Blue Jacket

For other uses, see Bluejacket (disambiguation).

Blue Jacket
Weyapiersenwah
Shawnee leader
Succeeded by	Tecumseh
Personal details
Born	c. 1743 (present day Ross County, Ohio).
Died	c. 1810
Known for	Defense of Shawnee lands in the Ohio Country; military leadership in the Northwest Indian War. Fought in Dunmore's War, American Revolutionary War (allied with the British), Battle of the Wabash and Battle of Fallen Timbers; signed the Treaty of Greenville, Treaty of Fort Industry

Blue Jacket or Weyapiersenwah (c. 1743 – 1810) was a war chief of the Shawnee people, known for his militant defense of Shawnee lands in the Ohio Country. Perhaps the pre-eminent American Indian leader in the Northwest Indian War, in which a pantribal confederacy fought several battles with the nascent United States, he was an important predecessor of the famous Shawnee leader Tecumseh.

Early life

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).

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Van Swearingen legend

In 1877, decades after Blue Jacket's death, a story was published which claimed that Blue Jacket had actually been 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 was popularized in historical novels written by Allan W. Eckert in the late 1960s. An outdoor drama based on the Van Swearingen story, Blue Jacket, White Shawnee War Chief, was performed in Xenia, Ohio, beginning in 1981. Performances of the play ended in 2007.

Beginning with historian Helen Hornbeck Tanner in 1978, a number of historians have argued that Blue Jacket and Van Swearingen were not likely to be 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 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 Blue Jacket biographer John 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, Marmaduke's 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."

See also

• Biography portal

References

Notes

Bibliography

• Sugden, John. Blue Jacket: Warrior of the Shawnees. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2000. ISBN 0-8032-4288-3.

Further reading

• Cave, Alfred. "Blue Jacket: Warrior of the Shawnees". Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, summer 2001. Review of Sugden's biography.
• Horsman, Reginald. "Weyapiersenwah". Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online.
• Johnson, Louise F. "Testing Popular Lore: Marmaduke Swearingen a.k.a. Chief Blue Jacket". National Genealogical Society Quarterly 82 (September 1994): 165–78.