Papers relating chiefly to Tecumseh's life before 1810. Original early manuscripts include an address (1807) by the Shawnee (or Wyandot) leader Round Head (Stayeghta, the Bark Carrier), interpreted by Isaac Zane and recorded by William McCulloch; a letter (1807) to Daniel Drake written at Blackhoofs town “by the light of an auld rag... twisted up & immersed in a pan of fat” by William Kirk, discussing the Prophet's preaching, Indian relations with the British and the Americans, and Kirk's treatment of the ague; and one (1808) by Alexander Edwards at Fort Wayne describing Indian herbal medicines for Drake. Among later letters to Draper, those by Francis V. Lesieur discuss his father Godfrey Lesieur (1798-1872) and grandfather Francois Lesieur; Tecumseh in the Shawnee village of Apple Creek, Missouri; and the dispersal of the population of the French-Canadian settlements in Missouri following the earthquakes of 1811-1812. A few other correspondents, both white and Shawnee, discussed the influence wielded by the wife of the Prophet.

Other topics on which there are notes, letters, or printed articles include: the massacre of Nicholas Carpenter and his party at Carpenter's Bar near Marietta, Ohio (1791); the attack (1792) on Buchanan's Station in Tennessee; the locations of American forts in the Ohio region in 1793-1795 and in the War of 1812; the visit (1806) of Tecumseh and a party of Shawnee to the governor of Virginia in Richmond; the Indian council at Springfield (1807); Tecumseh's meeting with Harrison at Vincennes (1810); Harrison's Vincennes residence, “Grouseland”; the site of Old Town in Ohio; the Shawnee chief Silverheels; Shingaba W'Ossin or Image Stone, a nineteenth-century Chippewa leader near Sault Ste. Marie; and incomplete portions of Benjamin F. H. Witherell's reminiscences of Tecumseh clipped from Wisconsin Historical Collections, III.