Dog Soldiers Societies Of The Plains

Examines 35 Indian nations living between 1750 and 1850 in every dimension: religion, heritage, tradition, government, family life, social life, crafts, hunting skills and warfare.

Describes the religious organizations and the ceremonies that characterized the thirty-five Indian nations of the Great Plains.

Warrior culture has long been an important facet of Plains Indian life. For Kiowa Indians, military societies have special significance. They serve not only to honor veterans and celebrate and publicize martial achievements but also to foster strong role models for younger tribal members. To this day, these societies serve to maintain traditional Kiowa values, culture, and ethnic identity. Previous scholarship has offered only glimpses of Kiowa military societies. William C. Meadows now provides a detailed account of the ritual structures, ceremonial composition, and historical development of each society: Rabbits, Mountain Sheep, Horses Headdresses, Black Legs, Skunkberry /Unafraid of Death, Scout Dogs, Kiowa Bone Strikers, and Omaha, as well as past and present women’s groups. Two dozen illustrations depict personages and ceremonies, and an appendix provides membership rosters from the late 1800s. The most comprehensive description ever published on Kiowa military societies, this work is unmatched by previous studies in its level of detail and depth of scholarship. It demonstrates the evolution of these groups within the larger context of American Indian history and anthropology, while documenting and preserving tribal traditions.

Using Cheyenne sources - both past and present - as well as U.S. military records, legal depositions, diaries, and contemporary newspaper accounts, the authors analyze drawings, identifying the warriors and describing the actions depicted.

This work chronicles the lives and accomplishments of over 200 enemies who have fought, plotted, spied on, and in some instances defeated U.S. forces over the past three centuries. Books on American military heroes abound. But this book is the first to focus on America's talented enemies—the generals, admirals, Indian chiefs and warriors, submarine captains, fighter pilots, and spies who opposed the United States with military force or other means. Often these military leaders were among the best minds of their times. For more than two centuries, the new nation's most constant military opponents were the Native Americans, led by such capable chiefs as American Horse and Little Wolf. Under D'Iberville, Canada's French colonialists became formidable foes, but they were soon surpassed by the rigorously disciplined redcoats of Great Britain under Howe and Cornwallis. Ironically, the most effective enemies in the history of the United States were not the leaders of foreign military forces—like Mexico's Santa Anna, Japan's Yamamoto, or Vietnam's Vo Nguyen Giap. They arose from among its own citizens during the Civil War, the bloodiest conflict in American history.

For many Plains Indians, being a warrior and veteran has long been the traditional pathway to male honor and status. Men and boys formed military societies to celebrate victories in war, to perform community service, and to prepare young men for their role as warriors and hunters. By preserving cultural forms contained in song, dance, ritual, language, kinship, economics, naming, and other semireligious ceremonies, these societies have played an important role in maintaining Plains Indian culture from the pre-reservation era until today. In this book, Williams C. Meadows presents an in-depth ethnohistorical survey of Kiowa, Apache, and Comanche military societies, drawn from extensive interviews with tribal elders and military society members, unpublished archival sources, and linguistic data. He examines their structure, functions, rituals, and martial symbols, showing how they fit within larger tribal organizations. And he explores how military societies, like powwows, have become a distinct public format for cultural and ethnic continuity.