Blue Jacket

Blue Jacket or Weyapiersenwah [Heidelberg College. [http://www.heidelberg.edu/FallenTimbers/FTbio-BlueJacket.html Weyapiersenwah biography] at the Fallen Timbers Battlefield Archaeological Project. Accessed online 1 March 2007.] (c. 1743 – c. 1810) was a war chief of the Shawnee people, known for his militant defense of Shawnee lands in the Ohio Country. Perhaps the preeminent American Indian leader in the Northwest Indian War, in which a pan-tribal confederacy fought several battles with the nascent United States, he was an important predecessor of the famous Shawnee leader Tecumseh.

Early life and identity debate

Little is known of Blue Jacket's early life. He first appears in written historical records in 1773, when he was already a grown man and a war chief. In that year, a British missionary visited the Shawnee villages on the Scioto River and recorded the location of Blue Jacket's Town on Deer Creek (present Ross County, Ohio).

In 1877, decades after Blue Jacket's death, a story was published which claimed that he was in fact a white man named Marmaduke Van Swearingen, who had been captured and adopted by Shawnees in the 1770s, around the time of the American Revolutionary War. This story, popularized in historical novels written by Allan W. Eckert in the late 1960s, remains well known in Ohio, where an outdoor drama celebrating the life of the white Indian chief is performed each year in Xenia, Ohio.

Despite the persistence of this tale, many have questioned its authenticity. Historians such as Reginald Horsman, Helen Hornbeck Tanner, and Blue Jacket biographer John Sugden have argued that the known historical facts about Blue Jacket and Van Swearingen make it unlikely that they were the same person. The historical record indicates that Blue Jacket was much older than Marmaduke Van Swearingen and was already an established chief by the time that Van Swearingen was supposedly captured. Furthermore, no one who personally knew Blue Jacket left any records referring to him as a white man. According to Sugden, Blue Jacket was undoubtedly a Shawnee by birth.

DNA testing of the descendants of Blue Jacket and Van Swearingen has given additional support to the argument that Blue Jacket was not Van Swearingen. After an initial test in 2000, results of a DNA test using updated equipment and techniques was published in the September 2006 edition of "The Ohio Journal of Science". The researchers tested DNA samples from four men descended from Charles Swearingen, Blue Jacket's supposed brother, and six who are descended from Blue Jacket's son George Blue-Jacket. The DNA from the two families did not match, and so the study concluded that, "Barring any questions of the paternity of the Chief's single son who lived to produce male heirs, the 'Blue Jacket with-Caucasian-roots' is not based on reality."

truggle for the Old Northwest

Blue Jacket participated in Dunmore's War and the American Revolutionary War (allied with the British), always attempting to maintain Shawnee land rights. With the British defeat in the American Revolutionary War, the Shawnee lost valuable assistance in defending the Ohio Country. The struggle continued as white settlement in Ohio escalated, and Blue Jacket was a prominent leader of the resistance.

On November 3, 1791, the army of a confederation of Indian tribes, led by Blue Jacket and Miami Chief Little Turtle, defeated an American expedition led by Arthur St. Clair, governor of the Northwest Territory. The engagement, known as the Battle of the Wabash or as St. Clair's Defeat, was the crowning achievement of Blue Jacket's military career, and the most severe defeat ever inflicted upon the United States by Native Americans. Traditional accounts of the battle tend to give most of the credit for the victory to Little Turtle. John Sugden argues that Little Turtle's prominence is due in large measure to Little Turtle's self-promotion in later years.

Blue Jacket's triumph was short-lived. The Americans were alarmed by St. Clair's disaster and raised a new professional army, commanded by General Anthony Wayne. On August 20, 1794, Blue Jacket's confederate army clashed with Wayne at the Battle of Fallen Timbers, just south of present-day Toledo, Ohio. Blue Jacket's army was defeated, and he was compelled to sign the Treaty of Greenville on August 3, 1795, ceding much of present-day Ohio to the United States.

In 1805, Blue Jacket also signed the Treaty of Fort Industry, relinquishing even more of Ohio. In Blue Jacket's final years, he saw the rise to prominence of Tecumseh, who would take up the banner and make the final attempts to reclaim Shawnee lands in the Ohio Country.

References

*Cave, Alfred. [http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3945/is_200107/ai_n8974415 "Blue Jacket: Warrior of the Shawnees"] . "Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society", summer 2001. Review of Sugden's biography.
*Evans, Brian J. [http://www.examiner.org/blue_jacket/part_1.html "The legend of Blue Jacket aka Wayapiersenwah"] . "Bellefontaine Examiner" online. A series of newspaper articles, undated but circa 2000, about the controversy over Blue Jacket's identity.
*Horsman, Reginald. [http://www.biographi.ca/009004-119.01-e.php?&id_nbr=2711 "Weyapiersenwah"] . "Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online".
*Rowland, Carolyn D., R. V. Van Trees, Marc S. Taylor, Michael L. Raymer, and Dan E. Krane. "Was the Shawnee War Chief Blue Jacket a Caucasian?" "The Ohio Journal of Science" 106, no. 4 (September 2006): 126–29.
*Ohio Historical Society. [http://www.ohiohistorycentral.org/entry.php?rec=43 "Blue Jacket"] . Ohio History Central: An Online Encyclopedia of Ohio History, 2005.
*Sugden, John. "Blue Jacket: Warrior of the Shawnees". Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2000. ISBN 0-8032-4288-3.

External links

* [http://shawnee-bluejacket.com/ Shawnee Blue Jacket Web Site]
* [http://www.bluejacketdrama.com/ The "Blue Jacket" outdoor drama]
* [http://www.cityofshawnee.org/Events/bluejacketarticle.htm Newspaper article about Blue Jacket and his grandson, Rev. Charles Bluejacket]