OUR VIEW Blue Jacket
History must change with the times, too
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Live and learn.
"Blue Jacket" has been an institution in the life of Xenia and the Miami Valley for three decades. With its outdoor pageantry and grand ambitions, the drama offers a form of entertainment that, though not rare, isn't available everywhere. And it brings both adults and children into contact with a part of local history that is otherwise largely ignored or not appreciated.
Extras
It's a drama about the days 200 years ago when Shawnee Indians were being driven from Ohio. It is performed on land outside Xenia where some such events might well have happened. That's one thing that makes the experience particularly compelling.
But a central part of the plot turns out to be false: the premise that the Shawnee leader Blue Jacket was, by birth, not an Indian but the Dutch-American Marmaduke Van Swearingen, who kills his own brother in battle.
Recent DNA tests of descendants of Blue Jacket's son, brother and uncles tell scientists that he was a Shawnee by blood.
The production has been staged for two summers since that conclusion, with notices to audiences about the DNA findings.
In truth, Blue Jacket's bloodline is a not a matter of crucial importance to the enjoyment of the play. The production is about much bigger subjects, about a clash of peoples, about life on the frontier, a central part of the American story. Audiences can benefit from the play without buying its plot, and, in fact, despite being warned about its plot.
But now the nonprofit First Frontier Inc. has decided to shut down the show for this summer, while coming up with a new script.
The group has had financial problems stemming from both a lack of contributions and slow ticket sales. To what degree the script problem might explain the financial problems is hard to say.
What's clear, though, is that the board had to face historical reality. It can't put on a show that amounts to a story about what people used to believe about the historical circumstances if one of the goals is to educate people.
As important, the biological identity of Blue Jacket is a matter of legitimate interest to the Shawnee Indians. One historian says he was the most important Native American of his time and belongs in the country's consciousness with much more famous names, like Tecumseh (who is the subject of an outdoor theater production in Chillicothe).
Any group that could claim Blue Jacket would want to claim him.
To continue to put on the old play would invite endless contention. It would invite the charge that the producers were insulting the Shawnees. The producers couldn't win. In the long run, the play would risk becoming a laughingstock.
People, companies and institutions in the Miami Valley should be wishing "Blue Jacket" well in this particular turning point in history.
— Cox News Service
