At sixteen he ran away and lied about his age; claiming to be nineteen, he enlisted in the Fifteenth Pennsylvania Volunteer Cavalry, in which he served until July 1865.

As Crook's aide, Bourke had the opportunity to witness every facet of life in the Old West—the battles, wildlife, the internal squabbling among the military, the Indian Agency, settlers, and Native Americans.

This book is considered one of the best firsthand accounts of frontier army life, as Bourke gives equal time to both the soldier and the Native American.

Several subsequent studies led in 1891 to the completion of his major work Scatalogic Rites of All Nations: A Dissertation upon the Employment of Excrementicious Remedial Agents in Religion, Therapeutics, Divination, Witch-Craft, Love-Philters, etc.

A revised German translation by Friedrich S. Krauss was published posthumously in 1913,[2] with a preface by Viennese psychiatrist Sigmund Freud who wrote: He was recognized in his own time for his ethnological writings on various indigenous peoples of the North American Southwest, particularly Apachean groups.Bourke married Mary F. Horbach of Omaha, Nebraska, on July 25, 1883.

[3] His wife was buried with him after her death in 1927 This article incorporates public domain material from websites or documents of the United States Army Center of Military History.