Death of Tecumseh, war chief of the Shawnee and Indian Nations of the North Oct 5, 1813

 Salvete Omnes,

yesterday it was 213th anniversary of the battle of the Thames. The American forces, 3,000 strong, commanded by William Harrison and  col. Richard Mentor Johnson defeated the allied forces of Tecumseh's Indians (500 strong) and general Henry Procter's British troops (450 regualrs). 

Tecumseh,  Panther in the Sky, led the remainders of his once promising Confederacy of the Nations of the North (Harrison defeated the allied native army, when Tecumseh was in the South,  in the battle of Tippecanoe in 1811). They allied themselves with the British and hence that part of the war of 1812 was also known as the Tecumseh's war. 

The charge of one battalion of the Kentucky mounted riflemen under col. James Johnson, screening Remember River Raisin, broke the British contingent, with Procter running away and his troops taken almost all prisoners. 

The native warriors, taking advantage of the swamp and woodland, skillfully continued to resist the advancing Shemanese (Long Knives) under their chief sachem Tecumseh and lesser chiefs and principal warriors of Shawnee, leading from the front and by example.

Another  battalion of the Kentucky mounted rifles  under col. Richard M. Johnson advanced and Johnson charged his 'dragoon' cavalry, with about 20 mounted men in van, the Tecumseh's position, drawing the sagamore and his retinue (comitatus) to a hand to hand melee, with sabers, pistols, rifle buts,  tomahawks and knives etc. 

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Johnson mortally wounded or killed sachem Tecumseh, but his command's attack was checked and repulsed by the Indian warriors, with Johnson wounded. Gen. Harrison ordered his 1000 strong infantry under Shelby  to attack the thin native warrior lines, and after a rather short firefight the confederate warrior bands, facing overwhelming numbers of their Shemanese enemies,  withdrew, taking the body of Tecumseh and some of other fallen warrior with them (the abandoned  fallen warriors' bodies were scalped and    mutilated in a true frontier fashion of the times ).  The Tecumseh's dream died there with him, albeit there were more battles between the former Tecumseh's confederates and the American forces in the Old Northwest.
John Sugden wrote a fine account of Tecumseh's heroic death titled -  Tecumseh's Last Stand (1985), followed by Tecumseh: A Life (1997).

Pacem aeternam to the great American heroes of that battle

Valete

On the eve of ending of Cecora campaign 1620AD

 Salvete Omnes, 

426 years ago, on the morning of October 6, 1620 Crown Grand Hetman Stanislaw Zolkiewski and his army completed their 8 night of fighting retreat (see this post for more detailed description).  The entire Crown army was confined to a wagenburg or large wagon train (6 rows of 100 wagons armed with hook guns & small cannon defended by 5,000 soldiers on foot, cavalry horses were led in front of the wagon-train). The troops, their  camp servants and horses marched, with wounded in the wagons, for more than 160 km (100 miles). They were about 10 km from the Dniester River, the border of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. 

They had been marching from the war camp at Cecora, on the Prut River in Moldavia. There, 17-19th of October they fought a pitched battle against Iskander Pasha's army, berlerbey of Silistra, the Ottoman force composed mostly out of the Crimean Tatars and various other Tatar hordes under Khan Temir (Bloody Sword), and some Moldavian & Transylvanian Turkish vassals. 

On that morning of October 6, 1620 there was no clear sign that by midnight of that night 6-7th of October the whole army would be disintegrated and all order vanished and hope gone. 

Tyche of Fortuna, Goddess of Luck, can be very capricious.

Valete

Polish America - 1608-2026

 Salvete Omnes,

Marker - first Poles in Jamestown, Virginia

I am part of Polish-American diaspora - and yesterday we celebrated the arrival of first Polish settlers  in Virginia. 

Smith's History of Virginia 

It was captain John Smith who made our first Polish colonists' voyage possible from northern Poland to Jamestown Virginia. To their credit they did save the Virginia colony in return. 

Polish Jew and amazing artist Artur Szyk created this image for the New York World Exhibition in 1938. 

A Libre book - our Polish American Congress published  History of Poles landing in Jamestown - 350th anniversary publication. 
S. H. Uminski's book you can to borrow from the Archive - Polish pioneers in Virginia. 

Vivat

Valete

Alfalfa & Nisean Horse

 Salvete Omnes,

Persepolis - king's horses

long time ago, when I first started this blog,  I wrote about the legume known as the alfalfa (Medicago Sativa) and the horse of Nisean/Nisayan Plain [ancient Media, since time immemorial in Iran], and recalled the article by Ms Louise Firouz and her Caspian Horse. 

Persepolis - king's chariot stallions  

My little gallery of the Achaemenid Empire horses from their own artists' studios, so to speak.
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enjoy

Darius' seal - chariot-riding, archer king with Ahura Mazda and rampant lion

Valete

Portraits of equine expressions in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century paintings

 Slavete Omnes,

University of Michigan Digital Collections 

 from the Journal of Veterinary Behavior come this libre article -Portraits of equine expressions in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century paintings by Denise Pereira Leme.

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It is free and about horse paintings, so why not to peruse it?  -   as the the proverbs go:

-don't look a gift horse in the mouth

-darowanemu koniowi w zęby się nie zagląda

-a caballo regalado, no le mires el diente

-Даровому коню в зубы не смотрят 

And what a joyous opportunity to share some great equestrian art on this blog 

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enjoy

Valete

 

New Book from Cheiron publishers - Rewriting equestrian history series

 Salvete Omnes,

last Sunday of this September 2026, also we have entered into the season of Autumn - Thanksgiving coming in two months.

ad rem, I was looking at the Trivent Publishing website for new Cheiron issue, and there they announced a new collection of articles on the European Medieval horses and their types: Backing the Right Horse: Types of Equids in Medieval and Later Europe.  Two articles - the Introduction and Defining the English Hackney - are 'libre' or available for download to read and study.

On this blog I have written plenty of posts on the medieval horses, mostly in the Medieval art, from destrier/dextrarius to jennet, rouncey (all purpose horse), hackney & sumpter (pack horse)- starting with this post on the dextrarius apertus of 2010..

Outright, I disagree with the position taken on breeding and breeds by Anastasija Ropa, one the editors, in the Introduction (page 11),  not only because  I read works by Juan Carlos Altamirano on the 'invention and breeding' of the  Spanish horse of king Felipe II.

In the past exchanges are had some disagreements on steppe and ancient Iranian etc horse history with on of the authors, namely Jurg Glassman. But in science and research informed disagreements just can  lead to more research and goodness - :) .

well, perhaps I get to read more of these articles, and so will you, dear fellow traveler. 

Valete