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Examining the Heritage of a Warrior By Brian J.
Evans A single mistake, in history, can be copied, passed along, duplicated for decades, until one day it is widely considered historical fact. Some historians spend their lives seeking the truth. They dig through old documents and files and books, hoping to uncover any errors which might be an injustice to what actually happened. What many consider one of history's great misconceptions, has been disputed for decades. As the story goes, Marmaduke or "Duke" Van Swearingen, was said to have been captured by Shawnee Indians at the age of 17, while out hunting with his younger brother during the Revolutionary War. According to the story, this boy, eventually, became the Shawnee war chief known as Blue Jacket. The story first surfaced in 1877 when Thomas Jefferson Larsh (a great-nephew of Marmaduke Swearingen) mailed a letter titled "Very interesting facts about a noted Indian Chief," to a newspaper in Ohio. And so, more than 67 years after the death of the famous Shawnee War Chief Blue Jacket, and about a 100 years after the alleged Marmaduke Swearingen captivity, the story that he was a white man was first published in a Feb. 15, 1877, edition of the Ohio State Journal. It was printed under the heading "An important Historical Letter" and was discretely signed with the single letter "L." After seeing the articles in print, Henry A. Thatcher of Chillicothe sent a copy of the articles to Henry H. Swearingen, who was compiling a Swearingen genealogy called Family Historical Register. The story was then printed in two editions of their family genealogies. Soon after, the story was published for the fourth time in the 1907-08 edition of the Transactions of the Kansas State Historical Society. - From those first few publications, the story began to grow. "It is important to stress that this was, from the beginning, a suspect source," commented John Sugden, a renowned author and historian. "One thing is clear. The statement that Blue Jacket was Marmaduke Van Swearingen, a white captive, comes purely from Larsh. Not a shred of corroborating testimony has been found. Larsh stands totally alone in the witness box. All research flows in the other direction. "Descendants of both the Blue Jacket and the Van Swearingen families, as well as historians, have concluded that the story is baseless," Dr. Sugden added. Following the first few publications, the story was embellished into short articles and even transformed into book form. It was uncritically reproduced in William A. Galloway's Old Chillicothe, in 1934 and in John Bennett's Blue Jacket: War Chief of the Shawnees, in 1943. Little to no attempts were made to check the authenticity of the story at that time, reported Dr. Sugden. Back then, little was known about Shawnee history in general, and Blue Jacket's in particular. They were studied very little. "It wasn't always for people to question the statements of writers who claimed expertise with their sources," Dr. Sugden added. Dr. Sugden believes the story survived because some people accepted it rather than challenged it. In addition to that, Mr. Larsh claimed Blue Jacket's own descendant, Charles Blue Jacket, was behind the story. This was perhaps the main reason why some people believed it. "Not everyone believed Larsh. The greater majority of historians ignored the claim," added Dr. Sugden. Because the writers who reproduced the story were influential, the myth grew, Dr. Sugden reported. The credibility of William A. Galloway's work seemed to be enhanced by his connections with the Alford family of Shawnees - although neither they, nor Galloway, were able to offer any corroboration of Mr. Larsh's story, Dr. Sugden reported. Nevertheless, Mr. Galloway endorsed and repeated the tale and even more recently, local novelist Allan Eckert used the story in several nationally-acclaimed books - books which despite these previous publications are said to have started the alleged controversy. Dr. Sugden said statements like Mr. Larsh's do not rank high on the hierarchy of historical sources, and typically, historians disregard them because they appear long after the people in the story are dead and originate from someone who wasn't a credible eye-witness. For that reason, few professional historians used the story at the time. "Some were also aware that stories like this have often been told about famous Indian leaders," Dr. Sugden added. "One gets the impression that if an Indian achieved something spectacular, there were those who believed he must be a white man and that families that lost loved ones in the Indian wars occasionally romanticized about their fates." Although this does not altogether discredit Larsh's claim, it urges great caution. Such an outstanding story needed evidence. And real evidence has yet to be found. At the time of the letter's publication, Mr. Larsh claimed Blue Jacket's own grandson, Charles Blue Jacket, accepted the story. Dr. Sugden has seen no evidence indicating whether or not he actually did. "Frankly, we don't exactly know what Charles Blue Jacket said, if anything. It is possible, however, he was persuaded to accept the Van Swearingen tale," Dr. Sugden suggested. Charles Blue Jacket was born about 1817, several years after Chief Blue Jacket's death, between 1808 and 1810. Thus, he never actually knew his grandfather. "Charles most certainly was a man of mixed-race ancestry. The Blue Jacket line as it then stood was both white as well as Indian blood," added Dr. Sugden. Whether or not Charles Blue Jacket accepted the
statement has yet to be confirmed either way. Although one thing
is evident; with the publication of Thomas Jefferson Larsh's article
in 1877, about 67 years after famous war chief's death, the story
that he was a white man first surfaced and began to grow. Tomorrow's article will examine the age differences between Marmaduke Swearingen and Blue Jacket.
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