Stanley Vestal

Stanley Vestal (born Walter Stanley Vestal; August 15, 1887 – December 25, 1957) was an American writer, poet, biographer, and historian, perhaps best known for his books on the American Old West, including Sitting Bull, Champion of the Sioux.

Biography Vestal was born to Walter Mallory Vestal and the former Isabella "Daisy" Wood near Severy in Greenwood County in southeastern Kansas. Vestal's father died when he was young. His mother remarried, and Vestal took the legal surname Campbell from his stepfather, James Robert Campbell. About 1889, the Campbell family relocated to Guthrie in the newly established Oklahoma Territory, where he learned Native American customs from his boyhood playmates, knowledge which would later be useful in his writing career.

In 1903, Vestal graduated from the new institution, Southwestern Oklahoma State University in Weatherford. His stepfather was the first president of the college. Vestal was Oklahoma's first Rhodes Scholar. He earned a Bachelor of Arts and a Master of Arts in English from Oxford University in England. He is interred as Walter S. Campbell at the Custer National Cemetery in Big Horn County, Montana.

Partial bibliography Fandango: Ballads of the Old West, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, 1927 Mountain Men''', Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, 1927 "Happy Hunting Grounds"' Lyons and Carnahan, Chicago, IL, 1928Kit Carson, the Happy Warrior of the West, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, 1928Dobe Walls a Story of Kit Carson's Southwest, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, 1929Sitting Bull-Champion of the Sioux-a Biography, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, 1932New Sources of Indian History 1850–1891. The Ghost Dance. The Prairie Sioux . A Miscellany. University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1934 The Wine Room Murder, Little, Brown & Co., Boston, 1935 Revolt On The Border, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, 1938 The Old Santa Fe Trail, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, 1939 King of the Fur Traders: The Deeds and Deviltry of Pierre Esprit Radisson, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, 1940 The Missouri, Farrar & Rinehart, New York, 1945 (Volume 26 of the Rivers of America Series) "Wagons Southwest: Story of Old Trail to Santa Fe," American Pioneer trails Association, New York, 1946 Warpath and Council Fire: The Plains Indians' Struggle for Survival in War and in Diplomacy, 1851–1891, Random House, New York, 1948 Dodge City, Queen of Cowtowns: "The wickedest little city in America", 1872–1886, Harper Brothers, New York, 1952 The Book Lover's Southwest: A guide to good reading, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1955 The Indian Tipi: Its History, Construction, and Use, (with Reginald Laubin & Gladys Laubin), University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1957 Warpath: The True Story of the Fighting Sioux Told in a Biography of Chief White Bull, University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, 1984 (copyrighted 1934 as Walter Stanley Campbell)