Blog Post

Tecumseh

HG writes: “Is there any truth to Tecumseh’s Curse?”

Legend has it that a curse was put upon all U.S. Presidents elected in a year ending in zero by Tenskwatawa—known by the Shawnee as “The Prophet" who was the brother of the great Shawnee Indigenous leader, Tecumseh.

The story behind the curse starts with Tecumseh's grievance with William Henry Harrison, who would be elected president in 1840. The argument began over a land deal Tecumseh believed was unfair. Tecumseh responded by organizing a large federation of native peoples from Wisconsin to Florida, using his skill as a speaker and organizer to convince the tribes to join his cause promoting Native American unity.

By 1809, he had amassed a significant number of Native American warriors, and it was William Henry Harrison, then serving as Governor of the Indian Territory, to confront Tecumseh and his warriors. In November of 1811, what has become known as the Battle of Tippecanoe, took place in Ohio where Tecumseh’s federation was defeated.

A year later, Tecumseh and his remaining warriors sided with the British in the War of 1812 where he was shot and killed. It is said that angry American soldiers mutilated his body, tearing off strips of skin to keep as souvenirs. Devastated by these losses, Tenskwatawa was said to have put a curse on all U.S. Presidents elected in a year ending in zero.

The curse supposedly went like this: “‘Harrison will not win this year to be the Great Chief. But he may win next year. If he does…He will not finish his term. He will die in his office.’ ‘No president has ever died in office,’ declared a visitor. ‘But Harrison will die I tell you. And when he dies you will remember my brother Tecumseh’s death. You think that I have lost my powers. I who caused the sun to darken and Red Men to give up firewater. But I tell you Harrison will die. And after him, every Great Chief chosen every 20 years thereafter will die. And when each one dies, let everyone remember the death of our people.'”

President William Henry Harrison

As Martin Kelly recounts in his article on ThoughtCo.com, "Did Tecumseh’s Curse Kill Seven US Presidents?" seven presidents elected in a year ending in zero have indeed died while in office.

Harrison was the first victim, having been elected in 1840 after campaigning with the slogan “Tippecanoe and Tyler Too” in reference to the initial battle with Tecumseh, (known as the Battle of Tippecanoe) died just thirty days after his inauguration of pneumonia.

Next was Abraham Lincoln who was elected in 1860 and was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth five years later.

James Garfield, elected in 1880, was shot by Charles J. Guiteau after just four months in office and died two months later on September 19, 1881. Guiteau, who was mentally unstable, was eventually hung for his crime.

William McKinley was elected to his second term in 1900 and was shot by Leon F. Czolgosz on September 6, 1901 who claimed the president was “the enemy of the people.” McKinley died a week later. Czolgosz survived him by less than a month when he was electrocuted for the crime.

Warren G. Harding, elected in 1920, was in office for a few years before suffering a stroke during a visit to San Francisco and died at the Palace Hotel on August 2, 1923.

Franklin Roosevelt was elected to his third term in 1940. He was in the midst of serving his fourth term (the only president in history to be in office for 12 years), when he suffered a cerebral hemorrhage and died on April 12, 1945. Because he was elected in a year ending in zero for one of his terms, his name is added to the list of those presidents felled by Tecumseh’s curse.

John F. Kennedy was elected to office in 1960 and was shot while riding in a motorcade in Dallas, Texas by Lee Harvey Oswald, who would die a few days later when he was shot while in police custody.

However, not every president elected in a year ending in zero died in office.

For example, Ronald Reagan was elected in 1980 and although he was shot on March 30, 1981 by John Hinckley, he survived the attack. “Reagan was the first to foil Tecumseh's curse and, some hypothesize, the president who finally broke it for good,” Kelly writes.

George W. Bush was elected in the year 2000 and although two attempts were made on his life, he survived.

Joe Biden was elected in 2020 and survives to this day.

As Kelly points out, “While some devotees of the curse suggest that the assassination attempts themselves were the Tecumseh's work, every President since Nixon has been the target of at least one assassination plot.”

Although curses are real, we have no documented evidence that Tenskwatawa placed a curse on anyone, hence the conclusion that Tecumseh’s curse is nothing more than an urban legend.

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