Letters, 1866-1891, and narratives about Tecumseh and some of his allies and contemporaries gathered by Draper from varied sources, including the families of persons who had been prisoners of the Shawnee, notably descendants of John and William Connor and of Abraham and Stephen Ruddell; relatives of Tecumseh's aide-de-camp at the battle of the Thames, Andrew Clark, who was the son of Margaret McKenzie (also a Shawnee prisoner) and the British trader Thomas Alexander Clark; relatives of Thomas Forsyth, Indian agent in Illinois; published writings, such as those of Joseph C. Guild of Nashville, Tennessee, and of Godfrey Lesieur of New Madrid, Missouri. Many facets of Tecumseh's career from birth to death are touched upon.

Other persons and topics discussed include: Tecumseh's brother the Prophet; the education of Shawnee boys; the founding of the settlement of New Madrid; the persecution of witchcraft among the Missouri Shawnee in 1808-1809; the Potawatomi chiefs Billy Caldwell, the Main Poque, and Shaubena; Andrew Jackson, William Weatherford, and the Creek War; and the Black Hawk War of 1832. Draper's extracts from The Letters of Veritas... (Montreal, 1815) give a British viewpoint of the northwestern campaigns (1812-1814) and of George Prevost's command in Canada. Letters, 1866-1868, of Juliette A. Kinzie contain numerous allusions to her book Wau-Bun and to Indian affairs, both past and current, in Wisconsin and the Midwest.