Keith, Harold

Harold Keith grew up near the Cherokee country he describes in Rifles for Watie.A native Oklahoman, he was edu-cated at Northwestern State Teachers College at Alva and at the University of Oklahoma.

While traveling in eastern Oklahoma doing research on his master's thesis in history, Mr. Keith found a great deal of fresh material about the Civil War in the Indian country. Deciding he might someday write a historical novel, he interviewed twenty--two Civil War veterans then living in Oklahoma and Arkansas; much of the background of Rifles for Watiecame from the note-books he filled at that ti...