Blue jacket bird

17/18th-century Shawnee chief

For other uses, see Bluejacket (disambiguation).

Blue Jacket, or Weyapiersenwah (c. &#;&#; ), was a war chief of the Shawnee people, known for his militant defense of Shawnee lands in the Ohio Country.

Perhaps the preeminent American Indian leader in the Northwest Indian War, in which a pantribal confederacy fought several battles with the nascent United States, he was an important predecessor of the famous Shawnee leader Tecumseh.

Early life

Little is known of Blue Jacket's early life.

Chief blue jacket family tree

He first appears in written historical records in , when he was already a grown man and a war chief. In that year, a British missionary visited the Shawnee villages on the Scioto River and recorded the location of Blue Jacket's Town on Deer Creek (present-day Ross County, Ohio).

Struggle for the Old Northwest

Blue Jacket participated in Lord Dunmore's War and the American Revolutionary War (allied with the British), always attempting to mai