Mackenzie S Last Fight With The Cheyennes

With the tension and excitement of a novelist, and the humor of a Mark Twain, soldier-scholar John G. Bourke wrote about one of the most important battles of the Great Sioux War, of which he was a participant. John Bourke’s contribution to the history of the so-called Indian Wars cannot be overestimated. It is not as a soldier that he is best remembered, but as an anthropologist, ethnologist, folklorist, scientist, and writer—amazing for a man who was in uniform from the ages of 16 to 50. Here he detailed Ranald MacKenzie's final fight with the Cheyenne under Dull Knife in the bitter cold of winter, 1876. These were some of the same warriors who had months earlier sent General George Armstrong Custer and five companies of 7th Cavalry troopers to an early grave at the Little Bighorn. Written as only Bourke could have done, this short account is a forgotten American classic. For the first time, this long out-of-print volume is available as an affordable, well-formatted book for e-readers and smartphones. Be sure to LOOK INSIDE by clicking the cover above or download a sample.

George Crook was one of the most prominent military figures of the late-nineteenth-century Indian Wars. As Paul Magid portrays Crook in this highly readable second volume of a projected three-volume biography, the general was an innovative and eccentric soldier, with a complex and often contradictory personality, whose activities often generated intense controversy.

The valuable interviews conducted by Nebraska judge Eli S. Ricker with Indian eyewitnesses to the Wounded Knee massacre, the Little Big Horn battle, the Grattan incident, and other events and personages of the Old West are finally made widely available in this long-awaited volume. ø In the first decade of the twentieth century, as the Old West became increasingly distant and romanticized in popular consciousness, Eli S. Ricker (1843?1926) began interviewing those who had experienced it firsthand, hoping to write a multi-volume series about its last days. Among the many individuals he interviewed were American Indians, mostly Sioux, who spoke extensively about a range of subjects, some with the help of an interpreter. For years Ricker traveled across the northern Plains, determinedly gathering information on and off reservations, in winter and in summer. Judge Ricker never wrote his book, but his interviews are priceless sources of information about the Old West that offer more balanced perspectives on events than were accepted at the time. ø Richard E. Jensen brings together all of Ricker?s interviews with American Indians, annotating the conversations and offering an extensive introduction that sets forth important information about Ricker, his research, and the editorial methodology guiding the present volume.