Rhetorical strategies in speeches by Red Jacket and Tecumseh

Tecumseh Red Jacket Speeches

The speeches of Red Jacket and Tecumseh are both fundamental examples of the period and of the manner in which different Indian orators developed and utilized ethos, pathos and logos to demonstrate each point to different audiences. To begin with this work must briefly describe each and then it will discuss the differences between the two on all three points. The ethos of any persuasive argument is demonstrated as the authority with which the speaker comes into the argument and how the audience recognizes this authority and how the speaker creates trust with content and technique. The logos of the persuasive argument is the material utilized by the speaker to persuade in an artistic manner, while the pathos of the persuasion is the emotion that already resides with the audience which the speaker then plays upon to build his persuasive argument.

Kennedy 56) Having briefly defined each element this work will then move forward to compare and contrast the information offered by each speaker to persuade his audience.

Ethos

Both Tecumseh and Red Jacket relay heavily on individual skill to demonstrate their authority, and both have gained authority outside of the persuasive argument that they then utilize and present artistically to demonstrate purpose and intent. The intended audience of each speaker intensely modifies the messages of the speakers, as Red Jacket, speaks to the U.S. Senate relying on the fact that he has been asked to participate in this "council fire" by the senate and will speak to the questions they have placed before him, most specifically the fact that he believes the Red Man and the White man to be different and therefore deserving of their own unimpeded faiths. Red Jacket outlines, rather tamely the many ways in which the white man has challenged the Red man's trust, on many issues and then defines the need of the White Man to refrain from attempting to usurp the authority of the Red Man's religion, until such time as the Red Man sees if the preaching of the White Man to local white men (in the communities where both live together) actually changes their historical behavior to one that is more in line with the words of the White Man's Book (the bible) which is even among the white man interpreted divergently, and which has not been handed down to the Red Man by his ancestors, in the way the their own Great Spirit faith has been. While Tecumseh on the other hand is speaking to another Indian nation, one he wishes to persuade to fight the White Man for all of the wrongs, he has committed. He comes to the oration with the authority of truly being a brother to the Osages, as a fellow Red Man and with the authority of the Great Spirit, a divine character which they collectively rely on as the universal creator.

Pathos

The character of the Red Jacket speech is dependant upon the emotional ties that the Red Man and the White Man have with one another and the sorrow that White Men might be feeling for the historical actions of their own kind, against the Red Man. Red Jacket relies heavily on the pathos of brotherhood and unity, as does Tecumseh but from entirely different emotional motivations. Red Jacket expresses that he sees the calling of the White Man for this "council fire" as a sign that they emote in a manner that is at least sympathetic to the Red Man, and that they will see the Red Man as similar to the White Man in their divergent takes on religion and history. While Tecumseh relies on Brotherhood and Unity as a collective experience of having been brutalized, in countless ways by the White Man and seeking retribution for the lost land, power and blood of th Red Man. The emotions of each audience is divergent and therefore the pathos had to be tailored to the audience, and call upon history to redirect the meaning and mission of the statements each persuasive argument makes.

The formation and reception of each persuasive speech is very obviously tailored for and to the audience being persuaded. Red Jacket, accepted as an authority for his previous dealings with the White Man (even so much so that he was given his name as a result of the British) is clearly the right man to tell the U.S. Senate that the Red Man wishes to withhold judgment on the word of a group of people who have done so many wrongs to his people. Tecumseh in accordance is the right man for the job of persuading a rival Indian nation of the need to create unity through a collective sense of wrongdoing and to come together to fight, a mistake Tecumseh expresses that other Indian nations have made by not doing so long ago.