Battle of the Thames
The Battle of the Thames was a pivotal American victory during the War of 1812.
On October 5, 1813, General William Henry Harrison, who also was the governor of the Indiana Territory, led an army of 3,500 American troops against a combined force of eight hundred British soldiers and five hundred Indian warriors at Moraviantown, along the Thames River in Ontario, Canada. The British troops were under the command of Colonel Henry Procter. Tecumseh, a Shawnee Indian chief, commanded many of the Indian warriors. The British army was retreating from Fort Malden, Ontario after Oliver Hazard Perry's victory in the Battle of Lake Erie in September 1813. Tecumseh convinced Colonel Procter to make a stand at Moraviantown.
The American army won a total victory. As soon as the American troops advanced, the British soldiers fled or surrendered. The Indians fought fiercely, but lost heart and scattered after Tecumseh died on the battlefield. The identity of the person who killed Tecumseh is still vigorously debated.
The Battle of the Thames was an important land battle of the War of 1812 in the American Northwest. Since the early 1800s, Tecumseh had sought to form a confederacy of Indian tribes to stop white Americans from seizing Indian land. Tecumseh's death and General Harrison's victory marked the end of Tecumseh's Confederacy, as the natives now lacked a strong, unifying leader. Over the next three decades, Indians in the old Northwest signed treaties, forsaking claims to the land in this region.
References and Suggested Reading
- Antal, Sandy. A Wampum Denied: Procter's War of 1812. East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press, 1997.
- Barr, Daniel P., ed. The Boundaries Between Us: Natives and Newcomers Along the Frontiers of the Old Northwest Territory, 1750-1850. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2006.
- Bond, Beverley W., Jr. The Foundations of Ohio. Columbus, OH: Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Society, 1941.
- Borneman, Walter R. 1812: The War that Forged a Nation. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2004.
- Clark, Jerry E. Clark. The Shawnee. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1993.
- Edmunds, R. David. Tecumseh and the Quest for Indian Leadership. Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1984.
- Flavell, Julie, and Stephen Conway, eds. Britain and America go to War: The Impact of War and Warfare in Anglo-America, 1754-1815. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2004.
- Hickey, Donald R. The War of 1812: A Forgotten Conflict. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1989.
- Hurt, R. Douglas. The Ohio Frontier: Crucible of the Old Northwest, 1720-1830. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1996.
- O'Donnell, James H., III. Ohio's First Peoples. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2004.
- Ricky, Donald B., ed. Encyclopedia of Ohio Indians. St. Clair Shores, MI: Somerset Publishers, Inc., 1998.
- Sugden, John. Tecumseh's Last Stand. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1985.
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Citation
"Battle of the Thames", Ohio History Central, July 1, 2005, http://www.ohiohistorycentral.org/entry.php?rec=481
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