(no subject)

[camwyn]

Borrowed a book from the library on the history of Native Americans serving in the United States armed forces- Warriors in Uniform, by Herman J. Viola, Smithsonian curator emeritus. Among things I have learned so far:

- When the Great War broke out, the Onondaga Nation unilaterally declared war on Germany. A Wild West show that numbered several Onondagas among their members had been stranded in Berlin when the hostilities began; the declaration of war was in retaliation for how badly their people had been treated.

- In 1917, Indians were not US citizens. They enlisted anyway. Over two thousand of them signed up before the draft registration began. More than seventeen thousand total registered for the draft. By the end of the Great War, ten thousand Native Americans had served in the Army and two thousand in the Navy, three out of four of whom were volunteers.

- They kept enlisting after the Great War, too; there were at least four thousand uniformed Native Americans serving before Pearl Harbor.

- By 1942, ninety-nine percent of all eligible Native American men had registered for the draft. Something like forty-five thousand Native men saw active duty during World War 2; for perspective, there were 350,000 Native Americans in the US, total, at that time.

- The Navajo weren't the only code talkers in either of the World Wars. Choctaw speakers were employed in the first one, Comanche in the second. Apparently the Comanche code word for Adolf Hitler was posah-tai-vo, which translates into English as 'crazy white man'.

- Attempts were made to get all-Native units as far back as the First World War, but between one thing and another this didn't happen, which meant that Native Americans were racially integrated into the Army and fighting alongside white guys long before black guys were allowed to do the same thing.

- At least one soldier who served in Vietnam came within a hair of the four deeds necessary to be counted as a war chief- lead a successful raiding party, touch an enemy without killing him, disarm an enemy and take his weapon without killing him, and steal an enemy's horse- but the Viet Cong didn't have horses and the elders back in the States ultimately decided that stealing an enemy's elephant didn't qualify. Not sure why; I'm guessing that not being able to actually ride the elephant in battle yourself was probably part of it.

- Joseph Medicine Crow, who did make war chief in World War II (he led a supply party during the D-Day invasion, he punched a German and grabbed his rifle, he let the German go when the man started hysterically pleading for his life, and he stole an SS officer group's herd of fifty racehorses because hey, it was cutting off their escape options), looked amazingly like my Abruzzese-ancestry grandfather. Especially when he got old and had to wear glasses.

- And on and on and on.

I am reminded of the sentiment that I started yelling about back in college, on my second day of the anthro department's Asian Medical Systems class, after the professor basically gave us an intro to the huge gap of Chinese history between 'the ancient Chinese invented the crossbow! and gunpowder!' and the Opium Wars: nobody ever taught me anything.

Comments

[silveraspen]

Holy hell. That book is going on my must-read list immediately. I knew none of this, and I should have.

[attractivegeekery]

Okay this is hands down the most badass thing I've read today. I'm going to have to check this book out as well!

[camwyn]

"[Brummet Echohawk, a Pawnee member of the Fighting 45th], also told of the fear that the Germans had of American Indians, perhaps a lingering legacy of Karl May's Winnetou novels. "The 179th RCT takes a fanatical German counterattack. We are shoved back but stop them at the Sele River. We capture prisoners. These troops are fresh. Cocky and arrogant, they sit behind us... confident that will will be overrun. Two Indian Military Policemen come to collect prisoners. One is a Pawnee. The other is a Sioux. Both stand at six foot six. They lumber towards the singing German soldiers. Both draw their bayonets. The Sioux growls: 'We American Indians- you understand? Vrstehen?' They not only understand, they almost have heart failure. One cries hysterically, 'Geneva Convention! Geneva Convention!'."

[attractivegeekery]

I have this great mental image of Berko Shemetz in my head now.
This is all awesome.

[newredshoes]

My copy of Leslie Silko's Ceremony (which I've been wanting to reread for a while anyway) is packed, but dammit, you can't give me more books I need to read when I'm trying to get rid of books right now!

[camwyn]

I've only gotten up to the Korean War part at this point. Something like ten thousand Native Americans served in Korea, although the book says it's hard to be sure of the exact number (among other things, more than a few states classified anybody who had even one black ancestor as black, even if they were members of Native nations trying to register as such). Which, kind of amazing.

[camwyn]

*wryface* Never let anyone say fanfic is a useless endeavor that does nobody any good. I'm reading this, among other things, because I want to write a fanfic about events in the pre-canon history of the Fallout universe and I was wondering what I could expect if I said that a particular military man was a Blackfoot or a Crow...

[ceitfianna]

Ooh, I really want to read that. I loved Codetalker.

[bjornwilde]

And adding to my "to read" and to my "daughter must read" piles.

[camwyn]

You may want to add Counting Coup: Becoming A Crow Chief on the Reservation and Beyond to the list, too. It's Joseph Medicine Crow's memoir, written for a younger audience. I haven't read it yet, but I plan on it soon myself.

[bjornwilde]

Looks neat. I'll add it to the library request.

[agonistes]

High five. This is great stuff, and definitely in line with the social/political reorganization happening in the 20th Century -- if Viola hasn't explicitly said that part of the reason Natives enlisted was because of existing (and outside perceptions of) warrior cultures... yeah. It was (and is) a way to claim membership in the U.S. I can dig up a few more sources if they'd be helpful.

(Also one of the things that the Chicago Blackhawks do to take attention away from their problematic imagery is have a Native veteran do the colors at the beginning of every home game at the United Center.)

[camwyn]

Oh, he's pretty clear about the warrior cultures thing being a powerful motivator. And about both American and foreign perceptions thereof, too- and also about the use/perception of the armed forces as a tool of assimilation, since they did, after all, impress the English language and white cultural expectations of work/obedience/discipline/etc. onto recruits.

[jothra]

Yeah, I feel you on the 'nobody ever taught me anything'. I've learned more about
Chinese history while researching for my fantasty tabletop RPG than I ever learned in school.

[genarti]

Oh, wow. This sounds like a fantastic book.

[kyrielle]

1) Awesome, I need to read this book.

2) Based on your comment about college - any chance you can recommend source books for that topic? Because I know very VERY little about China.

[camwyn]

Larry Gonick's Cartoon History Of The Universe II: From The Springtime Of China To The Fall Of Rome. Start there, and then go to his bibliography in the back- it's amazingly extensive, on China and on everything else.There's more China material in number III as well.