White colonizers moving westward posed a huge threat to Native American tribes in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. These tribes were threatened with the loss of their homes, ways of life, and families when white people came to forcefully eject them from land that was rightfully theirs. Tecumseh, a Shawnee leader, recognized that the only way to defeat the violent white men was to unite his tribe with other tribes faced with the same problems. Tecumseh met with the neighboring tribe, the Osages, to deliver a speech calling for the unification of the tribes. Through his use of figurative language, diction, and allusion, Tecumseh attempts to unite the Shawnee with the Osages against their common enemy, the white man.
Tecumseh’s first strategy to unite the tribes is to appeal to the similarities that the tribes share. He begins his speech by addressing the Osages and the Shawnee collectively as “brothers” and repeats this in almost every subsequent paragraph. This repetitive use of the word is a device used by Tecumseh to establish and emphasize his friendly and familial tone. He makes it clear that he already views the two tribes as one, unified family. He then brings up that since both tribes belong to one family, they
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He warns both tribes of what will surely happen if the tribes stay divided. He says that both tribes will be easily destroyed by the white men like the many tribes before have been when they chose not to unite as one. This creates a sense of urgency – the tribes must unite now. While his audience is thinking about the seemingly inevitable fight with the white men, Tecumseh assures them that although the white men are evil, they are still only human. He identifies their weaknesses, that they are slow runners and easy to shoot, to prove that they are not invincible and says that there is no reason that the Native Americans should fear