moccasin telegraph

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English

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Noun

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moccasin telegraph (plural moccasin telegraphs)

  1. An informal communication network among the native peoples in North America.
    • 2013, Terry C. Johnston, Red Cloud's Revenge:
      Most had refused to believe the gruesome news brought to the stockade walls by the moccasin telegraph of the Crow, Sioux and Cheyenne.
    • 2014, Edmund Metatawabin, Alexandra Shimo, Up Ghost River, →ISBN:
      But I'd heard stories about them through the moccasin telegraph.
    • 2015, Gerald Hickman, Medal of Honor, →ISBN:
      The moccasin telegraph carried messages from the last non-treaty leader of importance, Sitting Bull, to tribesmen still on the various reservations in Dakota and Nebraska territory.
    • 2017, Scott Richard Lyons, The World, the Text, and the Indian, →ISBN:
      Nor should we find ourselves surprised at the relative but growing success of native cultural producers elsewhere: the 1491s, a young comedy troupe whose short satirical productions go viral on the electronic moccasin telegraphs of Facebook and Twitter; A Tribe Called Red, an electronic music group that has attained a fan base in the dance and hip-hop scenes that far exceeds the native community; and other examples.