“It's a guy who will take care of his family and his people,” muses the 55-year-old, pony-tailed free spirit. He does this “by whatever means necessary,” Cook says, quoting Malcolm X.

In Cook's youth, being a warrior meant taking part in dozens of combat missions in Southeast Asia in the 1960s that were complicated by things like the failure of his M16 or lack of air support. These days, the same sense of obligation brings him home to Connecticut, at least temporarily, to take care of business on a family farm he inherited with his siblings. Cook is a watercolor artist and fly fisherman who has spent the past several years working on ferry boats in Washington State.

Cook says he knew he was part of something when he enlisted in the Army in 1966, a year out of Fitch High School. A communications specialist, he says he lost many of the friends he made during his two tours, but couldn't spend time grieving.

“Let the burial detail take care of it” was his philosophy, he said. He later traveled through the western United States, where he says there was more going on for Indian veterans — powwows, gatherings and healing ceremonies.

“As I dealt with my own version of delayed stress, it was out there that I got help I didn't get here,” he remembers. A dark-skinned Indian, Cook says, “just having somebody brown talking to you was half the battle.”

Cook and several other Indian veterans, natives of Gales Ferry, Montville, Pawcatuck and Willimantic, speak of a tradition of military service passed down through their ancestors, but say they were just doing their jobs when it came time to serve. They gladly take their places in the honor guards that lead the grand entry processions into tribal powwows, though they don't look for accolades and only share their most graphic war stories with other veterans.

“I'm not a joiner or a flag-waver. I just do what my generations before me did — go to work,” says Peter Schultz, vice chairman of the Mohegan Tribe. Schultz, who lost five of his classmates from Montville High School in the Vietnam War, joined the Air Force a year after graduating in 1972. He served four years, first as part of a perimeter security force at Loring Air Force Base in Maine, then as a member of the last air installation in Vietnam, where he took part in two helicopter rescue missions. Soldiers don't fight for some huge cause, Schultz says. They go to rescue each other.

“It put the rest of my life in perspective,” he says of his military experience. “It made me much more mature. It made me appreciate life.”

American Indians say they were driven to serve in large numbers because there is a martial spirit, or a sense of collective responsibility, within tribes. Going to war is almost a test of manhood, Schultz says. And as with other minorities, Indians were attracted by the benefits of the GI Bill. Schultz attended night school for 15 years and obtained a master's degree.

War chief

Mashantucket Pequot Stanley F. Harris III, an Army Reserve veteran who served for eight years during the Korean War and retired as a staff sergeant, was bestowed the title of tribal war chief and presented with a ceremonial .30-30 rifle and a beaded war shirt, crafted by elders, a few years ago. He serves in the Mashantucket honor guard with his son, Stanley F. Harris Jr., who is a Marine veteran of the Persian Gulf War. Harris III's father was a Navy veteran, serving on PT boats during World War II.

A Willimantic native who started his career as a pipefitter at Electric Boat and worked much of his life as a pipe designer in nuclear power plants in Washington State, the elder Harris says he wasn't thinking of his American Indian background when he enlisted at 17. After learning more about his heritage and reuniting with long-lost relatives after joining the tribe five years ago, Harris says he is now “double proud” to have served two American nations, the tribe and the United States, in the military.

“I don't expect the community outside of Mashantucket to treat me any differently, except to recognize that Native American blood was shed along with anyone else's,” says Harris.

Despite the Pequots' warring history, Harris says the role of war chief nowadays is not about preparing to fight, but “to be watchful of anything that's going to disrupt the peace — to smooth ruffled feathers.”

He's modest about his own service, but praises his son, who joined the Marines in 1988 and was on the front lines during Desert Storm as a tank gunman in Kuwait City. He hated knowing his son was in harm's way.

“I wish everyone could have a son like that,” he says, after greeting his son with a hug when they met for a joint interview at Foxwoods Resort Casino last week. “He's a good father and a hard worker.”

The younger Harris, 33, who achieved the rank of corporal, is a former amateur boxer who is attending school full-time to become an environmental engineer. He received a commendation for “initiative in selfless dedication to duty” for handling prisoners of war and alerting his battalion to the presence of an Iraqi regiment.

Father and son say they looked to the military, in part, as an outlet for youthful aggression.

“Like my father, I was a wild child,” the younger Harris recalls. “After high school, I needed something to do, quick.”

He joined the Marines, he says, because “they were the roughest,” and became a tank gunman because the weapons were “the biggest thing I could get my hands on.” And in the throes of battle, when faced with “either it's you or them, you get kind of hard,” he remembers. But the married, father of four says he is more mellow these days.

Silver Star

Fifty-six year-old Mashantucket Pequot elder John Holder, who oversees tribal development as chief property officer, was drafted into the Vietnam War in 1967, two years after he graduated from Stonington High School. Holder was a squad leader on armored personnel carriers in an Army infantry division.

“I knew from when I was a little kid I was going to be in the war,” he recalls.

Oddly enough, a recurring dream he had in his youth of being at war, surrounded by the enemy without backup and a broken rifle, came true on May 7, 1968. The day's events were part of what is known the Mini-Tet Offensive. Holder was outside of Saigon, marching near the front of the division when he found himself surrounded by the enemy after turning a corner ahead of his company. His rifle jammed, and as he leaned up against a building to try to fix it, he realized “it was the dream.”

Somehow, Holder says, all the machine gun fire missed him that day and he managed to shoot his way to safety. Unable to return to his own company, he joined up with another group of soldiers and engaged in two more fights that day. He later received a Silver Star for gallantry and service beyond the call of duty, a fitting tribute for the great grandson of Pequot Chief Atwood Williams, who was known as Silver Star.

Holder, who has four children and lives with his wife, Suzanne, in a custom-built house in Stonington, is enjoying his life. He worked as a senior draftsmen at Electric Boat until tribal patriarch Richard A. “Skip” Hayward called on him to oversee the tribe's first housing construction project in 1979.

“Everything since May 7, 1968, has been a freebie,” he says. Each year, he takes May 7 off to celebrate a personal holiday he calls “Life.”