It started with boxing.

Henry Camel, a semi-pro black boxer from North Carolina, left home at 16 and joined the Navy. While stationed in Astoria, Ore., he met Alice Nenemay, who had left the Flathead Reservation at 15 and found work as a welder in a Washington shipyard. The two married in 1944 and moved to the Flathead after World War II.

In addition to working, Henry started the Desert Horse Boxing Club in Polson and Ronan to train boys and men to box. He had known the cold stares or outright insults of racial prejudice and insisted that his sons Charles, Tom, Marvin and Kenneth learn the sport to prepare them physically and mentally for the challenges they faced as the only black family on the reservation.

Tom, now 60 and fourth in the Camel lineup, easily recounts incidences of racism the family experienced. On an outing to a Ronan café when Tom was about 10, the owner asked the family to leave, he says, because some customers didn't want to eat in the same room as Henry. Tom says he and his brothers were targets of racial slurs and hostility from both whites and Native Americans. Boxing was their counterpunch against the slights.

"He said, 'If anybody calls you names, you fight back," Tom recalls. "He taught us that we had a responsibility to defend ourselves."

Tom started boxing at 12 and fought in 78 matches before he was 20. He traveled with the Desert Horse team to tournaments all over Montana and qualified for the national Golden Gloves tournament for amateur boxers 16 and older, where he reached the semifinals.

"Boxing gave me some control and some self-esteem in a place that took away your self-esteem," Tom says. "It also gave my family self-esteem when they would come to watch me box."

When Tom was 21 and about to be drafted into the military he chose instead to enlist. He continued to box on an army team until he was wounded in Vietnam and had his leg amputated.

When Tom was in Vietnam, Marvin began to thrive as a boxer. He fought his first match as an 11-year-old at an event in Polson that his parents took him to watch.

"My dad said that someone was looking for a fight and asked me how much I weighed," Marvin says. "I said 106 pounds, then Dad turned away and told the guy, 'I've got someone for you.'"

Marvin lost, but decided he wanted to learn how to win. He began training by sparring with his brothers in their yard. Even though he was gifted in other sports—he lettered in track, football and basketball—boxing triumphed.

"Boxing for me was never a chore," Marvin says.

Boxing earned Marvin newfound respect. Sauntering through the halls of Ronan schools with a boxer's self-assured swagger, Marvin says he made sure kids knew he could "clean their clocks." He says pointedly that nobody dared call him "nigger" again.

Not every Camel boy wanted to be a fighter. Ken Camel remembers being pushed under the ropes by his father as a scared 6-year-old. He hated the sport, hated being hit. To try to avoid boxing, he hid behind the woodshed when Henry was loading up the van for matches. Ken begged to be left alone, but Henry told him he would need to learn to fight someday. With his mom's help, Ken quit at 8 after two fights.

He still benefited from having boxing brothers. The older boys used the sport to earn reputations as the toughest boys on the reservation. As his brothers got bigger, so did their shadows, which Ken readily stepped into.

"Everybody knew I was that Marvin Camel's brother," Ken says. "I walked on water. Nobody touched me."

Ken returned to boxing, however, when he failed his first year at the University of Montana. Not wanting to go back to the reservation, he decided to try amateur boxing. He joined Marvin in Missoula, where together they repaired pinball machines by day and sparred by night.

After 23 professional fights, Ken quit boxing for the second and final time with a 17-3-3 record. He said he was tired of hitting people and of being hit, which—because of his pronounced Native American bone structure—resulted in marked scars still visible under his sharply triangular eyebrows. He was also weary of being mistaken for Marvin.

"I had the legacy of being the younger sibling of Marvin Camel, with all everybody's expectations always on me," Ken says. "I wanted to take another road."

About the time the passion for boxing was taking hold in Marvin, his father and coach left the family and moved to Homedale, Idaho, with another woman, leaving Alice to raise the 11 children still living at home.

Henry had four children with Mildred Conko and they too became boxers. Starting at 6 years old, the three boys were sparring in their home gym, learning the bob-and-weave. Traveling to tournaments consumed most weekends. In a mostly Mormon community, the club functioned as the same social tool for Zack, Bill and J.R., the only dark-skinned kids in Homedale, as it did for Henry's other sons.

Boxing allowed Zack and J.R. to cross the cultural divide at school. They used their strength and skills to defend not only themselves, but the weaker, more vulnerable kids, who were grateful for the Camels' handiness with their hands.

"Without boxing, which gave me all the confidence and all the strength I got, I wouldn't have made it through," Zack says.

Though the boys didn't pursue boxing beyond high school, Zack says that J.R. could have been a champion. But he chose basketball, and shined for a few years on the University of Montana men's team in the late 1990s. He was twice an all-Big Sky Conference pick and as a sophomore was fourth in the nation in number of steals per game. J.R. says he couldn't have been successful without the support of Henry, who died 10 years ago, in both boxing and basketball.

"Dad was always in our corner for boxing," J.R. says. "And for everything else. He was always in our corner."