Bluejacket Carved Walking Stick

Walking Stick

Shawnee tribal leader Charles Bluejacket carved this walking stick for his friend Charles Boles, a Methodist missionary, in the mid- to late-19th century. The two met in Kansas in the early 1850s, when the church assigned Boles to preach to the Shawnee tribe.

A deep friendship took root between two men in the wilds of Kansas. Their bond spanned the differences of culture and race, and lasted a lifetime. Today we often think of encounters between whites and American Indians on the frontier as tense, even violent. This was not always the case. The likelihood that individuals would get along depended on their personalities and as well as the circumstances under which they interacted. In this regard, Bluejacket and Boles may have been predisposed to friendship. Both men were deeply religious. They fathered large families, and lived respectable lives by European-American standards.

Charles Bluejacket came to Kansas as a youth after a treaty with the United States government removed the Shawnees from Ohio and Missouri. His grandfather was the famous chief Bluejacket, and his grandmother probably was white. Charles was familiar with Indian missions, having attended a Quaker school in Ohio. In Kansas, he completed his education at another mission school. He married, became a successful farmer and interpreter for the federal government, and began leading a prayer group.

Charles Boles converted to Methodism as a young man in Missouri and was ordained an elder in 1851. The following year he was assigned to the Shawnee Indian Mission School in present-day Kansas City. It was during his six-year ministry to the tribe that he became friendly with Bluejacket.

Shawnee Methodist Mission

Conditions were primitive at many frontier missions, but not at Shawnee Indian Mission. The Methodist church considered it an exemplary site, as did the federal government (a major funding source). At its height, the mission occupied almost 2,000 acres, much of it farmland. Its grounds had brick schoolhouses and dormitories, workshops, and farm buildings. Because the Methodists used "circuit riders" (traveling ministers) to spread the gospel, Shawnee Mission was Boles' headquarters, although he spent most days in the field ministering to his flock.

Details on the friendship between Boles and Bluejacket are spotty, but the two men obviously saw each other frequently and perhaps even rode the circuit together. One early visitor to the area noted that he met Bluejacket and Boles at another missionary's home in 1857. The Methodist conference minutes for this time period record that Boles was "assisted" by Bluejacket and others in building the church rolls to about 100 Shawnees.

The six years Boles preached to the Shawnee tribe coincided with the Bleeding Kansas era, when violence exploded along the Kansas-Missouri border. It became extremely difficult to accomplish any missionary work. The Methodist conference minutes for this period note, "There was comparatively little done from 1855 to 1865. During these perilous years Bro. Boles stood almost alone." Almost alone, but not quite. His friend Bluejacket had become an ordained minister in 1859. When war made it impossible for whites to preach at Shawnee Mission, Bluejacket became missionary in charge.

A number of mission schools closed during the Civil War, including Shawnee Mission. Methodists continued to preach to the tribes remaining in Kansas, but most American Indians were removed to Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma) shortly after the war. Boles began preaching to non-Indian Methodists in eastern Kansas. Bluejacket became a prosperous farmer, despite the fact that many of his fellow tribesmen had moved south. An 1874 county atlas describes his "beautiful farm" and house "furnished in a style that would do credit to many of our wealthy people."

Bluejacket eventually joined his tribesmen in Indian Territory, but before he left he made this elaborate walking stick for Boles. Its carved figures include at least two motifs from the pillars of an early Shawnee council-house in Kansas--a rattlesnake and a turtle, the latter being prominent in Shawnee creation mythology. View a close-up of the turtle carving. The walking stick was passed down in the Boles family until the Kansas State Historical Society acquired it in 2009. It is in the collections of the Society's Kansas Museum of History.

https://www.kshs.org/kansapedia/walking-stick/10388

Entry: Walking Stick
Author: Kansas Historical Society
Author information: The Kansas Historical Society is a state agency charged with actively safeguarding and sharing the state's history.
Date Created: July 2009
Date Modified: December 2014

Piqua Shawnee
Piqua Shawnee Tribe

Weyapiersenwah (ca. 1743-1810) / Blue Jacket

From Ohio History Central

Chief Blue Jacket

Weyapiersenwah (ca. 1743-1810), also spelled Wehyehpiherhsehnwah and commonly referred to by his English name Blue Jacket, was a prominent military leader of the Shawnee. During the Northwest Indian Wars (1785-1795), Blue Jacket and Miami Chief Little Turtle led an American Indian alliance against United States military forces in the Ohio Country, which included members of many tribes with villages in Ohio, including the Shawnee, Miami (Myaamia), Wyandotte, Delaware (Lenape), Ottawa, Potawatomis, Ojibwes, and small numbers of Cherokee and Seneca-Cayuga Tribes.
The first sources mentioning Blue Jacket date to his being a prominent war chief, leaving his early life up to speculation. However, Blue Jacket was born during a time marked by regular, bloody skirmishes between the American Indians and Anglo-American settlers. During the 1740s, Ohio tribes previously forced to flee the Ohio Country during the Beaver Wars, a campaign during which the Iroquois fought other American Indian groups, including those in the Ohio Country, for their lands and territories in order to gain access to new beaver populations, were returning to what we refer to today as Ohio. The most notable of these tribes was the Shawnee, and by the time Blue Jacket was a young boy, the Shawnee’s re-settlement in the Ohio Country was fully underway. The British and French desired the Shawnee’s homeland, and it became disputed “unsettled” territory.

During the early 1760s, Ohio tribes, including the Shawnee, ran out of ammunition and other supplies with which to defend their villages and lands, and began to conduct a series of raids to replenish supplies. It is during this period that Blue Jacket probably gained recognition as a talented warrior. Blue Jacket and the Shawnee allied with the British during the American Revolution (1765-1783) and he led the Shawnee in Lord Dunmore’s War (1774), when the Shawnee and Seneca-Cayuga Tribes unsuccessfully fought to ward off Anglo-American squatters on American Indian lands south of the Ohio River in Virginia. As a result, American Indians there lost their rights to hunt on lands south of the Ohio River. The Shawnee continued to lead the resistance and Blue Jacket rose to prominence.

During the 1790s, Blue Jacket and Little Turtle together led warriors of their American Indian alliance in victory over United States’ forces under the command of Josiah Harmar in 1790, and again in 1791 against Arthur St. Clair. As ordered by President George Washington, St. Clair’s forces fought to force American Indian groups in the Ohio Country off their land. The two leaders led the alliance in an offensive attack on St. Clair’s troops at daybreak and swarmed the camp on the banks of the Wabash. Although Blue Jacket and Little Turtle led the alliance against United States forces, the American Indians suffered a decisive defeat at the Battle of Fallen Timbers against General Anthony Wayne in 1794. The American Indian’s defeat at Fallen Timbers resulted in leaders of many tribes, after months of deliberation, signing the Treaty of Greenville in 1795, a document which ceded two-thirds of the State of Ohio to the United States—all of southern Ohio and parts of the central and eastern regions.

After the signing of the Treaty of Greenville, although Blue Jacket remained active in public relations efforts, he retired to Wapakoneta, Ohio, where he supplemented his farming and hunting with trade. Blue Jacket’s later successor Tecumseh became a notable warrior during the Northwest Indian Wars and after Blue Jacket’s passing, grew to prominence and continued to lead the alliance during the War of 1812.

It is interesting to note that a story in an 1877 issue of the Ohio State Journal written by journalist Thomas Jefferson Larsh propagated the idea that Blue Jacket was in fact a young, Anglo-American man named Marmaduke van Sweringen who was captured by the Shawnee, probably during the American Revolutionary War (1775-1783). In the late 1960s, author Allan W. Eckert popularized the theory in his novels. However, chronological disconnects and other inconsistencies in the documented lives of both Blue Jacket and van Sweringen, along with conclusive DNA tests, prove this theory to be false. The results of the DNA tests were published in the September 2006 issue of the Ohio Journal of Science.

http://www.ohiohistorycentral.org/w/Weyapiersenwah
Piqua Shawnee
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The Treaty of Fort Wayne (1809)

The Treaty of Fort Wayne (1809)

Tecumseh's War
The two principal adversaries in the conflict, chief Tecumseh and American politician William Henry Harrison, had both been junior participants in the Battle of Fallen Timbers at the close of the Northwest Indian Wars in 1794. Tecumseh was not among the Native American signers of the Treaty of Greenville, which had ended the war, when the Shawnee and other Native Americans ceded much of their historic territory in present-day Ohio to the United States. However, many Indian leaders in the region accepted the Greenville terms, and for the next ten years pan-tribal resistance to American hegemony faded.

The Treaty of Fort Wayne, sometimes called the Ten O'clock Line Treaty or the Twelve Mile Line Treaty, is an 1809 treaty that obtained 3,000,000 acres (approximately 12,000 km²) of American Indian land for the white settlers of Illinois and Indiana. The tribes involved were the Delaware, Eel River, Miami tribe, and Potawatomi in the initial negotiations; later Kickapoo and the Wea, who were the primary inhabitants of the region being sold. The negotiations did not include the Shawnee who were minor inhabitants of the area purchased and had been asked to leave the area previously by Miami War Chief Little Turtle. Territorial Governor William Henry Harrison negotiated the treaty with the tribes. The treaty led to a war with the United States began by Shawnee leader Tecumseh and other dissenting tribesmen in what came to be called "Tecumseh's War".

Tecumseh was outraged by the Treaty of Fort Wayne, believing that American Indian land was owned in common by all tribes, an idea advocated in previous years by the Shawnee leader Blue Jacket and the Mohawk leader Joseph Brant.^[30] In response, Tecumseh began to expand on the teachings of his brother, known as The Prophet, who called for the tribes to return to their ancestral ways. He began to associate the teachings with the idea of a pan-tribal alliance. Tecumseh traveled widely, urging warriors to abandon the accommodationist chiefs and to join the resistance at Prophetstown.^[30]

Negotiations

The treaty also has two nicknames, the "Ten O'clock Line Treaty of 1809" and the "Twelve Mile Line Treaty". The first nickname comes from tradition that says the Native Americans did not trust the surveyors' equipment, so a spear was thrown down at ten o'clock and the shadow became the treaty line. There are other myths that say it was either a tree or a fence that was used. The Twelve Mile Line was a reference to the Greenville Treaty and the establishment of a new 'line' parallel to it but twelve miles further west.

In 1809 Harrison began to push for a treaty to open more land for settlement. The Miami, Wea, and Kickapoo were "vehemently" opposed to selling any more land around the Wabash River.^[1] In order to influence those groups to sell the land, Harrison decided, against the wishes of President James Madison, to first conclude a treaty with the tribes willing to sell and use them to help influence those who held out. In September 1809 he invited the Pottawatomie, Lenape, Eel Rivers, and the Miami to a meeting in Fort Wayne. In the negotiations Harrison promised large subsidies and payments to the tribes if they would cede the lands he was asking for.^[2]

 

Only the Miami opposed the treaty. They presented their copy of the Treaty of Greenville and read the section that guaranteed their possession of the lands around the Wabash River. They then explained the history of the region and how they had invited the Wea and other tribes to settle in their territory as friends. The Miami were concerned the Wea leaders were not present, although they were the primary inhabitants of the land being sold. The Miami also wanted any new land sales to be paid for by the acre, and not by the tract. Harrison agreed to make the treaty's acceptance contingent on approval by the Wea and other tribes in the territory being purchased, but he refused to purchase land by the acre. He countered that it was better for the tribes to sell the land in tracts so as to prevent the Americans from only purchasing their best lands by the acre and leaving them only poor land to live on.^[2]

After two weeks of negotiating, the Pottawatomie leaders convinced the Miami to accept the treaty as reciprocity to the Pottawatomie who had earlier accepted treaties less advantageous to them at the request of the Miami. Finally the Treaty of Fort Wayne was signed on September 29, 1809, selling United States over 3,000,000 acres (approximately 12,000 km²), chiefly along the Wabash River north of Vincennes.^[2] During the winter months, Harrison was able to obtain the acceptance of the Wea by offering them a large subsidy and the help of Miami Chief Pacanne who helped to influence the Wea leaders. The Kickapoo were closely allied with the Shawnee at Prophetstown and Harrison feared they would be difficult to sway. He offered the Wea an increased subsidy if the Kickapoo would also accept the treaty, causing the Wea to pressure the Kickapoo leaders to accept. By the spring of 1810 Harrison had completed negotiations and the treaty was finalized.^[3]

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Shawnee Ceremonial Dance: Fall Bread Dance

Shawnee Ceremonial Dance: Fall Bread Dance

 

As with other Indian Nations, Shawnee ritual was expressed most publicly in their dances.  The Shawnee ritual year opened with the Spring Bread Dance and closed with the Fall Bread Dance.  Some Shawnee groups had a Green Corn Dance, but it was not the beginning of the ritual year as in other northeastern or southeastern woodland groups. It was rather related to the first ripening of the corn in early summer.  In keeping with its basic subsistence pattern of hunting and gathering, the Shawnee moons were related to this aspect of their annual cycle rather than to planting, weeding and harvesting of the maize crop.

Sources:

Erminie-Wheeler Voegelin with a cover letter letter to Frank Speck, signed by Carl and Erminie Voegelin.  572.97 Sp3 in the Frank G. Speck Papers, APS III. Northeast, E.  Miscellaneous Tribes, 2. Shawnee, c. Shawnee Dances (Freeman Guide, 3649).  CFV undoubtedly did the eliciting of the terms and EWV the ethnological descriptions.  The cover letter is dated July 15, 1934 at 332 Kickapoo St., Shawnee, Oklahoma. 

Invaluable as well are dances listed by Lewis Henry Morgon during his fieldwork in Kansas 

among the Shawnee in 1859-60.  His source was Blue Jacket. The Shawnee Prophet, in 

Shawnee Traditions by Trowbridge (1824) lists some dances as well. In the discussion of

Shawnee ritual, James H. Howard's contributions to Shawnee Ceremonies, in Shawnee!, 

will be fully utilized.

Fall Bread Dance:

Tak'wanekaawe

Prophet: Tuhkoakaawaa "is a dance performed by women. It is danced for amusement only.  This peculiarity and the custom of the women to  join the man in singing are its only characteristics. The dancers form a line, fronting the man who sings, and they join him in singing a kind of prelude, which continues some minutes, when they commence, the man singing alone, and dance around in a circular manner."

Erminie-Wheeler Voegelin "Season for all dances closes with this, a night dance of amusement following the same evening of the Bread Dance and being the last such until the next spring. A night dance follows immediately after dark on the same day that the Bread Dance is danced; this closes the season for night dances of amusement.  No dances given after that until the Spring Bread Dance."

Learn more and view the full collection of Frank Gouldsmith Speck Papers and Background:

http://amphilsoc.org/collections/view?docId=ead/Mss.Ms.Coll.126-ead.xml 

http://amphilsoc.org/collections/view?docId=ead/Mss.Ms.Coll.126-ead.xml#d66274198e10681583665152 

Piqua Shawnee

www.piquashawnee.com

The Shawnee Bluejacket Family

The Shawnee Bluejacket Family

(This is a re-post of the Native Heritage Project)

https://nativeheritageproject.com/2012/08/22/the-shawnee-bluejacket-family/

Posted on August 22, 2012 by Roberta Estes

 

The Shawnee Bluejacket family reaches back into the mid-1700s.  Records begin with Chief Bluejacket himself, also known by his Native names of Se-pet-te-he-nath, Big Rabbit, his name given at birth and Wa Weyapiersehnwaw, his adult chosen name, found in use about 1777.
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).

This would put BlueJacket’s birth at least before 1750.  Historians estimate it to be about 1743.
Blue Jacket participated in Dunmore’s War and the American Revolutionary War (allied with the British), always attempting to maintain Shawnee land rights. With the British defeat in the American Revolutionary War, the Shawnee lost valuable assistance in defending the Ohio Country. The struggle continued as white settlement in Ohio escalated, and Blue Jacket was a prominent leader of the resistance.

On November 3, 1791, the army of a confederation of Indian tribes, led by Blue Jacket and Miami Chief Little Turtle, defeated an American expedition led by Arthur St. Clair, governor of the Northwest Territory. The engagement, known as the Battle of the Wabash or as St. Clair’s Defeat, was the crowning achievement of Blue Jacket’s military career, and the most severe defeat ever inflicted upon the United States by Native Americans.

Blue Jacket’s triumph was short-lived. The Americans were alarmed by St. Clair’s disaster and raised a new professional army, commanded by General Anthony Wayne. On August 20, 1794, Blue Jacket’s confederate army clashed with Wayne at the Battle of Fallen Timbers, just south of present-day Toledo, Ohio. Blue Jacket’s army was defeated, and he was compelled to sign the Treaty of Greenville on August 3, 1795, ceding much of present-day Ohio to the United States.
In 1805, Blue Jacket also signed the Treaty of Fort Industry, relinquishing even more of Ohio. In Blue Jacket’s final years, he saw the rise to prominence of Tecumseh, who would take up the banner and make the final attempts to reclaim Shawnee lands in the Ohio Country.

Later a story spread that he was in fact a European settler 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, popularized in historical novels written by Allan W. Eckert in the late 1960s, remains well known in Ohio, where an outdoor drama celebrating the life of the white Indian chief was performed yearly in Xenia, Ohio from 1981 until 2007.

However, subsequent DNA testing proved that story to be false.  Bluejacket’s DNA is unquestionably Native, and the Swearingen family’s is not.  Not only does the Bluejacket and Swearingen DNA not match, they are not even in the same haplogroup.  Swearingen is European, so they haven’t shared a common ancestors in 10s of thousands of years.  An article published in the Ohio Journal of Science in September 2006 which details the findings is shown at this link:                                               http://shawnee-bluejacket.com/Bluejacket_Folders/BlueJacket.pdf

The Bluejacket family has a website with further information about history and current activities at this link:  http://shawnee-bluejacket.com/

Also on this site is the list of the 772 Shawnee adopted into the Cherokee tribe in 1871:  http://shawnee-bluejacket.com/1871_registry.htm

Piqua Shawnee
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