All-American Horse

November 9, 1912

November 9, 1912 was a blustery overcast day at West Point. At three o'clock on that Saturday afternoon, a battle was waged--the U.S. Army versus the Indians. This battle was not fought with guns and swords, bows or arrows: the weapon used was an oversized tapered ball. The end of a culture was at stake. Revenge was the motive for winning.

Solomon American Horse, a young Lakota Indian, is caught between two worlds at the beginning of the Twentieth Century. Longing to keep his people's traditional ways, but forced by white society to conform to modern American life, the young Indian finds himself facing the hangman's nose. Captain Richard Pratt of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School intervenes, and the captain brings Solomon back to his school. In Pennsylvania, Solomon discovers two important facts: he finds a skill at playing football and he learns how to fly the new aeroplanes.

Starting with the tragedy at Wounded Knee, on to the early days of college football, and ending with an aerial battle over France in the Great War, All-American Horse is a different telling of the proud Native American experience.