In one of the strangest chapters of American history a boy who had long played at being an Indian became one. Marmaduke Van Swearingen, captured with his younger brother by a band of Shawnee warriors, traded his white identity for his brother's release and became totally—in fealty, in life style, in consuming hatred for the white man—an Indian…. With a precise fidelity to the facts of history, [Allan W. Eckert] has constructed a documentary novel [Blue Jacket: War Chief of the Shawnees]—terse, brooding in its revelation of white man's greed.

Jane Manthorne, "Red, Black, and White," in The Horn Book Magazine (copyright © 1969 by The Horn Book, Inc., Boston), Vol. XLV, No. 2, April, 1969, p. 193.

Although many aspects of Indian life are well integrated into the text [of Blue Jacket: War Chief of the Shawnees] and the (un)diplomatic circumstances are enumerated, the characterization of Blue Jacket...