Ronald Reagan, whose political career was based in California, was born and raised in the state.
Today, Illinois honors Lincoln with its official state slogan Land of Lincoln, displayed on its license plates since 1954. The state is the site of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield and the future home of the Barack Obama Presidential Center in Chicago. "Illinois" is the modern spelling for the early French Catholic missionaries and explorers' name for the Illinois Native Americans, a name, spelled in many different ways in the early records. American scholars thought the name "Illinois" meant "man" or "men" in the Miami-Illinois language, with the original iliniwek transformed via French into Illinois; this etymology is not supported by the Illinois language, as the word for "man" is ireniwa, plural of "man" is ireniwaki. The name Illiniwek has been said to mean "tribe of superior men", a false etymology; the name "Illinois" derives from the Miami-Illinois verb irenwe·wa - "he speaks the regular way". This was taken into the Ojibwe language in the Ottawa dialect, modified into ilinwe·.
The French borrowed these forms, changing the /we/ ending to spell it as -ois, a transliteration for its pronunciation in French of that time. The current spelling form, began to appear in the early 1670s, when French colonists had settled in the western area; the Illinois's name for themselves, as attested in all three of the French missionary-period dictionaries of Illinois, was Inoka, of unknown meaning and unrelated to the other terms. American Indians of successive cultures lived along the waterways of the Illinois area for thousands of years before the arrival of Europeans; the Koster Site demonstrates 7,000 years of continuous habitation. Cahokia, the largest regional chiefdom and urban center of the Pre-Columbian Mississippian culture, was located near present-day Collinsville, Illinois, they built an urban complex of more than 100 platform and burial mounds, a 50-acre plaza larger than 35 football fields, a woodhenge of sacred cedar, all in a planned design expressing the culture's cosmology.
Monks Mound, the center of the site, is the largest Pre-Columbian structure north of the Valley of Mexico. It is 100 feet high, 951 feet long, 836 feet wide, covers 13.8 acres. It contains about 814,000 cubic yards of earth, it was topped by a structure thought to have measured about 105 feet in length and 48 feet in width, covered an area 5,000 square feet, been as much as 50 feet high, making its peak 150 feet above the level of the pl
A county seat is an administrative center, seat of government, or capital city of a county or civil parish. The term is used in Canada, Romania and the United States. County towns have a similar function in the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland, in Jamaica. In most of the United States, counties are the political subdivisions of a state; the city, town, or populated place that houses county government is known as the seat of its respective county. The county legislature, county courthouse, sheriff's department headquarters, hall of records and correctional facility are located in the county seat though some functions may be located or conducted in other parts of the county if it is geographically large. A county seat is but not always, an incorporated municipality; the exceptions include the county seats of counties that have no incorporated municipalities within their borders, such as Arlington County, Virginia. Ellicott City, the county seat of Howard County, is the largest unincorporated county seat in the United States, followed by Towson, the county seat of Baltimore County, Maryland.
Some county seats may not be incorporated in their own right, but are located within incorporated municipalities. For example, Cape May Court House, New Jersey, though unincorporated, is a section of Middle Township, an incorporated municipality. In some of the colonial states, county seats include or included "Court House" as part of their name. In the Canadian provinces of Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, the term "shire town" is used in place of county seat. County seats in Taiwan are the administrative centers of the counties. There are 13 county seats in Taiwan, which are in the forms of county-administered city, urban township or rural township. Most counties have only one county seat. However, some counties in Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, New Hampshire, New York, Vermont have two or more county seats located on opposite sides of the county. An example is Harrison County, which lists both Biloxi and Gulfport as county seats; the practice of multiple county seat towns dates from the days.
There have been few efforts to eliminate the two-seat arrangement, since a county seat is a source of pride for the towns involved. There are 36 counties with multiple county seats in 11 states: Coffee County, Alabama St. Clair County, Alabama Arkansas County, Arkansas Carroll County, Arkansas Clay County, Arkansas Craighead County, Arkansas Franklin County, Arkansas Logan County, Arkansas Mississippi County, Arkansas Prairie County, Arkansas Sebastian County, Arkansas Yell County, Arkansas Columbia County, Georgia Lee County, Iowa Campbell County, Kentucky Kenton County, Kentucky Essex County, Massachusetts Middlesex County, Massachusetts Plymouth County, Massachusetts Bolivar County, Mississippi Carroll County, Mississippi Chickasaw County, Mississippi Harrison County, Mississippi Hinds County, Mississippi Jasper County, Mississippi Jones County, Mississippi Panola County, Mississippi Tallahatchie County, Mississippi Yalobusha County, Mississippi Jackson County, Missouri Hillsborough County, New Hampshire Seneca County, New York Bennington County, Vermont In New England, the town, not the county, is the primary division of local government.
Counties in this region have served as dividing lines for the states' judicial systems. Connecticut and Rhode Island have no county level of thus no county seats. In Vermont and Maine the county seats are designated shire towns. County government consists only of a Superior Court and Sheriff, both located in the respective shire town. Bennington County has two shire towns. In Massachusetts, most government functions which would otherwise be performed by county governments in other states are performed by town or city governments; as such, Massachusetts has dissolved many of its county governments, the state government now operates the registries of deeds and sheriff's offices in those counties. In Virginia, a county seat may be an independent city surrounded by, but not part of, the county of which it is the administrative center. Two counties in South Dakota have their county seat and government services centered in a neighboring county, their county-level services are provided by Fall River Tripp County, respectively.
In Louisiana, divided into parishes rather than counties, county seats are referred to as parish seats. Alaska is divided into boroughs rather than counties; the Unorganized Borough, which covers 49 % of Alaska's area, has equivalent. The state with the most counties is Texas, with 254, the state with the fewest counties is Delaware, with 3. County seat war Administrative center County town, administrative centres in Ireland and the UK Chef-lieu, administrative centres in Algeria, Luxembourg, France and Tunisia Municipality, equivalent to county in many c
The Mississippi River is the second-longest river and chief river of the second-largest drainage system on the North American continent, second only to the Hudson Bay drainage system. Its source is Lake Itasca in northern Minnesota and it flows south for 2,320 miles to the Mississippi River Delta in the Gulf of Mexico. With its many tributaries, the Mississippi's watershed drains all or parts of 32 U. S. two Canadian provinces between the Rocky and Appalachian mountains. The main stem is within the United States; the Mississippi ranks as the fifteenth-largest river by discharge in the world. The river either borders or passes through the states of Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Tennessee, Arkansas and Louisiana. Native Americans have lived along its tributaries for thousands of years. Most were hunter-gatherers, but some, such as the Mound Builders, formed prolific agricultural societies; the arrival of Europeans in the 16th century changed the native way of life as first explorers settlers, ventured into the basin in increasing numbers.
The river served first as a barrier, forming borders for New Spain, New France, the early United States, as a vital transportation artery and communications link. In the 19th century, during the height of the ideology of manifest destiny, the Mississippi and several western tributaries, most notably the Missouri, formed pathways for the western expansion of the United States. Formed from thick layers of the river's silt deposits, the Mississippi embayment is one of the most fertile regions of the United States. During the American Civil War, the Mississippi's capture by Union forces marked a turning point towards victory, due to the river's strategic importance to the Confederate war effort; because of substantial growth of cities and the larger ships and barges that replaced steamboats, the first decades of the 20th century saw the construction of massive engineering works such as levees and dams built in combination. A major focus of this work has been to prevent the lower Mississippi from shifting into the channel of the Atchafalaya River and bypassing New Orleans.
Since the 20th century, the Mississippi River has experienced major pollution and environmental problems – most notably elevated nutrient and chemical levels from agricultural runoff, the primary contributor to the Gulf of Mexico dead zone. The word Mississippi itself comes from Misi zipi, the French rendering of the Anishinaabe name for the river, Misi-ziibi. In the 18th century, the river was the primary western boundary of the young United States, since the country's expansion westward, the Mississippi River has been considered a convenient if approximate dividing line between the Eastern and Midwestern United States, the Western United States; this is exemplified by the Gateway Arch in St. Louis and the phrase "Trans-Mississippi" as used in the name of the Trans-Mississippi Exposition, it is common to qualify a regionally superlative landmark in relation to it, such as "the highest peak east of the Mississippi" or "the oldest city west of the Mississippi". The FCC uses it as the dividing line for broadcast call-signs, which begin with W to the east and K to the west, mixing together in media markets along the river.
The Mississippi River can be divided into three sections: the Upper Mississippi, the river from its headwaters to the confluence with the Missouri River. The Upper Mississippi runs from its headwaters to its confluence with the Missouri River at St. Louis, Missouri, it is divided into two sections: The headwaters, 493 miles from the source to Saint Anthony Falls in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The source of the Upper Mississippi branch is traditionally accepted as Lake Itasca, 1,475 feet above sea level in Itasca State Park in Clearwater County, Minnesota; the name "Itasca" was chosen to designate the "true head" of the Mississippi River as a combination of the last four letters of the Latin word for truth and the first two letters of the Latin word for head. However, the lake is in turn fed by a number of smaller streams. From its origin at Lake Itasca to St. Louis, the waterway's flow is moderated by 43 dams. Fourteen of these dams are located above Minneapolis in the headwaters region and serve multiple purposes, including power generation and recreation.
The remaining 29 dams, beginning in downtown Minneapolis, all contain locks and were constructed to improve commercial navigation of the upper river. Taken as a whole, these 43 dams shape the geography and influence the ecology of the upper river. Beginning just below Saint Paul and continuing throughout the upper and lower river, the Mississippi is further controlled by thousands of wing dikes that moderate the river's flow in order to maintain an open navigation channel and prevent the river from eroding its banks; the head of navigation on the Mississippi is the Coon Rapids Dam in Minnesota. Before it was built in 1913, steamboats could go upstream as far as Saint Cloud, depending on river conditions; the uppermost lock and dam on the Upper Mississippi River is the Upper St. Anthony Falls Lock an
Battle of Tippecanoe
The Battle of Tippecanoe was fought on November 7, 1811 in Battle Ground, Indiana between American forces led by Governor William Henry Harrison of the Indiana Territory and Indian forces associated with Shawnee leader Tecumseh and his brother Tenskwatawa, leaders of a confederacy of various tribes who opposed settlement of the American West. As tensions and violence increased, Governor Harrison marched with an army of about 1,000 men to disperse the confederacy's headquarters at Prophetstown, near the confluence of the Tippecanoe River and the Wabash River. Tecumseh was not yet ready to oppose the United States by force and was away recruiting allies when Harrison's army arrived. Tenskwatawa was a spiritual leader but not a military man, he was in charge. Harrison camped near Prophetstown on November 6 and arranged to meet with Tenskwatawa the following day. Early the next morning, warriors from Prophetstown attacked Harrison's army, they took the army by surprise. The Indians were repulsed when their ammunition ran low.
After the battle, they abandoned Prophetstown and Harrison's men burned it to the ground, destroying the food supplies stored for the winter. The soldiers returned to their homes. Harrison accomplished his goal of destroying Prophetstown and proclaimed that he had won a decisive victory, he gained the nickname "Tippecanoe", popularized in the campaign song "Tippecanoe and Tyler too" during the presidential election of 1840 which Harrison won. The defeat was a setback for Tecumseh's confederacy from which it never recovered. Americans blamed the violence on British interference in American affairs because they had supplied the Indians with financial support and ammunition; this led to a further deterioration of relations with Britain and was a catalyst of the War of 1812, which began six months later. The US declared war on the United Kingdom in June 1812, Tecumseh's confederacy was ready to launch its war against the United States in alliance with the British. In preparation, the Indians rebuilt Prophetstown.
Frontier violence in the region continued until well after the War of 1812, although Tecumseh was killed in 1813 during the Battle of the Thames. William Henry Harrison was appointed governor of the newly formed Indiana Territory in 1800, he sought to secure title to the area for settlement. In particular, he hoped that the Indiana Territory would attract enough settlers to qualify for statehood, he negotiated numerous land cession treaties with American Indians, including the Treaty of Fort Wayne on September 30, 1809 in which Miami, Pottawatomie and other tribal leaders sold 3,000,000 acres to the United States. Tenskwatawa was known as the Prophet and had been leading a religious movement among the northwestern tribes, calling for a return to the ancestral ways, his brother Tecumseh was outraged by the Treaty of Fort Wayne, he revived an idea advocated by Shawnee leader Blue Jacket and Mohawk leader Joseph Brant, which stated that Indian land was owned in common by all tribes, land could not be sold without agreement by all the tribes.
Tecumseh was not ready to confront the United States directly, he found that he was opposed by the Indian leaders who had signed the treaty. He threatened to kill anyone and their followers who carried out the terms of the treaty, he traveled urging warriors to abandon their chiefs and join his resistance at Prophetstown, insisting that the Fort Wayne treaty was illegitimate, he met with Governor Harrison in 1810 and demanded that Harrison nullify the treaty, he warned that settlers should not attempt to settle the lands sold in the treaty. Harrison rejected his demands and insisted that the tribes could have individual relations with the United States. Tecumseh warned him. Tensions had been high for several months between the United States and Britain as a result of British interference in American commerce with France; as early as 1810, British agents had sought to secure an alliance with Indians to assist in the defense of Canada should hostilities break out, but the Indians had been reluctant to accept their offer, fearing that they had little to benefit from such an arrangement.
In August 1811, Tecumseh again met with Harrison at Vincennes, he assured Harrison that the Shawnee brothers meant to remain at peace with the United States. Tecumseh traveled to the Southeast on a mission to recruit allies among the "Five Civilized Tribes". Most of the southern tribes rejected his appeals, but a faction of the Creek people answered his call to arms and became known as the Red Sticks, they led the Creek War, an internal war among factions that were divided over adoption of some American ways. This became a part of the War of 1812. By contrast, the Creek of the Lower Towns were more integrated with American culture and supported the US against Britain. Harrison left the territory for business in Kentucky shortly after the meeting with Tecumseh, secretary John Gibson was acting governor. Gibson had lived among the Miami tribe for many years and learned of Tecumseh's plans for war, he called out the territory's militia and sent emergency letters calling for the return of Harrison.
Most of the militia regiments had formed by mid-September and Harrison had returned, accompanied by a small force of army regulars, he took command. He had communicated with his superiors in Washington, D. C. and he was authorized to march against the confederacy in a show of force in the hopes that its members would accept peace. Harrison gathered the