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Sculpture
City of Shawnee Kansas
CITY HALL * 11110 JOHNSON DRIVE * SHAWNEE, KS
66203
PHONE: 913/631-2500
FAX: 913/631-7351
E-Mail:
cityofshawnee@cityofshawnee.org
Blue Jacket FOUNTAIN AND SCULPTURE PLAZA
REV. CHARLES Blue Jacket
This essay is about a man who spent his life
helping others. With other Shawnee Tribe leaders, he helped
bring a grand people from the near dregs of despair to something
closer to the Promised Land, a feat few humans have experienced.
More unusual, he was the grandson of perhaps, an even greater
leader.
Blue Jacket Genealogy
First Generation
Waweyapiersenwa
– the last principal War Chief of the
Shawnee Tribe. The Whirlpool, he was one of the greatest native
American leaders, perhaps more so than Tecumseh, a pupil of his.
He originally bore the Shawnee Indian name Sepettekenathe, Big
Rabbit. Before 1778, he had chosen to use Waweyapiersenwa, which
was recorded by Jasper Yates and Col. John Montgomery
(Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, Vol. 5, pp.
484-485.) as one of the tribal representatives present at the
signing of the Treaty of Fort Pitt in that year. The same name
is affixed to the Treaty of Green Ville in 1795. A third name,
Sasesequa was passed by James Galloway in his letter to Benjamin
Drake in 1839 (Draper Manuscripts, BJ245-259.). Most common
however, was Blue Jacket,
used by Indian and white alike, which is how Minister David
Jones described him in a visit to Shawnee villages along the
Scioto River in 1772 – 1773.
Blue Jacket led a consortium of Great Lakes
Algonquin Indian tribes against the U. S. Army in an effort to
rid Ohio country of white emigrants in 1791. A force of 1,300
Americans was ambushed by Blue Jackets warriors on November 4th
of that year, on the banks of the Wabash River, killing 600 and
wounding 300, the worst defeat the U. S. Army ever suffered at
the hands of native Americans. In 1794, he again tried to push
the Americans from the same area and was defeated by General
Anthony Wayne, ending organized Indian conflict east of the
Mississippi River.
Third Generation
Charles Blue Jacket
was born in 1817 in southeastern
Michigan Territory, nine years after his grandfather, Blue
Jacket, passed away there. His father was (Second Generation)
George Blue Jacket
and his mother is unknown but very likely a Shawnee lady. Blue
Jacket’s wife that bore George was the half-Shawnee, half-French
daughter of Jaques Dupéron Baby of that French Canadian trading
family. At Charles’ birth, his family was farming on the south
bank of the Huron River, several miles up stream of its
confluence with the Detroit River. His father, uncle James and
aunt Sarah had been schooled in Detroit among the French
Canadians of their mothers’ family. That undoubtedly was the
forerunner of Charles’ religious life, even though he became a
protestant rather than a catholic, as practiced by his French
family background. Shortly after Charles was born, the family
moved to the Piqua, Ohio area, where a goodly number of the
Shawnee Tribe was located.
Being the last of seven brothers and sisters,
Charles was regaled with his grandfathers’ exploits and a
brother, George, was the first Shawnee to write a historical
manuscript about the Shawnee Tribe. Charles began his education
at the Quaker Mission School serving the Piqua Agency Indians.
Education was interrupted when Indian removal brought him to the
Shawnee Kansas Reserve in 1833. He continued schooling, farmed
and began to help missionaries bring the word of God to Shawnees
in their own language. Charles was a pre-eminent student of
Shawnee culture, studying and passing to others, the intricate
customs of times past. In 1859, Charles became an ordained
Methodist minister and later, joined the Masonic Lodge.
His command of English and Shawnee was such
that he became a valued Interpreter for the U. S, Government. In
1854, the government negotiated a treaty with the Shawnees,
dissolving the 1,600,00 acre Shawnee Kansas Reserve to 200,000
acres of land owned by individual Shawnees. Charles accompanied
the tribal leaders to Washington D.C. , serving as the
government Interpreter for that mission. His brothers, Henry and
George Blue Jacket, were, among others, signers of the treaty.
That event was the key that ultimately caused the Shawnee Tribe
to again have to leave their land to whites and remove to more
hospitable territory.
As his penchant for successful farming and
business ventures began to flourish, so did his leadership in
the Shawnee Tribe. His home place was in Shawnee, Kansas
Territory. The Shawnee Methodist Mission, now surrounded by
Kansas City, Kansas, was the focal point of Shawnee life on the
south bank of the Kaw River. The nearby towns of Olathe, Shawnee
and DeSoto were centers of Shawnee activity. At the western
extent of Shawnee occupancy, in 1855, Charles and brothers
George and Henry, opened a hotel and ferry on the Wakarusa River
called Blue Jacket’s Crossing, six miles east of Lawrence,
serving the burgeoning traffic of emigrants on the California
Oregon Road.
As the Civil War broke out and Kansas became
a state in 1861, the Rev. Charles began a four year term as the
Chief of the Shawnee Tribe. This period of turmoil greatly
affected the Shawnees and his leadership lent a steadying hand.
Two of his boys enlisted in the Union Army and were examples of
the usage of the term "Loyal Shawnees" for the Shawnee Tribe.
This usage was common practice until abandonment in 2001. A
daughter-in-law, Eliza (Silverheels) Blue Jacket, was guarding
her home at Blue Jacket’s Crossing on August 21, 1863 as William
Quantrill’s confederate raiders crossed the Wakarusa on their
way to sack Lawrence. A raider entered her home through a window
and Eliza confronted him with a pipe tomahawk giver her and her
husband David Likens Blue Jacket by the Rev. Charles. With a
mighty blow that broke both the shaft of the tomahawk and her
own arm at the same time, rented the raider’s head and ended his
life forever.
With the war over, intense pressure by whites
to acquire land caused the Shawnees to seek relief and in 1867,
Jonathan Gore, a son-in-law of the Rev, Charles and attorney for
the Shawnee Tribe, accompanied a group on a trip through Indian
Territory seeking a new home for the tribe. Finally, the
Shawnees acquired land in the Cherokee Nation and with a treaty
in 1869, merged into the Cherokee. As the Missouri-Kansas-Texas
railroad built into Indian Territory in 1871, the Shawnees
acquired land along the new tracks and 15 miles south of the
Kansas line, a cattle loading spur called Blue Jacket Station,
was named after the Rev. Charles, who had settled nearby.
The tent town that sprang up at the spur
began to grow and settled into a small but bustling community.
The Blue Jacket post office was opened March 3, 1882, with
Charles Blue Jacket as postmaster. The Cherokee Nation Senate
approved the incorporation of the town of Blue Jacket on
November 4, 1894. In the fall of 1897, the Rev. Charles made a
pilgrimage to his old Kansas home to locate the grave of The
Prophet, younger bother of Tecumseh. Becoming ill, he returned
to Indian Territory and died there on October 29, 1897. He was
buried in Blue Jacket Cemetery on land he had donated to the
town of Blue Jacket. The following year, the Methodist Church of
Blue Jacket commenced construction on it’s new church on land
donated to the congregation by the Rev. Charles.
It is unique in history that a grandfather
and grandson had so much effect on so many people in the course
of their lives. Blue Jacket was a fierce adversary of Americans
trying to wrest ancestral lands west of the Allegheny Mountains
from his Algonquian peoples. Yet, he quickly saw the futility of
continued strife after his forces lost the Battle of Fallen
Timbers in 1794. His progeny immediately became successful
farmers, educated their children and grandson Charles Blue
Jacket contributed his life to the Shawnee Tribe.
G. Carlyle Hinshaw
Norman Oklahoma
March 14, 2002
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