The Great War and Its Legacy: Chilocco Goes to War

Dr.  Warde will examine the “Chilocco boys” from the Chilocco Indian Agricultural School (which had strong ties with OAMC/OSU) who served in the Great War. Many served on submarines, trained at Harvard and OU as radio operators, baked bread at Camp Funston, KS, fought with and entertained troops in France, and protected supply depots in Siberia. Many of their letters home are available, and Dr. Warde will discuss their experiences as Oklahomans in the Great War.

Dr. Mary Jane Warde, author and historian, earned a B.A. at the University of Tennessee, Martin, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in history at Oklahoma State University. For eight years, she was an Indian Historian/Indian Archivist with the Oklahoma Historical Society. During her tenure there, her work included collecting nearly eighty oral histories, mostly from Indian people, and helping design the Indian Gallery in the new Oklahoma Museum of History. She has written three books, including "Washita" and "George Washington Grayson and the Creek Nation." Her latest book, "When the Wolf Came: The Civil War and the Indian Territory," won the 2014 United Daughters of the Confederacy's Jefferson Davis Gold Medal, the 2014 Oklahoma Book Award, nonfiction and the 2014 Pate Award from the Fort Worth Civil War Round Table. In April 2014, she was inducted into the Oklahoma Historical Society's Oklahoma Historians Hall of Fame.