BLUE JACKET; War Chief of the Shawnees

Boston Toronto: Little, Brown & Company, 1969. Fifth Printing. Cloth. Near Fine/Very Good +. Map. INSCRIBED by the Author; 8vo, tan cloth with blue lettering on spine and cover, illustrated with map of "Blue Jacket's Country," archival mylar-protected pictorial dust jacket (price-clipped) with B&W drawing of Blue Jacket, gold endpapers, x, [xi-xii] + 177 pages. Allan Wesley Eckert (1931 - 2011) was an American novelist and playwright who specialized in remarkably accurate and dynamic historical novels for adults and children. He was also a naturalist who wrote studies on many birds and animals.<br /> <br /> Blue Jacket, or Weyapiersenwah (1738 - 1810), was a highly successful war chief of the Shawnee people, known for his militant defense of Shawnee lands in the Ohio Country. Forerunner of Tecumseh.<br /> <br /> A legend developed about Blue Jacket that he had been a white boy named Marmaduke Van Swearingen, who had been kidnapped and adopted by the Shawnee during the Revolutionary War. The legend took hold in 1877 by a biographer and grew in grandiosity. <br /> <br /> Even major biographer, Allen Eckert, accepted the legend. <br /> <br /> However, recent historians using DNA analysis from descendants of Blue Jacket and Marmaduke Van Swearingen have disproved the legend and established that Blue Jacket was, indeed, a full-blooded Shawnee.<br /> <br /> Tight clean copy. Dust jacket is price-clipped with light soil and hints of waterstains at periphery of rear panel. No previous owner or remainder marks.