Reviews of Books

From the Revolution until the Treaty of Greenville in 1795, both the geographical expansiveness of the United States and the contours of its Indian policy first came clearly into focus in the Ohio Valley. Perhaps no Indian group was as important in contesting these developments as the Shawnees; according to John Sugden's biography, no Shawnee was more important to the course of events in these years than the storied war leader Blue Jacket. "Blue Jacket's followers accounted for more American enemies in serious battle than the forces of Cochise, Red Cloud, Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull, and Geronimo put together, and his vision of intertribal unity was much keener and more sophisticated" (pp. 263–64). In a well-paced and compelling narrative written with lucidity, economy, and grace, Blue Jacket makes the case for its subject's significance as it traces the history of a critically important phase of United States-Indian relations.	1
Born about 1743, Blue Jacket (originally Se-pet-te-ke-na-the, or the Big Rabbit; the source of his more familiar name is unknown) came of age during the Seven Years' War. He was a young adult when the Fort Stanwix Treaty of 1768, negotiated between William Johnson and the Iroquois and imposed on the Ohio Indians, ceded much of modern Kentucky to the British crown. The Shawnees, in particular, regarded those lands as their hunting ground and opposed the cession. In the years that followed, Shawnee leaders worked to construct a pan-tribal confederacy to oppose British expansion. "Their messengers," Sugden notes, "went to the southern Creeks, Cherokees, and Chickasaws and to the northern Wyandots, Ottawas, Potawatomis, and Ojibwes. They went west to the Miamis, Weas, Piankeshaws, Mascoutens, and Kickapoos of the Wabash and the Illinois and even northeast to the Iroquois, whom they still disparaged as mere minions of the whites" (p. 39). In response to the perceived militancy of the Shawnees, Virginia's governor, the earl of Dunmore, organized a militia campaign against their towns in 1774 that culminated in the Battle of Point Pleasant. Virginians believed victory at Point Pleasant validated their claim to Kentucky. Most Shawnees disagreed. As the Revolution unfolded, expansion became an American objective, and Britain emerged as an ally to the Ohio Indians in their efforts to prevent white occupation of the Ohio Valley.	2
The outline of the story that follows is relatively familiar. First during the Revolution itself, then in a series of contested treaties, raids, and battles afterward, a shifting coalition of Ohio Indians sought, with increasing desperation, to defend their lands north of the Ohio River. All the while, towns were abandoned and resettled, alliances broke into factions, and resistance leaders struggled to maintain their coalitions of support. Blue Jacket emerged as a war leader of the first rank during the Revolution. He later played a leading role in the defeat of U. S. forces under Josiah Harmar (1790) and Arthur St. Clair (1791), and he was a principal in the Battle of Fallen Timbers (1794), in which troops led by Anthony Wayne finally defeated the Indian confederacy of the Old Northwest. In the wake of that defeat, Blue Jacket agreed to the peace that was concluded in the Treaty of Greenville and tried, with limited success, to make the transition from war leader to civil chief. As an old man, he witnessed a series of crises among the Ohio Shawnees that gave rise to a new attempt to construct a unified Indian resistance movement, this one led by a prophet named Lalawéthika and his brother Tecumseh.	. . .