Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography/Tetinchoua

TETINCHOUA, Miami chief, lived in the 17th century. He is described by Nicolas Perrot, who met him in 1671 at Chicago, as being the most powerful of Indian chiefs. According to the French traveller, he could control four or five thousand warriors, never marched without a guard of forty men, who patrolled night and day around his tent when he camped, and seldom held any direct communication with his subjects, but conveyed his orders to them by subordinates. Perrot was received with great honor as an envoy from the French governor. Tetinchoua sent out a detachment to meet him, which, after performing some remarkable military evolutions, escorted Perrot and his Pottawattamie guard into the principal town of the Miamis. Tetinchoua then assigned him a guard of fifty men, regaled him splendidly after the manner of the country, and ordered a game of ball to be played for his diversion. He was unable, owing to his age and infirmities, to accompany Perrot to Sault Ste. Marie, at the mouth of Lake Superior, where the French took formal possession of all the country on the lakes. He did not even send deputies to the assembly that was held on the occasion, but he gave the Pottawattamies power to act in his name. In 1672 Father Claude Dablon is said to have met him with his army of 3,000 Miamis. But, although the missionary was received with marks of friendship, he did not succeed in making any conversions.