Paper medicine man : John Gregory Bourke and his American West

Summary: John Gregory Bourke was a U.S. Army officer who became an ethnologist, a military historian, and a prolific writer on the American West. Most of Burke's active military service was spent in the post-Civil War West. After graduation from West Point he fought in last-stand battles with the Sioux, the Northern Cheyenne, and the Apaches. He was in General George Crook's command when it ventured deep into the rugged Sierra Madre in an all-out effort to bring out the fugitive Ciricahua Apaches. These exploits proved a watershed in Bourke's career. His many contacts with the Indians brought a growing interest in their lifeways and ceremonies, of which he observed and made extensive field notes. The Apaches, intrigued by this strange white soldier who always seemed to be writing, began calling him "Paper Medicine Man." To the Sioux he was "Ink Man." Bourke began publishing his observations and quickly developed a reputation as a careful and accurate reporter of Indian custom and ritual. He became one of the select few military men invited to work on the U.S. Bureau of Ethnology. He also became a staunch advocate of Indian's rights in an age when they had few defenders. His open concern for them eventually crippled his career. In the meantime, his published works on the West gained an international audience. In this major work of biography, based on prodigious research and drawing on Bourke's voluminous diary, Bourke emerges as a brilliant officer and scholar beset with troubling concerns about his government's treatment of the Indians. The author gives a sensitive, richly detailed portrait of an intelligent, active, compassionate man in the context of his times and accords Bourke his rightful place in America's military, cultural, and intellectual history. -- from Book Jacket.