Tecumtha was now in the prime of manhood, being about 40 years of age, and had already thought out his scheme of uniting all the tribes in one grand confederation to resist the further encroachments of the whites, on the principle that the Indians had common interests, and that what concerned one tribe concerned all. As the tribes were constantly shifting about, following the game in its migrations, he held that no one tribe had any more than a possessory right to the land while in actual occupancy, and that any sale of lands, to be valid, must be sanctioned by all the tribes concerned. His claim was certainly founded in justice, but the government refused to admit the principle in theory, although repeatedly acting on it in practice, for every important treaty afterward made in Mississippi valley was a joint treaty, as it was found impossible to assign the ownership of any considerable section to any one particular tribe. The Shawano themselves hunted from the Cumberland to the Susquehanna. As a basal proposition, Tecumtha claimed that the Greenville treaty, having been forced on the Indians, was invalid; that the only true boundary was the Ohio, as established in 1768, and that all future cessions must have the sanction of all the tribes claiming rights in that region. By this time there were assembled at Greenville to listen to the teachings of the prophet hundreds of savages, representing all the widely extended tribes of the late region and the great northwest, all wrought up to the highest pitch of excitement over the prospect of a revival of the old Indian life and the perpetuation of aboriginal sovereignty. This was Tecumtha’s opportunity, and he was quick to improve it. Even those who doubted the spiritual revelations could see that they were in danger from the continued advances of the whites, and were easily convinced that safety required that they should unite as one people for the preservation of a common boundary. The pilgrims carried back these ideas to their several tribes, and thus what was at first a simple religious revival soon became a political agitation. They were equally patriotic from the Indian point of view, and under the circumstances one was almost the natural complement of the other. All the evidence goes to show that the movement in its inception was purely religious and peaceable; but the military spirit of Tecumtha afterward gave to it a warlike and even aggressive character, and henceforth the apostles of the prophet became also recruiting agents for his brother. Tecumtha himself was too sensible to think that the whites would be destroyed by any interposition of heaven, or that they could be driven out by any combination of the Indians, but he did believe it possible that the westward advance of the Americans could be stopped at the Ohio, leaving his people in undisturbed possession of what lay beyond. In this hope he was encouraged by the British