First Nations

The American Indian as Sniper (The Stars and Stripes, 1919)

You will see that during the First World War it was not beyond the editors of THE STARS and STRIPES to indulge in ethnic stereotyping from time to time and, to be sure, they exploited that privilege in the attached article (Yank Indian was Heap Big Help in Winning the War) yet regardless of this fact, the performance of the American Indian soldiers on the Western Front got high marks for a number of valued military skills from many of the French and British officers who came in contact with them. It was not simply their ability to shoot well that inspired the praise, but their nocturnal instincts while patrolling in the darkness of No-Man’s-Land as well as a unique sense of bravery.

The article is rich with a number of factoids that the Western Front reader will no doubt enjoy; among them, mention is made of German women serving in combat.

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The Great Native-American Athletes of the Early 20th Century (American Legion Magazine, 1940)

Idolized, publicized, dramatized, picturesque members of a fast diminishing aboriginal race, they were the white man’s heroes. But the white man’s adulations and his indulgences helped write ‘finis’ prematurely on the records of some of them even as his vices quickened the racial degeneration of their stock.

Sockalexis, Thorpe, Bender, Longboat and Meyers! There were scores of other notable Indian athletes from ’93 to 1915, but the names of those five were household words in the early days of the new century.

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The Trail of Tears (The North American Review, 1912)

Twenty five years after the long march that has come to be known as the ‘Trail of Tears’, an account of that sad injustice was written by one of the first archeologists of the American south-west, O.K. Davis.

The troops and Indians marched side by side for two days for Fort Bowie. Then, Geronimo, Natchez, and about twenty men…escaped…

The second half of the article is available upon request.

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‘Failure of Indians as Soldiers” (The Literary Digest, 1897)

The last of the companies of Indians enlisted in the regular army of the United States has been mustered out after six years trial, at Omaha, Nebraska. The Omaha WORLD-HERALD intimates that the failure of the experiment may not be entirely due to the Indians.


The journalist reporting on this matter opined that all subjugated people should never be expected to fight for a tyrannical government.

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