In the year 1771, a white boy named Marmaduke Van Swearingen was captured by the Shawnee Indians in what is now West Virginia, but was then the edge of the American frontier. Impressed with his bravery, he was not killed but instead was taken to Ohio where he was adopted into the tribe and given the name Blue Jacket, from the blue shirt he was wearing at the time of his capture.
Eckert has taken all of the known facts of Blue Jacket’s life and has woven them into a narrative of compelling interest, with a very different perspective on the way America was settled. The reader will learn what life was really like on the dangerous frontier wilderness that was West Virginia, Kentucky and Ohio before the Revolutionary War.
By Allan Eckert
