Born in a Shawnee village in what is now Ohio, Tecumseh became in the 1770s co-leader with his brother, the Prophet, of a movement to restore and preserve traditional Indian values. He believed a union of all the western tribes to drive back white settlement to be the one hope for Indian survival and spread this idea the length of the frontier. Seeing the Americans as the immediate threat, he allied himself with the British in 1812, assisted in the capture of Detroit and was killed near here at the Battle of the Thames on 5 October 1813, while retreating with General Proctor from Amherstburg.