Tecumseh, the Shawnee leader, was born at this site on the bank of a large spring in 1768 as a great meteor crossed the sky, while his parents, the Shawnee war chief Pucksinwah and his wife Methotasa, were traveling from Kispoko Town on the Scioto River to a major tribal council at Chalahgawth, the Shawnee capital village. Although tribal tradition barred him from becoming chief of the Shawnees, he became one of the greatest warriors, orators, and military strategists of any tribe in America. In response to rapidly encroaching white settlement on Native American lands, he forged and led a confederation of tribes numbering about 50,000 warriors. That resistance might have succeeded but for the rash acts of his younger brother Tenskwatawa, The Prophet, which brought on the Battle of Tippecanoe and undermined Tecumseh's efforts. After circumstances forced him to ally with the British in the War of 1812, he was killed at the Battle of the Thames near present Chatham, Canada, on October 5, 1813.