DNA Test Debunks Indian Chief Blue Jacket Myth

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Douglas Richardson

DNA Test Debunks Indian Chief Blue Jacket Myth

Legg inn av Douglas Richardson » 05 mai 2006 15:00:36

DNA Test Debunks Indian Chief Blue Jacket Myth
By Mike Danahey
STAFF WRITER
SuburbanChicagoNews.com

ELGIN - Vaughn Pedersen recently received some family news he's been
waiting at least six years to hear. For him, it was a matter of history
finally being set straight.

"This was quite a present," the Elgin resident said.

Pedersen is a sixth-generation descendant of the Shawnee Indian chief
known as Blue Jacket. Legend had it that Blue Jacket was a white man,
Marmaduke (Van) Swearingen, who, after being captured by the Shawnee,
joined them in their struggle against white settlement. The story goes
he was thus named because of the coat he wore at the time of his
capture.

But new DNA evidence shows almost certainly that Blue Jacket was in
fact an American Indian and not white, as the myth had it.

What is known is that Blue Jacket was a mentor to Tecumseh, the famous
leader of a most-ambitious Indian resistance movement. Blue Jacket also
led Indian uprisings, and in a battle in 1791 along the Wabash River in
Fort Recovery, Ohio, his charges killed more than 600 troops, more than
the number George Armstrong Custer lost to Sitting Bull at Little Big
Horn.

Pageant to note study
In the mythologized version of the Ohio battle, Blue Jacket/Swearingen
winds up killing his white brother who is part of the army forces. But
records show the brother actually died in Indiana in 1848, and that
Swearingen disappeared about 1771. There also is evidence that a
distant cousin of Marmaduke Swearingen was killed in the 1791 skirmish.
The myth is part of a pageant presented every summer in Xenia, Ohio,
that has drawn more than 1 million visitors over the last 25 years. In
light of the new evidence, the show's executive director, Lorrie
Sparrow, recently told the Bellefontaine (Ohio) Examiner that the show
will remain the same for this season, but a poster will be put up about
the recent DNA findings.

The study in question will be published this fall in the Ohio Journal
of Science. It is the result of tests conducted by researchers based at
Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio, and Technical Associates Inc.
in Ventura, Calif.

The team collected DNA from six living male descendants of Blue Jacket
and four direct relatives of Swearingen. The abstract for the research
states 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' legend is not based on reality."

Inaccuracies noted
Pedersen started delving into his genealogy about 10 years ago, after
his mother died. Using records from Chicago's Newberry Library and the
National Archives, he traced her lineage, discovering that he was a
sixth-generation descendant of Blue Jacket.
The research led him to retiree and history writer Robert Van Trees, a
native of Fort Recovery, Ohio, who told Pedersen of the summertime Blue
Jacket drama and what he felt were its inaccuracies.

According to Wright State professor Daniel Krane, Van Trees approached
him about seven years ago to ask if the tools of genetic testing might
be able to determine any ties between the Blue Jacket and Swearingen
lines. Krane found the story a fascinating one and asked Van Trees to
help find descendants of the two families.

Carlyle Hinshaw, an Oklahoma geologist and seventh-generation
descendant of Blue Jacket, was of assistance in finding relatives as he
had "done some updating of genealogy and developed a good data base."
Blue Jacket's people were first resettled to northeast Kansas, then,
after the Civil War, to Oklahoma to live with the Cherokee, Hinshaw
explained.

While the 2000 book Blue Jacket: Warrior of the Shawnees by John Sugden
goes into detail debunking the historical roots of the myth, the news
of the DNA findings "straightens out my ancestry," said Hinshaw.

A letter to the editor Thomas Jefferson Larsh wrote to the Daily Ohio
State Journal in 1877 may be the source of the myth that Blue Jacket
was a white man, Pedersen said. And a biography of Blue Jacket by Allan
Eckert published in 1969 furthered the tale of the two Swearingen
brothers battling each other at Fort Recovery.

Hinshaw said that Blue Jacket was known as Sepettekenathe (Big Rabbit)
in his youth and changed his name to Weyapiersenwa (Whirlpool) as an
adult. As for how the Indian leader got the Blue Jacket moniker,
Hinshaw said he has heard family stories about a French soldier who
lived among the Shawnee who may have given the coat to Hinshaw's
ancestor.

And Blue Jacket is listed among the Indian names on transactions with
registered Pennsylvania traders on the Ohio River during the mid-1750s,
Hinshaw noted.

Pronunciation trouble
In Blue Jacket's day, the British often would identify individual
Indians by a characteristic, garment or something else to differentiate
them, as they had trouble pronouncing the actual names, Hinshaw said.
Hinshaw explained that Larsh was the grandson of Marmaduke Swearingen's
sister, Sarah. In his childhood, Larsh heard tales about Swearingen's
capture by Indians. He became interested in their culture and had
Indian friends, including the Rev. Charles Bluejacket.

Larsh gave his two daughters Indian names and named his son Blue
Jacket. Larsh also came to believe that he and the reverend might be
related.

While unveiling the truth beyond the myths has familial significance
for Pedersen and Hinshaw, historian Van Trees took up the cause decades
ago after meeting a Bluejacket.

Van Trees had heard stories of the white-man-turned-Indian-chief as a
boy. In 1944, while serving in the U.S. Army Air Corps and flying from
Pennsylvania to Missouri, he met a Marine, Sgt. Eugene Donald
Bluejacket. The men got to talking and found they had Fort Recovery in
common. Bluejacket told Van Trees that the stories he had heard were
not true.

More than 20 years later, while visiting someone else at the Wright Air
Force Base hospital, Van Trees saw Bluejacket again. He was there
fighting a losing battle against cancer. Bluejacket reminded Van Trees
of the fable once more and wrote Van Trees about it as well.

Van Trees took to tracking the truth in the late 1970s, visiting
Indians in Oklahoma on business trips to start his research. After
retiring from his job at an electronics firm, he devoted more time to
the effort.

"It's been a labor of love," said Van Trees. "I did it for my own
convictions."

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