Tecumseh, c. 1811

The great Shawnee chief, Tecumseh, was a warrior, a diplomat, a peacemaker and a prophet. He accurately prophesied to the day the great earthquake at New Madrid, IL (December 18, 1811) several months before it occurred. Tecumseh and his brother organized a confederacy of tribes to fight the menace of the United States. After the Battle of Tippecanoe (1811), in which his brother Tenskwatawa was defeated, Chief Techumseh sent a message, delivered by prisoners he released to General William H. Harrison:

"Harrison will not win this year to be the great chief. But he may win next year. If he does, he will not finish his term. He will die in office."

One of the prisoners argued, "But Chief Tecumseh, no president has ever died in office".

"Harrison will die, I tell you," Tecumseh said. "And when he dies you will remember the deaths of my people. You think that I have lost my powers: I who caused the sun to darken and red men to give up firewater. But I tell you Harrison will die. And after him, every great chief chosen every twenty years thereafter will die. And when each one dies, let everyone remember the death of our people."

Before Tecumseh left for the Battle of the Thames in Canada (October 13, 1813), he gave away his possessions and made this prophecy to Tenskwatawa:

"Brother, be of good cheer. Before one winter shall pass, the chance will yet come to build our nation and drive the Americans from our land. If this should fail, then a curse shall be upon the great chief of the Americans, if they shall ever pick Harrison to lead them.

"His days in power shall be cut short. And for every twenty winters following, the days in power of the great chief which they shall select shall be cut short. Our people shall not be the instrument to shorten their time. Either the Great Spirit shall shorten their days or their own people shall shoot them.

"This is not all. Each contest to select their great chief shall be marked by sharp divisions within their nation. Within seven winters of each contest, there shall be a war among their people, either within their nation or with other nations, I know not which. Our people shall prosper only if they can avoid these wars."

When President Harrison died of pneumonia on April 4, 1841, many began to believe in Tecumseh's curse. Since then, every president elected in a "0" year has been shot or otherwise died in office.

L.J. Jensen noted, in 1935, that since 1840, when Saturn and Jupiter began conjuncting in earth signs, every U.S. President who was elected in those periods died during his term in office: William Harrison (1841, pneumonia), Abraham Lincoln (1865, assassinated), James Garfield (1881), William McKinley (1901), Warren Harding (1923), Franklin Roosevelt (1945), and John F. Kennedy (1963, assassinated). Only two presidents elected at 20-year intervals before 1840 did not die in office: Thomas Jefferson and James Monroe. (30, 31)

The last conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn occurred in 1980 in the air sign Libra. President Reagan was shot soon after but was resurrected. The next conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter will be in 23o Taurus in May 2000, affecting the reign of President-select George W. Bush, Jr.

The 20-year cycle has been analyzed by the Fisher Exact Probability test and yields a statistical significance level of 0.00004, which is to say that there is only a very low possibility that the 20-year cycle is due to chance.

The statistical and theoretical difficulties of analyzing the cycle have been treated by the mathematician Michael Capobianco using a more conservative technique which still yields statistically significant results (0.012). According to Capobianco, “There is slightly better than one chance in a hundred that the seven deaths would have occurred in this way... The average interval of 20.44 years [between presidential deaths in office] is nearly the same length as the interval for the double cycle in sunspots (21.22 years). Furthermore, the presidential deaths always occurred near the extreme dip in the sunspot cycle. In the opinion of astrologer David Williams, “The cycle became inoperative in 1981 because the Jupiter-Saturn conjunction fell in the air sign of Libra.”¹

1. Taken from Prophecy –A History of the Future (Internet Edition), by Robert A. Nelson at http://www.rexresearch.com/prophist/phf8usa.htm