Download or read book Forty Miles a Day on Beans and Hay written by Don Rickey and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2012-11-28 with total page 421 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The enlisted men in the United States Army during the Indian Wars (1866-91) need no longer be mere shadows behind their historically well-documented commanding officers. As member of the regular army, these men formed an important segment of our usually slighted national military continuum and, through their labors, combats, and endurance, created the framework of law and order within which settlement and development become possible. We should know more about the common soldier in our military past, and here he is. The rank and file regular, then as now, was psychologically as well as physically isolated from most of his fellow Americans. The people were tired of the military and its connotations after four years of civil war. They arrayed their army between themselves and the Indians, paid its soldiers their pittance, and went about the business of mushrooming the nation’s economy. Because few enlisted men were literarily inclined, many barely able to scribble their names, most previous writings about them have been what officers and others had to say. To find out what the average soldier of the post-Civil War frontier thought, Don Rickey, Jr., asked over three hundred living veterans to supply information about their army experiences by answering questionnaires and writing personal accounts. Many of them who had survived to the mid-1950’s contributed much more through additional correspondence and personal interviews. Whether the soldier is speaking for himself or through the author in his role as commentator-historian, this is the first documented account of the mass personality of the rank and file during the Indian Wars, and is only incidentally a history of those campaigns.
Download or read book Forty Miles a Day on Beans and Hay The Enlisted Soldier Fighting the Indian Wars With Plates written by Don Rickey and published by . This book was released on 1963 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Forty Miles a Day on Beans and Hay written by Don Rickey and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2012-11-28 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The enlisted men in the United States Army during the Indian Wars (1866-91) need no longer be mere shadows behind their historically well-documented commanding officers. As member of the regular army, these men formed an important segment of our usually slighted national military continuum and, through their labors, combats, and endurance, created the framework of law and order within which settlement and development become possible. We should know more about the common soldier in our military past, and here he is. The rank and file regular, then as now, was psychologically as well as physically isolated from most of his fellow Americans. The people were tired of the military and its connotations after four years of civil war. They arrayed their army between themselves and the Indians, paid its soldiers their pittance, and went about the business of mushrooming the nation’s economy. Because few enlisted men were literarily inclined, many barely able to scribble their names, most previous writings about them have been what officers and others had to say. To find out what the average soldier of the post-Civil War frontier thought, Don Rickey, Jr., asked over three hundred living veterans to supply information about their army experiences by answering questionnaires and writing personal accounts. Many of them who had survived to the mid-1950’s contributed much more through additional correspondence and personal interviews. Whether the soldier is speaking for himself or through the author in his role as commentator-historian, this is the first documented account of the mass personality of the rank and file during the Indian Wars, and is only incidentally a history of those campaigns.
Download or read book Regular Army O written by Douglas C. McChristian and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2017-05-04 with total page 783 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “The drums they roll, upon my soul, for that’s the way we go,” runs the chorus in a Harrigan and Hart song from 1874. “Forty miles a day on beans and hay in the Regular Army O!” The last three words of that lyric aptly title Douglas C. McChristian’s remarkable work capturing the lot of soldiers posted to the West after the Civil War. At once panoramic and intimate, Regular Army O! uses the testimony of enlisted soldiers—drawn from more than 350 diaries, letters, and memoirs—to create a vivid picture of life in an evolving army on the western frontier. After the volunteer troops that had garrisoned western forts and camps during the Civil War were withdrawn in 1865, the regular army replaced them. In actions involving American Indians between 1866 and 1891, 875 of these soldiers were killed, mainly in minor skirmishes, while many more died of disease, accident, or effects of the natural environment. What induced these men to enlist for five years and to embrace the grim prospect of combat is one of the enduring questions this book explores. Going well beyond Don Rickey Jr.’s classic work Forty Miles a Day on Beans and Hay (1963), McChristian plumbs the regulars’ accounts for frank descriptions of their training to be soldiers; their daily routines, including what they ate, how they kept clean, and what they did for amusement; the reasons a disproportionate number occasionally deserted, while black soldiers did so only rarely; how the men prepared for field service; and how the majority who survived mustered out. In this richly drawn, uniquely authentic view, men black and white, veteran and tenderfoot, fill in the details of the frontier soldier’s experience, giving voice to history in the making.
Download or read book Indian Fights and Fighters written by Cyrus Townsend Brady and published by . This book was released on 1909 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Life of a Soldier on the Western Frontier written by Jeremy Agnew and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Focusing on the Indian Wars period of the 1840s through the 1890s, Life of a Soldier on the Western Frontier captures the daily challenges faced by the typical enlisted man and explores the role soldiers played in the conquering of the American frontier.
Download or read book Sagebrush Soldier written by Sherry L. Smith and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2001-05-15 with total page 182 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sagebrush Soldier is an account of military life during the Indian Wars in the late nineteenth-century West. Private William Earl Smith describes daily camp life, battle scenes, and the behavior of famous men - Ranald Mackenzie and George Crook - in public and private poses. His diary covers the war from the enlisted men’s viewpoint, as he worries about what he will eat and how he will keep warm in freezing conditions, and how he will keep calm when bullied by the sergeant major, of whom he says he would give "five years of my life to [have] walked up to him and smacked him in the nose." To complete the picture of the Sioux War, and particularly the Powder River Expedition, Sherry Smith frames Private Smith’s narrative with contemporary accounts written by other participants in these events. She assembles a balanced, comprehensive history by also incorporating the testimony of officers, their Indian scouts and allies, and their enemy, the Northern Cheyennes. In camp on Christmas Eve, 1876, Smith bought a can of peaches, which cost him two dollars, to share with his bunkmate. Meanwhile, he sees another man give ten dollars for a bottle of whiskey. His own words best convey the feelings of a young man far from home at Christmas: "We had a regular Old Christmas Dinner, a little piece of fat bacon and hard tack and a half cup of coffee. You bet I thought of home now if ever I did. But fate was a gane me and I could not bee there. My Bunkey bought some candy and we ate it." Christmas candy and thoughts of home; some things never change, as readers will learn in this picture of military life unique in its eloquent honesty.
Download or read book 10 Horse 40 Saddle written by Don Rickey and published by Bison Books. This book was released on 1999 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reprint of a 1976 book (Old Army Press), with a new introduction by Daniel N. Vichorek. This book introduces the reader both to the life and to the gear of the authentic 1880s cowboy, using information gathered from interviews with men who actually rode the range. Trying to correct some misconceptions surrounding the cowboy that have been prevalent in modern media, Rickey, also author of 40 Miles a Day on Beans and Hay, describes their clothes (hats, coats, pants, gloves, chaps, even underwear), arms and equipment (guns, ropes, bed rolls), and gear (saddles, bridles, brands), incorporating dozens of sketches by Dale Crawford. 10x7". Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Download or read book Bloody Knife written by Ben Innis and published by . This book was released on 1994 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Boots Saddles at the Little Bighorn written by James S. Hutchins and published by . This book was released on 1976 with total page 81 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Typewritten book draft with handwritten corrections. The item is about the equipment of George Armstrong Custer's 7th Cavalry. The book draft was submitted to the Old Army Press for publication.
Download or read book The Sergeants Major of the Army written by and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Five Years a Cavalryman Abridged Annotated written by H H McConnell and published by Independently Published. This book was released on 2019-06-21 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A highly-amusing, unsentimental view of frontier army life in the 19th century, Harry McConnell's classic memoir of his years in the 6th United States Cavalry is a treasure for readers and historians alike.A Civil War veteran, McConnell hints at mysterious but unnamed reasons why he left his wife and child to join the U.S. Army and head to the Wild West (they joined him later). But with wit and clarity, he paints a picture of life in a rough regiment of men who mostly couldn't find occupation elsewhere but in the frontier army.Among the topics upon which he turns his wit are army procurement and record keeping, the cruelty and capriciousness of some officers, the official policies in force at the time toward Indians, and the simple life of staying alive in dangerous conditions, including under fire.But he also writes of the famous men he met, the heroic comrades with whom he served, and the great love he came to have for Texas. In all, it is a rollicking and exciting ride through a time and place that no longer exists.
Download or read book Into the Valley written by John Hersey and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2002-03-01 with total page 108 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: John Hersey (1914?93) was a correspondent for Time and Life magazines when in 1942 he was sent to cover Guadalcanal, the largest of the Solomon Islands in the Western Pacific. While there, Hersey observed a small battle upon which Into the Valley is based. While the battle itself was not of great significance, Hersey gives insightful details concerning the jungle environment, recounts conversations among the men before, during, and after battle, and describes how the wounded were evacuated as well as other works of daily heroism.
Download or read book Mr Kipling s Army written by Byron Farwell and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 1987 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is an upstairs-downstairs view of the Victorian-Edwardian army, one of the world's most peculiar fighting forces. The battles it fought are household words, but the idiosyncracies and eccentricities of its soldiers and the often appalling conditions under which they lived have gone largely unrecorded. Byron Farwell explores here the lives of officers and men, their foibles, gallantry, and diversions, their discipline and their rewards.
Download or read book Soldiering in the Shadow of Wounded Knee written by Hartford G. Clark and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2016-10-20 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the aftermath of the December 1890 massacre at Wounded Knee, U.S. Army troops braced for retaliation from Lakota Sioux Indians, who had just suffered the devastating loss of at least two hundred men, women, and children. Among the soldiers sent to guard the area around Pine Ridge Agency, South Dakota, was twenty-two-year-old Private Hartford Geddings Clark (1869–1920) of the Sixth U.S. Cavalry. Within three days of the massacre, he began keeping a diary that he continued through 1891. Clark’s account—published here for the first time—offers a rare and intimate view of a soldier’s daily life set against the backdrop of a rapidly vanishing American frontier. According to editor Jerome A. Greene, Private Clark was a perceptive young man with wide-ranging interests. Although his diary begins in South Dakota, most of its entries reflect Clark’s service at Fort Niobrara, located amid the sand hills of north-central Nebraska. There, beginning in February 1891, five troops of the Sixth Cavalry sought to protect area citizens from potential Indian disturbances. Among his hard-drinking fellow soldiers, “Harry,” as Clark was called, stood out as a teetotaler. He was also an avid horse racer, huntsman, and the leading pitcher on Fort Niobrara’s baseball team. Beyond its descriptions of a grueling training regimen and off-duty entertainment, the diary reveals Clark’s evolving perception of Native peoples. Although he initially viewed them as savage enemies, Private Clark’s attitude softened when the army began enlisting Indian men and he befriended a Lakota soldier named Yellow Hand, who shared Clark's love of sports. Drawing on his extensive knowledge of nineteenth-century military history, Greene offers a richly annotated version of Private Clark’s remarkable original text, replete with information on the U.S. Army’s final occupation of the American West.
Download or read book Prairie Nocturne written by Ivan Doig and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2003 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From one of the greatest novelists of the American West comes a surprising and riveting story set in Montana and in New York during the Harlem Renaissance--drawing on the characters from Doig's most popular work.
Download or read book The American Soldier 1866 1916 written by John A. Haymond and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2018-03-08 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the years following the Civil War, the U.S. Army underwent a professional decline. Soldiers served their enlistments at remote, nameless posts from Arizona to Alaska. Harsh weather, bad food and poor conditions were adversaries as dangerous as Indian raiders. Yet under these circumstances, men continued to enlist for $13 a month. Drawing on soldiers' narratives, personal letters and official records, the author explores the common soldier's experience during the Reconstruction Era, the Indian Wars, the Spanish-American War, the Philippine-American War and the Punitive Expedition into Mexico.
