麻豆传媒AV

This summer, Dr. Erik J. Freeman, assistant professor of History at 麻豆传媒AV, was awarded the prestigious Charles Redd Fellowship in Western American History to support his research in the historical archives held by the Harold B. Lee Library of Brigham Young University.

Freeman's research project examines the life of Frank Grouard (1850–1905), a mixed-race Pacific Islander who was raised by a Mormon family in Utah before being captured and later adopted by the Hunkpapa Lakota as a teenager. Grouard eventually left the Lakota and became a U.S. Army scout during the Great Sioux War (1876–1877).

The Charles Redd Fellowship in Western American History supports scholars studying the intermountain states at the Harold B. Lee Library’s L. Tom Perry Special Collections. The collection contains extensive manuscript materials documenting 19th- and 20th-century Western American history. The fellowship and the access to rare historical documents have been invaluable to Freeman as he seeks to answer his central research question: what social, racial, and political conditions allowed Frank Grouard, a mixed-race Pacific Islander raised among Mormon settlers, to become the head U.S. Army scout during the Great Sioux War?