The true story of the US Army's Comanche Code Talkers, from their recruitment and training to active duty in World War II and postwar life.Among the allied troops that came ashore in Normandy on D-Day, June 6, 1944, were thirteen Comanches in the 4th Infantry Division, 4th Signal Company. Under German fire they laid communications lines and began sending messages in a form never before heard in Europe?coded Comanche. For the rest of World War II, the Comanche Code T...

For many Plains Indians, being a warrior and veteran has long been the traditional pathway to male honor and status. Men and boys formed military societies to celebrate victories in war, to perform community service, and to prepare young men for their role as warriors and hunters. By preserving cultural forms contained in song, dance, ritual, language, kinship, economics, naming, and other semireligious ceremonies, these societies have played an important role in maintaining Plains Indian ...

The North American handgame has a long lineage, attested in the myth, oral traditions, and archaeological records of Native American people. In The Handgame of the Kiowa, Comanche, and Apache: Spirited Competition on the Southern Plains, noted scholar William C. Meadows examines the game’s history, evolution, and practice from origin accounts to the present day among people of the Southern Plains American Indian nations.According to Meadows, the handgame, once pri...

The US military is one of the largest employers in the country and is a relative microcosm of American society, bringing in people from diverse backgrounds and history to defend the nation from all enemies. Military and civilian leaders address the same challenges as those found in the civilian world, including diversity, inclusion, equity, and belonging. The US military has both led and followed the nation in establishing policies of diversity and inclusion. In this second edition, the ed...

Many Americans know something about the Navajo code talkers in World War II—but little else about the military service of Native Americans, who have served in our armed forces since the American Revolution, and still serve in larger numbers than any other ethnic group. But, as we learn in this splendid work of historical restitution, code talking originated in World War I among Native soldiers whose extraordinary service resulted, at long last, in U.S. citizenship for all Native Americans....

Examining the place names, geographical knowledge, and cultural associations of the Kiowa from the earliest recorded sources to the present, Kiowa Ethnogeography is the most in-depth study of its kind in the realm of Plains Indian tribal analysis. Linking geography to political and social changes, William Meadows applies a chronological approach that demonstrates a cultural evolution within the Kiowa community.Preserved in both linguistic and cartographic forms, the concep...

Hugh Lenox Scott, who would one day serve as chief of staff of the U.S. Army, spent a portion of his early career at Fort Sill, in Indian and, later, Oklahoma Territory. There, from 1891 to 1897, he commanded Troop L, 7th Cavalry, an all-Indian unit. From members of this unit, in particular a Kiowa soldier named Iseeo, Scott collected three volumes of information on American Indian life and culture—a body of ethnographic material conveyed through Plains Indian Sign Language (in which Scott...

This newest volume in Oxford's acclaimed Pivotal Moments series offers an unforgettable portrait of the Nez Perce War of 1877, the last great Indian conflict in American history. It was, as Elliott West shows, a tale of courage and ingenuity, of desperate struggle and shattered hope, of short-sighted government action and a doomed flight to freedom.To tell the story, West begins with the early history of the Nez Perce and their years of friendly relations with white settlers. In an initial...

An intimate portrait of the Lakota chief by his great-grandson.Ernie LaPointe, born on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, is a great-grandson of the famous Hunkpapa Lakota chief Sitting Bull, and in this book, the first by one of Sitting Bull's lineal descendants, he presents the family tales and memories told to him about his great-grandfather. LaPointe not only recounts the rich oral history of his family—the stories of Sitting Bull's childhood, his reput...

A detailed look at the warriors of the Native Americans who lived around the Great Lakes.This book details the growth of the European Fur trade in North America and how it drew the Native Americans who lived in the Great Lakes region, notably the Huron, Dakota, Sauk and Fox, Miami and Shawnee tribes into the colonial European Wars.During the French and Indian War, the American Revolution, and the War of 1812, these tribes took sides and became important all...

From the author of How the World Moves: A revelatory new look at the hallowed, diverse, and threatened landscapes of the American IndianFor thousands of years , Native Americans have told stories about the powers of revered landscapes and sought spiritual direction at mysterious places in their homelands. In this important book, respected scholar and anthropologist Peter Nabokov writes of a wide range of sacred places in Native America. From the “high coun...

Montana's history is rich, colorful, and full of excitement in this fully-illustrated volume.See how Jedediah Smith and Jim Bridger blazed trails and made their names under the Big Sky. Read about the day John Colter ran naked for his life, Blackfeet Indians fast on his heels.Watch as Hugh Glass is mauled by a grizzly before being left to die alone by his 'friends.' Have a toast with rowdy Mike Fink before he shoots a tin cup of whiskey from your head. And meet James Beckwo...