Blue Jacket

John Sugden is an independent scholar and a former associate editor of Oxford University Press's American National Biography project. His books include Tecumseh: A Life, winner of the Society for Military History Distinguished Book Award.

"Dispelling the notion that Blue Jacket was a white pawn, Sugden shows that he was in reality the leader of a Native American confederacy that scored great victories against the United States until his ultimate defeat by Maj. Gen. Anthony Wayne at the Battle of Fallen Timbers. He also mentored Tecumseh and influenced many of the ideas that would eventually be put into action by Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa, also known as the Shawnee Prophet... Highly recommended." Library Journal "Sugden corrects the cultural arrogance that has mistakenly portrayed Blue Jacket, a Shawnee warrior and diplomat, as a white captive, thereby recasting his role in the confederation of Indian tribes that fought in 1780s to hold on to territory in what is now the Ohio River valley." Booklist "This exciting volume chronicles the life of one of the most important, but largely overlooked, American Indian leaders of the 18th century... Sugden weaves a panoramic view of the war leader's life in the framework of his diplomatic abilities... This biography is a great contribution to Native American history in general and to Indian profiles in particular. Sugden has penned an enthralling milestone-marking volume sprinkled with tribal history, endless anecdotes, military accounts and Native perspectives that should be inspiring material for thoughtful readers of all persuasions." The Tennessean "For more than two hundred years the Shawnee leader Blue Jacket has been either a sidelight or a footnote to many histories of the Old Northwest. Sugden's book sets out to correct the oversight, and it succeeds. Sugden doesn't unearth new material. Rather, he offers a careful re-reading of existing sources to place Blue Jacket at or near the center of Indian-Indian and Indian-white interactions over a 35-year span. Admittedly, reconstructing the fine details of Blue Jacket's life requires a great deal of conjecture; neither his birth nor death was recorded. Still, Sugden's "could haves" are well grounded in circumstance and context." Choice "A major contribution to the field of Indian history and biography, as well as to frontier history. John Sugden has produced a dramatic, authoritative biography that completely destroys the widely accepted fiction that Blue Jacket was a white captive. This volume should establish Blue Jacket with Red Cloud, Crazy Horse, Geronimo, and Pontiac."--Helen Hornbeck Tanner, co-author of The Peopling of North America: The Visual Atlas of the Great Migrations into North America, from the Ice Age to Ellis Island and Beyond