Buckskin and Blanket Days

The earliest memories of Thomas Henry Tibbles (1840–1928) were of adventure and danger as his pioneer family followed the frontier west from Ohio to Bleeding Kansas, where young Tibbles volunteered for service with John Brown's abolitionist band. After the end of the border fighting he spent a memorable winter as the guest of a friendly Omaha tribe, going on the warpath with the Omahas against the Sioux, joining with them in buffalo hunts, and gaining the insights that made him a leader in the cause of justice for the American Indian. Although he returned to civilization, Tibbles' later life was far from routine. He led a posse against Jesse James, went to college, farmed, became a gun-toting, circuit-riding preacher, and later an editor on the Omaha Herald. As a correspondent for the Herald he described in unforgettable terms the battle of Wounded Knee and his meeting with the old chieftain Sitting Bull. Tibbles' second wife was his fellow-worker in the Indian relief campaigns, Susette La Flesch (Bright Eyes), daughter of Iron Eye, former head chief of the Omahas. When Longfellow met this beautiful and cultivated Indian princess, he said, "This is Minnehaha!" Tibbles wrote his memoirs in 1905, the year after he ran for Vice President of the United States on the Peoples' party ticket. The volume was first published in 1957, edited by Theodora Bates Cogswell.