I'm no expert but the welcome page is usually set up in one of the config files (or used to be) such as in web.xml ; i'm sure someone well correct me ?
there are config files that set up for which welcome pages can be called. in older
tomcat setups the web.xml calls the welcome page as a
servlet or
jsp;
when tomcat first started it compiled a class file for welcome jsp (index.jsp) and put it in work directory.
This used to be a pig if you were developing straight in ROOT and trying to use your own index.jsp.
i got around it by installing tomcat- but not running tomcat util I replaced the original index.jsp with my jsp, and and edited anyting in the web.xml
which might call the default welcome eg
<servlet>
<servlet-name>default</servlet-name>
<servlet-class>org.apache.catalina.servlets.DefaultServlet</servlet-class>
<init-param>
<param-name>debug</param-name>
<param-value>0</param-value>
</init-param>
<init-param>
<param-name>listings</param-name>
<param-value>true</param-value>
</init-param>
<load-on-startup>1</load-on-startup>
</servlet>
if you have a webapp in the webapp directory, not in tomcat ROOT you shouldn't get any problems.