In this episode, we start in Xenia.
Shawnee history has often been riddled with harmful stereotypes and presented inaccurately in southwest Ohio, from the outdoor "Blue Jacket" and "Tecumseh" dramas to the historical fiction books by famous local author Alan Eckert.
In episode two, we unpack why it is important to question things you may have taken as fact if you grew up in Ohio.
We also look at initiatives like Great Council State Park and Caesar's Ford Theatre, which make it easier to learn Ohio's history from a more accurate perspective that includes Shawnee voices.
Dispelling the Blue Jacket myth
One of the persistent myths around the Shawnee leader Blue Jacket is the belief that he was a white man originally named Marmaduke Van Swearingen. Genetic testing at Wright State University in 2006 proved that Blue Jacket was Indigenous. However, Shawnee people always knew that BlueJacket wasn’t an adopted European settler because his descendants lived in their communities. The BlueJacket last name is still common among the federally recognized Shawnee tribes today.
Where was Tecumseh born?
There is a strong consensus among Shawnee scholars that the Shawnee leader Tecumseh was born near the site of modern-day George Rodgers Clark Park in Clark County, Ohio. According to multiple sources, that's where Tecumseh himself said he was born.
For example, Duncan McArthur, a military officer and Federalist and National Republican politician from Ohio, shares in his account of traveling with Tecumseh, Blue Jacket, and Roundhead (Wyandotte) from Greenville to Chillicothe in 1807 that when passing the remnants of the Shawnee Village Pe'qa, along the Mad River, "the Tecumseh" noted that he had been born there, northwest of the Mad River.
Local legend has led to the myth that Tecumseh was born at Oldtown, near where the newly constructed Great Council State Park sits today. Some Kentuckians also believe that Tecumseh was born somewhere in what is now their state. Other non-Native historians have posited that Tecumseh was born near modern-day Chillicothe, Ohio.
Land of the Devil Wind
According to The Eastern Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma and The Shawnee Tribe, the legend that the Shawnee call, or ever called, the area around modern-day Xenia, Ohio, the "land of the devil wind" is false.
Additionally, the idea of, and a word for, the judeo-Christian "devil" does not exist in the Shawnee language or traditional religion.
