About this Book

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John Gregory
Bourke kept a monumental set of diaries beginning as a young cavalry lieutenant
in Arizona in
1872, and ending the evening before his death in 1896. As aide-de-camp to
Brigadier General George Crook, he had an insider's view of the early Apache
campaigns, the Great Sioux War, the Cheyenne Outbreak, and the Geronimo War.
Bourke's writings reveal much about military life on the western frontier, but
he also was a noted ethnologist, writing extensive descriptions of American
Indian civilization and illustrating his diaries with sketches and photographs.

    Previously, researchers could consult only
a small part of Bourke’s diary material in various publications, or else take a
research trip to the archive and microfilm housed at West
Point. Now, for the first time, the 124 manuscript volumes of the
Bourke diaries are being compiled, edited, and annotated by Charles M. Robinson
III in an easily accessible form to the modern researcher.

    This fifth volume
opens at Fort Wingate as Bourke prepares to visit the Navajos. Next, at the
Pine River Agency, he is witness to the Sun Dance, where despite his discomfort
at what he saw, he noted that during the Sun Dance piles of food and clothing
were contributed by the Indians themselves, to relieve the poor among their
people. Bourke continued his travels among the Zunis, the Rio Grande pueblos,
and finally, with the Hopis to attend the Hopi Snake dance. The volume
concludes at Fort Apache, Arizona, which is stirring with excitement over the
activities of the Apache medicine man, Nakai’-dokli’ni, which Bourke spelled Na
Kay do Klinni. This would erupt into bloodshed less than a week later.

    Volume Five is
especially important because it is the first in this series to deal almost
exclusively with Bourke’s ethnological research. Aside from a brief trip to the
East Coast, most of the text involves his observations either during the Great
Oglala Sun Dance of 1881, or among the pueblos of New Mexico and Arizona. Bourke’s
account of the Sun Dance is particularly significant because it was the last
one held by the Oglalas. The Hopi material in this volume served as the basis
of The Snake Dance of the Moquis of
Arizona, published three years later in 1884, and perhaps his best-known
work after On the Border with Crook.

    Extensively annotated and with a
biographical appendix on Indians, civilians, and military personnel named in
the diaries, this book will appeal to western and military historians, students
of American Indian life and culture, and to anyone interested in the
development of the American West.