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Oct. 14th, 2014 11:47 amBorrowed 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.
- 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.
