Tecumseh's reputation among Americans has been both the most unique and anomalous. As the leader of the Shawnee, Tecumseh was the most famous Native American of the early 19th century, and he attempted to peacefully establish a Native American nation east of the Mississippi River in the wake of the American Revolution. While Native Americans, especially in the "old Northwest" (present-day land west of the Appalachian Mountains and east of the Mississippi River), understood and recognized their own long-established territories and those of other tribes, these boundaries and territories were ignored and unappreciated by the incoming settlers. Together with his brother, Tenskwatawa, Tecumseh was in the process of forming a wide-ranging Native American confederacy that they hoped would stem the westward flow of Anglo-American settlers and essentially establish a "nation" of Native Americans that would be recognized and accepted by the advancing European-American settlers. Throughout his life, Tecumseh had experienced the effects of encroachment by white settlers as his family and his people were forced from their ancestral homelands and wandered westward several times, finally settling in Missouri.