So live your life that the fear of death can never enter your heart.
Trouble no one about their religion; respect others in their view, and demand that they respect yours.
Love your life, perfect your life, beautify all things in your life.
Seek to make your life long and its purpose in the service of your people.
Prepare a noble death song for the day when you go over the great divide.
Always give a word or a sign of salute when meeting or passing a friend, even a stranger, when in a lonely place.
Show respect to all people and grovel to none.
When you arise in the morning give thanks for the food and for the
joy of living.
If you see no reason for giving thanks, the fault lies only in yourself.
Abuse no one and no thing, for abuse turns the wise ones to fools and robs the spirit of its vision.
When it comes your time to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled with the fear of death, so that when their time comes they weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way.
Sing your death song and die like a hero going home.
- Chief Tecumseh, Shawnee Nation
November 24, 1812 marks the death of Tecumseh's nephew Spenicalawba, who scouted for the Americans during the War of 1812, having been captured as a young boy by a general who raised him. "Captain Logan", as he was also known, tried to temper Tecumseh's hostility toward the Euro-Americans.
Wasn't gonna happen. Tecumseh (Tekoomsē: "Shooting Star" or "Panther Across The Sky") allied with the British in Canada, hoping by this effort to drive the Americans away for good, giving up his life in the effort.
A year earlier while he was away traveling, his forces were defeated in the Battle of Tippecanoe. His brother Tenskwatawa was there. Tenskwatawa was a religious leader who also advocated a return to the ancestral lifestyle of the tribes. He put a curse on governor William Henry Harrison that he would never be President but instead die.
True. Harrison's presidency lasted one month. He died of pneumonia. This began a long series of what became known as "Tecumseh's Curse" whereby Presidents elected in a year ending in zero would die is office.
Here is the "Zero Year" list of fated Presidents:
1840 – William Henry Harrison (pneumonia)
1860 – Abraham Lincoln (shot in head)
1880 – James A. Garfield (shot in back)
1900 – William McKinley (shot while shaking hands with well-wishers after making speech)
1920 – Warren G. Harding (stroke – may also have been poisoned by wife)
1940 – Franklin D. Roosevelt (massive cerebral hemorrhage in fourth term while on vacation with mistress)
1960 – John F. Kennedy (shot in head)
While some claim Ronald Reagan, elected in 1980, "broke the chain of zero-year voodoo", others say the curse is only sleeping.
"W" also managed to escape, does this mean the spell was indeed broken?
Or does it mean that the Presidency itself "died in office" in 1980, replaced by corporate rule?
