The striking circumstances of his birth, the ascendency of his brother, the Prophet, his burning hatred of the white race; his skill as a hunter and valor as a warrior; above all his wonderful eloquence and thorough knowledge of all the Indian treaties of the past, gave Tecumseh an influence and authority among the tribes far beyond that of any of the braves or sachems of that day. If at the first his imagination had not dared to scale the heights of power, he later boldly threw aside all disguise, and by his powerful advocacy of a communistic ownership of all the Indian lands by the tribes in common, he aimed both a blow at the ancient authority claimed by the Indian chieftains, and at the validity of every treaty ever negotiated between the two races of men. The sum and substance of Tecumseh's doctrine is thus succinctly stated by Judge Law: "That the Great Spirit had given the Indians all their lands in common to be held by them as such and not by the various tribes who had settled on portions of it--claiming it as their own. That they were squatters having no 'pre-emption right,' but holding even that on which they lived as mere 'tenants in common' with all the other tribes. That this mere possession gave them no title to convey the land without the consent of all. That no single tribe had the right to sell, that the power to sell was not vested in their chiefs, but must be the act of the warriors in council assembled of all the tribes, as the land belonged to all--no portion of it to any single tribe."