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Vaughn had an uncle, Pearl Tecumsah Blue Jacket who was a bow maker. Pearl also was a first cousin to my grandmother. My Grandmother took Pearl, leaving from Afton IT on the Frisco, to Carlisle Industrial School in 1893 when she was 13 and Pearl was 11. As a result, they were life long friends, in Vinita OK. When I was about 10, Pearl made me a bow. He used Bois 'd Arc wood and it was beautifully crafted. The first time I used it, my guardian came out to watch me shoot. The first arrow hit him in the arm!Roy Blue Jacket of Welch OK said Pearl could split a barrel stave at 100 yards. Melvin Blue Jacket of Coffeyville KS said Pearl wanted to shoot an apple of his head one time but Melvin refused, saying "I didn't like the look in his eye!" Vaughn came up with these two stories.
Attached are two pictures, one of me with that bow, in Parsons KS where I was raised, circa 1943 and another of Pearl in his plains Indian regalia to corroborate this story.
We just got back from Parsons this afternoon. They had their Katy Days celebration which is all about the Missouri-Kansas-Texas railroad days. Now, the Union Pacific owns the tracks and just about all vestiges of the Katy are gone. They had train rides yesterday and today. The rides were on another railroad, our of Altamont, ten miles south. Everyday, twenty-three trains of 120 cars each carry coal from Wyoming to eastern Oklahoma coal fired utility plants. There is no way rides can be taken on the old Katy tracks now. Eastern Oklahoma has vast coal reserves which I gave a paper at a seminar a couple of weeks ago. Oklahoma's coal is not fit to burn to make electricity. Talk about hauling coal to Newcastle!
The Katy was the first railroad to enter Indian Territory, being on June 6, 1870 at the northern end of the Cherokee Nation, twelve miles north of Blue Jacket. Blue Jacket was the first cattle loading spur in Indian Territory and was named for an uncle of Vaughn 'n me. He was the Rev. Charles Blue Jacket, an ordained Methodist Minister who lives near the spur, then called Blue Jacket Station. "Uncle Charley" wore out three wives and sired 23 children. He was an uncle to both Gerty and Pearl. The first engines to cross the Kansas line were wood burners and by 1872, coal was being mined in the Chochtaw Nation to fuel the steamers. There were mine shafts into the Dry wood coal at Timber Hill, three miles west of Blue Jacket and my guardian took me into one, also about age 10. Almost all of the mining in northeastern Oklahoma was by stripping, however. Craig County, where Blue Jacket and Vinita are located, produced 73,000 short tons in 2000.
"Good Chiefs and Wise Men"Indians as Symbols of Peace in the Art of
Charles Wilson PealeCHARLES COLEMAN SELLERS
CHARLES Wilson Peale was the irrepressible optimist of the American Revolution. He confidently expected that with liberty achieved, the nation would set new standards changing the world-ideals of reason and nature derived from the more romantic of the French philosophers, of whom Rousseau appealed to him the most. His museum of natural history, conceived in 1784 and begun in 1786, was intended both to advance science and educate the masses. An understanding of natural history, he believed, would lead to wise use of natural resources, healthy living, and longer life. Above all, it would teach a lesson of peace among men and nations, and he never tired of decrying that man alone, of all the animals, preyed upon his own species. Moreover, the mere contemplation of nature's beauties influenced the mind toward reverence and love for all creatures. He stressed this point in opening his series of lectures on natural history in 1800.
An instance of this is in the memory of many of my hearers. The chiefs of several nations of Indians, who had an hereditary enmity to each other happened to meet unexpectedly in the Museum in 1796 they regarded each other with considerable emotion, which in some degree subsided when, by their interpreters, they were informed that each party, ignorant of the intention of the other, had come merely to view the Museum. Never having before met, but in the field of battle, where the recollection of former scenes of bloodshed only roused the spirit of revenge, no room as left for the feelings of the social man. Now, for the first time, finding themselves in peace, surrounded by a scene calculated to inspire the most perfect harmony, the first suggestion was, that as men of the same species they were not enemies by nature, but ought forever to bury the hatchet of war. After leaving the Museum they formed a treaty so far as their powers extended, and wishing the white people to be witnesses of the sincerity of their intentions, at the request of the Secretary at War, I supplied them with a room. Sixty-four chiefs of eight or ten nations met they heard a speech sent by General WASHINGTON, recommending peace. Their orators spoke, and they departed friends.
The date of that unique council was Friday, December, 1796. The museum was then in the Hall of the American Philosophical Society on what is now Philadelphia's Independence Square (fig. 62). A regularly scheduled meeting of the Society was held that night, but its minutes say nothing of the proceedings of the warriors earlier in the day. For that, one must go to the papers of the president and secretary of war, where the incident loses some of Peale's cherished moral, but none of its drama. A powerful confederacy of tribes armed and encouraged by the British had twice defeated the "Legion" of the United States: Gen. Josiah Harmar had been beaten back ingloriously Arthur St. Clair's army had been erased in a bloody rout. Anthony Wayne marched next, out to the west of Lake Erie, American territory still held by the British Fort Miami. The story of the council at the museum begins with another council of Indian chiefs outside Fort Miami on the night of August 19, 1794. Wayne was nearby, at a place where much of the forest had been leveled by some tremendous storm of the past. The Miami warrior Little Turtle, who had led the tribes to victory over St. Clair in 1791, was now advising caution, even overtures for peace. But Blue Jacket of the Shawnee, who had fought under Little Turtle, then spoke for an immediate night attack and was ready to lead it. The final decision was for an attack the next day, and it was made with Blue Jacket at the head of the whole force and a young warrior, Tecumseh, leading the Shawnees. The Battle of Fallen Timbers was a stand-up fight of about sixteen hundred Indians and British volunteers against Wayne's thousand. But Wayne's cannon and cavalry broke their line and furiously pursued it. The tribesmen fled to the fort but found its gates closed against them. Nothing could have told them more clearly that they were now, and would be in future, at the mercy of the Americans.
By the turn of the year, chiefs and warriors were coming to "Mad Anthony's" camp at Greenville in Western Ohio seeking terms. Wayne reported to the secretary of war on February 12, 1795, that "the infamous Blue Jacket" had "come with a crowd of Shawnee and Delaware warriors, bearing a flag and suing for peace." His tone changed after three weeks in camp. It was then "the famous Blue Jacket" with whom he was dealing. In their talks, Blue Jacket had shown a paper, signed by Sir John Johnson, 1784, certifying him as "War Chief." Wayne countered by showing an American officer's commission with its engraved decorations and, noting the light in the other's eye, ordered his efficient quartermaster general, Colonel O'Hara, to add engraved commissions to the list of requisites for the coming ceremonies. Wayne himself was receiving propitiatory gifts, some of which he passed on to Peale's museum for public display:
A Large Indian Mantle, made of a Buffalo's skin and ornamented with Porcupine quills A Pipe of the Sack nation of Indians who reside at the junction of the Tyger and Missouri Rivers. This nation, it is said, are able to send out 10,000 warriors. A Chipewas Pipe, and a Pipe of Peace of the Hickapoos, Piankashaws and Kaskaskie, natives of the Mississippi and Missouri, which was passed through and was smoked by the several Tribes of Indians previous to the treaty of Peace, lately concluded with them by General Wayne Presented by General WAYNE.
That treaty had been signed on August 3, 1795. Ninety-one chiefs -Wyandots, Delawares, Shawnees, Ottawas, Chippewas, Potawatomies, Miamis, Kickapoos, Kaskaskias, Weas, and Eel River Tribe made their marks below "Mad Anthony's" bold signature. Lands were ceded in return for $20,000 and payments to follow every year in perpetuity. The chiefs, to whom face-to-face reassurances meant much, were invited, at their own request, to visit the Great Father in Philadelphia, to give and be given final words of trust and respect. President Washington's Indian policy could now be extended into the northwest. It was centered upon the encouragement of settled living and agriculture, with American agents going out as missionaries of "husbandry." Wayne's treaty specified that, whenever requested, annual gifts to the Indians could take the form of tools and domestic animals. The treaty did contain some seeds of further conflict or so Wayne's young aide-dc-camp, William Henry Harrison, would in time decide- but for the nonce all hopes for a permanent peace were high.
Concluding arrangements took time and a year went by before the official visitations were made. On October 3, 1796, three parties set out from Detroit on the long journey to Philadelphia. The first to arrive walked into the office of Dr. James McHenry, secretary of war, on November 20. McHenry reported to the president:
The Indian Chiefs named Mus-qua-cu-nokan or Red pole, Wey-a-pur-sen-waw, or Blue Jacket, She-me-jum-ne-sa or Soldier, Asi-me-the, and Muc-ca-ti-wa-saw or Black chief, stilling themselves the representatives of the Wyandots, Delawares, Shawanoes, Ottawas, Chipwas, Putawati-mes, Miamis, Eel River, Weas, Kickapoos, Piankashaws, and Kaskaskias have informed the Secretary of War in a talk delivered by Red pole at the War Office on the 20th inst: that they had come a great way to see their Father the President that they had long listened to the British that they had discovered their error that they had made peace with the fifteen fires (meaning the United States) and in future would only listen to their great Father the President that they were now waiting till they could hear what advice he could give them, which they would follow and that they would on their part try to keep the path open between their people and the people of the United States. That finally, they wished to hear the President's advice as soon as possible, having a great way to go to get to their nations. To this Blue jacket added, that what had been spoken by Red pole was the sense of all the warriors present. That he rose to mention this and give a particular proof of his own sincerity by delivering to his great Father the commission he had received a long time ago from the British that he now broke it, and would hereafter serve faithfully the United States.
The president's short speech of good advice, November 29, was a plea for the industrious, "comfortable" life of the farmer, urging friend-ship between men and nations. At the end, with an approving word for Blue Jacket's surrender of his British title, he gave each warrior a handsomely engraved commission as an American chief, in "proof of his esteem and friendship." All through that week they were feasted in four separate parties at their Great Father's table, the guests at the first (party), on Monday the twenty-eighth being the Shawnees' Red Pole "Principal Chief" and Blue Jacket together with three Pottawatomies, five Chippewas, and two interpreters. The unexpected encounter in Philadelphia Hall occurred in the midst of these excitements, on Thursday, and at the intertribal peacemaking council on the next day. The news of it was printed a week later in Benjamin Franklin Bache's Aurora of December 8, heading the column filled by Washington's last annual message to Congress before his retirement from office:
A singular circumstance took place a few days ago in this city. Several chiefs of the Creeks, Cherokees, and other nations of Indians, now here upon an invitation of the President of the United States, met accidentally at Peale's Museum. They shewed evident surprise at the recontre, and were remarkably shy of each other at first. They by degrees, however, through the Intervention of the interpreters, became more reconciled to each other, and at last entered into conversation. Some of the chiefs were from tribes hostile to others, but in this first interview they made such progress towards a reconciliation, that they agreed to meet again at the Museum, and the chiefs from the following tribes did assemble, and after a sitting of some hours, concluded a pact of peace and friendship. The following is a list of the tribes represented. Creeks, Cherokees, Choctaws, and Chicasaws, all southern Shawnee, Wyandots, Delawares, Miamis, Chippewas, Kickapoos, and other of the north western Indians. The conference was opened by a message from the President, encouraging them to make up their differences. The Indians were so struck with the singular manner of their meeting, that they expressed their persuasion, that the Great Spirit must have brought them thus together for the purpose of reconciliation, an opinion which will probably secure the permanency of their friendly union.
There is a religious note also in the message which the secretary of war brought on behalf of Washington. The words, dated December 1, 1796, are McHenry's and are preserved in his papers at the William L. Clements Library, University of Michigan. He spoke in the poetic imagery of the council fire:
Brothers the president of the United States, your father, who loves you as his Children, has heard the request which some of you have made to him, and agreed that you should all meet in one assembly, to strengthen be-fore me, as a solemn witness, that chain of friendship which ought to connect you together, and which he wishes may continue like the sun always bright. The great Spirit whom your father the President and the people of the United States adore, requires from men of every colour and language that they should live in peace and love each other. Nations which engage in war and forsake this, path are sure to be hurt, though they should kill a great many of those they fight against, for war is a fire that burns the large trees as well as the small ones. To avoid this terrible fire, good Chiefs and Wise men, whenever a dispute or difference happens between the people of their respective nations, will meet and try to have it settled in a peaceable manner and rather than go to War will give up something to which they think they have a right. By observing this line of moderation and strictly performing all Its promises, a nation may avoid a War that might cost it more lives and property than the thing about which they quarreled was worth. Your father the President wishes, if any of you have differences to settle, to remember this rule and recommends it to you, to hold fast the Chain of friendship, which now unites you in peace, and which he wishes never to see broken. Brothers, you will now proceed to business.
Proceed to business they did, with Red Pole as principal orator. No transcript of his words was made, and we have only a memorandum of McHenry's to attest his genuine zeal for peace:
Red pole Thinks their young men cannot be effectually restrained while they are obliged to go to a distance for their powder. The traders should be obliged to reside at the Indian villages so that the young men should have no excuse to go to a distance and that the chiefs might always know where they went.
Red Pole and Blue Jacket, both signers for the Shawnees at the Treaty of Greenville, had been to the fore in everything up to this final conference on tribal relations, and it was in their portraits that Peale determined to perpetuate the story and its moral. He might have painted them for the museum gallery, but decided instead upon a series of wax sculptures illustrating the races of mankind, each lifesize and each in characteristic native dress. There were ten in all sachem and the war chief, a "Carib, or Native Indian of Guana South America," a native of the "Oonalaska Island on the north west coast of America," natives of Kamtschatka, of the Sandwich Islands, of Otaheite, of the Gold Coast of Africa, a Chinese laborer, and a Chinese mandarin. When the work was completed and announced in the papers of August 1797 the figure of Red Pole stood also as a monument to departed worth. On his return journey, camping on an island near Pittsburgh, Red Pole had contracted pneumonia and died. Dr. Nathaniel Bedfore, Pittsburgh's best physician, and two other doctors had been hurried to his side in vain. At McHenry's order and as holder of an American chiefs commission, he had been given a soldier's burial in old Trinity churchyard under a commemorative stone that still stands outside the present cathedral.
MIO-QUA-COO-NA-CAW RED POLE PRINCIPAL VILLAGE CHIEF OF THE SHAWNEE NATION DIED AT PITTSBURGH. 28th OF JANUARY 1797 LAMENTED BY THE UNITED STATES
Peale published the epitaph in his newspaper announcement of the figures, adding a tribute to Red Pole's "excellent speech at a Grand Conference held at the Museum in Philadelphia on the 2nd of December 1796. When George Washington, a private citizen once more, visited Philadelphia in the autumn of 1798, he was invited to see the sculptures at the museum. What he said or thought of the Indians is not recorded, although the Peales always remembered how, in passing the full-length painting of Raphaelle and Titian Peale, the trompe l'oeil portrait now at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (fig. 75), he had "bowed politely to the painted figures which he afterwards acknowledged he thought were living persons. As for the tribes who brought their own affairs into order there in the midst of Peale's scientific classification of nature, the newspaper re-ports name Creeks, Cherokees, Chickasaws, and Chocktaws in addition to those from the northwest. There had been treaties with the Creeks and Cherokees not long before, and a Creek delegation left for home at about the same time as Red Pole. It would seem, therefore, that the former British allies from the north were coming to new terms with the southern tribes. Peale's recollection of 1800 that they "had never before met but in the field of battle" may not be entirely accurate, as the newspaper report of their being simply "remarkably shy of each other" suggests. Friction had developed among the signers to the Treaty of Greenvile and though this could hardly have entered into the conference at the museum, it does appear in the aftermath of the making of the portraits in wax. Wayne had explained the matter to McHenry when the Indians were leaving Detroit:
Among whom is the famous Shawanoe Chief Blue Jacket, who, it is said had the Chief Command of the Indian Army on the 4th of November 1, against General St. Clair, The Little Turtle Miama Chief who also claims that honor, & who is his rival for fame & power & said to be daily gaining ground with the Wabash Indians - refuses or declines to proceed in Company with Blue Jacket: he possessed the spirit of litigation to a high degree, possibly he may have been tampered with by some of the speculating land jobbers.
Little Turtle was in Philadelphia in 1797 when the wax figures of Red Pole and the despised Blue Jacket first came to public view. The Turtle, who had presented a case for peace before Fallen Timbers, was still its advocate, and to keep him so he had been awarded a small pension. When, at this same time, McHenry brought him to Gilbert Stuart to have his portrait painted to hang in the War Office, there is a strong implication that the rivalry with Blue Jacket had something to do with it. The portrait of Little Turtle, destroyed by fire, is now known only through prints made from it (fig. 63) and remembered, too, in an anecdote of the moment. Sittings to Stuart were always lively, and here there was a bantering Irishman with whom the Indian kept up a battle of wits as well as language differences allowed. The Turtle, however, sensed that he was receiving a kind of immortality as the picture matured, becoming silent and sedate. The Irishman claimed victory. When that idea reached him through the interpreter, Little Turtle struck back. "He mistakes, I was just thinking of proposing to this man to paint us both on one board and there I would stand face to face with him and blackguard him eternally." Also on the Philadelphia scene in 1797 there was another chief, once greatly feared but now interested in peaceful accommodation. This was Joseph Brant, Thayendanegea of the Mohawks, holder of a captain's commission in the British army, who had led the warriors of the Iroquois in a terrible raid and massacre during the Revolution. Afterward, he had been a leader in holding the northern tribes to British allegiance and in St. Clair's defeat, 1791. But now his power had been broken, and the Adams administration, threatened only by war with France, had no interest in him. He became nonetheless something of a social lion -entertained, rather curiously, at the dinner tables of American sympathizers with France. He met the French exiles and diplomats with whom Peale also associated-freedom-fighter Kosciuszko and the historian Comte de Volney one with his passion for national liberties, the other seeking a common understanding for all mankind. Both had interviews with Brant and Little Turtle, their fame and that of the chiefs remembered together. Volney was an admirer of the museum, and Peale would always treasure his words as he first came through its door. "This is the Temple of God! Here is nothing but Truth and Reason!" Not many persons could have seen Captain Brant as an advocate of peace, but at least he was living proof of Peale's belief that only education was needed to bring the red man to a level equal to that of the white. Brant, well read, widely traveled, thoroughly literate and urbane, could hold his own very well in any company of gentlemen. Romney's portrait of him, painted in England, stresses the soldier. Peale's for the museum gallery is characterized by gentleness and an upward, searching look apparently intended to symbolize the aspirations of his race (fig. 64). Ten years later, the Louisiana Purchase and the return of the explorers Lewis and Clark had put a new edge on the American expansionist spirit perhaps sensing this fact, Peale again slanted a museum exhibit toward peace and brotherhood. President Jefferson had made the museum a depository for some of that expedition's scientific materials, and the explorers themselves made gifts. Peale explained to the president, on January 29, 1808 what use he had made of one of them:
I completed a wax figure of Capt. Lewis and placed it in the Museum. My object in this work, is to give a lesson to the Indians who may visit the Museum, and also to show my sentiments respecting wars, the figure being dressed in an Indian dress presented to Capt. Lewis by Cornea-wait, Chief of Shoshone Nation , who was suspicious that Capt. Lewis meant to lead him into an ambuscade with his enemies. The figure has its right hand on its breast and the left holds the Cdmut which was given me by Capt. Lewis. In a tablet I give the story in a few words, and then add, "This mantle, composed of 140 ermine skins, was put on Capt. Lewis by Conieawhait, their Chief. Lewis is supposed to say, 'Brother, I accept your dress. - It is the object of my heart to promote amongst you, our neighbors, peace and good will that you may bury the hatchet deep in the ground never to be taken up again and that henceforward you may smoke the Calmut of Peace and live in perpetual harmony, not only with each other, but with the white men, your brothers, who will teach you many useful arts. Possessed of every comfort in life, what cause ought to involve us in war? Men are not too numerous for the lands we are to cultivate and disease makes havoc enough amongst them without deliberately destroying each other. If any differences arise about lands or trade, let each party appoint judicious persons to meet together and amicably settle the disputed point." Such I believe to be the sentiments of our friend Lewis, and which he endeavored to instill in the minds of the various savages he met with in his long and hazardous tour. I am pleased when I can give an object which affords a moral sentiment to the Visitors to the Museum.
A year later, General Harrison would conclude his treaty with the tribes who had met at Greenville - Shawnees excluded a land grab of massive proportions that would precipitate new warfare and lead on to his triumph at Tippecanoe. Peale by that time had retired to his farm, and his son Rubens, more businessman than moralist, had taken over the museum with an emphasis on entertainment rather than instruction. Captain Brant is still to be seen, alert and hopeful, in the portrait gallery at Independence National Historical Park, but Red Pole, Blue Jacket, and Lewis with his ermine mantle and pipe of peace have vanished. The Peale collections were scattered in the mid-nineteenth century, the wax figures apparently destroyed in one of the fires that wiped out the Barnum museum enterprises in New York and Philadelphia.
NOTES
This chapter was originally published in the American Art Journal 7 (1975):
Discourse introductory to a Course of Lectures on the Science of Nature (Philadelphia, 1800), PP. 39-40 (FIID/3). 2. Benjamin B. Thatcher, Indian Biography, (1932 rpt. New York, 1845), Richard C. Knopfed., Anthony Wayne, A Name in Arms, Soldier, Thplomat, Defender of Expansion Westward of a Nation The Wa~e-Knx-Pinthle,-McHen~y Correspondence (Pittsburgh, Pa. 93. Ohio Archaeological and Historical Quarter!, 15(1906): 444-45; Knopf, ed., Wayne Correspondence, pp. 1996. 4. Knopf, ed., Wayne Correspondence, ). 390. 5. Ibid. 6. Ibid., pp. 390, 414. 7. Clapoole's American Daily Advertiser (Philadelphia), June 18, 1796.
THE HOTELS As you walked east from the Golden Arches, you were going along West Illinois Street which was old U. S. Highway 66, main street America. The north-south street flanking McDonalds behind you is Wilson Avenue, Vinita’s main street. At the intersection of W. Illinois and Wilson, Hiway 66 turned south, all the way thru town.
At the corner where you two turned south along the street paralleling the north-south MKT (Katy) Railroad tracks, was the Cobb Hotel.
The Cobb Hotel above which opened in April, 1891, was
one of the major hotel properties in Indian Territory.
Looking westerly, the east-west street on the right is West Illinois. The north-south street along the hotel is Vann. There were two entrances, one on Illinois and one on Vann. The photographer was standing on the railroad tracks and the Katy Station was just to his left on the east side of Vann, directly across from the Cobb. At the southern end of the hotel, lower left in the picture, is a door. It leads to a first floor apartment extending from the Vann entrance to the south end of the hotel.
Carlyle 19361934 to 1936 - We lived in that apartment!
I still have that sticking out belly! My mother and I were living with her adoptive parents, William Lewis (Bill) and Eva (Warenfelt) Dukes. Bill had retired from the International Harvester on January 1, 1934, right after I was born on December 29, 1933. He helped manage the Cobb Hotel, hence living in its ground floor apartment. Mother was trying to cope with the Depression as a divorced mother.
With the Katy Station just a few feet across the street from our apartment door, everyone who rode the line regularly knew Bill Dukes’ "grandkid."
Where McDonalds is now, was a drugstore with the grandest fountain and I am sure that my little round belly held many ice cream cones. Today, maybe a Martoonie or two!
You said "About a block north, there was an east-west railroad track which crossed the north-south railroad." In the middle ‘30’s, this is what it looked like!
In the background is the Katy/Frisco crossing and they always had someone in that tower to prevent crashes at the crossing. We moved to Parsons, Kansas September of 1936 and there was an exact setup just a few blocks from our house there. Again, it was an east-west Frisco crossing the north-south Katy with the ubiquitous tower standing guard! There, the Frisco tracks have long since been ripped up. The Katy is now the Union Pacific and 23 coal trains a day go thru Parsons, carrying the coal from the Powder River Basin in Wyoming to power plants in eastern Oklahoma. Each train has two diesels in front, 120 cars of coal and two diesels in back. They make a loop, never retracing their steps.
Photographer: Deborah Ann HinshawTime flies! Here is what the Cobb looked on July 31, 2000! The doors are still where they were in 1891 and 1936 but the two upper stories were removed. Originally, there was a water tank on the third floor that supplied water for washing and bathing. The wide kid is gone but there is an old bugger looking down Illinois Street just like the kid did in 1936!
Now you can look at a map and recognize what we have been talking about. This is a United States Geological Survey topographic map of the Vinita 7 ˝ Minute Quadrangle. North is straight up and the town is canted toward the northeast-southwest. The heavy red line coming from the southeast turning left and going out of town to the south is U. S. Highway 66. The map was printed in 1971 so the hiway was still main street USA. McDonalds is at the southeast corner of the intersection of West Illinois and Wilson, where old 66 makes its left turn,..
The Katy tracks come in at the northeast corner of town and go out at the south. The Frisco comes in on the east and goes out on the west. The Katy tracks split the town (the Blue Jackets lived on the wrong side!) and Illinois is called East Illinois east of the Katy tracks. The Post Office is the large black building labeled PO and it is just across the street north from the Cobb Hotel. The first street on the east side of the Katy tracks and parallel to them is 1st Street. The Blue Jacket HOTEL (bet you thought I had for got it!) was on the northeast corner of the intersection of 1st Street and East Illinois Street. Illinois is not labeled on the map but 1st Street and Wilsoon are. The Will Rogers Turnpike is just east of the map. Next we will look at what Stephen S. Blue Jackets place of business looks like now.
This is the intersection of East Illinois and 1st Street looking down Illinois to the east. Stepens S. Blue Jacket’s hotel was where Reynolds Boot Shop and Western Wear now sits. On the far right is Kegge Ruark ‘n me talking about just that on July 31, 2000 in front of his liquor store. He owned the old hotel property several years ago and the building was still standing. He sold it and Reynolds built their store about thrree years ago. Kegge and his mother were great friends of my grandmother, Gertrude Alice (Foreman) Hinshaw. They helped us celebrate Gertie’s 100th birthday in 1980.
A young newspaperman, Harry Arlington, left his St. Louis home to take a job on The Indian Chieftan of Vinita. He wrote his parents on June 6, 1884 and it reads: "I left Joplin yesterday at 3:25 and arrived at Pierce City at 6:25 p.m. I remained in Pierce City Thursday night and started for Vinita at 9:20 a.m. this morning and arrived here at 12:35.
Such lovely country – broad expansive prairies extending as far as the eye can see and seeming to kiss the skies in the far distance. But little farming is carried out here and that on a very small and ancient scale.
I have seen more Indians in the two short hours of my stay here than in all my life before, some full bloods and mostly three fourth and half bloods, but civilized. They are THE people here. They carry on the principal part of the business in this town of some 800 or 900 inhabitants. They are monarchs of all they survey. I am stopping at a boarding house owned by an Indian named Stephen Blue Jacket, $3.50 a week. He is very intelligent and polite and has two of the prettiest Indian maidens I have ever seen.
All of the white men in business here are married to Indian women, which they have to do before they can carry on a business in their own name. Whites cannot own over five head of stock without a permit which cost $1 per month. A white man is a perfect blank here unless he marries into an Indian family. All I have written regarding this pecular style of government was just told me by the editor of the paper who is an Indian and also mayor of the town (William P. Ross, nephew of Chief John Ross).
I think I can strike a job on the paper – at least I am very sanquine of my efforts thus far, but of course not positive – it is very interesting thus far but terribly lonesome." (VINITA, I.T., O.B. Campbell, 1969, The Oklahoma Publishing Co., Oklahoma City)
We probably could find a photograph that shows the Blue Jacket Hotel at the Vinita Public Library and Eastern Trails Museum, two blocks west of Wilson on the south side of West Illinois. If any interested recipients are that way, give it a shot and let us know the results. My grandfather, George Austin Hinshaw, married a member of the Cherokee Nation on November 7, 1904, thereby allowing him to open his plumbing contracting and plumbing store business in Vinita. The museum has one of his advertisements, a toilet paper holder which has HINSHAW stamped on the roller! I know where some of my sense of humor comes from.
Stephen S. Blue Jacket was the eldest of Henry Blue Jacket’s seven children. My great-grandmother, Emma Blue Jacket, was the last girl and next to last child. Stephen S.’s son Pearl Tecumsah Blue Jacket and my grandmother, Gertrude Alice (Foreman) Hinshaw were great friends. Gertie was a year and a half older than Pearl. At age 13, Gertie took Pearl in hand and went to Carlisle PA to enroll in Carlisle Industrial School in 1893. They enrolled her as Alice Renfrew, with the home address of Foreman. Both were listed as coming from Afton I.T. Pearl’s sister, Mamie F., also attended Carlisle.
You could hardly ever find a more colorful Indian than Pear Tecumsah Blue Jacket. Answering to several names including "Blue", most Blue Jacket kids, including me, called him Uncle Pearl. A bowmaker, Pearl made one for me when I was ten years old. I took it out in the alley to shoot it the first time and my guardian, William Lewis (Bill) Dukes came out to watch. The first arrow hit him in the arm! Mortification, I am well acquainted with it!
So much for being an Indian.
Near the center of the photograph is a group of small buildings a block east of the old hotel site. One was a café at one time. In the last week of May, 1953, several of we sophomores graduating from Parsons Junior College went fishing in Arkansas. Enroute, we stopped in that café for a cup of coffee. Lo and behold, there was Pearl, sitting with a vacationing man and wife from New York. He did not recognize me but I sat as close to him as I could. Pearl was regaling them with Indian stories. By the time we left, it was very clear that Pearl was hitting them up for a handout! That was the last time I saw Pearl. He died in Vinita in 1958 when I was attending Kansas State.
So, there you have it we three, a nostalgic sojourn thru an old Indian’s old territory. Hope you enjoyed it.
Carlyle Hinshaw
July 15, 2001
THE WAKARUSA RIVER
Home of the Shawnees and locale of Blue Jacket’s Crossing
By Carlyle HinshawThe Wakarusa arises in limestone hill country southwest of Lawrence, Kansas and flows east, passing that town just to the south of it’s city limits. About eight miles east of Lawrence, it empties into the Kansas (Kaw) River.
Press Release NE Oklahoma Newspaper
by: Gaylord Carlyle Hinshaw
June 24, 2001The Blue Jackets were part of the "Loyal" Shawnees that removed from the Johnson County area of northeast Kansas to Indian Territory around 1870. Settling on farm land acquired from the Cherokee Nation, Blue Jacket country extended from Russell Creek just south of Chetopa KS along the then new Katy rails to around Big Cabin, nine miles south of Vinita IT. Over the years a number of Chetopans and Coffeyvillians were Blue Jacket bloods. The small cemetery just south and east of Chetopa, in Kansas, contains quite a few Blue Jackets.
Blue Jacket bloods are members of three different tribes. The Cherokee Nation, headquartered in Tahlequah has many Adopted Shawnee Blue Jacket members. The Eastern Shawnee Tribe, headquartered at Seneca Mo also has many, with most living in Oklahoma. December 28th last, Public Law 106, Title VII was enacted, resurrecting the Shawnee Tribe which had languished in the Cherokee Nation for 130 years. Now a federally recognized Native American group 1,000 members strong, a number of Blue Jackets have joined or transferred from the Cherokees. The Tribal headquarters are in Miami OK. Blue Jackets can also be traced to Welch, the town of Blue Jacket, White Oak and Vinita for starters, at least as far north as Minneapolis and Detroit, east to Virginia, south to the upper Texas coast, west to that coast and one known for sure in the American Embassy in Moscow, Russia.
The patriarch of the family was 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.
At the pinnacle of his career, Blue Jacket led warriors from a consortium of Great Lakes Algonquian Indian tribes against the U. S. Army on November 4, 1791 on the banks of the Wabash River at what is now Fort Recovery OH. Killing 900 U. S. Army soldiers and Kentucky Milita and wounding 600 more, it was the worst defeat the U. S. Army ever suffered at the hands of Native Americans.
From Henry Howe's Historical Collection of Ohio Sent by: Hal ShermanMap of the Ancient Shawnee Towns, on the Pickaway Plains.
[Explanation's.-
A. Ancient works, on which Circleville now stands.
B. Logan's cabin at Old Chillicothe, now Westfall, four miles below Circleville; from this place a trail let through Grenadier Squaw town, and from thence up the Congo valley, and crosses to the opposite side of the creek, about 1.5 miles from its mouth.C. Black mountain, a short distance west of the old Barr mansion.
D. Council house, a short distance northeast of the residence of W. Renick, Jr. The two parallel lines at this point represent the gauntlet through which prisoners were forced to run, and O the stake at which they were burnt, which last is on a commanding elevation.
F. The camp of Col. Lewis, just south of the residence of Geo. Wolf. The Logan elm is about a mile north of the site of the camp of Lewis on Congo creek.
E. The point where Lord Dunmore met with and stopped the army of Lewis when on their way to attach the Indians: it is opposite the mansion of Major John Boggs.
G. The residence of Judge Gills, near which is shown the position of Camp Charlotte.]
WHO'S WHO?
That’s Who!
PHOTO GOES HERE
A SHAWNEE FUTURE
Korina MaxwellWyandotte Oklahoma, July 17, 2001 _______ Korina LaTisha Maxwell, a Senior to be at Wyandotte High School, has been selected to be in the 2001 Who’s Who Among American High School Students. Korina will graduate in May, 2002 and receives a $1000 scholarship that goes with this honor.
This Eastern Shawnee Blue Jacket blood lass, is the granddaughter of Beverly Ann (Blue Jacket) Moss. She is a ninth generation descendant of Blue Jacket, the last principal War Chief of the Shawnee Tribe (1743-1808). Her great uncle is Robert Denton Blue Jacket of Tulsa and his son, Dennis Wayne Blue Jacket, lives there also. There are Blue Jackets all over the place in this family! A prouder mother than Kimberly Ann Martinez is hard to find.
Wyandotte is the home of the Wyandotte Nation and is a town of some 370 souls 10 miles southeast of Miami OK and just west of the Missouri line. Located in the southwest part of the Ozarks, the land is wooded and hilly. Have they got Bears? You betcha, that’s the school mascot! They do tolerate Shawnees there!
Korina’s prime educational interests are Astronomy and Physics. (a budding Astrophysicist?) And, golly, she wants to attend Florida State University beginning in the fall of 2002! Oh well, at least it is an Indian’s school!
A roller blader, she likes running with her friends.
Korina is active in the Spanish Club at the Bear Den. She also is in the Accounting Club, where she won an a award at Tulsa University, plus a gift certificate at the TU bookstore.
How about this: Here is a Shawnee kid that speaks Spanish, keep real good track of shekels, has stars in her eyes, has a granddad that gave the U. S. Army the worst defeat it ever suffered at the hands of Native Americans and wants to become a Seminole. Sic ‘em Korina!
Hey folks, here’s a little girl from a little town who made it to the big time! Send her a congratulatory message at: mrtn917@aol.com
"Gone But Not Forgotten"
by: Robert V. Van Trees
July 8, 2001Fairborn, Ohio, August, 2001 - I have tried in vain to learn the whereabouts of the wife and son of a WW II friend of mine, M/Sgt Donald E. Blue Jacket, who died of cancer here at the Wright Patterson AFB hospital in 1963. His wife and son left Fairborn in 1964 and I have no idea where they went or their whereabouts, but I would really like to contact them if possible. Can you help?
WORLD WAR II VETERAN EULOGY
Donald Eugene Blue Jacket, son of Michael P. and Vida (Grimes) Blue Jacket, was born November 10, 1923 in Kansas. Donald is a great grandson of Rev. Charles Blue Jacket. A veteran of military service (1941-1963), M/Sgt. Blue Jacket died July 16, 1963 in the Military Hospital at Wright Patterson AFB, Ohio and his mortal remains rest in the Fairfield Cemetery (Lot #2, Grave #2., Sect 2) at Fairborn, OH not far from where the controversial "Blue Jacket outdoors drama" near Xenia, OH erroneously portray his ancestor as being a white person named Marmaduke Van Swearingen who kills and scalps his own brother, Charles Van Swearingen. M/Sgt Donald E. Blue Jacket's (SSN 511 12 511) Death Certificate #37-170 is filed in the Greene County Dept. of Health at Xenia, OH.
Donald married Myra Eunice ________ and their son, "Mike," was born January 1, 1956 on the north side of Chicago, IL. At the time of Donald's death, his wife and son lived at 862 Washington St. in Fairborn but ten months after her husband's will was settled in May of 1964, Myra moved, leaving no forwarding address. School records of Myra's son indicate she was born in California. Efforts to learn her whereabouts or that of Mike have been unsuccessful. Attempts to establish contact with Donald's sister, Gail B. Mathena, who lived in Dallas, TX in April of 1963 have been unsuccessful. The maiden name of Myra Eunice could not be obtained from the Illinois birth record of her son since such data is only released to relatives of Donald.
Any additional information concerning the above matter will be sincerely appreciated by Robert V. Van Trees, 589 Westwood Drive , Fairborn, OH 45324 (e-mail: vntrz@graphtronics.net ).
Other Genealogical Notes on Donald
Donald had a half-sister, Jessie Margaret Lee Blue Jacket, whose mother was Lilla Stewart. Jessie was born December 12, 1905 in Indian Territory. Jessie married an unknown Sutton. Father Mike P. Blue Jacket was listed in the 1909-1910 Craig County, Oklahoma Voter Rolls. Donald was born when Mike was 42 years of age.
An addendum by Robert Van Trees
I met M/Sgt Donald E. Blue Jacket in Operations at Olmsted Air Base near Harrisburg, PA shortly after WW II ended. He was interested in obtaining a ride to St. Louis, MO on a C-47 I intended to fly. I agreed to take him but indicated I planned to RON (Remain Over Night) reroute at Wright Patterson Air Base and have dinner with my parents in nearby Fort Recovery, Ohio where I was born and raised. Reroute to Wright Patterson, in customary fashion I asked Donald to join me in the cockpit and during our conversation he said his ancestor had fought General St. Clair's army along the Wabash where Fort Recovery now stands. He volunteered he was a full blooded Shawnee when I remarked about having known a fighter pilot from Oklahoma who claimed to be a full blooded Cherokee. More interested in "girls" than "history" at the time, I did not pursue a further discussion of Donald's lineage.
Although I planned to take Donald on to St. Louis the following morning, in Operations at Wright Patterson I learned another plane was going to St. Louis that same afternoon and arranged for Donald to proceed on west. I never heard from him again until I saw him in the hospital at Wright Patterson Air Base a week or so before he died the morning of July 16th, 1963. I was not immediately interested in his lineage until the late 1970s when I started performing research, which led me to the Blue Jacket controversy. Subsequently I viewed Donald's Death Certificate and Will which are on file in Greene County, OH but found no trace of his wife's whereabouts. The Will indicates his sister in Dallas, TX as an alternate executrix in the event his wife could not serve as such.
A Pen and Pencil staff addendum
Four years ago I began Blue Jacket family research and the second contact made was, luckily, Robert V. Van Trees. Early on in our frequent communications, he related the above story to me and asked that I help search for Donald's wife and son. I worked up an address list of Blue Jackets and mailed out 55 letters, relating Donald's story and Robert's plea, asking these bloods to search their histories and reply. The sum total of responses was an e-mail message from a lady divorced from a Blue Jacket and a telephone call from Joseph David Blue Jacket of Edmond OK. Joe turned out to literally, be a gold mine of Blue Jacket history. His early career was as a gold miner in Cripple Creek CO just before and for a while after, World War II.
Robert also introduced Vaughn Pedersen of Elgin IL and me and a great deal of Blue Jacket family history has been going on since this late 1997 time of relevation. Many Blue Jackets have since been "uncovered" by all of us and many still refuse to reply to frequent queries from us.
Contrasting the foregoing, Robert Van Trees, with nary a drop of Indian blood in his veins, has given many years of his productive life researching, writing and living a life of Blue Jacket history. He knows more about Blue Jacket family history than any living Blue Jacket blood. Robert has staunchly defended the many attempts by historians to sully the Blue Jacket and Swearingen family heritages and his fidelity to a fallen American soldier named Donald Eugene Blue Jacket, is exemplary. Robert V. Van Trees is a Prince among men. Robert my friend, I salute you.
Carlyle Hinshaw
Newspaper has Blue Jacket Connection
Twin Bridges State Park – July 1, 2001The first Catholic newspaper printed in the United States was due to the enterprise of Father Gabriel Richard, of Detroit, Michigan. In 1808 he visited Baltimore, and while there bought a printing press and a font of type which he sent over the mountains to Detroit (then a frontier town) and set up in the house of one Jacques Lasselle , in the suburb of Springwells. On this press, the lever of which is still preserved in the museum of the Michigan Historical Society, he printed, on 31 August, 1809, the first issue of "The Michigan Essay, or Impartial Observer", containing sixteen columns and a half in English, and one column and a half in French, on miscellaneous topics. There is no Local news included in its contents and only one advertisement, that of St. Anne's school, Detroit. The imprint says the paper was printed and published by James M. Miller, but under the direction of Father Richard. It was to appear every Thursday; only one issue, however, was made, and of this but five copies are extant.
Reminiscent of Pen and Pencil, of the Shawnee-Blue Jackets, published semi-occasionally in Indian Territory? Well, we are at least going to have two issues and this article will be a part!
Here is the Blue Jacket connection to the first Catholic newspaper taken from Blue Jacket Genealogy, 2nd Edition, 2001.
DEEP IN THE
MISSOURI WOODS
by: Drake Bell
09/24/02Dear Carlyle,
Our trip to Oklahoma and the meeting at White Oak was so rewarding as we were able to meet and visit with such interesting and wonderful people leading to a better understanding of times passed and loved ones gone. Regrettably, I did not get to talk with you as I had hoped since the time was long and we were very tired. Needless to say, I feel as if I know you better even though our discussion was short. Not long ago Roger had given me a copy of your Blue Jacket genealogy he had obtained from Frank White who was married to my mother's sister.
My interest in BJ began to surface some years before my mother's passing, even though she was somewhat secretive about her past. As you believed initially I thought the white man turned Indian chief was the true history of BJ, however, discrepancies began to complicate the information I had leading to incomplete links in early relationships. However, cancer surgery in 1994 detoured my ambitions for a year leaving me with a heightened awareness of the here and now. Dana Blue Jacket was my mother and Charles W. Blue Jacket was her great-grandfather. I was not aware of the DNA work until last year during a trip to Bellefontaine, Ohio.
After spending summers on my Uncle Henry's farm in Blue Jacket and working in the US Forest Service in Idaho for a summer I have always longed to live in the woods close to nature where the wild turkeys roam, coyote puppies romp, white-tail deer raise little ones, the red tailed hawks soar on the thermal air currents lifting them high in the sky, song birds capture the moment with calls of spring, and the pileated woodpecker thumps on the old oak tree. We live in the woods of Missouri not too far from the past home of Mom's great-grandfather who spent some years of his life on the Shawnee lands in Kansas before being moved to Oklahoma, as you know.
Thank you for the excellent Web site and the information that leads one to a better understanding of who we are.
Sincerely, Drake Bell
by: Hopalong Van
July 29, 2001
In company with my wife (shown with me above) I limped over to Hal Sherman's humble abode last evening and enjoyed a visit with Hal and his wife at a nearby restaurant and several hours of talk about his paintings when we returned to Hal's home. Among his many paintings is one of McGary bashing in the head of Moluntha which, gruesome as it is, you might like to see. Hal does a fine job on human figures and now in his retirement years he is really staying busy painting and researching for info concerning historic frontier people. I was particularly impressed with the "Treaty at Fort Finney" which he sent you a photo of. He does good work and both my wife and I enjoyed our evening with the Shermans. Hal has a digital camera and he snapped the attached photo of my wife and I. Our six to midnight get together was one we hope to repeat in the near future. Stay cool out there!
Photo and story by: Hal Sherman
I was up in Fort Recovery today which is the hometown of Robert Vantrees and took a photo of a plaque dedicated to a Shawnee Warrior that had fallen in battle there. A white Oak tree was planted beside it in his memory. I always get emotional when I see it. There is never many dedications to the Native American's and I thought I would pass it on to you.
Note: Jesse Hilton Stuart (1907-1984) was an American author who wrote about the mountain regions of Kentucky. A copy of this "To Whom It May Concern" is attached to your copy of my message to the Jesse Stuart Foundation to explain what prompted my action. As the old saying goes:
"It is better to light a single candle than curse the darkness!" Got a match? "Hopalong Van"
