Oshkosh The Brave Sparknotes

Hidden amongst thick reference books on the Menominee Indian Tribe, a small red single-edition book written by Phebe Jewell Nichols offers an unreplicatable perspective on the lives of Chief Oshkosh and Reginald Oshkosh. Published jointly by the Centennial Edition and the Oshkosh Northwestern newspaper, Oshkosh the Brave preserved an intimate version of a an individual which other histories never captured, Chief Oshkosh’s grandson Reginald Oshkosh. Acting as Chief, Reginald Oshkosh struggled alongside other Menominee leaders during the Menominee Tribe V. United States case. Despite obvious personal biases included in the narrative, Oshkosh the Brave captures a unique Indian-based perspective and enshrines a Menominee chief forgotten by white

Nichols begins with the disclaimer that “I knew Chief Reginald Oshkosh, and I can see in memory his bright quizzical eyes looking up at that statue on the day the Old Chief's bones were reinterred” (37). With this statement she both establishes which Chief Oshkosh her book refers to (one of a long line), as well as conveys the personal relationship she shared with him. While such informality may damage the credibility of a book attempting to act as both a description of Reginald Oshkosh’s personal life and a summary of his experiences as a whole, it does preserve a primary source account in a way that secondary sources are usually preserved in. Informal language again comes through when she describes the speech Reginald was asked to give at the re-interring of his grandfather’s, the Chief Oshkosh of which Oshkosh the

Nichols describes an encounter she had with Reginald one day “when I queustioned him once on the Indian idea of life and death… His mouth was a hard bitter line “The only hell the Indian knows is living under the Indian Bureau control” (37). From this anecdote we glean a sense of Chief Oshkosh’s perspective on the supreme court case and government oversight as well as a better understanding of his personal temperament (unobscured by his austere speech that was revised for court proceedings). She records quotes of his such as “‘We have come a long way. Our moccasins are bloody’” and “‘they said we must give our allegiance to the flag and it would protect us’” that were not archived by other sources (37). Nichols expresses the importance of her own book in the line that “this was the Chief Oshkosh as he revealed himself to me on occasion” (37), because her book documents a version of Chief Oshkosh that wouldn’t have been revealed for historical consumption