Tecumseh statue by Alan Cottrill, Great Council State Park, Ohio. Image from the park’s opening ceremony on June 7
When Margaret Erskine was taken on the trail to Kentucky in 1799, she had no idea where she was headed. All she knew was that the Shawnee war party that took her and her sister Agatha were not going in the right direction to reach Kentucky. As she experiences it, an ignorant and inevitably prejudiced white woman from Virginia, the Shawnee are mysterious and terrifying. At the end of many days on horseback, they arrived at Chillicothe, the main Shawnee town at the time, in Ohio.
White soldiers burned that town and several others where the desperate tribe was holding out against their forced relocation to Oklahoma which happened a few years later. Now the memory of their town and of the tribe is enshrined in Ohio’s newest park, Great Council State Park, near Xenia. As described in a recent article in the Springfield News-Sun, the visitor’s center is a “12,000-square-foot modern interpretation of a council house, the primary gathering place and traditional dwelling in a 1700s Shawnee village.” The council house holds three stories of artistic and interactive exhibits, celebrating the lives of the Shawnee. Perhaps most impressive, the sculptor Alan Cottrill has created a statue of the Shawnee chief Tecumseh, based on an early drawing of “the chief, warrior and orator” who was born nearby.
The park was developed after many consultations with the three Shawnee tribes that survived their removal and attempted destruction.
Margaret, if she were alive, would smile secretly, shielding her pleasure from her censorious Virginia relatives. The park enshrines the story she tells, through me, in Taken by the Shawnee, of her gradually increasing understanding of these extraordinary people.
[The June 7 Grand Opening Ceremony, including the unveiling of the statue, was streamed live and is available to watch on Facebook.]
Kudos to all who made this park in Ohio a reality. I do not travel very much due to my dedication to my many cats and my herd of three old Icelandic Horses. The youngest horse is a gelding of 21 years. Loftur still acts and looks very young.
It is an easy trip by car, but I probably won’t make it there in this lifetime. I wish the Ohio State Park website had some pics of the inside of the building.
It really warms my heart to see the grand statue of Tecumseh! This feels very healing to my soul.