Download or read book The War on Powder River written by Helena Huntington Smith and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 1966-01-01 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Account of the Wyoming range war of the Johnson County Stock Growers Association against homesteading cowboys and small ranchers.

Download or read book Patrick Connor s War written by David E. Wagner and published by . This book was released on 2023-03-07 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The summer of 1865 marked the transition from the Civil War to Indian war on the western plains. With the rest of the country's attention still focused on the East, the U.S. Army began an often forgotten campaign against the Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho. Led by Gen. Patrick Connor, the Powder River Indian Expedition into Wyoming sought to punish tribes for raids earlier that year. Patrick Connor's War describes the troops' movement into hostile territory while struggling with bad weather, supply shortages, and communication problems. David E. Wagner's carefully assembled account carries readers along the trail of Connor's men and allows soldiers to give firsthand impressions of the land and campaign. The author draws on journals, letters, and reports--especially the James H. Kidd Papers, a copy of Connor's expedition report previously believed burned, and the newly discovered C. M. Lee diary--to reconstruct a day-by-day chronology that finds the men trudging, sometimes barefoot and half starved, over unforgiving terrain. The thrill and danger of buffalo hunts and skirmishes with Indians punctuated an arduous trek across the northern plains. Copious maps tie narrative to topography by plotting Connor's route and the paths of the units under him. Also included is a detailed account of the civilian road-building expedition of James Sawyers, whose fate became intertwined with the Powder River expedition. Two dozen illustrations and biographical sketches of main players round out the work. This first major campaign of the post-Civil War Indian wars has been largely overlooked by historians--but should be no longer. Patrick Connor's War breaks new ground by bringing the expedition to life in fascinating detail that will satisfy scholars and engage general readers.

Download or read book Powder River Invasion War on the Rustlers in 1892 Expanded Annotated written by A. S. Mercer and published by Independently Published. This book was released on 2019-02-21 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The true story of the Johnson County War written by the crusading local journalist who had once been on the side of the cattle barons.Asa Shinn Mercer is best known today as one of the Mercer brothers who brought pioneer brides from the east coast to the frontier town of Seattle in the 1860s. That story was fictionalized in the 1960s TV hit, "Here Come the Brides."Thirty years later, Mercer moved his family to Cheyenne, Wyoming to run the public relations newspaper for the Wyoming Stock Grower's Association. He soon found that the cattle barons were engaged in theft, extortion, and even murder to drive out small ranchers from Johnson County and claim exclusive rights to grazing and water.Turning his journalistic sights on the cattlemen, Mercer was threatened, beaten, his office taken over, and his newspaper suspended for a time. But he persevered, writing this account of the dangerous men he knew and had once worked for.The first edition of this book, "The Banditti of the Plains," was suppressed and today is extremely rare, fetching prices in the thousands of dollars. In 1923, John Mercer Boots republished the book and this edition expands on that one.Updated with an extensive new introduction and annotations about the principal actors in the drama, which did not appear in Mercer's or Boots' editions, this important work is now available for a 21st century audience.

Download or read book Morning Star Dawn written by Jerome A. Greene and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From a recognized authority on the High Plains Indians wars comes this narrative history blending both American Indian and U.S. Army perspectives on the attack that destroyed the village of Northern Cheyenne chief Morning Star. Of momentous significance for the Cheyennes as well as the army, this November 1876 encounter, coming exactly six months to the day after the Custer debacle at the Little Bighorn, was part of the Powder River Expedition waged by Brigadier General George Crook against the Indians. Vital to the larger context of the Great Sioux War, the attack on Morning Star’s village encouraged the eventual surrender of Crazy Horse and his Sioux followers. Unbiased in its delivery, Morning Star Dawn offers the most thorough modern scholarly assessment of the Powder River Expedition. It incorporates previously unsynthesized data from the National Archives, the Library of Congress, the U.S. Army Military History Institute, and other repositories, and provides an examination of all facets of the campaign leading to and following the destruction of Morning Star’s village.

Download or read book Powder River written by Paul L. Hedren and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2016-05-31 with total page 473 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Great Sioux War of 1876–77 began at daybreak on March 17, 1876, when Colonel Joseph J. Reynolds and six cavalry companies struck a village of Northern Cheyennes—Sioux allies—thereby propelling the Northern Plains tribes into war. The ensuing last stand of the Sioux against Anglo-American settlement of their homeland spanned some eighteen months, playing out across more than twenty battle and skirmish sites and costing hundreds of lives on both sides and many millions of dollars. And it all began at Powder River. Powder River: Disastrous Opening of the Great Sioux War recounts the wintertime Big Horn Expedition and its singular great battle, along with the stories of the Northern Cheyennes and their elusive leader Old Bear. Historian Paul Hedren tracks both sides of the conflict through a rich array of primary source material, including the transcripts of Reynolds’s court-martial and Indian recollections. The disarray and incompetence of the war’s beginnings—officers who failed to take proper positions, disregard of orders to save provisions, failure to cooperate, and abandonment of the dead and a wounded soldier—in many ways anticipated the catastrophe that later occurred at the Little Big Horn. Forty photographs, many previously unpublished, and five new maps detail the action from start to ignominious conclusion. Hedren’s comprehensive account takes Powder River out of the shadow of the Little Big Horn and reveals how much this critical battle tells us about the army’s policy and performance in the West, and about the debacle soon to follow.

Download or read book Wyoming Range War written by John W. Davis and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2012-09-05 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Wyoming attorney John W. Davis retells the story of the West’s most notorious range war. Having delved more deeply than previous writers into land and census records, newspapers, and trial transcripts, Davis has produced an all-new interpretation. He looks at the conflict from the perspective of Johnson County residents—those whose home territory was invaded and many of whom the invaders targeted for murder—and finds that, contrary to the received explanation, these people were not thieves and rustlers but legitimate citizens. The broad outlines of the conflict are familiar: some of Wyoming’s biggest cattlemen, under the guise of eliminating livestock rustling on the open range, hire two-dozen Texas cowboys and, with range detectives and prominent members of the Wyoming Stock Growers Association, “invade” north-central Wyoming to clean out rustlers and other undesirables. While the invaders kill two suspected rustlers, citizens mobilize and eventually turn the tables, surrounding the intruders at a ranch where they intend to capture them by force. An appeal for help convinces President Benjamin Harrison to call out the army from nearby Fort McKinley, and after an all-night ride the soldiers arrive just in time to stave off the invaders’ annihilation. Though taken prisoner, they later avoid prosecution. The cattle barons’ powers of persuasion in justifying their deeds have colored accounts of the war for more than a century. Wyoming Range War tells a compelling story that redraws the lines between heroes and villains.

Download or read book Powder River Invasion written by Asa Shinn Mercer and published by . This book was released on 1928 with total page 146 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Where a Hundred Soldiers Were Killed written by John H. Monnett and published by UNM Press. This book was released on 2008 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Monnett takes a closer look at the struggle between the mining interests of the United States and the Lakota and Cheyenne nations in 1866 that climaxed with the Fetterman Massacre.

Download or read book Powder River Invasion written by Asa Shinn Mercer and published by . This book was released on 1923 with total page 146 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Riders of Judgment written by Frederick Feikema Manfred and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2014-04 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Here is a rich and serious novel of the violent West. Full of the authentic sounds and colors of Wyoming cattle country in the late nineteenth century, it tells the true story of a long-vanished time--the era of the cowhands and the bloody Johnson County range wars. Riders of Judgment centers on the three Hammett brothers and their cousin Rosemary, whom all three love. To the oldest brother, Cain, falls the lot of avenging the murder of his father, grandfather, and brother. Cain--who is in a sense a cowboy Hamlet--is torn by conflicts within himself. He desires peace yet is forced to wear a gun. He is a law-abiding man by instinct yet has to take the law into his own hands. He is loved by a woman but rejects her because he feels unworthy of her love. Then one spring morning the cattle barons invade his territory, and Cain's hesitancy vanishes. One man's inner struggle becomes a fight to turn the cattle kingdom into a free country for the small stockman. Riders of Judgment is the final book in Frederick Manfred's five-volume series, The Buckskin Man Tales.

Download or read book The Banditti of the Plains written by A. S. Mercer and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2013-06-14 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1894, when A. S. Mercer published this angry eyewitness account of the cattlemen’s invasion of Wyoming, the book was so thoroughly and ruthlessly suppressed that few copies of that edition remain today. Although historians have since questioned some of Mercer’s conclusions about the Johnson County range war, they have never controverted the facts of the cattlemen-homesteader struggle as he grimly reported them. With the intention of "executing" alleged rustlers and terrorizing the homesteaders, a band of fifty-two cattlemen and hired gunmen invaded Johnson Country, Wyoming, in April 1892. After besieging and killing "the bravest man in Johnson County," the raiders in turn found themselves besieged by the homesteaders and finally in the protective custody of the Untied States cavalry. Further legal and illegal maneuvering permitted the invaders to go unpunished, but the cattlemen never again attempted to retain their hold over the range with organized mob violence. In this new edition of The Banditti of the Plains the original text has been followed with the utmost fidelity, even including the illustrations. An informed and interesting foreword by William H. Kittrell has been added to the book.

Download or read book Powder River Odyssey written by David E. Wagner and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The entry for September 8, 1865, is terse: “We marched and fought over 15 miles today.” With these few words civilian military engineer Lyman G. Bennett characterized the experience of the 1,400 men of the Powder River Expedition’s Eastern Division as they trudged through largely unexplored territory and faced off with American Indians determined to keep their hunting grounds. David E. Wagner’s Powder River Odyssey: Nelson Cole’s Western Campaign of 1865 tells the story of a largely forgotten campaign at the pivotal moment when the Civil War ended and the Indian wars captured national attention. The expedition’s mission seemed simple: punish the bands of Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho that had attacked white emigrants and commercial traffic moving west along the Oregon Trail. But the army’s western command failed to appreciate either the resolve of their enemies or the difficulties of the terrain. Cole’s men, ill-provisioned from the outset, began to die of scurvy two months into the campaign and contemplated mutiny. Bennett’s previously unpublished journal and other primary sources clarify and correct previous accounts of the expedition. Fifteen detailed maps reflect the author’s intimate knowledge of the topography along the expedition’s route. Wagner’s documentary account reveals in stark detail the difficulties inherent in the army’s attempt to pacify the American West.

Download or read book Powder River Country written by Margaret Brock Hanson and published by Margaret Hanson. This book was released on 1981 with total page 536 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Powder River Expedition of 1865 written by Charles River and published by Independently Published. This book was released on 2020-11-07 with total page 46 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: *Includes pictures *Includes a bibliography for further reading The Bozeman Trail ran through the Powder River country, which included the traditional hunting grounds of Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho peoples. Attempts by the natives to prevent encroachment and armed defense of settlers along the trail led to conflicts in short order. Due to the presence of the Sioux in the region, as early as 1864, travelers were advised not to traverse the Bozeman Trail except in very large wagon trains. The U.S. Army also suffered - that year, when a party led by Captain Townshend and several soldiers set out along the Trail with a wagon train, the Sioux attacked his train, killing four soldiers in the assault. In response to Sioux raids along the Bozeman Trail, the United States Army closed the trail in 1865 to mount the Powder River Expedition against the Sioux alliance that kept ravaging settlers and the beleaguered Crows. With the Civil War nearing its end, spare men were hard to come by, but still the Powder River Expedition was prepared under the leadership of Brigadier General Patrick Connor. Charged with keeping the roads and trails of the plains open, Connor's expedition was war in all but name. Underequipped, and without enough men, the expedition turned out to be little more than a series of limited skirmishes, fortification construction, and requisitions for more men and materiel. Almost from the start, the expedition faced trouble. The various division commanders had a foggy notion of which parts of the Powder River Country they were to march through, with the varied surveys of the region not helping. The biggest problem, however, was the soldiers' refusal to march. Occurring at the climax of the Civil War, the expedition's soldiers expected to be discharged and allowed to return to their homes, not stuck in the middle of nowhere fighting another battle. Dissuaded from mutiny with the helpful aid of artillery, the various divisions finally got under way in July. The expedition faced vast open country, and that, coupled with lack of supplies, logistics, and communication beyond runners and scouts, quickly took their toll. Men succumbed to scurvy, and the east and middle divisions failed to link up on schedule, thanks largely to the lack of proper surveys of the region and general lack of knowledge of the terrain. This lack of knowledge resulted in supply failures, further exacerbating the expedition's plight. With the soldiers lacking food in a region sparse of forage for anything except oxen and birds, the natives pounced, attacking the separated divisions. The natives' attacks were a rude awakening for the soldiers, as among the three divisions only the Native American scouts had knowledge of the area or experience fighting in the West. Expecting nearly nude savages flinging spears and arrows, the natives' use of rifles and captured Army uniforms took them completely by surprise. Despite the lack of supplies and the Native American raids, the middle and east divisions managed to link up in early September, but as the united divisions marched onward to join with General Connor's division, 225 horses and mules died from heat exhaustion, starvation, or cold thanks to a recent mountain storm. Both the natives' view of the expedition and General Connor's offer an idea of the end result. "The Indians, thinking that the commander had voluntarily retired from their front, again hastened to the road, passing General Connor's retiring column to the east of his line of march, and again commenced their devilish work of pillage, plunder and massacre." General Connor himself is reported to have stated in regard to the expedition, "You have doubtless noticed the singular termination of the late campaign against the Indians. The truth is, rather harm than good was done, and our troops were, in one sense, driven out of their country by the Indians..."

Download or read book Battles and Skirmishes of the Great Sioux War 1876 1877 written by Jerome A. Greene and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 1993 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume offers accounts of the many battles and skirmishes in the Great Sioux War as they were observed by participating officers, enlisted men, scouts, surgeons, and newspaper correspondents. The selections-some rendered immediately after the encounters and some set down in reminiscences years later - are important and little-known sources of information about the war. By their personal nature, they give a compelling sense of immediacy to the actions. The editor's introduction and commentary on each of the accounts help readers understand the interrelationship of events and appreciate the entire spectrum of the conflict.

Download or read book Blood Song written by Terry C. Johnston and published by St. Martin's Paperbacks. This book was released on 2013-07-23 with total page 406 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Blood Song Terry C. Johnston Frontier Scout Seamus Donegan is heading for Montana Territory with his new bride when war erupts in the Black Hills of Dakota. Sitting bull and Crazy horse have defied the federal Government and refused to lead the wild tribes of the Northern Plains onto the reservation, and Washington decides to end the Indian problem once and for all. Donegan joins us with General George Cook who is leading the 2nd and 3rd Cavalry and a rough-and-tumble band of scouts and interpreters into the bloody battle. For Seamus Donegan and the men on the front lines, the long fight in the bitter cold of winter will be one of loneliness and fear--a struggle for survival that will not end, even with the swift and successful assault one the enemy stronghold. For in the ashes on the snow, in the fury of defeated warriors, the seeds are sown for a new and even bloodier chapter in the Indian Wars.

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.