moccasin telegraph

English

Noun

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.