Employing military records, archival sources, and contemporary interviews with current Pawnee tribal members-some of them descendants of the scouts-Van de Logt presents the Pawnee scouts as central players in some of the army's most notable campaigns. He argues that military service allowed the Pawnees to fight their tribal enemies with weapons furnished by the United States as well as to resist pressures from the federal government to assimilate them into white society.

According to the author, it was the tribe's martial traditions, deeply embedded in their culture, that made them successful and allowed them to retain these time-honored traditions. The Pawnee style of warfare, based on stealth and surprise, was so effective that the scouts' commanding officers did little to discourage their methods. Although the scouts proudly wore the blue uniform of the U.S. Cavalry, they never ceased to be Pawnees. The Pawnee Battalion was truly a war party in blue.

Mark van de Logt is Assistant Professor of Liberal Arts at Texas A&M University of Qatar and author of Monsters of Contact: Historical Trauma in Caddoan Oral Traditions.

Walter R. Echo-Hawk, formerly an attorney for the Native American Rights Fund, currently practices law in Oklahoma City. He is a member of the Pawnee Nation.