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Thomas Bailey Marquis (19 December 1869 – 22 March 1935) was a self-taught historian and ethnographer who wrote about the Plains Indians and other subjects of the American frontier. He had a special interest in the destruction of George Armstrong Custer's battalion at the Battle of the Little Bighorn, which became his lifelong obsession. Marquis' body of work is valued by historians for his recording of the life stories of several Plains Indians and his writing on their way of life. These were mostly Cheyennes, but he also included Crows, Sioux, and in a few cases, whites. Marquis started from the perspective of researching the Custer fight, and this remained his central interest, but the work soon expanded to writing the full biographies of several participants, most notably Wooden Leg in ''A Warrior Who Fought Custer''. Marquis carried out this research at a time when few were interested in the Indian version of events, even though there were no survivors at all from the US side of the Custer fight. Marquis' work is thus both unique and unrepeatable. Marquis developed his own theories regarding the history of the Cheyenne. One idea in particular, that many of Custer's men committed suicide when the situation became hopeless, proved to be highly controversial. The idea first surfaced in the Wooden Leg narrative, but was most fully developed in ''Keep the Last Bullet for Yourself'', considered by Marquis to be his most important work and the culmination of his Custer research. The latter was not published during Marquis' lifetime, possibly because of this controversy. This, and much else of his work, did not appear in print until the 1970s. The last book to be published, ''The Cheyennes of Montana'' in 1978, is considered especially valuable to historians. An indication of Marquis' continued relevance is the publication in 2006 of a collection of his photographs in ''A Northern Cheyenne Album''. The project was begun by the Cheyenne educator John Woodenlegs in the 1960s, who died before it could be completed. It was picked up again by ethnologist Margot Liberty after a gap of seventeen years. Marquis was born in Missouri and trained for a career as a printworker. He moved to Montana because he wanted an adventure in the West, but ended up staying there for the remainder of his life. At first he worked as an itinerant printer, but after getting married he trained in medicine and became a physician. The idea was to have a more settled lifestyle, especially after his first daughter was born, but Marquis seemed to have a wanderlust, frequently changing location and often considering a change of career (he qualified as an attorney at one point). These moves were sometimes for financial reasons, and sometimes to be closer to the scene of his research, but sometimes it seemed to be moving just for the sake of moving. This became especially apparent after his military service in World War I and the failure of his marriage. These moves were always within Montana, and his final location was in Hardin on the Crow Reservation close to the Custer battle site. He founded a museum there that has now been incorporated into the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument. Marquis first took up writing around the turn of the century, writing newspaper articles. In 1922 he was appointed agency physician to the Northern Cheyenne. He resigned after only ten weeks, but he was there long enough to realize that several participants of the Custer battle were still alive. Between 1923 and 1926 Marquis practiced medicine privately on the Crow Reservation but then tried to make writing his permanent career. Throughout his life Marquis was often short of money and frequently in debt; his writing was sometimes interrupted by the need to earn money at medicine, or even his original career of typesetting. From 1926 he returned to his contacts among the Cheyenne, interviewing them in depth. The trust he developed with them allowed them to open up to him in a way they had not with any other outsiders. The result formed the bulk of Marquis' most important works. ==Early life== Marquis was born December 19, 1869, on a farm near Osceola, Missouri. The family surname originated from French ancestors who had been granted the hereditary title of Marquis. Marquis' great-great-grandfather was disinherited around 1768 for marrying beneath his station, to the daughter of an English merchant. With no prospects in France, he emigrated to Virginia, where he took ''Marquis'' as a surname.〔Weist, p. 23〕 Marquis' grandfather, James Marquis, was a minister in the Methodist Church. However, he gave up his ministry in order to study medicine. His son, Adonijah Cosner Marquis, Marquis' father, also studied medicine, and both James and Adonijah served as medical officers in the Union Army during the American Civil War. Adonijah served at the military hospital in Clinton, Missouri, where he met and married Sarah Ellen Westfall, the eldest daughter of a wealthy farming family from Vernon County, Missouri, and Marquis' mother. After the war, Adonijah purchased the farm in Osceola; however, he returned to medical practice and left the running of the farm to employees.〔 Marquis was the youngest of four children. His mother died before he was one year old. Although his father remarried soon after, Marquis was cared for by his maternal grandmother until he was four. He then joined his father and second wife at their home in Roscoe, Missouri. Adonijah bought a half-share in the newspaper ''Osceola'' so that his son, Birney, Marquis' elder brother, could learn the printing trade. When he was old enough, Marquis did the same and could set type by the time he was thirteen. After leaving school in 1885, Marquis was sent, along with his sister Mollie, to the Weaubleau Christian Institute in Weaubleau, Missouri. He graduated in 1887.〔Weist, pp. 23–24〕 At first, Marquis was only able to find work as a teacher at a local one-room school. However, his brother found him work as a printer in St. Joseph. In February 1888 Marquis made the 150-mile journey to St. Joseph. This was the farthest the young man had ever been from home and his first experience of a big city.〔Weist, p. 24〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Thomas Bailey Marquis」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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