BY HERMAN J. VIOLA FOREWORD BY CARSON WALKS OVER ICE WYOAINN NI SYORTUVM. VIOIA ‘f NVWY4HWARRIORS IN UNIFORM [NATIVE ANERICANS HAVE WILLINGLY SERVED IN THE US, MILITARY during every one of our countrys wars and their numbers inthe armed forces today exceed the percentage of any other ethnic group. What inspires these young people to enlist? One impor- tant reason isthe opportunity to continue a proud warrior tra~ dition in which the deeds of battle are considered the highest form of bravery—a cultural context that is thrillingly detailed in Warriors in Uniform. ‘Author Herman J. Viola sets this powerful story against a chronology of conflict from the 1770s to the present, detailing the surprising roles of Native soldiers in America’s two wars with Britain—and the poignant reason 15,000 American Indians wore Confederate gray. We learn why the Great Wer proved a watershed for Native Americans, and how they have served with distinction in both world wars, as well asin Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq, Warriors in Uniform introduces many heroes: men who upheld the tradition of “counting coup” or keeping track of personal battle triumphs; code talkers who sent secret com- ‘munications in tribal languages: the baseball pitcher who ‘waged a one-man assault with well-aimed hand grenades; the “Marine who helped raise the flag on Iwo Jima but ultimately ‘could not live with the losses; the first Native woman to die as 4 soldier, Their stories touch on many aspects of Native ‘American life including socal issues, spiritual belief, family relationships, and the deep respect afforded to veterans—for not only are Native Americans intensely patriotic, but they are prouder still to wear the uniform and to celebrate those who ‘wear it, because military service reinforces age-old traditions that unify their entice community. lustrated with compelling archival drawings and photo- graphs, Warriors in Uniform holds fascination for everyone interested in history, culture, and biography...as. well as deeper truths, for all of us, about the way we view one anoth- er as fellow citizens ofthe nation and the world. 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Army: Agent of Assimilation 34 Three Fighting the Metal Hats: World War 1 58 Foun Fighting the Metal Hats: World War II. 76 Five Fighting the Short Wolf Men: Korea 102 Six Fighting the Short Wolf Men: Vietnam 122 Seven Fighting the Curved Knives: Afghanistan and Iraq 138 Exght Warrior Traditions 160 Afterword 184 Bibliography 185 Acknowledgments and Credits 186 Index 187(OUR ENEMIES ARE CRYING Issheele Uuwateesh lvveck. ‘The Ones with Metal on the Top of the Head (the Lakota) ae crying Tkku’pe Unwateesh Tiweek ‘The Metal Hats (the Germans of World War I and II) are crying wétbachee Pu'mmeesh leek The Short Wolf Men (the Asians of World War II, Korea, and Vietnam) are crying Ishbi'chia Lushiash Tiweek ‘The Curved Knives (the Arabs of the Gulf War, Lebanon, Afghanistan, and Iraq) are crying ‘Alawachee’ Waatchalachik Huuash liwoek We heard that he was an outstanding man (the enemy soldier) but he is crying —Crow Nation Warrior SongFOREWORD y name is Carson Walks Over Ice, and I am a member of the Crow Nation of Montana, My Indian name, Buffalo Chief, was given to me by my clan uncle. All the Crows have a second name in addition to their legal name. You get it from your clan uncle, The name is not for anything that you've done; it is whatever the clan uncle did and wants to give you, My clan uncle gave me his name, Buffalo Chief. ‘When you give away your name, you need to get another one. It is important to have a second name because the Great Spirit will not know you if you do not have a name, For example, my father-in-law came to me because he had no name. He had given his second name to a grandchild, so he needed a new name and asked me for one. He was afraid that if he died, he wouldnt be known in the spirit world. Because I was in the Army and wore a military patch with an eagle on my shoulder, I gave him the name Eagle Soldier, I got my second name, Buffalo Chief, when I ‘was in high school because my grandmother thought it was time for me to have another name before I left for the Army. When I was just a little boy, my second name was Flies ‘Through the Clouds. My grandfather was ‘wounded in the Second World War, and the Army brought him back on an airplane that flew through the clouds, so that’ how I got that name, [ later gave that name to my second son. I grew up hearing war stories, but in a dif- ferent way from most people in America. When I was a little guy, my grandfather George Hogan would invite people to his house to tell stories. In those days, we didn’t have things like televisions—even radios—so our entertainment was stories about the old days before life on reservations, We would bring people into our homes to tell stories. We ‘would hear about the Crow scouts who helped the cavalry like at the Battle of the Little Bighorn. We would hear the old warriors tell how they fought the Sioux, the Black Feet, and the Shoshone. They would tell us their war deeds, how they stole horses from the other tribes. For example, my grandfather's second name was Along the Hillside, and his honor song says how he went to an enemy lodge and cut a horse from out front and took it away. All of those stories of war deeds came down tome,and my relatives would say, “This is what your dad did, this is what your uncles did, this is what your brothers did. All of them went to war and they did all of these war deeds” So when it came my time to serve, I joined. Even though I am afraid of heights, I joined the 101st Airborne Ranger Division, the “Screaming Eagles” and became a paratrooper. I was able to jump out of airplanes and helicopters, to land and attack enemy camps. I did all these things for almost ten months before I got wounded and was taken out. But when I came back from Vietnam, I could say to the other veterans, “I did all the stuff that our forefathers did, that you did, that my dad, my uncles, my grandfa- thers did. I did those things, too” ‘The Crow, like all our Native American brethren, honor their veterans. Today, when a Crow soldier returns from Iraq or Afghanistan, the family hosts a welcome home ceremony at the Billings (Montana) Airport (see page 180). ‘The family members paint their faces and sing an honor song to the returned warrior, who is. given a feathered war bonnet as part of the ceremony. Each family has its own special way of painting their faces. In the old days a special honor song was only for returningwounded warriors. The warriors, who were brought back into camp on horseback at sun- rise, were serenaded with this song, which praised their strength compared with the weak- ness of their enemies. ‘The Crow ‘Tribe has recently revived this cer- emony, which is called Welcoming the Warrior Back Into Camp. A special song is now used to honor all Crow soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, whether wounded or not. This is done to encourage them and to show them that their family respects and appreciates the sacrifices they have made for their country and their people Before the present conflicts in Iraq and Ajghanistan, the last time the Welcoming the Warrior Back Into Camp ceremony was performed was in 1970 when Eddie Little Light and 1 returned home from Vietnam, Both of us had been wounded. The ceremo- ny was performed during Crow Fair (an annual gathering and celebration in Montana). Our faces were painted and we were wearing eagle feather war bonnets and buckskins. As we were led into camp on horseback at sunrise, we were followed by friends and relatives, including our mothers and grandmothers, wearing special clothes. Many people witnessed this moving and beautiful ceremony. Although I had received numerous cita- tions from the U.S. Amy for my combat service in Vietnam, I valued more the hon- ors accorded me by my Crow people for upholding our tribe's warrior tradition, In Vietnam I had done my war deeds. I had counted coup on the enemy. ‘To the Crow people, a war deed is something that says you area man, that you have faced the enemy. It says that you have heard the gunfire and that you went and did a brave deed in front of the enemy—you are a warrior. We call these war deeds coups. If you accomplish a war deed, wwe say you have counted coup on the enemy. I guess it comes from the French phrase coup detat, “to strike” ‘To become a Crow chief you have to accom- plish four different coups. One is to touch an ‘enemy in battle without hurting him—you just reach out and touch him and let him go. The second one is to take an enemy's weapon away from him in battle, again doing it without hurt- ing him. The third coup is to lead a successful war party. This means you have accomplished your objective without any of your men getting hnurt. The fourth coup is to cut a horse from in front of an enemy lodge. When you do those four things you are held up in esteem in front of. your people. As a paratrooper in Vietnam, 1 counted many coups. Counting coup is not about killing the enemys it is about demonstrating bravery, like the time I reached outand grabbed a Viet Cong soldier who was rushing past me through heavy brush trying to escape from a firefight. Ashe went past me, I reached out and grabbed. him and then said, “Go” in Vietnamese. He just looked at me real funny, and then he ran, [can tell you he was one surprised fellow: In another fight I pulled a Viet Cong sol- dier’s weapon out of his hands. It was a Russian-made SKS carbine, and I used it the rest of my time in Vietnam. I grabbed the car- bine and told him to go, so he ran and he ran, “Why didn’t you kill him?" the white sol- diers with me asked, “I had my reasons)’ I told them, “but you saw me do it and that’s all that matters” My third deed, leading a successful war party, I accomplished many times. My war parties were the endless patrols—search and destroy missions—we conducted in Vietnam. Asa platoon leader, I led a bunch of those patrols and did not lose a single soldier, but it was impossible for me to capture an enemy horse because the Viet Cong did not have any. Instead of horses they had elephants, and I did capture four of those.It was early in the war and the North ietnamese sometimes used elephants to carry supplies into South Vietnam along the Ho Chi Minh Trail. I was sitting on a ridge overlooking the trail one day when a Viet Cong supply col- umn came along. It was led by a young boy. I didn't realize he was young because he was wearing a helmet and carried an AK-47. After I shot him I spotted these elephants behind him. 1 grabbed the rope of the lead elephant, but he kept moving. He dragged me for about 100 yards before he finally stopped. The only reason that elephant stopped was that he decided to stop. I had nothing to do with it, but when he stopped I wrapped his rope around a tree. Since he was tied to three other elephants, Ican say I captured those four elephants. But they werent horses, so the old people at home did not count them Because of my own combat experiences, I have been anxious to help tell the story of all Indians who have served in our country’s armed forces. The telling of that story has been, long overdue, and that is why I welcomed the opportunity to help with this book. Their mil- itary contributions, their sacrifices to help pre- serve American democracy deserve recogni- tion. They are the forgotten heroes in this country’s history. Few non-Indians are even aware that Native American men and women have served in the ranks of the US. military in every one of our nations wars including our present conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, The sad reality is that most of these soldiers, who have come from every tribe in this country, have been “invisible” What is even more shameful is that American Indians were not citizens of the United States until after World War I. These brave American Indian men and women ‘went into harm’s way without ever receiving appropriate recognition for their selfless contributions and service except from their ‘own people. Even after they obtained citizenship in 1924, Native American men and women may have been welcomed as soldiers on our nation’s battlefields, but they remained second-class citizens in their own country regardless of the fact that many of them bled and died on those battlefields. Despite past injustices, our young men and women still choose to enlist and serve their coun- try in numbers that exceed the percentage of any other ethnic group in America because we love this country. About the only Indians who have received recognition for their contribu- tions to our armed forces are the “code talkers” These are the Native Americans from several tribes whose unique language skills were used to such good effect by the U.S. armed forces during World War I and Il and Korea. The Indians could talk to each other using codes no one outside their tribes could understand. The Japanese so feared the code talkers that their soldiers were ordered to kill them instead of capturing them. During the Vietnam War numerous non- natives went to Canada to avoid military serv- ice because the draft was still in effect, However, | am proud to point out that many ‘Canadian Indians came to the United States and enlisted in the US. Army and fought in Vietnam alongside American soldiers. | am sorry to say that these Native American vol- unteers from Canada have never been recog nized for their contributions to the US. Army. We Native Americans who have enlisted and served this country are extremely proud of our service, our sacrifices, and our accom- plishments in time of war. Some of us came back uninjured, some came back wounded in mind or body, and some did not make it back at all —Carson Walks Over Iee Crow Nation, MontanaChapter t a NNA aNTWO FIRES RSC ie sug the bir Tegra Argh katy CRC Cas : otil the was finally resolved by the Civil War, America’s Native peoples frequently found themselves caught between “two fires” During the American Revolution Indian loyalty was pulled between England and the colonies. During the War of 1812, the choice was between England and the United States. In the Civil War, it was between North and South. Nonetheless, much as the tribes would have preferred to remain neutral in these conflicts, they were drawn into the fray, and for the most part these conflicts became their own civil wars, splitting tribes as well as families. As a result, Indians have fought in every war our country has fought. The die was cast during the American Revolution, Both sides initially sought neu trality from Indian tribes. It was not concern for Indian welfare that prompted this atti tude, but awareness that they did not fight according to the rules of “civilized” warfare. Neither side wished to tarnish its image in the parlors of Europe by being the first to enlist ‘savages” in its armies. Such scruples soon gave way to the neces- ities of this hard-fought conflict, with most tribes remaining loyal to the crown. The Indian choice was simple and prag matic: Most of their trade goods came from England, whereas most trespassers on their hunting grounds were colonists. ‘The fact that the Continental Congress offered the issue Delaware Indians their own state after the Revolution in return for their support indi cates the desperation of the colonial cause. This offer, which the Delaware rejected, resembled a clause in a tr Cherokees allowing them to send a represen- tative to Congress. Neither option was likely to be accepted by the American public. The tribes that became most directly involved in the American Revolution were the members of the Iroquois Confederacy. Powerful and primarily pro-British, the con: federacy occupied a strategic location along the Hudson River between New England and the middle colonies. Of the six tribes in the confederacy, the Seneca, Mohawk, Cayuga, and Onondaga sided with the British; only the Oneida and Tuscarora took up the patriot cause. George Washington, for one, recog- nized the need for Indian soldiers. They could “be made of excellent use as scouts and light troops” he informed the Continental Congress. Accordingly, the Congress in 1776 authorized him to enlist 2,000. Eventually, of the 250,000 men who served in Washington's army, about 5,500 were Indians ‘A number of the Indians who rallied to the patriot cause were descendants of the so-called Praying Indians of New England, whose communities dated from the 17th century and the proselytizing activities of the Puritan missionary John Eliot. Now fully y with theRECALLED ONE WHITE COMRADE, THE ONEIDA “FOUGHT LIKE BULL DOGS.” +——_e-__+ assimilated and intermarried with their white and black neighbors, they little resembled their Mahican, Wappinger, and other tribal ancestors in appearance or culture. Of these Christian Indians, the residents of Stockbridge, Massachusetts, stand out. Known as the Stockbridge Indians after their mission village located in the Berkshire Mountains of Massachusetts, the members of this Christian community were primarily Mahican, but it included other Native peoples from across New England. The Stockbridge Indians not only used their influence to keep other tribes from support- ing the British, but they also formed a com- pany in the colonial army and fought in every major campaign in the eastern theater of the American Revolution from Bunker Hill to the Battle of Monmouth. Their effectiveness as a fighting unit ended in August 1778 when the Stockbridge company encountered a unit of the Queen's Rangers, mounted dragoons, near White Plains, New York. Although they were hea outnumbered, the In- dians fought gallantly, but were no match for the horsemen who ran them down, killing or dis- abling some 40 of the Mahican patriots and capturing 10. After the battle, local residents The George Ill peace medal was distributed by the British to tribal leaders for loyalty and service. buried the slain Stockbridge soldiers, including their chief, in a site now known as Indian Field in Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx, New York. ‘The Oneida Indians also paid a steep price for their loyalty to the patriot cause. Like the Praying Indians, the Oneida were Christian, espousing the Presbyterian tenets of theit beloved missionary Samuel Kirkland, a New England Puritan and ardent patriot. As early as 1775, the Oneida had organized their own militia company under Captain ‘Tewahangaraghken, or Honyery Doxtator. According to his pension file in the National Archives, he organized a company of Oneida Indians “who were friendly to the Americans in their struggle for liberty, and entered the military service of the Revolutionary War” At his side was his wife, ‘Tyonajanegen who, at the Battle of Oriskany Creek, not only handled her own musket but also loaded her husband’s gun for him after a ball wounded his right wrist. Recalled ‘one white comrade, the Oneida “fought like Bull dogs” Oriskany was one of the bloodiest battles of the American. Revolution. Hundreds of soldiers in the patriot ranks died that day. The battle also was a major factor in the 4 WARRIORS IN UNIFORM,- GQeany Le Ss Voll badge SZot A778 depiction of a Stockbridge Indian. The Stockbridge fought in every major campaign in the eastern theater of the American Revolution. CHAPTER T isNaat Ee aesONE ONEIDA FIGHTING WITH THE AMERICANS WAS CAPTURED BY HIS OWN BROTHER. -————_«e_. breakup of the Iroquois Confederacy be- cause it pitted some 60 Oneidas against an equal force of Mohawks and Senecas led by Mohawk leader Joseph Brant, who held a commission in the British Army. As a result of Oneida support for the patriot cause, the American Revolution be- came a civil war for Iroquois as well as colo- nial families. One Oneida fighting with the Americans was captured by his own brother, a supporter of the British, who then turned him over to the Seneca for execution. Although the Indians had little effect on the military outcome of the American Revolution, their participation produced two far-reaching emotional and psychological consequences that shaped white attitudes and US. government policy for decades. One was a reputation for brutality inspired by the atrocities that are inevitable in every war. The other was the notion that the Indians deserved punishment for siding with the British even though several tribes cast their lot with the colonies. To make matters worse for the Indians, no matter which side eastern tribes chose, the newly formed United States did not make any distinction. During the War of 1812, when the United States fought its second war of independ- ence from England, tribal America again followed diverging courses. On the north- em frontier, some Indians rallied to the vision of the Shawnee leader ‘Tecumseh, who called for the tribes to unite against the United States. Tecumseh, a general in the British Army, died for his cause at the Battle of the Thames, during fighting in the Northwest. In the South, the once powerful Creek Nation became so divided over allegiances between the United States and England that a civil war erupted between “Red Sticks” and “White Sticks.” The breakup of tribal groups in the South presaged the sort of bitter frat- ricide that occurred during the Civil War as members of the so-called Five Civilized Tribes joined opposing forces. Eventually, Andrew Jackson, with the aid of a Cherokee regiment and the support of the Choctaw led by Chief Pushmataha defeated the Red Sticks at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend in Alabama, Old Hickory then turned his attention to the British. Again drawing upon Indian allies, includ- ing 500 Choctaws, he attacked Pensacola, Florida. Later, at the Battle of New Orleans, Jackson's Choctaw allies led by Chief Pushmataha, buttressed his left flank, Pushmataha, who died on Christmas Eve 1824, while on a visit to Washington, D.C., was rewarded for his loyalty to the United States with a state funeral. His dying wish—to “let the big guns be fired over me”—was honored by the Marine Corps under the direction of the secretary of the Navy and two companies of the District of Columbia militia. Two thousand congressmen, government officials, and citizens followed the cortege to Con- gressional Cemetery. The minute guns that thundered on Capitol Hill were echoed by three crisp musket volleys at graveside as the United States paid tribute to the Choctaw general, No such ceremony honored Maj. David Moniac, who was killed at the Battle of 6 WARRIORS IN UNIFORM,Wahoo Swamp in 1836 during the Second Seminole War. Moniac is considered by many to be the first Native American to graduate from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Although a couple of other cadets could claim that distinction because of mixed ancestry, Moniac is the first cadet identified as such in surviving academy records. Referred to as the Indian Boy b emy superintendent Sylvanus Thayer, the 15-year-old Creek youngster was admitted in 1817 under the terms of a 1790 treaty between the U.S. government and the Creek Nation. A secret codicil to that treaty provided that the U.S. government would bear the educational expenses for four Creek men, and the tribe selected David to ‘A German portrait of Shawnee leader Tecumseh, a general in the British Army during the War of 1812, Tecumseh died October 5, 1813, at the Battle of the Thames. CHAPTER | ”Charles Bird King painted this portrait of Choctaw chief Pusmataha during the chief's visit to Washington, D.C., in 1824. The chief died soon after and was buried in Congressional Cemetery. attend the academy. Even though Cadet Moniac spent an extra year at the academy in hopes of improving his class standing, he ranked only 39th out of 40 when he graduated on July 1, 1822. Then, after serv- ing only about six months as a brevet second lieutenant in the Sixth Infantry Regiment, Moniac resigned his commission because of family problems back home. His decision was probably also eased some- what by the suggestion of President James Madison that excess officers retire to civil- ian life, where they could impart the benefits of their West Point training to their state militias. Moniac did enlist in the Alabama state militia, as a private, but he had more success as a farmer raising cotton and breeding horses, Ironically, even though he was married to a cousin of the Seminole leader Osceola, Moniac agreed to join the fight against his Seminole kinsmen and in August 1836 was commissioned as a captain in the Mounted Creek Volunteers. With the Sec- ond Seminole War going badly, the federal government promised the Creek volunteers 2» WARRIORS IN UNIFORM,“the pay and emoluments and equipment of soldiers in the Army of the United States and such plunder as they may take from the Seminoles” for their service. Moniac was the only Indian among the 13 officers who 750 Creek volunteers, The Creeks, who wore white tur- bans to distinguish themselves from their kinsmen, earned their money because the Seminoles were virtually unbeatable in their swampy homeland. After leading an attack against a strong Seminole encampment near Tampa, Florida, in October 1836 Moniac was promoted to major, but his budding military career commanded the regiment’ This lithograph depicts South \Withlacoochee River during the Second Seminole War, which lasted from 1835 to 1842. ended abruptly a month later combined force consisting of the Creek Volunteers, Volunteers, and Florida militia, Moniac pressed the attack against a group of Seminoles hiding in a cypress swamp behind a stream connecting two lakes, When the Creek dragoons hesi tated, fearing the narrow stream was too deep to wade across, Moniac lifted his sword and plunged forward. The hidden Seminoles riddled him with numerous bullets. A witness to his death later wrote, “Major Moniac, an educated Creek warrior, in attempting to cross the creek, fell dead and the Seminoles were elated.” Part of a Tennessee Carolina soldiers along theGen. Ulysses S. Grant is shown with Ely S. Parker (seated at right), a Seneca ‘who became Grant's secretary and achieved the rank of brigadier general during the Civil War. On Moniac’s tombstone is engraved a quote by Gen. Thomas Sydney Jesup, commander of all U.S. troops in the Second Seminole War: “David Moniac was as brave as any man who has drawn a sword and faced the enemy.” Perhaps a more appro- priate epitaph—one that would serve for most warriors in uniform—was written by historian Kenneth L “He died as he lived, in two worlds: as a Major in the service of the United States Army—and as an Indian warrior in the service of his people” Another prominent Indian soldier in this period was Ely S. Parker, a New York Seneca chief who fought for the North during the Civil War. Parker Benton: became Gen. Ulysses S. Grant’s secretary and achieved the rank of brigadier general After the war, he became the first Native American to head the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the government agency that has controlled the destiny of the nation’s Native peoples since its establishment in 1824 Parker was educated at a Baptist mission school and later studied law, but was denied admittance to the New York Bar because, as an Indian, he was not an American citizen. He then studied engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. When the Civil War broke out, Parker offered his civil servic: refused a commission by both the governor as an army engineer but wasUNION ARMY COMMANDERS REGARDED INDIANS AS AN ENEMY TO BE FOUGHT. ne of New York and Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, again because of his Indian her- itage. The Civil War, Stanton explained to Parker, was a personal affair between white men, and he would do well to return home and tend his farm. Parker ignored this patronizing advice and continued to press for a commission, becoming a captain of engineers in 1863. Because of an earlier friendship with General Grant, he was assigned to his staff. ‘As in the previous North Ame flicts, the combatants welcomed Indians into their armies. Indeed, American Indians fought fiercely for both sides in the war. As historian Laurence Hauptman points out in his important study Between Two Fires, many fought because they believed it was their last best hope to halt the genocide that had begun on the East Coast, continued through the Trail of Tears westward through the 1830s, and then exploded after the Gold Rush of 1849. But, as Hauptman points out, “the Civil War, rather than the last best hope, proved to be the final nail in the cof- fin in Indian efforts to stop the tide of American expansion” As many as 20,000 Indians contributed to Union and Confederate forces both on land and on sea. They were present at most of the major battles and participated in the heav- iest fighting of the war, including Second Bull Run, Antietam, the Wilderness, Spot- sylvania, Cold Harbor, and the Union assaults on Petersburg. It was Parker, Grant's secre- tary, who drew up the articles of Robert E. Lees surrender at Appomattox, while the last Confederate general to lay down his arms— ‘an con- two months after Lee—was Stand Watie, the ‘Cherokee commander of the Indian regiments fighting in the western theater. For the Confederacy, Indian manpower was especially important, and southern agents actively sought Native American allies, especially among the Five Civilized ‘Tribes—the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole—all of them former slave-holding peoples, despite the fact that slave-holding practices and attitudes among them varied. That these tribes joined the Confederacy was perhaps inevitable be- cause the land they occupied adjoined Confederate states and many of their mixed- blood leaders were slaveholders sympathetic to the southern cause, Moreover, the Confederate states offered them equal status in the Confederate government. The tribes could send repre- sentatives to the Confederate Congress and had the right to tax merchants and traders within their boundaries. The Confederate government also promised the tribes com- pensation for damages caused by intruders during the war. As a result of Confederate inducements, the five tribes formally joined the Con- federacy and more than 15,000 uniformed Indian soldiers fought for the southern cause, primarily in the western theater with Pea Ridge in Arkansas their most significant battle Perhaps as many as 4,000 Indians fought for the North. Some served in the infantry, others were scouts and sharpshooters. The Indian volunteers wore their uniforms as proudly as their white comrades-in-arms did, 4 WARRIORS IN UNIFORM.A group of Cherokee Confederate veterans gather for a reunion in 1901 in North Carolina Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole also sided with the Confederacy during the Civil War. and they suffered the same horrendous cas alty rates as their white compatriots in this unbelievably brutal and bloody war. For example, of the 135 Oneida volunteers from Wisconsin in the Union Army, only 55 returned home, a mortality rate of nearly 41 percent. Parker and a few other Indians received commissions in the Union Army and were recognized for their contributions to the war effort, but such cases were rare. If the truth be told, Union Army commanders regarded Indians as an enemy to be fought, not as warriors to be welcomed in their ranks. Had it not been for the early recruit ment of Indians by the Confederacy, it is unlikely that the Union Army would have enlisted any Indians at all. Indeed, as early as July 1861, Brig. Gen. Albert Pike had succeeded in raising a regiment of Creek tribal members in the Indian Territory for Confederate November the South had filled four com plete Indian regiments, service. ByDELAWARE INDIANS REST AFTER WV RECONNAISSANCE aie oon“IT IS NOT THE POLICY ... TO FIGHT HIGH-TONED SOUTHERN GENTLEMEN WITH INDIANS.” On the Union side, the War Department, as ‘well as the professional officer corps in general, opposed the recruitment of Indian troops. Besides concern about the reliability of Indian soldiers, there was concern that they would not fight according to the rules and standards taught at West Point, As one Union officer re- portedly said, “it is not the policy of our gov- ernment to fight high-toned southern gentle- men, with Indians” The officer corps also believed that their lack of discipline and train- ing would make Indians ineffectual soldier Nonetheless, in the spring of 1862 the sec- retary of the interior formally requested President Lincoln to authorize several regi- ments of Indians to be recruited from refugees driven from Indian Territory by their pro-Confederate brethren. Although Lincoln and his Cabinet con- cluded that neither Indian nor Negro units could be enlisted under the provision authorizing the enlistment of volunteer troops, they did agree to create a “Home Guard” of loyal Indians for local service. The secretary of war was then directed to enlist two or more Indian regiments in the De- partment of the Missouri. Although the Indians were to be a Home Guard, their obvious objective would be the recovery of Jost homes and lands, and therefore it would be a case of Indians fighting Indians, ‘The formation of the Home Guard regi ments almost did not occur, because the local Union commander simply forbade it. In fact, he threatened to arrest any officer who recruited Indians. At this strategic moment the former Department of Kansas was reestablished, and the new commander >—__——» ordered that the Indian regiments be formed as quickly as possible. The first military expedition, consisting of two Creek and Cherokee regiments, five white regiments, and two artillery batteries, was launched soon afterward. This expedition set the pattern of subsequent Indian participation in the war, which consisted of a series of expe- ditions into Indian Territory to restore the refugee Indians to their homes, neutralize the Confederate Indian force, and establish a base of operations to strike at the Confederate forces in the West. The Indians performed so well that the War Department not only re- laxed its objections to their use but even looked into making them eligible for the draft as the manpower demands of the Civil War mushroomed. The inquiry got no further than the Department of the Interior, which pointed out that Indians were not citizens and. thus could not be drafted. The original objections of Union officers to Indian soldiers appeared well founded after the Battle of Pea Ridge, Arkansas, in March 1862, when some of the Union dead had obviously been scalped. Further evi- dence of scalping was found among both the Confederate and Union dead the following September, after the Battle of Newtonia, Missouri. This was one of the few battles of the Civil War in which significant numbers of Indians fought on both sides. These discoveries concerned both Union and Confederate commanders, who thereaiter refrained from making use of Indian sol- diers outside of the Indian Territory. Of more concern, however, was the lack of discipline and military deportment of the 28 WARRIORS IN UNIFORM.‘Thomas Bigford of Taycheeda, Wi Native American soldiers to fight witLEE SAID, “I AM GLAD TO SEE ONE REAL AMERICAN....” PARKER REPLIED, “SIR, WE ARE ALL AMERICANS.” Indian soldiers, but what could the profes sional officer corps expect? Hastily recruited and put into battle, the Indian soldier had little time to learn the white man’s military methods and codes, even had he been so in- clined. Accustomed to individual, guerrilla- type warfare, the Indian soldiers preferred to fight from behind trees and rocks. Also dis- concerting to white commanders was the Indian soldier's general ignorance of En- glish, which made it difficult to execute oral or written commands, his disdain for rou- tine camp duties, and his lack of concern about the proper cleanliness and care of his uniform. Most distressing was the Indian soldier's in- clination to wander off on occasion. Reg- ulations about un- authorized absences, one of the corner- stones of military discipline, meant lit- tle to Indian soldiers who often came and went as they pleased. Desertion was also common since the Indian soldiers usu- ally had no loyalties to cause other than reclaiming or pro- tecting their homes and lands. When, for example, the first Home Guard expe- dition into Indian » Cherokee Stand Watie commanded the last Confederate combat unit of the Civil War. eo ‘Territory captured the Cherokee capital of Tahlequah, an entire regiment of Confederate Indians deserted to the Union side. Regardless of what some officers may have thought about warriors in uniform, General Grant obviously valued the services of Ely Parker. When Grant needed someone to draft a congratulatory letter to his army after its victory at Chattanooga, he gave the task to Parker because “he was good at that sort of thing” At Appomattox Court House, Grant assigned him the task of transcribing the arti- cles of surrender because, as one of the Union officers admitted, Parker's handwriting was so much better than anyone else's? Robert E. Lee at first seemed taken aback at the dark- skinned Parker, when Grant introduced the Confederate general to his staff, Perhaps he thought that Grant was making a point by having a black soldier present at the surrender cer- emony before realiz- ing that Parker was a Native American, While shaking Park- er’s hand Lee said, “I am glad to see one real American here” To which Parker replied, “Sir, we are all Americans” WARRIORS IN UNIFORMSeneca Chief Ely Samuel Parker served the Union cause with distinction during the Civil War Later he became the first Native American to serve as commissioner of Indian affairs, CHAPTER 1 qSymbols of Uationatism arriors began wearing military uniforms during the colonial wars of empire when the European powers began contesting each other for con- trol of North America. Native friendship and manpower were especially important to France and England. As a result, these coun- tries went to great lengths to gain Native loy- alty and allegiance. An essential component of their diplomatic efforts was the presentation of gifts of state that conveyed power and authority to the recipients, These gifts included flags, silver medals, uniforms, and weapons such as swords, tomahawks, and guns. The weapons often were engraved and personalized like the tomahawk shown here that presented to Tecumseh, the Shawnee leader, by his British patrons during the War of 1812. The inscrip- tion reads, “To Chief ‘Tecumseh from Col Proc- tor MDCCCXII” The most important diplomatic gifts were medals and flags. These carried the full weight of national allegiance and con- ferred upon the recipients added status and rank within their tribes. All the colonial powers, including Russia, gave such gifts to tribal leaders. By 1789 the custom had become so fixed that the newly established United States had no choice but ‘A Charles Bird King portrait shows Seneca chief Red Jacket wearing his ‘Washington peace medal to continue the practice. Thus, beginning with the presidential administration of George Washington, the young republic continued to give tribal leaders diplomatic gifts in order to gain their friendship and loyalty. Known as peace medals because many of them bore symbols of friendship such as clasped hands on the obverse, the American medals were solid silver and featured the like ness of the incumbent President. With the exception of John Adams, each President from George Washington to Benjamin Harrison issued peace medals to Indian leaders. On this page is the portrait of Red Jacket, the Seneca chief, painted by American por- traitist Charles Bird King, Red Jacket is proudly ‘wearing the friendship medal he received from President George Washing- ton. The medal is in the cu tody of the Buffalo and Erie County Historical Society The medals for the Washington Administra- tion were made by silver- smiths, but later they were designed and manufac tured by the U.S. Mint. The first minted medals, begin- ning with the administra- tion of Thomas Jefferson, came in three sizes, but later two sizes were made. The largest medals, about three inches in diameter, were presented with much pomp and ceremony to head chiefs, and the smaller medals went to chiefs and warriors of lesser rank. 2 WARRIORS IN UNIFORMPe ncaertrd Stead FOUGHT ON BEHALF OF See es ROCChapter 2 THE U.S. ARMYAGENT OF ASSIMILATIONCe eee Serialhen the guns of the Civil War finally fell silent, the US. Army underwent a dramatic drop in manpower. Authorized strength fell from 57,000 in 1867 to half that a decade later and then averaged 26,000 until the war with Spain at century's end. Effective strength, however, always fell short of authorized strength caused by high rates of sickness and desertion, so the Army was hard-pressed to provide the command and control neces- sary to maintain order and safety across the Far West. Although this was an era of international peace for the United States, on the domestic front it was far different. The years following the Civil War witnessed a dramatic increase in violence across the West as various Indian tribes lashed out at the tide of white settle- ment that poured across the Mississippi River after Appomattox. Faced with the realities of a shrinking Army and a huge territory to patrol and pacify, military forces in the West, both pro- fessional and volunteer, increasingly came to make use of friendly Indians in their con- flicts with the hostiles. Some of the arrange- ments with these Indian allies were informal, with captured horses, weapons, and other booty the only payment necessary for their services. In other situations, however, the Indians were enlisted into formally organ- ized and officered militia units just as was the case with volunteer troops by Confederate and Union forces during the Civil War. As a result, the concept of the Indian as the enemy slowly gave way to the realization that in western warfare the Indian could be an invaluable ally against other Indians. Recognizing this, Congress in 1866 au- thorized the Army to enlist up to 1,000 Indians “to act as scouts...{and to] receive the pay and allowances of cavalry soldiers.” Although seldom more than a third that number were in the ranks over the next three decades, the door had been opened to per mit American Indians to serve as enlisted personnel in the U.S. Army. The scouts served six-month tours of duty with the option to reenlist if they wished. Many did 80, forming a core group of enlistees who played important roles in campaigns against hostile Indians across the West until the era of the Indian wars drew to a close at the end of the 19th century. For many of the Indians who served as Army scouts and auxiliaries, it was often their introduction to white culture, their first significant exposure to white ways of think- ing and doing things. In fact, some of the professional officer corps viewed the Indians in this manner as a useful step in the process of assimilating these tribesmen into mainstream society One of the officers who believed this was John J. Pershing, who was stationed on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South se ofDakota in the early 1890s upon graduating from West Point In his autobiography, Pershing extolled the virtues of his Indian soldiers, They readily learned English and they provided a good example to other Indians, “It would have been an excellent idea,” he declared, “to have formed two permanent regiments of...[Indians] as we had with the Negroes. Nothing would have done more to teach them loyalty to the govern- ment nor have gone further to bring them to civilized ways” Because of his favorable experience with his warriors in uniform, Pershing—almost alone among the professional officer corps— supported the concept of separate Native units in World War | one or Church groups, humanitarians, and other reformers, however, did not share Pershing’s optimism. They believed that encouraging the warrior way of life did the Indians a dis- service, Indians should be encouraged to become farmers, not fighters, insisted the reformers and other white benefactors, who saw the warrior mind-set as the root cause of the “savagery” from which they hoped to res- cue the Indians, Nonetheless, when given the option, most western tribesmen welcomed the opportu- nity to join the Army as scouts and auxil- iaries just so they could continue their war: rior way of life as long as possible. Who could blame them? “A reservation is a prison,’ declared James Kaywaykla, As a child he had been one of the band members US. Cavalry Company B, made up of Lakota Sioux, poses with its commander, Lt. John J. Pershing, on the Pine Ridge Agency in South Dakota in 1891 RRIORS IN UNIFORM“OURS WAS A RACE OF FIGHTING MEN— WAR WAS OUR OCCUPATION.” under Mimbres Apache raider Victorio. “Ours was a race of fighting men—war was our occupation,’ he boasted. “A rifle was our most cherished possession. ..there was not a man [on the reservation] who did not envy the scout with his rifle” Little wonder, then, that men who re- garded warfare as honorable and horses and ‘weapons as the tools of manhood should find Army service attractive. Moreover, as soldiers, their adjustment to the white way of life was less drastic, enabling them to meet their inevitable future somewhat on their own terms. Several tribes—notably the Tonkawa, the Warm Springs of Oregon, the Pawnee, the Wyoming Shoshone, and the Crow—maintained long-term relationships with the Army. For the Crow Nation that relationship was dictated by the harsh realities of life on the northern Plains after the Civil War as various tribes fought with each other as well as with white settlers over an ever shrinking land base. The Crow, whose traditional homeland encompassed a vast area that stretched across much of present- day Wyoming and Montana, were sur- rounded by several numerically superior and militant tribes including the Sioux, the Cheyenne, and the Blackfoot. Constant warfare with these traditional enemies made the Crow a brave and hardy people. It also helped explain why they allied themselves with the U.S. Army: Its ene- mies—the Sioux and Cheyenne—were also their enemies. ‘The violence on the northern Plains esca- lated when the federal government opened a route in 1864 linking the Oregon Trail to the gold fields of Montana. Known as the Bozeman Trail, the road passed through pristine hunting grounds that belonged to the Crow but that were also coveted by the Sioux and Cheyenne, who immediately attacked any white travelers they encoun- tered. To protect travelers, the U.S. Army built a string of three forts along the trail— Phil Kearny, C. F. Smith, and Reno. The posts had minimal garrisons and no Indian scouts, although 50 had been authorized. The Crow offered to provide 0 warriors to help protect the forts, but commander C, F. Carrington turned them down. He claimed he lacked the authority to enlist them as well as the weapons needed to equip them. As a result, the posts endured months of siege conditions or- chestrated by Red Cloud, the brilliant Oglala leader. Fort Phil Kearny, Carrington's head- quarters, sustained more Indian attacks than any other post in American history, culminating in the destruction on December 21, 1866, of more than half his garrison in the Fetterman Fight. Crow Indian scouts doubtless would have alerted the garrison to the massive ambush that awaited Capt. William J. Fetterman and his 80 troopers. Although never given any official status, the Crow remained in the area of the Bozeman outposts until the Army abandoned them in 1868. Had it not been for their pres- ence, Fort C. F, Smith, which was even more isolated than Fort Phil Kearny, might have fared just as badly, but it was more centrally CHAPTER 2 »Cte“THERE IS NOT ONE REDEEMING TRAIT ABOUT. THE CHARACTER OF ANY INDIAN, LIVING OR DEAD.” +e located in Crow country, and the Sioux and Cheyenne had no desire to tangle with them. In truth, the local military commanders did not trust the Crow and therefore took little stock of their advice and warnings ‘Typical of the attitudes of the professional soldiers at these posts isa series of newspaper articles by Lt. George Palmer, who was stationed at Fort C. E Smith, Shortly after his arrival, Palmer wrote: “There is not one redeeming trait about the character of any Indian, living or dead” A few months later he conceded that Indian troubles were some- times the fault of corrupt government offi- cials, Later, after befriending some Crows and spending time with them and sharing a meal in their lodges, he gave grudging admiration to their war- rior qualities, declaring that “no other Indians are braver or better fight- ers than the Crows” By then, the change in atti- tude was too late to save the posts, which Red Cloud burned after the Army vacated them. Having learned a bitter lesson along the Boze- ‘man Trail, the Army ten years later made ample use of Indian auxiliaries in the campaign to force Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, and their defiant fol- lowers onto the Great Sioux Reservation. Medicine Crow led a force of warriors fighting for Gen. George Crook as allies, not scouts. In the spring of 1876, the Army sent three columns of troops to converge upon and trap the last free-roaming Indians, who were thought to be somewhere in the Bighorn Country. One column, under Gen. George Crook, marched northward from Fort Fet- terman on the Upper North Platte River. A second column, headed by Col. John Gibbon, moved eastward from Fort Ellis in Montana. A third column, led by Gen, Alfred Terry with the Seventh Cavalry commanded by Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer, ven- tured west from Fort Lincoln in the Dakota Territory. Crook, a major proponent of employing Indian allies to fight Indians and who later successfully employed Apache soldiers to fight hostile Apaches, dis- patched emissaries to the Crow Agency near Livingston, — Montana, requesting the aid of Crow warriors in the campaign against the Sioux and Cheyenne, The Crow authorized a force of 176 warriors led by chiefs Medicine Crow and Plenty Coups to join Crook, but as fighting allies and not merely as noncombatant scouts. With Crook were also a number of Shoshone under the leadership of Chief Washakie. 2 WARRIORS IN UNIFORMParticipants in the Battle of the Little Bighorn, including White Man Runs Him (second from left) pose in 1926 on the 50th anniversary of the battle at a monument to those who fought. Thanks to his Indian auxiliaries Crook was saved from the fate that befell Custer a few days Tater. A large force of Sioux and Cheyenne led by Crazy Horse almost caught the troopers by surprise as they prepared breakfast along the banks of the Rosebud River. The subsequent Battle of the Rosebud, fought June 17, 187 saw fighting between the Lakota and Cheyenne and the Crow and Shoshone. According to the Indian combatants, the soldiers were just there, and sometimes they were in the way. Although there were few casualties on either side, Crook’s troopers expended so much ammunition in the six- hour fight that he retreated after Crazy Horses followers returned to their camp along the Little Bighorn River. Unaware of Crook’s defeat, Terry and Gibbon met at the junction of the Rosebud and Yellowstone Rivers without encoun- tering any Indians. Upon receiving word that scouts had spotted a fresh trail heading toward the Little Bighorn, Terry sent Custer and the Seventh Cavalry south along the Rosebud in hopes of finding Sitting Bull’. camp. Once he found it, Custer was to block the Indian retreat into the Bighorn Moun- tains and await reinforcemen With Custer were 47 Indian scouts—a few dozen Arikara, four Sioux married to Arikara CHAPTER 2 ’women, and six Crows. One of the Cro hite Man Runs Him, Crow (see outs was V whose Joseph was to earn his war honors as an grandson Medicine Chapter infantryman fighting the Germans in World War II. Custer admired his Crow describing them in a letter to his wife, Libby, scouts, as “magnificent looking men, so much hand somer and more Indian-like than any we have ever seen, and so jolly and sportive; nothing of silent Redman about them? the gloomy, Indians had heard that Custer was tough, that abandoned a trail, and that when his That was the he ne food ran out he would eat mulkind of man they wanted to were willing to eat mule, too: under; they Custer may have admired his Crow scouts, but he failed to heed their advice. As White Man Runs Him later told his grandson, the Sitting Bull's camp, but they also warned Custer that the enemy force was too large for the Seventh to handle and advised him to await the promis Crow scouts succeeded in findin Cavalr reinforcements. Custer refused, him of the lest Sitting Bull escape and depriv victory he so desperately wanted and antici pated. Upon learning that Son of the Morning Star, the Crow name for Custer, planned an immediate attack, the scouts began removing their uniforms and putting on. traditional fightin ia. “What are they uster asked Mitch Bouyer, his When Bouyer repeated the question to the of them pointed his finger at Custer and said in Crow: “Tell this man he’ crazy! He is no good. Tell him that in a very doin hief of scouts. outs, oniChiricahua prisoners including Geronimo (first row, third from right) are photographed outside their railroad car in Arizona. short time we are all going to walk a path we never walked before. When we meet the Great Spirit, we want to be dressed as Crow warriors not as white men!” Upon hearing this, Custer ordered the Crow scouts to leave. “I don't want that defeatist attitude around my sol diers” he told Bouyer. “We'll do the fighting if they are so afraid of the Sioux.” That is why none of the Crow scouts died that day, although three Arikara were killed, including Caster’ favorite scout, Bloody Knife. The disaster at Little Bighorn could have been averted if Custer had heeded the advice of his Crow scouts. An example of this is pro vided by the Apache scouts who helped the Army against their hostile kinsmen, By the 1880s, of all the tribes that had once roamed freely over the American West, only a few Apache bands still resisted reservation life. Given the reservation allotted to them, Apache hostility is not difficult to under stand. As part of an ongoing consolidation program, the Bureau of Indian Affairs as- signed all the various Apache bands to San Carlos, a large reservation west of the Rio Grande along the Gila River. Of all the CHAPTER 2 ¥Geronimo (left center) in a meeting with Gen, George Crook (far right) agreed to surrender two months after a raid on the ‘Apache camp in the Sierra Madre. Two nights later he changed his mind and fled. godforsaken pieces of landscape upon which the federal government placed Indians, San Carlos was one of the worst. “There was noth: ing but cactus, rattlesnakes, heat, rocks, and insects” recalled one of the Apaches who lived there. “No game, no edible plants, Many, many of our people died of starvation.” Although most of the Apaches did their best to adjust to life there, two important and effective leaders refused. One was Victorio of the Mimbres, who took to the warpath when the government refused his requests to leave San Carlos, For a year his warriors raided unchecked across ‘Texas, New Mexico, and northern Mexico, attacking isolated ranches and travelers with American and Mexican troopers constantly at his heels. The end came on October 15, 1880, when ‘Tarahumara Indian scouts led Mexican sol diers to Victorio’s hidden camp in the Chibuahua foothills known as Tres Castillos. Unable to escape, the Apaches fought desper- Yat times fighting hand to hand, Of the 150 or so Apaches in the camp, 68 were cap- tured, but there were 78 killed—one of them Victorio. The other Apache raider of note was Ge- ronimo of the Chiricahua. Unhappy with reservation life, always ill-tempered, but also crafty and cunning, Geronimo decided to leave San Carlos in August 1881 following a disturbance caused by the Army’s attempt. to arrest a medicine man preaching a new and—according to white observers— inflammatory religion. With Geronimo went some 100 men, women, and children. WARRIORS INCROOK ENLISTED FIVE COMPANIES OF CHIRICAHUA SCOUTS—'THE WILDEST I COULD GET,” HE BOASTED. -———_e-—__+ A few months later he returned in dramatic fashion, killing the San Carlos police chief and forcing several hundred Chiricahuas to join him in Mexico. The result was another Apache war that kept the Southwest in turmoil for the next five years. Wily, implacable, and tough, the Chiricahua were conquered only because the US, Army enlisted fellow tribesmen, conced- ing that only an Apache could catch an Apache. Credit for the tactic goes to Gen. George Crook, who had enjoyed considerable success fighting Apaches before his embar- rassment at the Battle of the Rosebud against the Lakota and Cheyenne. Returned by the Amy to the scene of his earlier success, Crook imposed military rule on San Carlos and enlisted five companies of Chiricahua scouts—“the wildest I could get,” he boasted. ‘They were tough as well as “wild”; eleven of the Medals of Honor given to Indian soldiers in the 19th century went to Apache scouts. The Apache trademarks were stealth and surprise, easily achieved since war parties seldom numbered more than two dozen ‘men. Typical was a raid in 1883 led by Chato, one of the more notorious Chiricahua free- dom fighters. On March 21 Chato and some two dozen men crossed the border into Arizona, raided for six days, killed at least 11 people, covered more than 400 miles, lost only one man, and then slipped back into the Sierra Madre of Mexico without having been seen by any of the military units attempting to intercept him. This time Crook and his Apache scouts took up the trail. Now, thanks to an agree- ment with Mexico that allowed U.S. forces permission to cross the border when in hot pursuit of Apache raiders, the international boundary no longer provided protection to the fugitives. When the scouts surprised Chato in his high mountain hideout, a lair no outsider had ever before breached, the raiders knew the old way of life was over. One by one the band leaders, including Geronimo, met with Crook and surrendered. Crook's success was short-lived. Geronimo soon tired of life at San Carlos, and in May 1885 he broke out again, taking more than a hundred people with him, including Naiche, the Apache chief Cochise’ youngest son; Chihuahua, an Apache chief; and Nana, who was married to Geronimos sister. Once again the scouts found them hidden in the Sierra Madre and once again Geronimo met with General Crook and agreed to surrender, even though told they would have to be confined in the East for two years. Crook hurriedly left to telegraph the good news to his superiors, while the prisoners followed at a leisurely pace toward the bor- der, Along the way, the Apaches fell in with a whiskey peddler. The result was a change of heart on the part of Geronimo, who rushed back to the Sierra Madre with 20 men and 13 women This time Geronimo's behavior had disas- trous consequences for his Chiricahua Kinsmen. For letting him get away, Crook lost his command to Gen. Nelson Miles, who determined the strategy that finally brought the Apache wars to a conclusion. One reason. the dihards had been so successful in maintaining their independence was their ability to visit relatives at San Carlos. These so WARRIORS IN UNIFORM,Gen. Nelson Miles and his staff view the large Indian camp near Pine Ridge, South Dakota, a few days after the conflict that occurred at nearby Wounded Knee Creek on December 28, 1890. visits provided occasional reinforcements and opportunities for rest and resupply. Miles, therefore, deported all the Chiricahua Apaches, including the scouts who had fought with the US. Army against their untamed kinsmen, to the Castillo de San Marcos in St. Augustine and other detention camps in Florida and Alabama. The deportation was as cruel as it was effective. The Chiricahuas were shipped by train to Florida in August 1886, Geronimo surrendered for the last time only a few weeks later Only once did the use of Indians to fight Indians backfire. In 1881 some Apache scouts turned on their fellow soldiers at Cibeque Creek in Arizona Territory. The mutiny resulted in the execution of three of the Apache scouts found guilty of murder and desertion in the face of the enemy. Certainly some adjustments had to be made by officers who commanded the Indian scouts. One was to accept the im- portance of the supernatural in their lives, To the Indians, it was a matter of the highest importance. To many white observers, it smacked of superstition, At best, it was a nuisance; at worst, it hindered military effi- ciency. Some officers did recognize the importance of religious ceremonials and protective “medicine” to the Indian warrior's CHAPTER 2 1Troop L of the Third U.S. Cavalry, shown standing in front of quarters, was composed of Indians following an 1891 U.S, Army directive, morale. George Custer allowed his Arikara scouts to perform the proper ceremonies before going into action. Scout Red Star later said, “Custer had a heart like an Indian?” George Crook, who commanded a large force of Apache scouts, once authorized them to hold a war dance so they could be assured of spiritual protection before setting ‘out on one of his campaigns. The culmination of the assimilation pro. gram came at the end of the Indian wars, pethaps as a means of continuing Army control over Indians when the need for it was fading away. Following the Wounded Knee Massacre in December 1890, the Army tried the experiment of enlisting Indians not as short-term scouts but as sol- diers serving five-year tours of duty in regular units. A directive issued in 1891 authorized changing the composition of Troop L in selected U.S. Cavalry regiments and Company I in selected U.S. infantry regiments to 55 Indian enlisted personnel for each troop. The white enlisted men in these companies were either transferred or discharged and the vacancies filled with Indians, usually from the same tribe. The idea was to help the Indians assimilate into mainstream American society while earn- ing an income. The initial recruitment was to be limited to 1,000 men, but they counted against the authorized ceiling of 2 WARRIORS IN UNIFORMONE WRITER SAID THE INDIAN “DOESN’T HAVE THE PATRIOTIC INSTINCTS A SOLDIER MUST HAVE.” -——_e+__+ 25,000 active-duty personnel in the peace- time Army. The program at first enjoyed remarkable success. The new recruits excelled in all facets of military deportment. An Apache company organized at Mount Vernon Barracks in Alabama from former prisoners of war proved so efficient at drill that the regimental commander placed it in a posi- tion of honor in battalion demonstrations, The Apache soldiers relished every opportu- nity to wear dress uniforms and demon- strate their abilities on the parade ground. Their commanding officer judged their intelligence to be far superior to that of the local citizens, especially the “sand hill tack- ies’ who hovered around the base ridiculing the Apache soldiers. Despite the evident success of the program, however, some officers expressed concern about employing Indians as soldiers. Indians admittedly did well on frontier duty fighting other Indians, the critics conceded, but could they perform as well quelling domestic distur- bances such as labor strikes and racial disor- ders in urban settings? Why risk jeopardizing, Army effectiveness, the critics also asked, sim- plyto provide employment to a small percent- age of America’ disadvantaged population? Indeed, some said, why should “dangerous savages” receive such favored treatment? One writer to the Army and Navy Journal (May 16, 1891) reminded its readers that Greece, Carthage, and Rome had fallen, in part, because of their reliance on barbaric merce- naries. He predicted that the use of Indian sol- diers would eventually undermine the moral fiber of America, declaring that the Indian simply “doesn't have the patriotic instincts a soldier must have” ‘The critics never had to confront their worst fears because the experiment fell apart of its own accord. After the initial success, recruitment among reservation Indians fal- tered badly. Despite extensive efforts to attract recruits from eastern Indian schools, by the summer of 1895, the 1,000 Indian sol- diers had dwindled to 67 men at Fort Sill, Oklahoma. This was Troop L of the Seventh Cavalry commanded by Capt. Hugh Scott Most of the other Indian companies had only their white cadres on active duty another two years, when the adjutant general reported there had been no enlistments or reenlistments in any of the units. On May 31, 1897, the Army declared the experiment a failure and discharged Scott's Troop L. Why did the experiment fail? It was not the discipline or drill the Indian soldiers disliked; they could handle whatever the Army handed them. Rather, they objected to.a system that violated cultural values such as making them cut their hair and living in framed buildings. They did not like the long- term enlistments or being stationed far away from their families. They also disliked much of the manual labor, which they called “womens work” On the part of the Army, the core of the problem may have been latent racism. Gen. O. O, Howard, the famed Civil War general and founder of Howard University, the black college in Washington, D.C,, said the experiment had been doomed from its inception because of the fear that one day white soldiers would have to take orders ¢ units remained CHAPTER 2 sfrom Indian commissioned offi- cers. Twenty years after his troop of Indian soldiers had been discharged, Hugh Scott, now a general in the US. Army, confided to a friend that the Indian soldiers had been cheated of their success by an air of prejudice in the War Department Nonetheless, the experiment with all- Indian units did have positive results if integration into white society was the desired outcome. Legislation passed in 1894 prohibited aliens who could not speak, read, or write English from enlist- ment in the US. non- Army. The law, a reflection of the nativism of the time, was prompted by the increase in en- listments from the immigrant population that followed the economic depression of 1893 Although most Indians were not US. citizens, as a class they were exempt from the law because the Army was in the midst of its social experiment, in which one outcome was to teach English to Indian recruits, Ironically, the failure of the experiment with all-Indian units meant that individual Indian soldiers would be integrated into the Army, an equal- rights opportunity that eluded black soldiers until the Second World War. After the experiment ended, most of the Indian soldiers returned to civilian status, ss WARRIORS Sgt. WJ. McClure, a Choctaw, was a veteran of the 1898 Philippine campaign. although a few re- mained on military rolls as scouts. Dur- ing the Spanish- American War, some effort was made to organize all-Indian units, but none suc- ceeded. William F Cody, better known as Buffalo Bill, of- fered to organize units of Indians for service in Cuba, as did Richard Henry Pratt, the founder of the Carlisle School for Indians. Although Pratt had previously opposed the forma- tion of all-Indian regiments because it flew in the face of his, belief that Indians should be fully inte- grated into American society, he proposed forming a regiment of former Carlisle Indian students. What better way to demonstrate Carlisle’ success in preparing Indian youth for their place American society? None of the proposed units were organized, but a number of Indians did enlist in Theodore Roosevelt First Volunteer Reg- iment, known popularly as the Rough Riders. Most were in Troop L, recruited from the Indian Territory. Although no fan of the red man—in his book The Winning of the West he had written, “I would not go so far as to state that the only good Indians are dead Indians, but nine out of every ten are, and I shouldn't inquire too closely into the case of the tenth’—Roosevelt- nonetheless had high IN UNIFORMpraise for his Indian troopers because they dis- played those martial qualities of which he was so fond. “We have a number of Indians,” he wrote to Senator Henry Cabot Lodge in May 1898, “who are excellent riders and seem to be pretty good fellows” Some of the Indians among his Rough Riders were inclined toward wildness, he admitted, but pointed out that “their wildness was precisely like that of the cowboys with whom they were associated” Although Indian soldiers also fought in the Philippines and a few saw action in the Boxer Rebellion in China, the real change in attitude about Indians serving in the US. armed forces did not come until the out- break of the First World V Choctaw Bankston Johnson was one of Theodore Roosevelt's First Volunteer Regiment in 1898, popularly known as the Rough Riders.Plains Indian warriors, drawing was | as natural as fighting. Before paper be- came available the warriors expressed their artistic creativity on bone, bark, rock walls, and tanned animal hides, but once in- troduced to paper in the early 19th century they eagerly adopted the medium. Since the first paper products usually available to them were the large, lined accounting books kept by traders and military officers, their creations are known as ledger art even though the war- rior artists used any paper products that came their way, including diaries, notebooks, Army rosters, and even business flyers. The ledger drawings, which frequently depicted the artists war deeds, or “coups,” were usually done in ink, pencil, or crayon. Shown are three such drawings from a ledger book at the Milwaukee Public Museum that belonged to Sioux warrior Red Hawk. According to a note inside the ledger, Capt. R. Miller originally “captured” the book from Red Hawk at Wounded Knee Creek, South Dakota, on January 8, 1891, days after the massacre at Wounded Knee. ‘The majority of the 105 drawings in the book show warfare and horse capture, particularly between the Sioux and Crow, traditional enemies. In many, one or more of the protag- onists are wearing military uniforms, suggest- ing that they were serving as Army scouts. Differences in artistic style indicate that several warriors besides Red Hawk used the ledger to record their war deeds. The captions may have been written by Captain Miller. 6 WARRIORS IN UNIFORM.CHAPTER 2FIGHTING THE eT esMETAL HATS: WORLD WAR IJAMES BLACK HAWK, ‘A CHEROKEE, SERVED [AS A FIREMAN SECOND CLASS ON THE USS, NORTH DAKOTA DURING WORLD WAR Ihe Great War proved a watershed for America’s Native peoples. They established a remarkable record of patriot- ism and selflessness during a conflict that they had no readily apparent reason to join or recognize. Nonetheless, they contributed to the victory beyond their tribal numbers and resources. Several tribes even made it “their” war. Most notable was the Onondaga Nation of the once feared Iroquois Confederacy. It uni laterally declared war on Germany, citing the ill-treatment accorded tribal members per- forming with a Wild West show who were stranded in Berlin when hostilities began. A few weeks later the Oneida Nation followed with its own declaration of war. Although most Indians in 1917 were not subject to the draft because they were not US. citizens, they enlisted in astonishing numbers. Even before the draft registration began, more than 2,000 had volunteered for the American and Canadian Armies, many of them eager to gain “war honors” All told, 17,213 Indians registered for the draft: Of these, 6,509, or 37.6 Percent, were inducted, most of them as vol- unteers. The Passamaquoddy of Maine, one of the numerically smaller tribes in the US. fielded 500 volunteers, including their chief, Peter Neptune, Perhaps more telling, only 228 of the 17,213 Indians who registered for the draft received an exemption; most of those were forced to do so because of their age. The Bureau of Indian Affairs later declared that of the 10,000 Native Americans who actually served in the Army and the 2,000 who served in the Navy, fully three out of four were volunteers. These totals do not count Indians like George White Fox, a Crow who changed his name so he could enlist as a citizen. He served as George White on board the USS. Wyoming in the North Atlantic during World War 1, but when he returned to south- ern Montana the government refused to rec- ognize his service. When White Fox died, there was no veteran's burial and no flag pre- sented to his widow: His descendants contin- ue to fight for his recognition The Indians volunteered and they fought, accumulating belied their small numbers. An estimated 5 percent of the Indian doughboys were killed or injured in the Great War compared with a 1 percent casualty rate for the entire American Expeditionary Force, which suf- fered a total of 50,280 killed and 95,786 wounded, Some tribal groups suffered even higher rates. An estimated 14 percent of the Pawnee soldiers in the AEF became casual: ties; the various Sioux groups suffered an average casualty rate of 10 percent. The high casualty rate is not surprising, says historian Thomas A. Britten, author of American Indians in World War 1, “given their often perilous duties as scouts, snipers, and messengers” In truth, Army officers ualties and decorations that CHAPTER 3 a“WHEN AN INDIAN WENT DOWN, ANOTHER INDIAN IMMEDIATELY STEPPED TO THE FRONT.” a motivated by romantic notions of Native American fighting abilities often gave their Indian soldiers the most dangerous assignments. Some Indians, in turn, ac- cepted those assignments to prove their worth as soldiers and to live up to the un- realistic and stereotypical images of their warrior heritage. Nonetheless, some of the Indian soldiers did welcome dangerous duties as opportunities to fulfill their warrior aspirations. Whatever their motivation, Indian dough- boys did nothing to tarnish their warrior reputations. According to Maj. Tom Reilley, commander of the Third Battalion, 165th Infantry Division, “Indians were always at the front. Ifa battle was on, and you wanted to find the Indians, you would always find them at the front.” During the Meuse- Argonne offensive, the first major test for American forces in the war, Major Reilly lost 476 of the 876 men in his battalion. “The Indians in the front ranks were thoroughly swept away,” he noted in his report. “When an Indian went down, another Indian imme- diately stepped to the front.” Historian Brian Dippie estimates that 150 Native Americans earned medals from the United States for valor on the battlefield, while another 10 received the Croix de Guerre, France's highest military award. One decorated war hero was Chauncey Eagle Horn of South Dakota, who was killed in France. His father had fought Custer at the Battle of the Little Bighorn. Joe Young Hawk, the son of one of Custer’s Arikara scouts at that battle, was wounded and taken prisoner by the Germans but later escaped ne after killing three of his guards and captur- ing two others. Although suffering gunshot wounds to both legs, Young Hawk marched his prisoners back to American lines. Perhaps the most brilliant record of the Indian warriors who fought in World War I belongs to Pvt. Joseph Oklahombi, a Choctaw in the 141st Infantry. His exploits rivaled those of the more famous Sgt. Alvin York. Oklahombi received the Croix de Guerre for scrambling across 200 yards of barbed-wire entanglements, wrenching a machine gun from its crew, and then using it to capture 171 German soldiers. He held the position for four days while withstand- ing a constant artillery barrage, including gas shells. Approximately 600 Oklahoma Indians, mostly Choctaw and Cherokee, were as- signed to the 142nd Infantry of the 36th Texas-Oklahoma National Guard Division, The 142nd saw action in France, and its soldiers were widely recognized for their contributions in battle. Four men from this unit were awarded the Croix de Guerre. Indian soldiers performed well in many areas, but it was as messengers and scouts that they excelled. One reason for their success in this regard, it was believed, was an inherent sense of tion. White officers claimed that non-Indian scouts frequently had to consult their compasses when operat- ing at night or in dense forests and thus exposed themselves to German. snipers. Officers of the 142nd Regiment tested this theory by sending five Indian and five non- Indian soldiers out on a reconnoitering ex- ercise. All the soldiers wore blindfolds. e WARRIORS IN UNIFORMThe officers reported that each of the five Indians crawled to his objective, while the five non-Indians crawled in ev but the right one Because of the German ability to intercept telephone communications, the Allies made frequent use of runners to convey messages. y direction Invariably Indians were chosen for this dan gerous duty because of their reputed courage and acclaimed scouting skills. One such messenger was Chester Armstrong Four Bears, a Cheyenne River Sioux, who reached regimental headquarters with his message despite heavy machine gun fire and a poison gas barrage that forced him to crawl most of the way from his front-line trench. Then. ignoring orders to report to the hospital for examination, he crept back to his unit. Choctaw soldiers in training to send coded transmissions during World War | were forerunners of th Along the way he encountered an injured French messenger who was so grateful to his rescuer that he gave Four Bears the Croix de Guerre pinned to his tunic. Some of the success of the Indian sol diers can be credited to German fear of “American savages: by the “Wild West Shows” that had been popular in Europe in the decades immedi ately preceding the outbreak of the Great War and by the fanciful novels of Karl May, the Zane Grey of The 19th-century author wrote a series of novels about the American West that established a deeply romantic and emotional tie to Indians that Germans cherish to this day Adolf Hitler, a Karl May fan, regarded In- dians as “red Aryans? This fear was instilled Germany. late radio and telephone famed code talkers of World War IlBo er Red CHAPTER 3 6Chief Plenty Coups, who had who led the Crow forces at the Battle of the Rosebud in 1876, Participates in the dedication ceremonies at the One of May's Indian heroes was an Apache chief named Winnetou. Although May described the Apache as honorable and noble, he also described at length the cruelty they inflicted on their enemies, acts that in- cluded torture and scalping. May also extolled the fighting skills of Native Ameri- cans, claiming that a warrior could throw a tomahawk with such accuracy that he could cut off the tip of an adversary’ finger at a hundred paces. Concern about having to face American Indians in combat was so perva- sive that the German press denied any were on the western front, while some American military officials, hoping to further demoral- ine their adversaries, suggested sending sol diers dressed as Indians on night patrols. Tomb of the Unknown Soldier 45 years later. An unexpected benefit of the service of uniformed warriors was their role as mes. sengers and telephone operators, because the Germans were unable to understand their languages. In the 142nd Regiment alone were Indians speaking 26 different lan- guages or dialects. The idea originated with officers in that regiment who asked two Choctaw soldiers to transmit messages in their native tongue. Although the use of Native telephone operators was not wide- spread during World War I, Comanche, Cheyenne, Osage, and Lakota speakers are known to have transmitted messages on the battlefield. One difficulty with the novel arrangement, a precursor of the more organ- ized and well-known Navajo code talkingDOUGHBOYS AND PROUD OF IT T hee natural world is sacred in tradi- tional Native American culture, and rock formations are considered to be especially powerful. Rock art—picto- graphs painted on stone, and petroglyphs, which are incised or chipped—can be found throughout the West. South-central Montana boasts one of the largest con- centrations of rock art in the United States. Two warriors from the Crow Nation, James Cooper and Clarence L. Stevens, ‘were working on the Spear-O Ranch near Lodge Grass, Montana, on the Crow Indian Reservation, when World War | erupted. The two Native cowboys enlisted together and served in the same unit in France, the Fourth Infantry Division. It was nicknamed the Ivy division for its insignia of four ivy leaves on a diamond field sym- bolizing the Roman numeral IV. Cooper was probably the artist for the panel below—the most recent of many Crow warrior biographic pieces at the Joliet archaeological site, in south- central Montana. Both men returned to the cowboy life after the Great War. Their descendants are successful ranchers and cowhands. This photograph was taken by Timothy P. McCleary, a professor of history at the Little Bighorn Tribal College on the row Reservation WARRIORS IN UNIFORM,system of World War IT, was the lack of mil- itary words in the Indian vocabulary. The Choctaws devised a workable code: A “big gun” meant artillery, a “tribe” was a regi- ment, a “grain of corn” was a battalion, a “stone” was a hand grenade, poison gas was “bad air? casualties were “scalps,” and a patrol “many scouts” Indians also contributed to the home front during the war, More than 10,000 joined the Red Cross, and they purchased more than $25 million in Liberty Bonds, an average per capita subscription of $75. ‘Typical of Indian support at home is the story told of a 75-year-old Ute woman who attended a Red Cross meeting on her reserva- tion. Each finger a person held up meant a $10 donation to the Red Cross. The old woman held up five fingers, which was recorded as a gift of $50. A few days later when she limped to the agency headquarters to sign her contri- bution form, she became indignant when the interpreter explained she had donated $50. “I want to give $500," she declared. When the reservation superintendent told her she had only $513 to her credit on the agency account books, she smiled: “Thirteen dollars left? ‘That's enough for me” Perhaps it was recognition by a guilt- ridden country that thousands of noncitizen Indians had fought for the United States during World War I that accounted for the invitation to Chief Plenty Coups, who led the Crow forces at the Battle of the Rosebud, to. participate in the dedication ceremonies at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier on November 11, 1921, Whatever the reason, the choice was a good one. The Crow were traditional friends of the white man, and their warriors had fought on the side of the United States in many conflicts. Plenty Coups, acclaimed as the “Chief of all Chief” was 70 at the out- break of the war and too old to enlist, but he not only encouraged his young men to volunteer—some 30 did—but he also kept a large map of France on the wall of his house so he could follow the news of the conflict “My heart sings with pride when I think of the fighting my people, the red men of all tribes, did in this last great war” Plenty Coups told his biographer, “and if ever the hands of my own people hold the rope that keeps this country’s flag high in the air, it will never come down while an Absarokee [Crow] warrior lives” Plenty Coups was not the only Indian to participate in the formal ceremonies at Arlington Cemetery that blustery November day. One of the pallbearers was Thomas D. Saunders, a Cheyenne from Oklahoma who had received the Croix de Guerre for his exploits during the Great War. But it was Plenty Coups, dressed in full tribal regalia, who captured the attention of the 100,000 spectators. Although he was not scheduled to speak—that honor had been reserved for President Warren G. Harding—the old war- rior could not resist making a few remarks as he laid a magnificent Crow war bonnet and coup stick on the casket. Lifting his arms to the heavens and speaking the Crow tongue in a voice filled with emotion, he said: I feel it an honor to the red man that he takes part in this great event, because it shows that the thousands of Indians who fought in the great war are appre- ciated by the white man. Tam glad to represent all the Indians of the United States in placing on the grave of this, noble warrior this coup stick and war bonnet, every eagle feather of which represents a deed of valor by my race. | hope that the Great Spirit will grant that these noble warriors have not given up their lives in vain and that there will be peace to all men hereafter. ‘This is the Indians hope and prayer. CHAPTER 3 ”Se ake ea End eee Raed Reece ca’ ered Ba eesVative Ulomen tn the UWitita ea P: Lori Piestewa (see page 142) may well be the first female American Indian soldier ever to die in battle, although no one knows for sure. According to Indian Country Today, the first active-duty Indian women were four Sioux nuns from South Dakota who served nurses during the Spanish-American War. Originally assigned to the military hospital at Jacksonville, Florida, they were transferred to Savannah, Georgia, then sailed to Havana, Cuba, where one of them—Sister Anthony—died of pneumonia. Although given a military funeral, Sister Anthony was denied burial in Arlington Na- tional Cemetery. During World War I, 14 Ameri- can Indian women joined the Army Nurse Corps. World War II saw a dramatic increase, with nearly 800 Native American women serv- ing in a variety of capa ities, but primarily as nurses, American Indian women nurses then served in mobile Army hospitals in both the Korean and Viet. nam Wars. That number has swelled dramatically since Vietnam, and American Indian wo- men ate now well represented in all of the branches of the ™ WARRIORS Cadet Micah Rae Highwalking, West Point Class of 2010, at the grave of George Armstrong Custer, Class of 1861 armed forces as well as the four service acade mies. One of those women is Micah Rae Highwalking, a member of the Northern Cheyenne ‘Tribe, who entered West Point in 2006. As she says It is a great honor for me to be rep- resenting the Northern Cheyenne people because they are marked with such respect in Indian country for their role in the Battle of Little Big horn and the Fort Robinson Out- break. I take great pride in going to school here even though it is sometimes awk ward knowing that Custer studied in the same buildings I study in, slept in the same barracks I sleep in, and ate in the same mess hall I eat in every- day. But in the end 1am comforted be- cause I know that 1am now in a position that 1 can help my people. As the first Northern Cheyenne to be at West Point, I'm now fighting a dif ferent war, a war that is taking my people—and all Native Americans —where they have never been. My UNIFORMgoal is to pave the way for other Northern Cheyenne and Native American students to study at great colleges and academies. In that regard, if someone asks me if | am a warrior in uniform I say, “Yes, Tam.” The Women’s Memorial at Arlington Cemetery is collecting the oral histories of Native women in the armed forces. Melinda Cain, a Pueblo-Jicarilla Apache, served as an Army specialist from 198 90. Although celebrated as a member of the military by her male Apache kinfolk, she says her male Pueblo relatives saw the military as strictly a man’s world, Me- linda says that she drew on her Native traditions, such as dance, during boot camp. “The drumbeat of those songs was what I would always hear in my mind as I ran. ‘The drumbeat kept my step in unison with everyone else and gave me strength to keep on,” she told an interviewer at the opening of an exhibit associated with the Women’s Memorial Another participant is Iva Good Voice Flute, an Oglala Sioux, who served in the Air Force from 1991 to 1995, She says that although the Air Force treated her as an equal, male veterans on the Pine Ridge Reservation did not. She recalled that while attending a powwow she was not allowed to fold the flag at evening retreat because, although a vet- eran, she was a woman. “I cannot forget the sting of those words? she said. “The incident changed me” Because of her efforts to change attitudes, though, the tribe has created a drum song specifically for female veterans. es, — — Four Native American members of the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps. Several hundred Indian women served in the WACs, WAVEs, and Army Nurse Corps during World War Il CHAPTER, 5AT ee FIGHTING THI AMONG THE MARINES RAISING THE FLAG ONETAL HATS: WORLD WAR IICoe oe eur ee Cdfier the Great War, Indians con- tinued to enlist in the armed forces. At least 4,000 were in uniform in the Army, Navy, Air Force, Coast Guard, and National Guard before Pearl Harbor. Immediately upon the declaration of war, Indians rushed to enlist. Half the eligible males on some reservations volunteered for duty. Several tribes held special war councils to prepare for mobilization. The Navajo Tribal Council, for one, called a special con vention in January 1942. With 50,000 tribal members in attendance the council declared its support for the war effort and promised to stand firm with the United States “until this nation shall achieve final, complete, and lasting victory.” Although as many as 45 percent of Navajo volunteers were rejected because of health and literacy requirements, some 3,600—fully 6 percent of the tribal population—served on active duty. Navajo men were so eager to join the fight some arrived at registration centers with their rifles and shotguns, At Fort Defiance, volunteers stood in the snow for hours to sign their draft cards. Nearly one- fourth of the 3,600 Ramah Navajo enlisted the day after war was declared. The same fervor was seen throughout Indian country. One-fourth of the Mescalero Apache enlisted. At the Lac Oreilles Reservation in Wisconsin, 100 Chippewa men enlisted from a population of 1,700, and at Grand Portage nearly all the eligible Chippewa men enlisted. At Fort Peck in Montana 131 Blackfeet volunteered. Even the Hopi, whose members shared a historical suspicion of the white world, contributed 213 men, or 10 percent of their population of 2,208, to the armed forces. A common misunderstanding among the Indian volunteers was the expectation that everyone who registered for the draft would be called into service, Many were turned down, though, for age or health reasons. “I rejected seven times on account of having old? a Pima man complained. “I am only 37 years old.” Another Arizona Indian, rejected for being overweight, argued: “Don't want to run, Want to fight? A Chippewa man, re- jected because he had no teeth, is said to have snarled: “I don’t want to bite em. I just want to shoot em!” Also ridiculed was the idea of entering a draft lottery. “Since when has it been necessary to draw lots for a fight?” was a common joke in Indian country. By 1942, at least 99 percent of all eligible Indian males had registered for the draft Had all eligible American males enlisted in the same proportion as tribal people there would have been no need for the Selective Service System. The Bureau of Indian Affairs later reported that, exclusive of officers, 24,521 reservation Indians saw military service during the war. About 20,000 non- reservation Indians also served. In other words, something like 45,000 Indians, more than 10 percent of the entire estimated CHAPTER 4 7»ABOUT 20 PERCENT OF THE INDIAN POPULATION... JOINED THE FIGHT AGAINST ADOLE HITLER. —— population of 350,000 Indians in the United States, saw active duty in the armed forces during World War II. In some tribes, up to 70 percent of the men were in the military. And hundreds of Indian women served, as well, in the Women’s Army Corps (WACs), the Navy’s Women Accepted for Voluntary Emergency Service (WAVES), and the Army Nurse Corps. All told, counting the Indians who worked in the defense industry as well as those who joined the armed forces, about 20 percent of the Indian population, or 65,000 men and women, joined the fight against Adolf Hitler, a man they called “He Who Smells His Moustache? and Benito Mus- solini, who they dubbed “Gourd Chin? American Indians also invested more than $50 million in war bonds and contributed generously to the Red Cross and to relief societies for the Army and Navy, It was a remarkable show of loyalty on the part of a people who had lost almost all but their pride, dignity, and warrior spirit at the hands of the federal government. The most celebrated of the World War IL ‘warriors in uniform were the “code talkers,” Indians who communicated messages on the battlefield in their tribal languages. Building on the success of the Choctaw message transinitters of World War I, the American military made extensive use of speakers of Native languages in World War IL Although several tribes participated in the program, including Hopi, Comanche, Cherokee, and Chippewa speakers, the most celebrated and publicized were the Navajo code talkers. + John Goodluck, Sr, one of the Navajo code talkers, recalled a test conducted on the reservation for Navy officials, who were somewhat skeptical about using Indians to send secret communications. For the test, he said, the military placed radios 300 to 400 yards apart and sent coded messages using both Navajo code talkers and regular Morse code machines. “The code talkers deci- Phered the message in under a minute, the machines took an hour” Goodluck laughed. Code talker messages were strings of seemingly unrelated Navajo words. The code talkers would translate each word into English and then decipher the message by using only the first letter of each English word. For example, several Navajo words could be used to represent the letter a— wol-la-chee (ant), be-la-sana (apple), and tse- nil (ax). Although the Navajo used more than one word to represent letters, about 450 common military terms had no equivalent and so had assigned code words. For exam- ple, “division” was ashih-hi (salt); “America” was Ne-he-mah (Our mother); “fighter plane” was da-he-tih-hi (hummingbird); “submarine” became besh-lo (iron fish); and “tank destroye:” was chay-da-gahi-nail-tsai- di (tortoise killer). Eventually, 379 Navajo talkers served in the Pacific Theater. “Some say there were 400, but many failed. You had to know both English and Navajo.” said Goodluck, who served in the Third Marine Division from March 1943 to December 1945 and partici- pated in the invasions of Guadalcanal and Bougainville in the Solomon Islands; Guam; and Iwo Jima, Japan, » WARRIORS IN UNIFORMCode talkers from other tribes also served in the European Theater. Charles Chibitty, the last survivor of the Comanche code talk- ers, who died in July 2005, said two Comanche were assigned to each of the Fourth Infantry Division's three regiments. They sent coded messages from the front line to division headquarters, where other Comanche decoded the messages. Chibitty, who joined the Army in January 1941 along with 17 other Comanches, said they com- piled a 100-word vocabulary of military terms during basic training at Fort Benning, Georgia. “Machine gun” became “sewing machine” Chibitty recalled, “because of the noise the sewing machine made when my mother was sewing” Since there was no Comanche word for “tank,” the code talkers used their word for “turtle” “Bomber” became “pregnant airplane.” “Hitler” was posah-tai-vo, or “crazy white man” Chibitty recalled that the first message he sent on D-Day, using the code the Comanche had created was, after translation into English: “Five miles to the right of the designated area and five miles inland the fighting is fierce and we need help” Fortunately, despite nearly two centuries of effort, the Bureau of Indian Affairs had not yet managed to eradicate Indian lan guages, a fact not lost on Kevin Gover, Assistant Secretary of the Interior for Indian Second Lt. Ernest Childers, a member of the “Fighting 45th,” received the Medal of Honor for his service in Italy. CHAPTER 4 siDe eee Sea Cnet Peer) LINE OF RESISTANCE IN. Pram‘IT'S A GREAT IRONY THAT...OUR WARRIORS WOULD PLAY SUCH A CRUCIAL ROLE IN...VICTORY” ———_e—_ + Affairs, who spoke at a ceremony honoring the code talkers in 1999, “It a great irony.” he declared, “that in just two or three gener- ations of being in conflict with the United States, our warriors would go forward and play such a crucial role in the victory over this country’s enemies” If the code talkers as a group were the most celebrated warriors in uniform in World War II, the best known individual was Pima Ira Hamilton Hayes, one of the Marines who helped raise the American flag on Iwo Jima. At the age of 19, he left school to enlist in the Marine Corps. His tribal chairman told him to be an “Honorable Warrior” and bring honor upon his family Dubbed Chief Falling Cloud at the US. Marine Corps parachutist school at San Diego, California, Hayes was assigned to a parachute battalion of the Fleet Marine Force upon graduation. As luck would have it, he found himself part of the American An all:Navajo Marine Corps unit poses in Peleliu in 1944. Navajo code talkers served in the Pacific, taking part in every assault by the U.S. Marines from 1942 to 1945, ry WARRIORS IN UNIFORMPima ra Hayes attended the U.S. Marine C Parachutist School in San Diego, where he was dubbed Chie! ‘aling Cloud.Van Barfoot, a Choctaw who fought with the Fighting 45th, was one of five Native American Medal of Honor recipients in World War I. invasion force that attacked the Japanese stronghold of Iwo Jima. There, on February 23, 1945, he and five others—four Marines and a Navy corpsman—raised the US. flag atop Mount Suribachi in a dramatic moment captured for posterity by combat photogra- pher Joe Rosenthal. Three of the flag raisers died in the continued fighting on the island, and the corpsman was wounded. Rosenthal’s photograph captured the American imagination, and, hoping to capi- talize on the dramatic moment, President Harry S. Truman summoned Hayes back to the United States to aid a war bond drive. Hayes was acclaimed an American hero, but he felt he had done nothing heroic. “How could | feel like a hero,” he lamented, “when. only five men in my platoon of 45 survived, when only 27 men in my company of 250 managed to escape death or injury?” Instead of being shuttled from city to city for public: ity purposes, Hayes simply wanted to return to the war. “Sometimes I wish that guy had never made that picture,” he confessed. After the war, Hayes attempted to lead an anonymous life on the reservation, but it was impossible, “I kept getting hundreds of letters)” he said. “And people would drive 6 WARRIORS IN UNIFORM.through the reservation, walk up to me and ask, ‘Are you the Indian who raised the flag on Iwo Jima?” Alcohol became his only escape. “I was sick.” he explained. I guess I was about to crack up thinking about all my good buddies. They were better men than me and they're not coming back, much less back to the White House, like me.” Never married, unable to get his life back in balance, Ira Hayes died of exposure in January 1955 at the age of 32. Sadly, he died just ten weeks after attending the dedication ceremony in Washington, D.C, for the US. Marine Corps War Memorial, featuring the cast bronze replica of the photograph that had caused him so much pain and torment. Characterized by his Pima people as “a hero to everyone but himself,’ Corporal Hayes is buried in Arlington Cemetery, just a short distance away from the Iwo Jima Memorial. Ira Hayes, like most of his American Indian comrades in arms, earned no medals for his battlefield exploits. In fact, of the 464 Medals of Honor—“for gallantry above and beyond the call of duty”—awarded to soldiers during World War Il, only 5 went to Native Americans. Three of those so honored were in the same unit, the Fighting 45th: Lt Jack Montgomery, a Cherokee; Lt. Ernest Childers, a Creek; and Lt. Van Barfoot, a Choctaw. They fought in Italy, and all three survived the war. The 45th Division was a reserve division from Oklahoma and New Mexico. Native Americans from some 50 dif- ferent tribes made up the vast majority of its troops. The unit’ distinctive patch bore a gold BUT WHAT RACE SHALL I BE CALLED? | dian inthe military in World War | were class ied as white, except in the segregated South, where they were classified as “colored.” Lt, Col, Mark Smith of the US. Military Academy, pictured at a pow. wow, wrote this poem for “those of mixed blood who ‘are more Native in culture and thought than the race they are frequently called.” But which race shal | be called? The recorder says: white, yellow, red, black But have two parents, The recorder says: white, yellow, red, black But my parents are from different heritage The recorder says: white, yellow, red, black But which race shall | be called? The recorder says: whichever is darker That which is darker | am calle. CHAPTER 4 ©IR\ et ead Peete eBid Seo Reon Mts thunderbird on a red background in tribute to its Indian personnel. The other two Indian Medal of Honor recipients were Navy Com- mander Etnest Evans and Pvt. John Reese, Jr, who fought and died in the Philippines. The actual number of Indians who served during World War IL is impossible to determine because they were classified as “white” inductees, and many kept their eth- nicity to themselves. In the segregated South, though, some Indians were classified as “col ored” and assigned to all-black units. In fact, three members of the Rappahannock Tribe of Virginia were sentenced to six months in prison for refusing to report to a black induction station at Fort Meade, Maryland. Although they had registered for the draft as Indians, the state cited a study that conclude born Virginian claiming to be an Indian who is not mixed with Negro blood and who is not classified as Negro under the laws of this stal Of the known Indians in the various branches of the armed forces during World War Il, $50 were killed—the first one died at Pearl Harbor—and more than 700 were wounded. To those warriors in uniform, the United States awarded 71 Air Medals, 34 Distinguished Flying Stars, 47 Bronze Stars, and 5 Medals of Honor. Most of the Indians who fought and were wounded, or died on the far-flung battle fields of World War II were nameless and forgotten to the vast majority of Americans, but not to their fellow tribesmen, who hon: l, “There is not ana osses, 51 Silver ored them for their military service and often revered them afterward. This was espe. cially true with tribes in which the warrior spirit has been predominant, such as the Crow Nation of Montana Andrew Bird-in-Ground was one of these unsung warrior heroes. During the AlliedNative American soldiers (left to right) Robert Dray, Creek, Lloyd Yellowhorse, a Pawnee, and Olson Damon, a Navajo. landing in Normandy, he earned the Bronze Star with three clusters. His Crow people felt he would have received the Medal of Honor but for the fact that he was an Indian. When Bird-in-Ground returned from the war he was given a new name, Kills Many Germans, in recognition of his batilefield bravery. Bird-in-Ground himself was very modest about his exploits, He explained that he fought so hard “because my address at the time I enlisted was in Oregon. I was afraid if I were killed in combat, they would not bury ‘me on the Crow Reservation in Montana. I was not trying to be a hero.” He was a hero to his people, nonetheless. Shortly after returning from the war, Bird in-Ground was visited by the worried parents of a newborn son, Kenneth Old oyote. Kenneth, they said, was critically ill and not expected to live. They appealed to Bird-in-Ground to visit their son in the Billings Hospital and pray for him. Having survived such a terrible battle, they said, it was obvious God had blessed him, perhaps had given him special powers. Would he try to help their son? Bird-in-Ground not only visited and prayed over Kenneth, he also gave him his new name, Kills Many Germans. Twenty years later, during the Vietnam War, Kills Many Germans earned the Bronze Star himself for saving two wounded comrades while under fire. %0 WARRIORS IN UNIFORMINVARIABLY, INDIAN SOLDIERS WERE CALLED CHIEF OR GERONIMO BY WHITE COMRADES Like the Indian doughboys of the Great War, the Native Americans who fought in the Second World War had to cope with a great deal of stereotypical attitudes and language, because most of the non-Natives they en: countered had never even met an Indian before. Everything about them aroused curiosity, comment, and confusion, even their names. When Charles Kills the Enemy reported to his induction center and gave his name, he was told to get serious and give his real name. “But Kills the Enemy is my name’ he tried to explain, Then there was the hospital nurse who, after checking the chart ofa wounded soldier, exclaimed: “How on Earth did you get shot with two arrows?” To which he replied, “That's my name, not my injury” Invariably, Indian soldiers were called Chief or Geronimo by white comrades The Indians usually took no offense, since they realized the nick- names were tended as racial insults but an acknowledg- ment of their reputed fighting abilities But of the many cultural differences not in Lt. Woody J. Cochran, a Cherokee and a much decorated bomber pilot, holds a Japanese flag while serving in New Guinea, between the Native and non-Native soldiers, few seemed more mysterious and impenetrable than the various purification and blessing cere- monies that were such an important part of native life. These ceremonies and the blessed objects the Indian soldiers carried, like feathers, medicine bundles, sweet grass, cedar, and other sacred objects, gave the owners peace of mind as they faced the perils of com- bat. Then, upon their returning home, other ceremonies purged the Indian veterans of the mental demons that often tormented non-Indian_ veterans. Members of numer- ous tribes held tradi- tional ceremonies be- fore going into combat. Many of these cere monies were dances intended to weaken the enemy, such as ceremonies held on Pavavu Island after its capture from the Japanese. In one, two Oklahoma Indians slashed pictures of Hitler and Japanese Prime Minister Hi deki Tojo with their knives at the end of the dance. Six Navajo code talkers also con- ducted a private cere- mony intended to restore harmony. Before the invasion Okinawa, of war CHAPTER 4 ,“WE WERE RAISED TO BE WARRIORS BUT...EXPECTED TO SUCCEED IN THE WHITE MAN'S WORLD. 0 correspondent Ernie Pyle, with the Marine Corps First Division, filed a story about the unit’s eight Navajo code talkers. “The Indian boys knew before we got to Okinawa that the invasion landing wasn't going to be very tough,’ Pyle wrote. “They were the only ones in the convoy who did know it, For one thing they saw signs and for another they used their own influence.” The “influence” was a ceremony wit- nessed by a “grave audience” of several thou- sand Marines. The face-painted Navajo Marines wore outtits fashioned from colored cloth contributed by the Red Cross and adorned with chicken feathers, sea shells, coconuts, and empty cartridge cases that jin- gled like bells as they danced and sang, Empty ration cans served as drums. The dancers told Pyle that they had asked “the great gods in the sky to sap the Japanese of their strength for this blitz. They put the fin- ger of weakness on them” ‘The Marines did, in fact, have an easy land- ing on Okinawa, but things quickly got rough. “What about your little ceremony? What do. you call this?” a Marine asked one of the code talkers as they hunkered down in a fox hole, “Thisis different,’ the Navajo answered with a smile. “We only prayed for an easy landing” ‘This was not the only ceremony performed by Native American Marines before and after the conquest of Okinawa, In a special edition of the magazine Indians at Work entitled Indians at War, mention is made of Apache, Comanche, Crow; Kiowa, Navajo, Pima, and Pucblo tribal members performing the Devil Dance, the Eagle Dance, the Hoop Dance, the ‘War Dance, and the Mountain Chant, WARRIORS IN, In addition to conducting public cere- monies, many Indian soldiers also carried some type of personal “medicine” and credited these sacred objects with keeping them safe during the war. For instance, when Germans captured Frankie Redbone, a Kiowa, in 1944, his captors told him to put all his belongings on a table. Upon noticing a small pouch in the pile, a German guard asked what it contained, “Indian medicine” Redbone said. The guard, who probably had enjoyed Karl May's Indian novels, took every- thing but the pouch, and Redbone credited his medicine bundle for enabling him to sur- vive his eight months as a prisoner of war, ‘The experiences of Joseph Medicine Crow can be seen as typical of Indian soldiers in the World War II era. Born on the Crow Res- ervation in Montana in 1913, Joseph had been raised by pre-reservation-era grandpar- ents to be tough and strong like traditional Plains Indian warriors. “All the boys my age on the reservation were brought up in two ways at the same time,” he says, “We were raised to be warriors but we were also ex- pected to succeed in the white man’ world.” The first male Crow to graduate from col- Jege—Bacone College in Oklahoma, a four- year liberal arts college with historic ties to the Native American community—and the first 10 obtain a master’s degree, he was working on his doctorate when World War Il interrupted his studies. Although offered a commission in the Army because of his academic background, Joseph turned it down on the grounds that a warrior must. first prove himself on the battlefield before leading others into battle. “It was the worst UNIFORMWorld War Il Air Corps trainees at mechanic's school at Sheppard Field, Texas. Left to right: Abraham Little Beaver, Winnebago; Adam Bearcup, Sioux; Delray Echohawk, Pawnee; and David Box, Sioux.mistake I ever made,” he laughs, “because the US. Army didn't work on the principles of the Crow Tribe and I never got another chance at a commission. I went into the Army a private and came out a private” Nov 94, he lives with his wife Gloria in the town of Lodge Grass, Montana, on the Crow Reservation. The official historian of the Crow Tribe, he is the author of several books includ. ing Counting Coup, in which he describes his upbringing as a traditional warrior. Descended from a long line of famous Crow war chiefS including White Man Run Him and Medicine Crow, Private Medicine Crow distinguished himself on the battlefields of Germany, where he counted coup on a German soldier and even captured a herd of horses from the Waffen SS. “While serving as an infantryman in Germany” he says, “I was able to perform the four types of war deeds, or ‘coups; a warrior needed to earn in order to become a chief” The most significant of these, he says, was to “sneak into an enemy camp at night, capture a prized horse, and then bring it back home” The other coups, Medicine Crow explains, were: “to touch a fallen enemy, to capture a ‘weapon from an enemy, and to lead a success- ful war party...one in which the goals had been achieved and all the members returned safely. To become a Crow chief, a warrior had to perform at least one of each?” When Medicine Crow went to Germany, though, he did not think in terms of count. ing coup. “I believed those days were gone” he says. “Naturally, however, I thought about the famous Crow warriors of the past, of my grandfather Medicine Crow who was ‘A two-man team of Navajo code talkers attached to a Marine regiment relays orders over a field radio in the Pacific os WARRIORS IN UNPvt. Henry Bobb, a Paiute, operates direction finding equipment for the 21 Ith Coast Artillery at Momote Airstrip on Los Negros Island in the Admiralty Islands in 1944 one of the most famous of our war chiefs. I knew I had a legacy to live up to. My goal was to be a good soldier, to perform honor- ably in combat if the occasion should occur.” When he returned from Germany, though, and the elders asked him and the other Crow warriors to tell their war stories, “lo and behold—I had fulfilled the four require- ments to be a chi Medicine Crow accomplished his first coup in January 1945, when the Allies began their push into Germany from France. “The ground was covered with snow,” Medicine Crow says, and “the boundary that sep- arated the two countries at this point was a little creek, about the size of Lodge Grass Creek, running through a canyon? The canyon was deep and had steep walls. “It was not rocky like our canyons in Montana.” Medicine Crow says, “but it had real sharp hills....The French Maginot Line, with its big guns, was behind us. On the other side of this creek, facing us, was the German Siegfried line, with its big guns” By late afternoon, Medicine Crow and his fellow soldiers had gone down the hill on the French side, crossed into Germany, and started toward the Siegfried line. “Before long.” he says “we ran into foxholes just loaded with Germans? and fighting broke out. Although it soon got dark, the Americans pushed with the Germans slowly withdrawing up the side of their hill toward their big guns. “As they retreated,” Medicine Crow remembers, “we discovered a network of trenches higher forward, CHAPTER 4 athan your head and about three or four feet wide, going every which way. We took the main trench and followed it to the top of the hill, but it was tough going. The path was kind of steep, slushy, and muddy?” By the time Medicine Crow got to the top, about 30 or 40 soldiers who had gone before him had made the ground even more slippery. “To make matters worse,” Medicine Crow says, “the guy in front of me was a fat, clumsy kid. He was always slipping and falling. When we finally reached the crest of the hill, he couldn't make it over the top. Hed get there, almost to the top, then slide down. Finally, I ‘managed to push him up and over, Just then, the Germans opened fire, and he came sliding back down again and landed on top of me, I think that is the only reason I didnt get killed myself that day. All the guys who had gotten on top were wiped out” The next day the division was ordered to blow up the German bunkers. “As luck would have it,” Medicine Crow says, “I was standing next to the commanding officer when the message came over the telephone... The CO said, “Well, Chief"—he always called me chief—'I guess if anybody can get through, you can. Get six men and go up there.” Before he could ask for volunteers, Medicine Crow recalls, “my closest buddy stepped up and said, ‘Let’s go, Chief? In all, six guys, my closest friends, went with me. I was glad only six came forward because that made seven of us, and seven is one of the numbers considered lucky by Indians” Before the soldiers left, the company com- mander ordered a smoke screen. “We can't afford to let these guys go in plain sight” he said, so guns from the American side began throwing smoke screen shells on the hill to give them cover, and soon the hillside was cov- ered with a mass of white smoke. “Then,” says. Medicine Crow, “we took off. We didn't know where the mines were. We just took off. Meanwhile, the Germans realized something, was happening, so they began lobbing mortar shells on us, here and there, We made it, but it took a long time crawling up that hill. It was slippery with wet snow and steep, but at least we did not set off any of the land mines?” Having arrived at the French side, the sol- diers were given hot soup and coffee, and after resting briefly were told to take off again. “They gave us boxes of dynamite with fuses” Medicine Crow says. “Each box weighed 50 pounds. We tried putting them on our shoul- ders, but the edges cut into our shoulders, and. we couldnit walk down the hill carrying them in both hands. They were just too clumsy to handle. I didn't know what to do at first. Then. 1 just sat down, set my box on my knees, and started sliding down the hill. The other guys saw me and did the same thing. Here we were, sliding behind one another down that hill, It wasn't fast, but we made it” Meanwhile, other soldiers had thrown smoke shells on the hill- side to keep it foggy, but the Germans were lobbing mortar shells and hand grenades, Medicine Crow recalls, “If our boxes had got- ten hit or if we had stepped on a mine, we would have been goners. It was a terrifying experience, but somehow we all came back without a scratch and with seven boxes of dynamite. The engineers then went ahead and blew up two or three of those big bunkers.” When Medicine Crow later told this story to the elders, they told him it was the same as leading a war party. Although he hadn't come back with horses or scalps, he had returned with materials essential to the welfare of his men, “That,” he says, “was my first war deed” Medicine Crows next war deed was count- ing coup on a German soldier. After enjoying leave in France, he and his unit went back into Germany. Soon after crossing the border they came to a little town, which they were ordered to enter from the rear, while other units attacked it straight on. Despite the fact that it CHAPTER 4 ”“THEY WANTED TO SHOOT THE GERMAN... | FELT SO SORRY FOR HIM, I LET HIM GO.” was March, says Medicine Crow, “There was still snow on the ground. To approach the town we had to wade through a slough up to our chests. | tell you it was wet and it was cold, but it was the safest way to get into town because the Germans had planted land mines all over” Medicine Crow and the soldiers assigned to him were told to secure a back alley in the town. With his platoon behind him, Medi- cine Crow began running down the alley, which, despite gunfire in the main street, was quiet. “I was carrying an M1 rifle?” he says: Along one side of the alley was a stone wall about ten feet high. As I was run- ning, I could see a gate, so I headed for it. [wanted to see what was happening on the main street. It turned out a German soldier had the same idea. He was running towards the gate, too, but from the other side of the wall. With all the shooting going on, I could not hear him and he could not hear me either. ‘We met at the gate. My reactions were a bit quicker than his, and I was pretty spry in those days. [hit him under the chin with the butt of my rifle and knocked him down and sent his rifle flying. He landed on his back. He tried to reach for his rifle, but | kicked it out of the way. I dropped my rifle and jumped on top of him. As I sat on his chest, I grabbed his throat and started choking him. Meanwhile, the rest of my guys caught up. They wanted to shoot the German, but I still had my hands around his throat. He was scared. He began hollering, “Hitler Kaput! Hitler Kaput! Hitler nicht gude” He was crying. Tears were run- ning down his face. I felt so sorry for him, I let him go, Capturing the German counted as two war deeds. By knocking him down and touching him, Medicine Crow had counted coup on him, and he had also taken his weapon away from him, which was another coup. The only coup that eluded Medicine Crow was also the most important: capturing a horse. The war was almost over before he managed it. “We were following a group of SS officers on horseback, about 50 of them,” he explains. The officers had abandoned their men, who surrendered by the thousands. Medicine Crow and his men followed the officers all night. “They were riding their horses on an asphalt road," he says, “and we could hear the clop, clop of the hooves ahead of us. About midnight, the horsemen left the highway and went to a farm about three miles down a dirt road. We followed their trail in the moonlight and arrived at a villa with a barn and a little fenced pasture” As the commanding officer sat down with the platoon leaders to discuss how best to han- dle the situation, all Medicine Crow could think about, he says, was the horses in the cor- ral. Having decided to attack the farmhouse at daybreak, the CO started telling the platoon leaders where to take their men, Medicine spoke up, saying, “Sir, maybe I should get those horses out of the corral before you attack, because some of those S$ guys might be able to escape on them. It would only take WARRIORS IN UNIFORMme about five minutes” The CO, he recall gave him a funny look, but all he said wa “OK, Chief, you're on.” That was all Medicine Crow needed. As he describes it: I took one of my buddies, and we began sneaking down towards the corral and the barn, We had to be careful in German was in the barn on guard duty, watching. When we got there, nothing was moving. The horses were tired, just standing around. I crawled through the corral fence and came up to one of them. I said, “Whoa. Whoa? in English. He snorted alittle bit, but he quickly set- tled down. I had this rope with me that Lused to tie my blanket. I took that rope and tied his lower jaw with a double half hitch, just like the old-time Crow used to do, and then I tried to get on. But it was a tall horse, and my boots were so muddy and caked up, I had a hard time mounting. Finally, I led the horse to the water- ing trough and stood on that to get on its back. Medicine Crow had told his buddy that he ‘was going to the other end of the paddock behind the horses, and as soon as he got there he would whistle, at which point the other soldier was supposed Three Native American women serving as Marine Corps reservists pose at Camp off Lejeune, North Carolina, in 1943 to open the gate and get out of the way. But as Medicine Crow recalls, “I got back there and whistled. Then I gave a Crow war cry, and those horses took off. There were woods about half a mile away, so I headed that way. Just about that time our boys opened fire on the farmhouse. By now it was coming daylight and I could get a good look at my horses. I had about 40 or 50 head. I was riding a sorrel with ablaze, a real nice horse. When we reached the woods and the horses started to mill around, I did something spontaneous. I sang a Crow praise song and rode around the horses. They all just looked at me” ‘The Germans had surrendered quickly and the firing was over, so Medicine Crow left the horses in the woods except the one he was rid. ing and headed back to the farmhouse. After the American soldiers had finished mopping things up and sending the pris- oners to the rear, they departed down a gravel railbed. Medi- cine Crow, however, was still on the horse he had captured. “It was better to ride than walk? he says. “I felt good. I was a Crow warrior, My grandfa- thers would have been proud of me, I thought. But all too soon, the reality of the war came back. After letting me ride the horse’ for about a mile or so, the CO yelled over to me, ‘Chief, you better get You make too good a target?” CHAPTER 4 »yi, Be Ze Medicine Crow's story n his memoir Counting Coup, Joe Medicine Crow describes the warrior tradition and his own response to being inducted into the Army in 1942: “In the pre-reservation days?” he says, ‘a Crow young man aspiring to be a warrior would go into the Wolf Teeth Mountains seeking spiritual power. He believed that this power would make him a better warrior” This experience was called “Going Without Water.” was a three- or four-day total fast that was thought to encourage the appearance of emissaries of the Great Spirit, The animal spirits would ensure the vision seekers success in battle, Some warriors added to the discomfort of the ritual by cut- ting off a finger. An alternative to seeking a vision was to be blessed by a veteran warrior or spiritual leader. Medicine Crow opted not to undergo the ritual before shipping out, saying, “I pre- ferred to do my communicating with the First Maker in church.” But he did bring tra- ditional “medicine” with him: a special feather he received from his uncle, Tom Yellowtail. Before each battle, Medicine Crow put the feather inside his helmet, re- cited prayers, and painted himself with a red lightning streak and red ring. “T did not put the paint on my face,” he says, “but on my arms under my shirt. My uncle taught me how to paint myself properly. If I did not have paint, I could use a red pencil” It was this medicine, Medicine Crow says, that pro- tected him despite a number of close encounters he had with the Germans. On one occasion, Medicine Crow's company was marching when they came under artillery and mortar fire from Ger- mans directly across a narrow valley Despite the vulnerability of their position, Medicine Crow says, “I felt pretty well pre- pared. My haversack was full of pemmican my mother had sent me. I had my rifle. 1 had painted the symbols on my arms, and I had put the medicine feather in my helmet.” An artillery shell, though, soon exploded in front of Medicine Crow, the force of which knocked him over the side of a hill. Although he received only some bruises, he says, ‘It killed or wounded about a half dozen of the soldiers nearest me.” His hel- met, haversack, and rifle gone, Medicine Crow began the laborious task of ascending the hill. Along the way he found his rifle, and then located his haversack. “Near the last tree at the top of the hill, he remembers, “I found my helmet with the feather still tucked in the liner. When I put the helmet back on, I came to my senses. Everything was now all right, but | admit 1 had panicked there for a while. 1 have always attributed that particular sequence of good luck to my special Indian medicine, Whenever I had a close call, I would think about that medicine” he says. After he returned to the United States, ‘Medicine Crow gave the feather to a fellow soldier, his cousin Henry Old Coyote, who was a machine gunner on a B-25 fighting in the European Theater and Africa, “I think after the Second World War that feather then went to Korea with a Crow soldier” Medicine Crow says. “It might have even gone to Vietnam. I don't know where it is now, but it certainly was powerful” 100 WARRIORS IN UNIFORM.ws pel tia ae ed ee ee et eo Ceo een CHAPTER 4Chapter § FIGHTING THE SHORIWOLF MEN: KOREA Pag Se Coed psa a Ered ere STi) eeMEN OF THE FIRST MARINE DIVISION ADVANCE THROUGH THICK SMOKE ALONG ‘THE KOREAN FRONT 1N 1951,mmediately following World War II and the Berlin Airlift of food and supplies to that conquered city in 1947-48, another war began—the Cold War. The geopolitical chess match between Russia and the United States dominated the second half of the 20th century. The Cold War had its hot moments, notably in Korea and Vietnam (see Chapter 6), where the United States sought to pre vent the anticipated expansion of commu- nism in Southeast Asia, Overshadowed by World War II and Vietnam, the Korean War is often re- ferred to as the forgotten war. It be- gan June 25, 1950, when North Korean troops crossed the 38th parallel dividing the Korean Peninsula. It featured some of the most vicious fighting and worst conditions that American soldiers had ever experienced But it also was marked by remark able accomplishments, from the morale- boosting landings at Inchon and the entrapment and remarkable escape of the First Marine Division at the Chosin Reservoir to the savage hill fighting at war's end. Three years of intense fighting had caused the combat deaths of almost 37,000 Americas. Although China—which had supplied its neighbor North Korea with supplies, ammu nition, and other support—the United States, and the United Nations agreed to an armistice in 1953, South Korea refused to sign, leaving the two Koreas separate and the war in suspension to this day. America’s native peoples paid scant heed to the geopolitical implications of the Cold War. Their country needed fighting men, and they answered the call, No matter that their adversaries now were the “Short Wolf Men” of Asia instead of the “Metal Hats” of Germany, the warriors in uniform again enlisted in numbers that far exceeded their percentage of the American population, Exact figures are difficult to establish, but it is believed that 10,000 Indians served in Korea and that, of the 54,000 American fatalities reported by the Department of Defense, 194 were Indians One of the American Indians who served in the Korean conflict was Ben Nighthorse Campbell, a Northern Cheyenne who later became one of the few American Indians ever to serve in the US. Congress. A high school dropout, Campbell joined the Air Force in 1951 and spent a year in a police unit in Korea, Like other warriors in uniform, he greatly valued his military experience. “There was a camaraderie that transcends ethnicity when you serve your country overseas in war- time,” he said in the Native American newsletter Canku Ota (Many Paths). After the war, Campbell devoted his life to judo and to politics, retiring in 2004 after serving CHAPTER 5 vosPresident Harry S. Truman presents Capt. Raymond Harvey (second from left) with the Medal of Honor. Harvey, a Chickasaw, was one of four Native Americans to be so honored during Korea. three terms as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives and then two terms as a US. Senator from Colorado. Another Native serviceman who achieved renown was Joseph “Jocko” Clark. Born in Pryor Indian ‘Territory (later Oklahoma) to a Cherokee father, Clark attended the US. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, and was its first Native graduate. With the outbreak of World War I, a newly graduated Clark served aboard an armored cruiser on combat duty in the Atlantic. He went on to serve in World War Tl and Korea, where he would become com- mander of the Seventh Fleet, before retiring asa full admiral Also an accomplished pilot, Clark drew on his heritage in naming the Cherokee Strike, a combat maneuver he devised that aided ground forces in Korea. Four American Indians were awarded the Medal of Honor for heroism in Korea. One was Pvt. Ist Class Charles George, a Chero- kee from North Carolina who sacrificed his life by throwing himself on a hand grenade to protect his fellow soldiers 106 WARRIORS IN UNIFORM“WHEN A MAN GOES INTO BATTLE, HE EXPECTS TO KILL OR BE KILLED AND IF HE DIES HE WILL LIVE FOREVER.” Capt. Raymond Harvey, a Chickasaw, led his platoon against entrenched positions, personally killing several of the enemy with carbine fire and hand grenades and then, although wounded, refusing to be evacuated until his company’s objective had been achieved The third Medal of Honor recipient was Cpl. Mitchell Red Cloud, Jr., a Winnebago from Wisconsin and a veteran of World War Ul, Corporal Red Cloud, a member of Company E, 24th Infantry, was on a ridge guarding his compa ny'’s command post when he exchanged fire with enemy troops who had launched a surprise attack. Although se- verely wounded, Red Cloud braced himself against a tree and continued shooting, thereby enabling his company to consoli date its position and evacuate the woun- ded. Corporal Red Cloud received the Medal of Honor post- humousty on July 2, 1951. On the monu- ment erected in his honor at Black River Falls, Wisconsin, is inscribed, “The son of a Winnebago chief and warriors who the Medal CHA Cpl. Mitchell Red Cloud, a Winnebago from Wisconsin, was awarded eo believe that when a man goes into battle, he expects to kill or be killed and if he dies he will live forever” The award of a posthumous Medal of Honor to a fourth Native American hero of the Korean War was authorized by Con- gress in 2007, Known to his family and friends as “Woody” and to his fellow sol- diers as “The Chief” Woodrow Wilson Keeble is only now receiving recognition for his remarkable exploits on the battlefield in World War II and Korea. A member of the Wahpeton _ Sisseton Sioux Tribe of North Dakota, Sergeant Kee- ble was awarded five Purple Hearts, two Bronze Stars, a Sil- ver Star, and a Dis- tin-guished Service Cross. Twice recommended him for the Medal of Honor but no action was taken during his lifetime. US. Senators from both North and South Dakota— both states claim Keeble as a native son because the Wahpe- ton Sisseton Reserva- tion straddles the state boundaries— wrote the legislation authorizing the post- humous honor. men | of Honor. PTER S 107Orphaned at the age of nine, Keeble spent most of his youth at the Wahpeton Indian Boarding School in North Dakota and returned there after his military service. An exceptional athlete, he was being recruited by the Chicago White Sox as a pitcher when he was called to service in World War II. He saw combat throughout the South Pacific with the North Dakota Army National Guard's 164th Infantry Regiment, and he had a well-earned repu- tation for taking care of his men. As one recalled, “The safest place to be was next to Woody” In fact, he received his first Purple Heart and first Bronze Star on Guadalcanal while attempting to rescue sev- eral fellow soldiers. When the Korean War broke out, Keeble reenlisted. Asked why, he said, “Someone has to teach those kids how to fight.” Keeble returned to service at the age of 34 asa mas- ter sergeant. And it was from the Korean War that he emerged as the most decorated military hero in North Dakota history. To his comrades in arms he demonstrated behavior “often seen in movies but seldom seen on the actual place of combat,’ as Sgt. Joe Sagami said in recommending that Keeble receive the Medal of Honor. Keeble’s defining moment came on October 20, 1951, during Operation No- mad, the last major US. offensive of the war, as his company battled Chinese communist troops near Kumsong. Two days earlier he had engaged the enemy in a firefight for which he would later receive the Iver Star. Now, although already wounded twice and suffering from a badly damaged knee, Keeble ignored requests from medics and his men to remain behind when his com- pany was ordered to take a nearby hill. Not until they had nearly reached the top, how- ever, did the soldiers realize that they had climbed into an inescapable trap with entrenched enemy troops directly above them. “They were throwing so many gre- nades at us,” one of the trapped soldiers remembered, “it looked like a flock of blackbirds flying over” Keeble took matters into his own hands. Armed only with an M-l rifle and hand grenades, he crawled toward the enemy and waged a one-man war. Thanks to his pitching skill, he managed to destroy three machine gun bunkers with well-aimed hand grenades, killing nine Chinese and wound- ing the other crew members. Although hit multiple times during this assault, including by a concussion grenade that stunned him momentarily, he attacked two trenches filled with enemy troops, killing seven before the rest ran away. On the back side of the entrenchments, his soldiers found a Chinese command post, which explained why the enemy had fought so fiercely. For this exploit, Keeble received the Dis- tinguished Service Cross. Although he had fragmentation wounds in his chest, both arms, both thighs, right calf, and right knee, Keeble refused evacua- tion because no replacements were avail- able. He returned to duty even though his wounds were bleeding through his ban- ages, he was limping badly, and he was so weak he could hardly lift his rifle, Little wonder that there was such a determined effort to get Sergeant Keeble the medal he so richly deserved. Following his service in Korea, Keeble returned to the Wahpeton Indian School, where he held several positions until a se~ ries of strokes rendered him speechless and unable to work. Hard times forced him to pawn some of his medals. He died in 1982 at the age of 65 and is buried in Sis- seton, South Dakota. “It’s hard to believe he had the warrior-like capabilities because outside of a war setting, he was so likeable,” tos WARRIORS IN UNIFORM,“THEY WERE THROWING SO MANY IT LOOKED LIKE A FLOCK OF BLACKBIRDS.” US GRENADES AT —— said Kurt Blue Dog, one of his relatives, in an article in Indian Country about the congressional action. Another of the unsung heroes of the Korean War is Vernon Tsoodle, a member of the Kiowa Nation, Now living near Meers, Oklahoma, with his wife of 58 years, the Marine Corps veteran served two tours in Korea and two in Vietnam before retiring in 1973 with the rank of master gunnery ser- geant (E-9) after 30 years of military service, including his time with the National Guard. He was awarded the Bronze Star for heroism during the Korean War. Like so many of the Native Americans in the military today, he is descended from noted warriors, and his family has followed in that tradition. Including those who have married into the Tsoodle clan, the family can claim more than 30 men and women who have served in the armed forces since World War II, including his two sons, a daughter, and three grandchildren. In addition to the influence of ancestors, soodle was shaped by other forces. In 1937, at the age of six, he was taken to Riverside Indian School in Anadarko, Oklahoma, because his grandparents, who Although twice recommended for the Medal of Honor, Master Sgt. Woodrow Wilson Keeble (far left), with members of the 24th Infantry Division near Kunsong, Korea, did not receive it in his lifetime, CHAPTER 5 1‘Sgt. Raymond Wahkinney, a Comanche who op bloodiest fighting of the Korean War at places like were raising him, could barely make ends meet. The only income they had was from farming and some money they got from grazing rights. “You hear a lot of negative things about Indian boarding schools; Tsoodle says, “but for me they were a blessing because I learned things such as discipline, which later served me well in the Marine Corps. A famous Marine general once said, “The dif- ference between being afraid and being help- lessly frightened is discipline? That not only applies to the Marine Corps but to life itself. If you are afraid, that’s fine. If you are dis plined, you can handle any situation” rom Riverside he went to Chilocco Indian School for high school. Chilocco had a National Guard unit, but it was empty 0 WARRIORS IN erated a 105-mm howitzer, saw some of the Porkchop Hill, Old Baldy, and Heartbreak Ridge. because everyone had been sent overseas to fight in World War II, so Tsoodle enlisted in the Oklahoma National Guard at the age of 14. “My rifle seemed like it was taller than I was,” he remembered. Five years later he married a high school classmate, jimmie Leah Reese. With the return of veterans from World War Il, Tsoodle couldn't find a job, so he enlisted in the Marine Corps. “I had to keep my marriage a secret, however.” he says, “because the Marine Corps was not accepting anyone who was married” The discipline Tsoodle received at Riverside and Chilocco, inured him to the rigors of boot camp. “At Indian boarding school,” he says, “we were taught when to eat, when to brush our teeth, when to breathe. Boot camp was a snap compared to Indian schools.” NIFORMAfter graduating from boot camp, in response to the worsening situation in Korea, Tsoodle was rushed to the peninsula. Years later he still remembered a magnifi- cent display of firefighting over the city of Inchon when he first arrived, In Korea Tsoodle was a communications lineman, ensuring landline communica- tions between each unit, because radios were not always reliable. This often put him in hostile territory stringing wires. He recalled sitting at the top of a telephone pole connecting a wire when fighting broke out in a village about a half mile away. “I was mesmerized watching the firefight and Marines moving from door to door through the town,” he says. “I watched for what seemed like a long time until it dawned on me that I was a sitting duck on top of that pole and that a sniper could take me down in one second. You never saw some- one scurry down a pole as quick as I did that night!” ‘Tsoodle wound up with the Marines trapped at the Chosin Reservoir, where 16,000 U.S. servicemen—including 12,000 Marines—faced more than 100,000 Chinese soldiers. The Chosin campaign prompted the famous Marine cry “Retreat, hell. Were attacking in a different direction” The soldiers earned the nickname “Frozen Chosin. ‘Tsoodle says the cold was ‘no exaggeration: We did not realize how cold it was il we got up there. Temperatures of 30 and 40 degrees below zero were common. The ground was so frozen a Men from the First Marine Division march down a pier to board the USS. Henrico, an attack transport that participated in the historic landing at Inchon, Korea, in 1950. CHAPTER 5“| REMEMBER BEING SERVED A WONDERFUL THANKSGIVING DINNER...BUT IT FROZE SOLID,” +—___e___. we couldn’ dig foxholes. We had to lay behind rice paddy dikes and things like that for protection. You couldn't build a fire because you would give your position away. All you could do was just lay there and endure the cold. I remember being served a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner with all the fixings but it froze solid while I was eating it. Even had there been no enemy shooting at us, we wondered how we could survive. Having been cut off by the Chinese, mem- bers of the wire team were faced with the grim job of unloading the wounded and the dead from incoming helicopters. “Many of the dead that we unloaded were in grotesque positions,” ‘Tsoodle remembered, “because once they were killed, they froze in that posi- tion. If we saw steam coming from their noses, we knew they were still alive and we carried them over to the medics so they could triage them by determining which men would live and which men wouldn't. It was a sorrowful job but you had to do it?” ‘Tsoodle saw frontline action when the First Marine Division was ordered to the village of Hagaru-ri to set up division head- quarters. On the east side of Hagaru-ri was a vital airstrip. Tsoodle, with the First Signal Battalion, was part of the advance party to tie headquarters to the Fifth and Seventh Marine Regiments, set up north and west of Hagaru- riat the end of the Chosin Reservoir. Upon leaving division headquarters they began stringing their lines overhead so track vehicles like tanks wouldn't tear them up, but just as they got to the edge of the headquarters compound, they started receiving sniper fire. Not knowing what was going on, they called the division wire officer, who ordered them to come back. Only then did they realize that they were surrounded. With the Chinese now pressing them on all sides, Marines not assigned. spec duties were formed into rifle platoons. ‘Tsoodle’s military occupation specialty was telephone communications, but he had first been trained by the Marine Corps to be an infantryman, he says, “So in situations such as this, they can take you and put you on a piece of equipment such as a machine gun, and you shouldn't have any problem operating it” The wire team was turned into a .30-caliber machine gun squad and tasked with defending the airstrip. ‘To reach their defensive position, they had to go up a steep incline to reach the ridge- line. “We had to re-supply ourselves with ammunition, which meant carrying M-1 bandoliers and grenades” Tsoodle says. The iey terrain made maneuvering in their win- ter boots difficult for the soldiers. When it was Tsoodle’ turn to make the trip, he strapped on six bandoliers of ammunition and started up the hill. “Id make a little headway and then start losing traction so Td take off bandolier to lighten the load” he says. “Id make a little more headway and slip again so 1d have to lose another bandolier. By the time I made it to the top, I was wearing only one bandolier! The next Marine in line tried to do the same thing, with the same results.” ns WARRIORS IN UNIFORMVice Adm. Joseph J. "jocko” Clark, a commander of the Navy's Seventh Fleet during the Korean War, was of Cherokee descent. On the opposite hill, Tsoodle noticed a number of brown spots—fox holes that were dug by the Chinese. The soldiers set up their machine guns behind a rice paddy revet- ment and waited for the Chinese to attack. ‘The attack came at night. “We always knew when [the Chinese] were coming” Tsoodle says, “because they would start yelling and screaming and shooting off tracers. I can still remember the bells and whistles that signaled the Chinese to attack ‘The Chinese would come running down the hill with all kinds of noise makers, and they would fill the air with green incendiary or tracer rounds that ricocheted off the rice cHar paddies all around us because the ground was so frozen” As fighting continued, the machine gun barrels got red hot and the soldiers fired aimlessly. “You didn't even have to pick out a target,” Tsoodle says “because if you shot out there, you were going to hit somebody and sure as heck, we did. When daybreak arrived, it was nothing to see hundreds of Chinese lying dead out there.” One night the Chinese decided to attack the Americans’ tank park, setting off 55-gallon drums of diesel fuel. When the drums exploded, the entire sky was lit up, illuminating thousands of Chinese coming ERSdown from the hill. Tsoodle recalled that they looked like “ants whose hill had been disturbed.” Because the crews slept around their tanks, they were able to react quickly and defend themselves. The next day, as they walked among the dead Chinese sol- s, the Americans could see that many of them carried only a blanket, tooth powder, a toothbrush, and a comb. Their food was grain strapped around their body, says ‘Tsoodle, like a bandolier, and despite the extreme cold, they were wearing only tennis shoes and quilted cotton uniforms. “That was their cold weather gear” Tsoodle says. “You sure had to pity them because they were in worse shape than we were.” ‘The UN forces succeeded in getting out, but at a terrible cost; there were something like 10,000 casualties, many of them because of the intense cold. ‘Tsoodle was awarded the Bronze Star with the Combat “V" (below) because he was in PRIVATE TSOODLE’S BRONZE STAR he Bronze Star is awarded to “any person who...distin- guished himself or her- self by heroic or met torious achievement or service...in connection with miltary operations against an armed en- emy; or while engaged in military operations involving conflict with an opposing armed force in which the United States isnot a beligerent pary.” The dation ac- companying Tsoodle’s bronze star reads “For heroic achieve- ment in connection with operations against an enemy while serving with a Marine signal company in Korea on 28 November 1950. Private First Class Tsoodle, acting as a machine gunner in a machine gun squad of a reinforced rifle platoon comprised of commu- nications personnel, displayed outstanding Put. Ist Class Vernon Tsoodle’s Bronze Star had an attached V for Valor because he displayed courage under fire while serving in Korea. professional. skill and initiative. When his platoon was assigned the mission of reinforc- ing an infantry compe- ny in defense of the Hagaru-ri, Korea air- strip, he fearlessly assumed an exposed position and placed accurate and effective fire on enemy posi- tions. Despite numer- ous casualties suffered by his platoon, he con- tinued to remain in position throughout the night and. by his fire, inflicted numerous cas- ualties on the enemy. His aggressive actions were an inspiration to all members of his pla- toon and contributed materially to the suc- cessful defense of the airstrip. Private First Class Tsoodle's initiative and courageous actions were in keeping with the highest traditions ofthe United States Naval Service.” us WARRIORS IN UNIFORM“1 WAS JUST A GUNG-HO 18-YEAR-OLD MARINE DOING HIS JOB.” —— charge of the machine gun section, which held the Chinese away from the airfield. Despite having been a participant in one of the major battles of the conflict, ‘Tsoodle says, “In situa- tions like that you don't realize how much peril you are in until after its over. I was just a gung- ho 18-year-old Marine doing his job” An inscription on the Korean War monu- ment in Washington, D.C., says “All gave some, some gave all” Tsoodle, who consid- ers himself “one of the lucky ones?” grows emotional when he thinks of the Marines who did not make it out. “I think of them and then I wonder why, despite four combat tours—two in Korea and two in Vietnam—I never got a scratch” ‘And Tsoodle’s luck extended to his family: When I was getting ready to ship out of Korea, people at the debarka- tion port started telling me that there was a guy who looked just like me asking for me, I knew exactly who it was, my brother Thee. He was also with the Marines, and he had walked something like ten hours just to see me off. We spent my last night in Korea together and he watched me leave the next day. It was one of the hardest things I've ever had to do, leaving my brother behind and not knowing if we would ever see each other again, However, he served his time in Korea and came home safely. It was a joyous reunion when we saw each other again, We were the closest in age, so we had a special bond. cHarT ‘Tsoodle says that when he joined the Marines he never saw himself as an Indian: Twas a Marine. As a Marine you develop close ties with other Marines because you are together for extended periods of time, away from your homes and families and dependent on each other for survival. Our bond ‘was common, We were no longer sep- arated by race. We were Marines. Because I was an Indian, however, my fellow Marines throughout my career called me “Chief” People have often asked if that offended me. It didn’t, and it still doesnt. It was never said or meant in a derogatory manner. To them a chief was a leader, so how could that be a bad thing to be com- pared to? I was pleased because a chief is a great warrior. Another Native veteran of the Korean War is. Gilbert Towner, a member of the Tututni, one of the Siletz Confederated Tribes of Oregon. One of the last speakers of the Tututni lan- guage, Towner is proud of his warrior legacy. His Indian name is Ensalun, the name of his great-grandiather, who was a war leader of the ‘Tututni in the Rogue River Wars of Oregon. Family members of Towner’ also served in World Wars I and II. Interviewed for the First Warrior Project, which has preserved the images and stories of 100 Indian veterans, ‘Towner says, “We uphold the tradition of my great-grandiather. We are Americans.” Like his friend Vernon Tstoodle, he was one of the “Chosin Few.” On the night of ERS