Hero of Beecher Island

Hero of Beecher Island PDF Author: David Dixon
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 9780803266056
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 298

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Book Description
George A. Forsyth took a determined stand against Sioux and Cheyenne Indians at the Battle of Beech Island in 1868 and in the process transformed this minor frontier skirmish into a legendary symbol of the American West. This engagement helped mold popular conception of Indian warfare and provided Forsyth with the reputation of being an intrepid Indian fighter like George Custer and Buffalo Bill. Although this image of Forsyth is not necessarily incorrect, it is certainly incomplete. Forsyth began his military career with the firing on Fort Sumter in 1861. Like many other officers who would subsequently gain distinction in the Indian campaign of the West, he learned the art of warfare in the great battles of the Civil War. His ascendancy through the ranks paralleled the rise of the Union cavalry as an effective combat arm during the war, and his education as a cavalryman came under the watchful eye of Phil Sheridan, one of America's most compelling soldiers. The Forsyth-Sheridan relationship began on the Virginia battlefields and continued until 1881. During this long period George Forsyth was one of Sheridan's most trusted aides, serving as the general's eyes and ears in countless military missions that took him from the banks of the Yellowstone to the sacred Black Hills and from the bayous of Reconstruction Louisiana to the palaces of Europe and Asia. Forsyth's varied military career was truly reflective of the army's role in the second half of the nineteenth century. In addition to serving as an instrument of government Indian policy, the army carried out other important missions designed to foster internal development in the United States. These activities included exploring and mapping the remnants of the uncharted West: escorting railroad survey and construction crews and building forts along the major lines of commerce. As a staff officer, George Forsyth played an important part in all of these activities and more. Therefore, while this biography chronicles the life and military career of a remarkable soldier, it also provides fresh insight into the role that the United States Army played during the post-Civil War period.

Hero of Beecher Island

Hero of Beecher Island PDF Author: David Dixon
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 9780803266056
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 298

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Book Description
George A. Forsyth took a determined stand against Sioux and Cheyenne Indians at the Battle of Beech Island in 1868 and in the process transformed this minor frontier skirmish into a legendary symbol of the American West. This engagement helped mold popular conception of Indian warfare and provided Forsyth with the reputation of being an intrepid Indian fighter like George Custer and Buffalo Bill. Although this image of Forsyth is not necessarily incorrect, it is certainly incomplete. Forsyth began his military career with the firing on Fort Sumter in 1861. Like many other officers who would subsequently gain distinction in the Indian campaign of the West, he learned the art of warfare in the great battles of the Civil War. His ascendancy through the ranks paralleled the rise of the Union cavalry as an effective combat arm during the war, and his education as a cavalryman came under the watchful eye of Phil Sheridan, one of America's most compelling soldiers. The Forsyth-Sheridan relationship began on the Virginia battlefields and continued until 1881. During this long period George Forsyth was one of Sheridan's most trusted aides, serving as the general's eyes and ears in countless military missions that took him from the banks of the Yellowstone to the sacred Black Hills and from the bayous of Reconstruction Louisiana to the palaces of Europe and Asia. Forsyth's varied military career was truly reflective of the army's role in the second half of the nineteenth century. In addition to serving as an instrument of government Indian policy, the army carried out other important missions designed to foster internal development in the United States. These activities included exploring and mapping the remnants of the uncharted West: escorting railroad survey and construction crews and building forts along the major lines of commerce. As a staff officer, George Forsyth played an important part in all of these activities and more. Therefore, while this biography chronicles the life and military career of a remarkable soldier, it also provides fresh insight into the role that the United States Army played during the post-Civil War period.

Indian Wars of Canada, Mexico and the United States, 1812-1900

Indian Wars of Canada, Mexico and the United States, 1812-1900 PDF Author: Bruce Vandervort
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134590911
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 361

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Book Description
Fully illustrated, this unique and fascinating study sheds new light on familiar events. Drawing on anthropology and ethnohistory as well as the 'new military history', this book interprets and compares the way Indians and European Americans waged wars in Canada, Mexico, the USA and Yucatán during the nineteenth century.

Comanche Jack Stilwell

Comanche Jack Stilwell PDF Author: Clint E. Chambers
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 0806163399
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 409

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Book Description
In 1863, the thirteen-year-old boy who would come to be called Comanche Jack was sent to the well to fetch water. Instead, he joined a wagon train bound for Santa Fe. Thus began the exploits of Simpson E. “Jack” Stilwell (1850–1903), a man generally known for slipping through Indian lines to get help for some fifty frontiersmen besieged by the Cheyenne at Beecher Island in 1868. Daring as his part in the rescue might have been, it was only one noteworthy episode of many in Comanche Jack Stilwell’s life—a life whose rollicking story is finally told here in full. In his later years, Stilwell crafted his own legend as a celebrated raconteur. Authors Clint E. Chambers (whose grandfather was Stilwell’s nephew) and Paul H. Carlson scour the available primary and secondary sources to find the unvarnished truth and remarkable facts behind the legend. In a crisp, fast-paced style, the narrative follows Stilwell from his precocious start as a teenage runaway turned teamster on the Santa Fe Trail to his later turns as lawyer, judge, U.S. marshal, hangman, and associate of Buffalo Bill Cody. Along the way, he learned Spanish, Comanche, and sign language, scouted for the U.S. Army, and became a friend of George A. Custer and an avowed, if failed, avenger of his kid brother Frank, an outlaw killed by Wyatt Earp. Unfolding against the backdrop of the Civil War, cattle drives, the Indian Wars, the Oklahoma land rush, and the rough justice of the Wild West, Comanche Jack Stilwell takes a true American character out of the shadows of history and returns to the story of the West one of its defining figures.

The Life of Yellowstone Kelly

The Life of Yellowstone Kelly PDF Author: Jerry Keenan
Publisher: UNM Press
ISBN: 9780826340351
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 412

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Book Description
Based on the memoirs and correspondence of Luther Sage "Yellowstone" Kelly (1849-1928), this first full-length biography offers a comprehensive look at a remarkable man who knew the frontier of the American West and recorded his impressions of that time and place with a fluid, literary pen.

Washita

Washita PDF Author: Jerome A. Greene
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 0806179996
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
An evenhanded account of a tragic clash of cultures On November 27, 1868, the U.S. Seventh Cavalry under Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer attacked a Southern Cheyenne village along the Washita River in present-day western Oklahoma. The subsequent U.S. victory signaled the end of the Cheyennes’ traditional way of life and resulted in the death of Black Kettle, their most prominent peace chief. In this remarkably balanced history, Jerome A. Greene describes the causes, conduct, and consequences of the event even as he addresses the multiple controversies surrounding the conflict. As Greene explains, the engagement brought both praise and condemnation for Custer and carried long-range implications for his stunning defeat at the Battle of the Little Bighorn eight years later.

The Terrible Indian Wars of the West

The Terrible Indian Wars of the West PDF Author: Jerry Keenan
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476623104
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 505

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Book Description
Expansion! The history of the United States might well be summed up in that single word. The Indian Wars of the American West were a continuation of the struggle that began with the arrival of the first Europeans, and escalated as they advanced across the Appalachians before American independence had been won. This history of the Indian Wars of the Trans-Mississippi begins with the earliest clashes between Native Americans and Anglo-European settlers. The author provides a comprehensive narrative of the conflict in eight parts, covering eight geographical regions--the Pacific Northwest; California and Nevada; New Mexico, the Central Plains, the Southern Plains; Iowa, Minnesota and the Northern Plains; the Intermountain West, and the Desert Southwest--with an epilogue on Wounded Knee.

The Frontier Army in the Settlement of the West

The Frontier Army in the Settlement of the West PDF Author: Michael L. Tate
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 9780806133867
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 480

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Book Description
A reassessment of the military's role in developing the Western territories moves beyond combat stories and stereotypes to focus on more non-martial accomplishments such as exploration, gathering scientific data, and building towns.

Twenty-Five Years among the Indians and Buffalo

Twenty-Five Years among the Indians and Buffalo PDF Author: William D. Street
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
ISBN: 0700636161
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 560

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Book Description
Nearing 60, William D. Street (1851–1911) sat down to write his memoir of frontier life. Street's early years on the plains of western Kansas were both ordinary and extraordinary; ordinary in what they reveal about the everyday life of so many who went out to the western frontier, extraordinary in their breadth and depth of historical event and impact. His tales of life as a teamster, cavalryman, town developer, trapper, buffalo hunter, military scout, and cowboy put us squarely in the middle of such storied events as Sheridan's 1868–1869 winter campaign on the southern Plains and the Cheyenne Exodus of 1878. They take us trapping beaver and hunting buffalo for hides and meat, and driving cattle on the Great Western Cattle Trail. They give us insight into his evolving understanding of his multi-decade relationship with the Lakota. And they give us a front-row seat at the founding and development of Jewell and Gaylord, Kansas, and a firsthand look at the formation of Jewell's "Buffalo Militia." In later life Street rose to prominence as a newspaper publisher, state legislator, and regent of the Kansas State Agricultural College. At the time of his death—noted in the New York Times—he was still at work on his memoir. Handed down through his family over the past century and faithfully transcribed here, Street's story of frontier life is as rich in history as it is in character, giving us a sense of what it was to be not just a witness to, but a player in, the drama of the plains as it unfolded in the late nineteenth century. Edited by Street's great-grandson, with an introduction by Richard Etulain, a leading scholar of the West, this memoir is history as it was lived, recalled in sharp detail and recounted in engaging prose, for the ages.

Massacre On The Lordsburg Road

Massacre On The Lordsburg Road PDF Author: Marc Simmons
Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
ISBN: 9781585444465
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 274

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Book Description
Though academically thorough in its exploration, the popular style of delivery of Massacre on the Lordsburg Road will capture and hold the interest of general readers of Indian history.

Encyclopedia of American Indian Wars, 1492-1890

Encyclopedia of American Indian Wars, 1492-1890 PDF Author: Jerry Keenan
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 9780393319156
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
Focusing on the longest running conflict in American history, this illustrated encyclopedia reveals the common threads that weave through four centuries of clashes, from Columbus's voyage to the Wounded Knee Massacre. 450 entries. 70 illustrations.