Synopses & Reviews
John Gregory Bourke was a U.S. Army officer who became an ethnologist, military historian, and prolific writer on the American West. Bourke spent most of his military service in the postandndash;Civil War West. After graduating from West Point, he fought in last-stand battles with the Sioux, Northern Cheyennes, and Apaches. He was in General George Crookandrsquo;s command, pursuing the fugitive Chiricahua Apaches into the rugged Sierra Madre.
Bourkeandrsquo;s contacts with Indians brought a growing interest in their lifeways and ceremonies. Ranging from Texas and Mexico north through Hopi and Zuni lands to Montana, Idaho, and the Rockies, Bourke observed and made extensive field notes. The Apaches began calling him andldquo;Paper Medicine Man.andrdquo; To the Sioux he was andldquo;Ink Man.andrdquo;
Bourke began publishing his observations and quickly developed a reputation as an accurate reporter of American Indian customs and rituals, earning praise from John Wesley Powell, Theodore Roosevelt, Francis Parkman, and Sigmundand#160;and#160; Freud. Bourke also wrote firsthand military history, chronicling Crookandrsquo;s exploits in the classic On the Border with Crook, which established him as one of the first historians of the Indian Wars.
Based on prodigious research and drawing on Bourkeandrsquo;s voluminous diary, Paper Medicine Man is an adventure in itself.
Review
andldquo;A splendid contribution to military and scientific history and to the history of the American West.andrdquo;andmdash;Robert M. Utley,in Nebraska History
Review
Winner of 3 Major Awards David Woolley Evans and Beatrice Cannon Evans Biography Award, 1986 (co-winner)
Spur Ward for Best Western Nonfiction Book, 1986 Western Writers of America
Co-Founders Award for Best Book of 1986, Westerners International
About the Author
Joseph C. Porter, who received the Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin, is former Chief Curator of the North Carolina Museum of History and coauthor (with W. Raymond Wood) of Karl Bodmerand#39;s Studio Art: The Newberry Library Bodmer Collection.