MARK VAN DE LOGT. War Party in Blue: Pawnee Scouts in the U.S. Army. Foreword by Walter R.Echo-Hawk. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. 2010. Pp. xviii, 350. $34.95
2011; Oxford University Press; Volume: 116; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1086/ahr.116.3.813-a
ISSN1937-5239
Autores Tópico(s)American History and Culture
ResumoAmerican Indians have formed alliances with non-Indians since the seventeenth century—earlier if we consider the Spanish conquest—for diplomatic, economic, military, and personal reasons. Mark Van de Logt's book is one of several studies of American Indians serving in the U.S. Army as it waged wars of imperial expansion against Indian nations in the mid-to late nineteenth century. For example, Thomas W. Dunlay's Wolves for the Blue Soldiers: Indian Scouts and Auxiliaries with the United States Army, 1860–90 (1982) examines the motivations of a range of Indian groups that included the Pawnee, Apache, confederated tribes of Warm Springs, and, perhaps most notably, the Arikara and Crow who joined George Armstrong Custer in his journey to death at Little Big Horn. The book under review focuses on the experiences of Pawnee scouts, during those “Indian wars” and beyond, as they fought a different battle against federal policies of coercive assimilation. Van de Logt's book evolved from a study of the scouts commissioned by Pawnee Nation citizens that became the basis of his doctoral dissertation. Accompanied by prominent Pawnee attorney Walter Echo-Hawk, the author traveled the Great Plains terrain covered by Pawnee scouts between 1864 and 1877, interviewed their descendants, and explored various state and national archives to document the scouts' motivations and methods for providing military intelligence and support for the U.S. Army as well as protection for railroad construction crews penetrating Indian Country after the Civil War.
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