moccasin telegraph

plural moccasin telegraphs

1. An informal communication network among the native peoples in North America.

   But I'd heard stories about them through the moccasin telegraph.

   2014, Edmund Metatawabin, Alexandra Shimo, Up Ghost River, →ISBN

   3 more examples

   Most had refused to believe the gruesome news brought to the stockade walls by the moccasin telegraph of the Crow, Sioux and Cheyenne.

   2013, Terry C. Johnston, Red Cloud's Revenge

   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.

   2015, Gerald Hickman, Medal of Honor, →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.

   2017, Scott Richard Lyons, The World, the Text, and the Indian, →ISBN