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the native american indians are very spiritula people. They hunt bison and buffalo In Indian Blood II, I incorrectly tell that Allan W. Eckert started "the Blue Jacket War." He did not. It seems clear now that Robert Van Trees did. In fact, to call it a war is to mischaracterize this mindless tirade by Van Trees and whatever of his ardent supporters over a open academic question Was Blue Jacket white? Blue Jacket was a Shawnee chief and it is not authentically importantwhether he was adopted or native--any more than it makes a difference whether one of his wives was white, which Van Trees does not dispute. According to the information on Carlyle Hinshaws website, Hinshaw called for a "crusade," victimization his word, to protest and suppress the republication of Eckerts The Frontiersmen. Thereafter, Eckerts publisher was bombarded withletters and phone calls from the dozen or so people involved. Letters were sent and some were posted on the site. Several people wrote Allan Eckert directly. When asked for comment, Eckert said that some of the lettershe received in this "crusade" were actually hate mail, personally attacking him and calling him names. nitwitted harassment. I should point out that none of the responsible Shawnee scholars--neither Randy Noe nor John Sugden--would join in this disgraceful display of lynch-mob mentality. I was given Hinshaws web terminus by an opposite Shawnee researcher. Hinshaws website at first favorably impressed me, but after I came upon a page of protests led by Van Treess articleentitled "Bluejacket and Swearingen Families Declare War on Eckert," I was taken aback. "Declare War," he says, in such strong language that makes you speak up of terroristic attacks, some kind of crazy holy war for, in his words, our "honored dead." This strikes me as unfair and bizarrely un-American, like shouting down the opposition. This is, after all, a simple and rather silly academic iss ue. If someone--Rev. Jesse Jackson, say--should write a book claiming that Blue Jacket was actually black and that historians had been wrong in their account of him all these years, would on that point be a similar protest? I hardly think so. Why not just write your own book and let the other fellow write his? When I asked Mr. Van Trees about this, he said that the tirade against Eckert was justified and by US Mail he sent copies of the fanatical hate mail that Robert Denton Bluejacket and others had sentto Eckert--as if that explained everything.