Tecumseh’s War was the last great Indian war in the Northwest Territory and raged from 1811 to 1817. The cause of the conflict was Indian anger at the numerous land cessions made between Indian nations and the United States from 1803 to 1809. While this war overlapped with the War of 1812, the two conflicts were separate events with different goals for the participants.

When James Madison was sworn in as President on March 4, 1809, his most pressing issue was dealing with British and French violations of American neutrality on the high seas. But he also had a rising issue in the west in the form of an Indian confederacy headed by the Shawnee chief Tecumseh and his younger brother, Tenskwatawa, better known to history as the Prophet. The focal point of this movement was the old Northwest Territory, the most fought over area in American history where white settlers and Native Americans vied for control in a virtually continuous conflict that lasted for more than fifty years before coming to an end in 1817.

On March 4, 1789, the Constitutional government, largely the creation of James Madison’s fertile mind, took effect. Naturally, Madison was there at the start to help President George Washington implement and execute this new government. But within a matter of just a few years, Madison would be opposed to the new administration that he helped bring to power as he saw the federal government going in a direction he had not envisioned. Madison’s about face, arguably the greatest political transformation by a national figure in American history, came about largely because of differing ideas regarding what the new government should look like.