Ryan Booth’s path to becoming a historian began in the stacks of the La Conner school library, where he pored over books on the U.S. Civil War as a high school student. That early fascination with military history eventually led him to a career researching Native American army scouts — a subject that recently earned him a role behind the scenes of a nationally televised documentary.
Booth, a 1995 La Conner High School graduate, helped write the script for an episode of PBS’s “Finding Your Roots” featuring chef and author Sean Sherman, a member of the Oglala Lakota Sioux tribe and a leading voice in Indigenous cuisine. The show, hosted by Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., explores guests’ ancestry with the help of genealogists and historians.
Producers sought Booth’s expertise because of his research on Native American scouts who served in the U.S. Army. As it turned out, Sherman had ancestors among those scouts.
“I helped the producers write the script describing this complex story,” Booth said, now a U.S. history professor at Washington State University. “How often does a Wazzu guy get to tell a Harvard man what to say?”
Though the show ultimately focused more on Booth’s insights into the Buffalo Soldiers — 19th-century African American regiments in the U.S. Army — his contributions helped shape Sherman’s episode, which aired Feb. 4 as part of the “Family Recipes” segment on PBS.
“I was surprised by what the producers and genealogists found,” Booth said. “They uncovered some really interesting documents. I didn’t even know who the special guest was until I saw the promo commercials for the season. When I heard my words about the Buffalo Soldiers, I knew it was Sean Sherman.”
Booth’s journey from La Conner to academia is deeply rooted in the Swinomish and Upper Skagit communities. A member of the Upper Skagit Tribe, he moved to Swinomish Reservation in sixth grade and quickly immersed himself in local history. His early academic promise earned him a role as a student page for then-U.S. House Speaker Tom Foley.
His interest in Native American scouts, however, developed later.
“I always thought they were sort of boring, just a dusty relic of Old West lore,” he said. “I didn’t realize they were so long-lived as part of the U.S. Army. It shocked me and made me want to learn more.”
Booth, 47, graduated cum laude from Loyola University Chicago in 2001, earned a master’s degree from Central Washington University in 2011, and completed his doctorate at Washington State University in 2021. As a Fulbright Scholar, he traveled to India to study similarities between Native American soldiers in the U.S. and Indian auxiliaries of the British Raj.
“Although half a world away, both the U.S. and British India shared a common experience in military history where subjugated peoples moved from being despised to becoming model warriors,” he said.
Native Americans served as army scouts for various reasons, Booth explained. Some were driven by tribal rivalries, while others sought the stability and resources that came with military service.
“They supported their families and accessed plentiful army stores,” Booth wrote in a 2021 article for Washington State magazine. “With an army blue jacket, they traveled the West untouched. No one wondered why they weren’t on their reservation.”
Now, Booth is revising his dissertation, “Crossed Arrows: The U.S. Indian Scouts, 1866-1947,” into a monograph. He describes it as a complex narrative about the U.S. empire, martial race theory, and Indigenous military service as a means to self-sufficiency.
His research has now reached a national audience through “Finding Your Roots.” Though the final cut focused on the Buffalo Soldiers rather than the Native American scouts, Booth still saw his words come to life on screen.
“It was fast, but I was there,” he said. “They cut out the Indian scout history, but the Buffalo Soldiers — that was my stuff.”
