Soldiers' Stories | Native American Soldiers: A Warrior History

For a quarter century - 1861 to 1886 - the U.S. military attempted to subjugate one of the largest Indian tribes of what is today the American Southwest. This is the gripping tale of how thanks to leaders such as Victorio and Geronimo, the Apache Indians held out longer than any other major U.S. tribe. This book also tells of how the surrender of Geronimo in 1886 ultimately forced the final free Apache bands to settle on government reservations.

"Crossing the Pond" is a term Native Americans used to describe the process of being transferred overseas for military duty. This was both an event and a duty taken quite seriously by tribal members, who participated in every aspect of wartime America. This meticulously researched study utilizes oral history narratives and interviews, along with documents from the Congressional Record, papers from various state museums, collections of various tribal councils, and records from the Bureau of Indian Affairs and War Relocation Authority.

Sweeney draws on American and Mexican archives, some only recently opened, to offer a balanced account of life on and off the reservation in the 1870s and 1880s. He details the Chiricahuas' ordeal in maintaining their identity despite forced relocations, disease epidemics, sustained warfare, and confinement. Resigned to accommodation with Americans but intent on preserving their culture, they were determined to survive as a people.

"A fascinating account of Apache history and ethnography. All the narratives have been carefully chosen to illustrate important facets of the Apache experience. Moreover, they make very interesting reading....This is a major contribution to both Apache history and to the history of the Southwest....The book should appeal to a very wide audience. It also should be well received by the Native American community. Indeh is oral history at its best."---R. David Edmunds, Utah Historical Quarterly

St. Clair's Defeat - as it came to be known - was hugely important for its time. It was both the biggest victory the Native Americans ever won, and, proportionately, the biggest military disaster the United States had suffered. With the British in Canada waiting in the wings for the American experiment in republicanism to fail, and some regions of the West gravitating toward alliance with Spain, the defeat threatened the very existence of the infant United States. Calloway illustrates how this moment of great victory by American Indians became an aberration in the national story and a blank spot in the national memory.

Apaches: A History and Culture Portrait, James L. Haley's dramatic saga of the Apaches' doomed guerrilla war against the whites, marks a radical departure from the method followed by previous histories of white-Native conflict. Arguing that "you cannot understand the history unless you understand the culture," Haley first discusses the lifeway of the Apaches--their mythology and folklore, religious customs, everyday life, and social mores. Haley then explores the tumultuous decades of trade and treaties and of betrayal and bloodshed that preceded the Apaches' final military defeat in 1886. He emphasizes figures that played a decisive role in the conflict: Mangas Coloradas, Cochise, and Geronimo, on the one hand, and Royal Whitman, George Crook, and John Clum on the other. With a new preface that places the book in the context of contemporary scholarship, Apaches is a well-rounded overview of Apache history and culture.

A true classic of American history, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee is Dee Brown’s eloquent, meticulously documented account of the systematic destruction of the American Indian during the second half of the nineteenth century. Using council records, autobiographies, and firsthand descriptions, Brown allows the great chiefs and warriors of the Dakota, Ute, Sioux, Cheyenne, and other tribes to tell in their won words of the battles, massacres, and broken treaties that finally left them demoralized and defeated. A unique and disturbing narrative told with force and clarity, this book changed forever our vision of how the West was really won.

Empire of the Summer Moon spans two astonishing stories. The first traces the rise and fall of the Comanches, the most powerful Indian tribe in American history. The second entails one of the most remarkable narratives ever to come out of the Old West: the epic saga of the pioneer woman Cynthia Ann Parker and her mixed-blood son Quanah, who became the last and greatest chief of the Comanches.

"As entertaining as it is thoughtful....Few contemporary writers have Weatherford's talent for making the deep sweep of history seem vital and immediate." --Washington Post After 500 years, the world's huge debt to the wisdom of the Indians of the Americas has finally been explored in all its vivid drama by anthropologist Jack Weatherford. He traces the crucial contributions made by the Indians to our federal system of government, our democratic institutions, modern medicine, agriculture, architecture, and ecology, and in this astonishing, ground-breaking book takes a giant step toward recovering a true American history.

At least 43,000 Native Americans fought in the Vietnam War, yet both the American public and the United States government have been slow to acknowledge their presence and sacrifices in that conflict. In this first-of-its-kind study, Tom Holm draws on extensive interviews with Native American veterans to tell the story of their experiences in Vietnam and their readjustment to civilian life. Holm describes how Native American motives for going to war, experiences of combat, and readjustment to civilian ways differ from those of other ethnic groups. He explores Native American traditions of warfare and the role of the warrior to explain why many young Indian men chose to fight in Vietnam. He shows how Native Americans drew on tribal customs and religion to sustain them during combat. And he describes the rituals and ceremonies practiced by families and tribes to help heal veterans of the trauma of war and return them to the "white path of peace." This information, largely unknown outside the Native American community, adds important new perspectives to our national memory of the Vietnam war and its aftermath.