Tecumseh Fox was a fictional private detective created by Rex Stout to provide some diversity from his housebound and opinionated rival Nero Wolfe. Although the character's name sounds native American, he is not. In Double for Death, he explains that his full name is William Tecumseh Sherman Fox, so he was supposedly named for the American Civil War general William Tecumseh Sherman. It seems probable that Stout chose this name in order to justify Fox's nickname, "Tec," which is also a slang term for detective. (A similar motive was presumably behind the naming of another Stout detective, the beautiful Theodolinda "Dol" Bonner.) The surname "Fox" was presumably chosen as an analogy to "Wolf(e)."