First Frontier, Inc.

First Frontier Inc. was established as a non-profit organization based out of Xenia, Ohio in 1977. With aid from the Institute of Outdoor Drama in North Carolina, First Frontier Inc. sought to develop an outdoor drama based on history relevant to Xenia and the Greene County area. The concept of was to be based on the play Tecumseh!, which was already being produced near Chillicothe, Ohio. During this time period, attendance to outdoor dramas was the highest it had been in decades. A great deal of research and planning was completed by First Frontier Inc. and its sponsoring organization in order to ensure that a viable plan was laid out.

Blue Jacket was an eighteenth-century Shawnee war chief who led the effort to preserve the tribe's land rights in Ohio Country during and after the Revolutionary War. W. L. Mundell wrote the script based on the twentieth-century historical novels written by Allan W Eckert. The production portrayed Blue Jacket as Marmaduke Van Swearingen, a white man raised as Shawnee. This is the version of Blue Jacket's life that Eckert popularized in his novels. Historical research and DNA testing has provided evidence that Blue Jacket could not have been Van Swearingen. Current scholarship indicates that the war chief was Shawnee by birth.

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