Blue Jacket
Contrary to a widespread belief, the Shawnee war chief Blue Jacket was not a white man adopted by the Shawnee. This story gained credence in several novels written by Allan Eckert about the settlement of the Ohio River Valley, but DNA testing has disproven the hypothesis. Blue Jacket’s Shawnee name was Wayapiersenah, and he was likely born in the mid-1740s, a period when the Shawnee were defending their lands against the Six Nations. During the slow withdrawal of the Iroquois to Canada, the Shawnee were repopulating the lands which became Ohio.
In the 1760s, the Shawnee began conducting raids on the western Virginia settlements to obtain armaments and other supplies depleted by the fighting against the Iroquois and allied tribes, leading to a conflict which became known as Lord Dunmore’s War. Fought against the settlements in what is now West Virginia and Kentucky, then both part of Virginia, the war cost the Shawnee their hunting rights in Kentucky, and despite a treaty which officially ended the war militant Shawnee continued to raid settlements south of the Ohio River. Blue Jacket figured prominently in these raids.
During the Revolutionary War the Shawnee gained the support of the British in Detroit, in the form of weapons and supplies, and the raids intensified. The British loss in the war led to American possession of the Ohio Country, and settlers began to pour downriver to the newly opened lands. Shawnee attacks intensified and Blue Jacket became a leading Shawnee war leader. In 1790 and 1792 the Legion of the United States was dispatched to put an end to the Shawnee threat. The Shawnee, supported by allies such as the Miami led by Little Turtle, crushed the American’s at the Battle of the Wabash.
The Battle of the Wabash was the worst defeat inflicted upon American arms by the Indians in the history of the nation. The US government responded with another legion and a superior commander, Revolutionary War hero Anthony Wayne. Wayne destroyed the Indian alliance at the Battle of Fallen Timbers, near the Maumee River. In addition to the Shawnee and the Miami, there were warriors from the Wyandot, Mingo, and Ottawa tribes, as well as others. There was also a contingent of British support. Following the battle Wayne imposed the Treaty of Greenville, and Shawnee control of the Ohio Country was at an end.
Blue Jacket withdrew to a Shawnee village near Wapakoneta, Ohio. There the former war chief ran a small farm and trade store, doing business with both whites and Indians, and supplemented his income with hunting and trapping. The alliance of the tribes from the Northwest Territory would have a further incarnation when a young warrior with whom Blue Jacket was familiar, Tecumseh, would revisit it prior and during the War of 1812. After 1805, when he was a signatory to the Treaty of Fort Industry, little is known of Blue Jacket. It is believed that he died shortly after.