Free Essays on Indian War

What struck me the most when I heard that 17,000 Native Americans had served in the Great War was that, not even thirty years after the end of the Indian wars, American Indians were willing to fight alongside their former enemy. I also was under the impression that most Native Americans had not been American citizens before the American Indian Citizenship Act of 1924 and wondered therefore how they could have been enlisted in the army, but also if their actual enlistment had anything to do with the granting of citizenship to American Indians in 1924. With this in mind, I began to sift through books on American history for anything concerning Native Americans fighting with the American army ­and not against it ­and on the status of Native Americans in 1917 according to United States law. I also tried to gather sources on the situation of American Indian affairs in the years preceding the Great War Meanwhile, I looked for information on the participation of American Indians in World War I but found little. Books dealing with the general history of Native Americans either failed to speak about the subject or dismissed it quickly with a participation figure which varied from one text to the next. The first concrete elements I found seemed only indirectly related to what I was looking for: emblems. The insignia of the Second Division of the American Expeditionary Forces was a Plains Indian head.(1) Section One of the American Ambulance Field Service also used a similar motif,(2) as well as the Lafayette Escadrille.(3 )Exploring this phenomenon, I noticed that, on pictures of American memorials erected after the Great War in France, the same Indian head profile appears ­a motif taken even further in the memorial located in Tours where American intervention has been symbolized by an Indian raising his hands towards an eagle. While exploring visual traces, I also be... Free Essays on Indian War Free Essays on Indian War What struck me the most when I heard that 17,000 Native Americans had served in the Great War was that, not even thirty years after the end of the Indian wars, American Indians were willing to fight alongside their former enemy. I also was under the impression that most Native Americans had not been American citizens before the American Indian Citizenship Act of 1924 and wondered therefore how they could have been enlisted in the army, but also if their actual enlistment had anything to do with the granting of citizenship to American Indians in 1924. With this in mind, I began to sift through books on American history for anything concerning Native Americans fighting with the American army ­and not against it ­and on the status of Native Americans in 1917 according to United States law. I also tried to gather sources on the situation of American Indian affairs in the years preceding the Great War Meanwhile, I looked for information on the participation of American Indians in World War I but found little. Books dealing with the general history of Native Americans either failed to speak about the subject or dismissed it quickly with a participation figure which varied from one text to the next. The first concrete elements I found seemed only indirectly related to what I was looking for: emblems. The insignia of the Second Division of the American Expeditionary Forces was a Plains Indian head.(1) Section One of the American Ambulance Field Service also used a similar motif,(2) as well as the Lafayette Escadrille.(3 )Exploring this phenomenon, I noticed that, on pictures of American memorials erected after the Great War in France, the same Indian head profile appears ­a motif taken even further in the memorial located in Tours where American intervention has been symbolized by an Indian raising his hands towards an eagle. While exploring visual traces, I also be...