There are no surprises for Robert Van Trees in the latest issue of The Ohio Journal of Science.
The September issue, which arrived belatedly last week, merely provides scientific confirmation of something the retired Air Force officer from Fairborn knew years ago.
The journal’s lead article is "Was the Shawnee War Chief Blue Jacket a Caucasian?" It reports results of DNA tests conducted to settle the century-old question once and for all.
Van Trees, who got this scientific ball rolling, is credited after lead author Carolyn D. Rowland as one of four co-authors of the four-page article.
Their conclusion: The oft-repeated story that the famous Shawnee warrior was actually a white man "is without merit."
That should, at last, be the final word. Still, the myth — dismissed by Blue Jacket’s most thoroughgoing biographer, John Sugden, as made up "out of whole cloth" — has proven surprisingly and stubbornly durable.
The gist of the story is that Blue Jacket, who lived parts of his life at Bellefontaine and Wapakoneta and scored a crushing victory over Gen. Arthur St. Clair at present-day Fort Recovery in 1791, was actually Marmaduke Swearingen, a white settler who was captured by the Shawnee during the Revolutionary War.
The tale first appeared decades after Blue Jacket’s death, in 1877. It has been frequently repeated without substantiation or critical examination, even in the face of genealogical and historical evidence that clearly traces separate lives for Swearingen and Blue Jacket.
Growing up in Fort Recovery, Van Trees said Thursday, "I heard my grandpa and my father talking about Blue Jacket and Little Turtle whipping St. Clair, and nobody said anything about color." Van Trees first heard about Blue Jacket as a white man from a high school teacher in 1935.
His interest was renewed during World War II when he met a young Marine sergeant "plastered with lots of medals." Donald Eugene Blue Jacket took umbrage at the suggestion his great-grandfather was anything other than Shawnee.
Van Trees began his research in 1952. By 1987, he had tracked the Swearingens through 10 generations and the Blue Jackets back to the 18th century.
By then, he said, "I was convinced, but there was no real proof other than my genealogical tracings."
Accounts of DNA testing further piqued Van Trees’ interest in the 1990s, eventually leading him to Wright State University biologist Dan Krane. Krane, also a co-author of the article, founded Forensic Bioinformantics Inc. in Dayton, where lead author Rowland is an analyst.
With Krane’s encouragement, Van Trees set off to several states, collecting DNA from descendants of both Swearingen and Blue Jacket. Test results in 1999 satisfied Krane and Van Trees that there was no genetic link between the two, but there was no money to complete a technical report.
An anonymous contribution changed that last year. Van Trees was off again, collecting new samples from six direct male descendants of George Blue Jacket, the chief’s son, and four direct male descendants of Swearingen’s great-grandfather.
Now that further tests have been completed, there is but one possible gap in the chain of evidence. Lacking birth records among the Shawnee, there is still the possibility that George Blue Jacket was not the chief’s biological son. The only thing that would settle the issue beyond doubt is DNA directly from Blue Jacket, who died in 1808. His burial place is unknown.
But for anyone willing to be swayed by evidence, we’re probably as close to a definitive answer as we’ll ever get. Blue Jacket was an Indian, not a white man.
Robert Van Trees knows some people will never be convinced. But at age 86, after 54 years of searching, he can rest easy in the knowledge that he has done his work well and thoroughly.
"Some people are still going to believe that story," he said. "You can chase these things forever. I’ve sort of closed the book on it."