Blue Jacket: Warrior of the Shawnees

Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, Summer 2001 by Cave, Alfred

Blue jacket: Warrior of the Shawnees. By John Sugden (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2000; xviii, 362. Cloth, $29.95.)

Of all of the "patriot chiefs" who championed and led armed resistance to Euro-American expansionism, the Shawnee war leader Blue jacket was both one of the most successful and one of the least remembered. In accomplishment, he was equal and arguably perhaps superior to both his predecessor, the Ottawa chief Pontiac, and his successor the Shawnee warrior Tecumseh. But while Pontiac and Tecumseh have both been celebrated in prose, poetry and drama and analyzed in numerous histories and biographies, Blue jacket remained so obscure that the editors of the Dictionary of American Biography deemed him unworthy of an entry. Given the fact that Blue Jacket accomplished a feat that eluded Pontiac and Tecumseh, namely the defeat of a major Euro-American military force, and did so not once but twice (Harmar's army, 1791 and St.Clair's, 1792), that obscurity is hard to explain. In both engagements, he commanded a multi-tribal force recruited through the sort of pan-Indian appeal usually associated with Tecumseh. In the latter battle, those forces inflicted upon the United States a casualty rate (60%) that has not yet been equaled. "Mad Anthony" Wayne's triumph at Fallen Timbers in 1794 not only ended the power of the northern Indian confederacy; it virtually erased the memory of the formidable opposition led by Blue Jacket and his fellow war chiefs.

Part of the reason for the neglect of Blue jacket in the historiography of the period can be attributed to the mistaken belief that the Miami chief Little Turtle was the preeminent leader of the Northern coalition. John Sugden, celebrated biographer of Tecumseh, in this first full-scale biography of Blue jacket, argues persuasively that William Wells, Little Turtle's son in law, systematically overstated the role of both the Miami and their war chief in the confederacy. Wells, a white captive raised by the Miami, was a turncoat who deserted his adopted family to join General Wayne. In his later career as an American Indian agent he earned a reputation for deviousness and dishonesty. Although Wells' re-writing of history prevailed, the contemporary sources clearly describe Blue Jacket as the most prominent of the war chiefs. While neither Little Turtle nor Blue Jacket wielded the sort of power given to Euro-American military commanders-in-chief, Blue Jacket's particular contributions deserve greater recognition. Sugden also demolishes the old story, recently embraced by the novelist Alan Eckert and favored by some historians, that Blue Jacket was white, taken into captivity at a tender age and adopted by the Shawnee.

In its command of the documentary evidence and in its careful, judicious respect for both facts and logic, Sugden's Blue jacket is reminiscent of his masterful, prize-winning biography of Tecumseh. Sugden excels in his descriptions and analyses of military engagements. Few writers have his understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of Indian warfare. Although Sugden's account of the Battle of Fallen Timbers would have been enriched by consideration of the recent archaeological findings of Michael Pratt, his narrative of this engagement and others is both lucid and insightful. He is less successful in reconstructing the life and character of Blue Jacket himself. The sources are scanty. Many aspects of Blue Jacket's life are poorly documented, or known only through often unreliable late testimony. Not only do we remain in the dark concerning some aspects of his career; our understanding of his beliefs, values and habits leaves much to be desired. Reading Sugden's Blue Jacket, we learn as much as probably can be learned about him, but we still know little.

The mystery that is Blue Jacket appears in its starkest form in his relationship to the Shawnee Prophet. Alone among prominent Shawnee chiefs, Blue Jacket gave his support to the Prophet and his brother Tecumseh. Residing near Detroit, he used his influence to secure federal annuities for the Prophet's community at Greenville (over the bitter objections of the established Shawnee leadership at Wapakoneta). He journeyed to the Prophet's sacred village, and used his skill as a negotiator on the Prophet's behalf in dealings with American officials. But, as Sugden notes, Blue jacket's own life-style was antithetical to the teachings of the Prophet. The Prophet called for repudiation of all aspects of white culture, explaining that the Great Spirit had punished his chosen people, the Indians, for their associations with the infernal white race. The Prophet, among other things, condemned alcohol, forbade intermarriage and demanded that Indians no longer trade with Americans or eat the flesh of their domestic animals. Blue Jacket, after making peace with the United States in 1795, prospered as a trader, lived in a comfortable Euro-American style house, enjoyed drinking, and had a white wife. His children were of mixed blood, and would have been outcasts in the Prophet's pure Indian society. Sugden offers no good explanation of Blue Jacket's affinity for the Prophet's cause. He doubts that he was ever a convert to the Prophet's religion, yet during most of Blue Jacket's association with the Prophet and Tecumseh at Greenville and later Prophetstown, the movement was primarily religious. Its transformation into a military alliance led by Tecumseh would not occur until the last year of Blue Jacket's life (he died in 1811). Perhaps, Sugden suggests, Blue Jacket was motivated by opportunism, by the desire to regain lost status. While that is plausible, it is not entirely convincing. The sources provide no real answer. This reviewer suspects that Sugden, in common with most historians, underestimates the power of the Prophet's message, and his charismatic appeal. Perhaps under the sway of Tenkswatawa's sermons and rituals, the aging war-chief re-captured something that had been lost, or experienced a new vision... but this is pure conjecture.