Though Allan Eckert's historical novel is dramatic, no amount of literature can truly capture Chief Blue Jacket's contempt toward the white man of the late 18th century frontier. Imagine your home stripped from you, along with your sustenance and pride. Anger, then arms, became the Shawnee reaction toward the oncoming white man. However, Blue Jacket's defiance existed outside the parameters of race. Blue Jacket was a white man.
We read in history texts about the conflicts between Shawnee and white settlers. Like Eckert, other writers and historians characterize the era through names like Daniel Boone, Tecumseh, and Simon Kenton. But we rarely read about Marmaduke "Duke" Van Swearingen, a white man who transcends the image of white settlers at the time. Long before Kevin Costner became Dances with Wolves in Hollywood, Marmaduke became Blue Jacket in Southeast Ohio and led his adopted people to first war then peace.
Marmaduke Van Swearingen was born on January 2, 1753, on a thousand-acre farm in Fayette County, Pennsylvania, according to a copy of his birth record at the Chillicothe Historical Society in Ross County. His parents were John and Katherine Stoll Swearingen, and he was the fourth son of fourteen children. Writer John Bennett's 1943, Blue Jacket, War Chief of the Shawnee, the first official biography of Blue Jacket, describes the Swearingen family as noted frontiersmen, traveling to Virginia, Carolina, Kentucky, and Ohio. Growing up, Marmaduke had a first hand account of the biased attitudes and experiences of the white settlers.
But Marmaduke seemed destined to breach the boundary between the settlers and the Shawnee. He had an intense curiosity about the Indian way of life. Their respect for the land and boldness engrossed him. Marmaduke eventually trained himself to become a Shawnee. He learned the Shawnee language from an old trapper, who lived among the Ohio Shawnee. Bennett states that Marmaduke, like many frontier youth, became fond of the wild, savage like. But unlike most boys, Marmaduke sympathized with the plight of the Native American and often expressed his desire to live their free life when he reached manhood.
In 1769, as researched by descendant Lola Thoroughman Van Swearingen, Marmaduke's sympathy evolved into a kinship with the Shawnee people. While hunting in what is now West Virginia with his younger brother Charles, the 17-year-old Marmaduke encountered a Shawnee hunting party. His knowledge of the Shawnee language was useful in avoiding a fight. After talking for over an hour, it was arranged for Charles to return home unharmed if Marmaduke willingly accompanied the Shawnee to their tribe. There, he was initiated into the Shawnee and given the name Blue Jacket, derived from his blue linsey jacket.
Marmaduke never lived within the white world again. Instead, he became one of the most feared Shawnee warriors and, remarkably, one of the eight outstanding chieftains in Ohio history.
The Indian captive O.M. Spencer described Chief Blue Jacket as "the most noble in appearance of any Indian I ever saw. His person, about six feet high, was finely proportioned, stout, and muscular; his eyes large, bright, and piercing; his forehead high and broad ... and his countenance open and intelligent, expressive of firmness and decision ..." Marmaduke fit so well within the Shawnee nation, he was never identified as a white man. His size, endurance, and intelligence helped him withstand the severe tests of initiation into his Shawnee tribe. And to Lola Van Swearingen, his enthusiasm, cheerfulness, and absolute loyalty made him very popular within his new family.
Blue Jacket's specific adopted tribe was the Kispokotha tribe. The Kispoko village had approximately 900 Shawnee and dwelt along the Scioto just north of Chillicothe (Chalahgantha). Elsie Johnson Ayres, in her book Hills of Highland, estimates that there were less than 15,000 Shawnee set along the Scioto and Paint Creek rivers at the beginning of the American Revolution. Continuously pushed westward, The Shawnee were in Southeast Ohio when the first settlers arrived. Fiercely, they defended their hunting ground.
A son of white settlers joining a people with an extreme rage toward all white invaders seems incredible to us today. The connection reflects well on both participants. But the relationship between Marmaduke and the Shawnee was more than an understanding.
Blue Jacket flourished within the Shawnee nation, contributing in the councils and war campaigns from the beginning of his tribal occupancy. Finally in the most ground breaking event, he was named chief of his tribe. In his Blue Jacket biography, Bennett explains that this "is all the more remarkable in that the Shawnee seldom or never permitted a white prisoner to engage with or lead a war party, for fear of betrayal."
Blue Jacket never hinted deception. Instead his reputation as a Shawnee warrior spread throughout the Ohio Valley. His first major battle occurred on October 10, 1774, at Point Pleasant. though he was only in his early twenties, Blue Jacket served as second in command. Until 1795, according to Bennett, Blue Jacket led his Shawnee people in a defensive war against the invading white man. During this time, his activities ranged from taking up the coat of a British officer to various run-ins with the famous frontiersman, Daniel Boone.
But despite his respect for Boone and others understanding his Shawnee life, Blue Jacket's contempt for the American invasion grew. At a governor's council he was quoted as saying, "From all quarters we receive speeches from the American, and no two are alike. We suppose they intend to deceive us ..." The most remarkable account of Blue Jacket's savageness as a warrior is at the battle of St. Clair in which he fought valiantly. Ironically, a Van Swearingen was killed in the battle. This was Blue Jacket's cousin, a captain of the American forces, according to Lola Van Swearingen.
The same motive which led Blue Jacket to war, however, eventually led him to seek a peace with the American government. The good of his people was all important. After a staggering defeat as the commander at the battle of Fallen Timbers, Blue Jacket realized that American occupancy in Ohio was inevitable. He became an emissary to those tribes still hostile. He even took up the blue coat of an American officer and helped orchestrate the Treaty of Greenville in 1795, a bond between the Americans and the Indian people that lasted fifteen years. He then relinquished all leadership and retired to Bellefontaine, Ohio, where he died on June 26, 1810.
There is no evidence of Blue Jacket ever revealing his nativity to his adopted people, nor is there any evidence of him returning to European life. He did, however, marry a white woman named Margaret Moore, taken captive by the Shawnee at the age of nine. She and Blue Jacket had one son, Joseph, and one daughter, Nancy, before she returned to her native home in Virginia. But while the woman he loved returned to the white world, Blue Jacket's heart remained with the Shawnee. He remarried the Indian Clearwater Baby and, as researched by Lola Van Swearingen, had many more children.
Blue Jacket returned only once to his original adopted home on the Scioto River. In 1803 a delegation of great chiefs went to the Chillicothe capital at Adena. In the course of the delegation, Blue Jacket met his distant cousin Eleanor Swearingen, the wife of United States Senator Thomas Worthington. Of course neither relative recognized the other. But the incident illustrates the different paths taken by two people of the same race, opportunity, and family. Their lifestyles were determined only by the diversity of their decisions.
Blue Jacket's unique path to greatness among the Shawnee people is still remembered today. Eckert romanticizes Blue Jacket's life in his novels The Frontiersman and A Sorrow in Our Heart. There is also the annual outdoor drama, Blue Jacket, near Xenia, Ohio. These constant remembrances of Marmaduke Van Swearingen do more than just commemorate the great chief Blue Jacket. They stand as reminders that one white man saw more than just greed for land in 18th century Ohio. Blue Jacket saw what was right and wrong. And, most important, he took action by giving his lifetime to the Shawnee.