Great Plains Studies, Center for
Date of this Version
Fall 2011
Citation
Great Plains Quarterly 31:4 (Fall 2011).
Abstract
There are many positive things to say about Mark van de Logt's study of Pawnee Indian scouts. The research, particularly in primary sources, is deep, while van de Logt's prose is so clean it practically sparkles. War Party in Blue is the result of great care taken by both author and press.
Van de Logt's intent, as expressed in his clear and concise introduction, is to revise traditional interpretations that attribute the scouts' success to Major Frank North's leadership. Given the contours of historical scholarship in the mid-twentieth century, as well as the voluminous accounts left us by Luther North, Frank's brother, this state of affairs was probably unavoidable. War Party in Blue seeks to correct these accounts by placing "the experiences of the Pawnee scouts themselves" at the center of the story. Instead of promising us a traditional narrative supplemented by Pawnee sources, van de Logt argues that "military service reinforced established Pawnee martial values and customs," while the maintenance of these values, customs, and, one might add, tribal enmities toward other American Indians in the region, explain the effectiveness of the Pawnees as auxiliaries of the United States Army. Far from leading the Pawnees, North and his officers, a disconcerting number of whom were personally related, were only "nominally in charge," as "the tactics, style, and conduct of warfare were decidedly Pawnee." "Although the scouts proudly wore the army blue ... they never ceased to be Pawnees," van de Logt concludes. "The Pawnee battalion was truly a war party in blue."
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