Content area
Full Text
Blue Jacket: Warrior of the Shawnees. By John Sugden. American Indian Lives. (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, c. 2000. Pp. [xviii], 350. $29.95, ISBN 0-8032-4288-3.)
Blue Jacket, the Shawnee war chief who defeated two U.S. armies in the early 1790s, has become shrouded in mythology, including claims that he was white. In his new biography John Sugden effectively puts such myths to rest, writing a compelling narrative of the Indian dispossession of Ohio between 1760 and 1800 and an illuminating account of Shawnee social and cultural life that places Blue Jacket at the forefront of that history.
To tell Blue Jacket's story, Sugden stitches together a variety of sources, mostly accounts of traders, soldiers, and settlers who came in contact with the Shawnee leader. Sugden also draws heavily on recent Indian...