Andele, The Mexican-Kiowa Captive: A Story of Real Life Among the Indians

by J.J. Methvin

Early in 1867 Kiowa chief Many Bears paid the Mescalero Apache one mule, two buffalo robes, and a red blanket to purchase ten-year-old José Andrés Martínez. Abducted near his home in Las Vegas, New Mexico, in October 1866, he became Many Bears's grandson, Andele. He quickly adapted to his new life, grew to manhood among the Kiowa, took part in Kiowa raiding parties when he turned sixteen, and three times married Kiowa women. Confined to a reservation in Oklahoma after 1875, Andele in the 1880s sought to reclaim his former life and returned to his family in Las Vegas. But in 1889, feeling "his interests were all identified with the Kiowa, and that he had learned to love them," he returned to the reservation, taught industrial arts at the agency school, and aided the Kiowa in defense of their lands. In the 1890s Andele began serving as a resource to a generation of anthropologists studying Kiowa and Apache society. His captivity narrative, published in 1899 by the Methodist missionary J. J. Methvin, is an invaluable eyewitness description of Plains Indians. It is reissued with an introduction by ethnohistorian James F. Brooks of the University of Maryland.

Genres: Biography

139 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 1996

Reviews

[Bob · Rating 5 out of 5]

You can get this book free, just type in and search "internet archive", and the title. It's a great book but not worth $15 that kindle is charging.

[Shaineinok · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this as a child from my grandfather's library. This book was written by my great great grandfather who was a Methodist minister to the Indian tribes of Southwestern Oklahoma. I found it an interesting view of that time. I had the pleasure of meeting several members of the tribe as a teen and one elderly lady remembered him, she and others still thought kindly of him and the work he did there.

[S. A. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Get past the narrator's hideous racism and this is a great and rather sympathetic look at Kiowa culture as it was disappearing.

It's also a fine example of Christian "redemption" narrative.