Presents an in-depth ethnohistorical survey of Kiowa, Apache, and Comanche military societies
William C. Meadows is Professor of Anthropology and Native American Studies at Missouri State University.
Meadows combines extensive ethnographic fieldwork, archival
research, and analysis of symbols to reconstruct the history and
significance of the military societies of the Kiowa, Apache, and
Comanche tribes of southwestern Oklahoma. More important, he shows
how these groups adapted in the twentieth century to provide each
tribe with its own distinctive identity while serving as tools for
social integration and enculturation at the same time.
*Journal of American History*
Meadows produced a book that captures and records for all time the
specifics of military society ceremonies, history and organization.
In documenting and preserving these aspects of Indian life, he
created a work valuable not just to anthropologists but to native
preservationists as well.
*Whispering Wind*
Because of the book’s descriptive content, readers interested in
the clothing, songs, dances, recruitment strategies, and symbols
used by the various military societies recognized by the Comanches,
Apaches, and Kiowas will find this work incredibly useful.
*Journal of Military History*
This book deserves praise, especially for the author’s own
fieldwork and thorough use of the Native voice in depicting the
multifaceted roles these sodalities played in Southern Plains
Indian cultures.
*Western Historical Quarterly*
This is a good book, detailed, scholarly, and clearly presented. .
. . The importance of [the author’s] fieldwork cannot be
overemphasized. The research is solid. The author used important,
and some long-forgotten, archival manuscripts and the best
linguistic data available.
*Military History of the West*
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