Search results for ""Author Robert M Utley""

Assigned to the District of Utah during the Civil War, physician John Vance Lauderdale spent the next twenty-five years on army posts in the American West, serving in California, Arizona, New Mexico, South Dakota, and Texas. Throughout his career he kept a detailed journal and sent long letters home to his sister in upstate New York. This selection of Lauderdale’s writings, edited and annotated by a premier historian of the American West, offers an insightful account of army life that will teach readers much about the settlement and growth of the West in a time of rapid change.Lauderdale’s observations are keen and critical. He writes about fellow officers, his army superiors, the civilians and American Indians he encountered, life on officers’ row, and the day-to-day functioning of the army medical service. Particularly valuable are his insights into military interactions with local communities of Mormons, American Indians, and Hispanos.

Read more less

In Frontier Regulars Robert M. Utley combines scholarship and drama to produce an impressive history of the final, massive drive by the Regular Army to subdue and control the American Indians and open the West during the twenty-five years following the Civil War. Here are incisive accounts of the campaign directed by Major General William Tecumseh Sherman—from the first skirmishes with the Sioux over the Bozeman Trail defenses in 1866 to the final defeat and subjugation of the Northern Plains Indians in 1890. Utley's brilliant descriptions of military maneuvers and flaming battles are juxtaposed with a careful analysis of Sherman's army: its mode of operation, equipment, and recruitment; its lifestyle and relations with Congress and civilians.Proud of the United States Army and often sympathetic toward the Indians, Utley presents a balanced overview of the long struggle. He concludes that the frontier army was not "the heroic vanguard of civilization" as sometimes claimed and still less "the barbaric band of butchers depicted in the humanitarian literature of the nineteenth century and the atonement literature of the twentieth." Rather, it was a group of ordinary (and sometimes extraordinary) men doing the best they could.

Read more less

Frontiersmen in Blue is a comprehensive history of the achievements and failures of the United States Regular and Volunteer Armies that confronted the Indian tribes of the West in the two decades between the Mexican War and the close of the Civil War. Between 1848 and 1865 the men in blue fought nearly all of the western tribes. Robert Utley describes many of these skirmishes in consummate detail, including descriptions of garrison life that was sometimes agonizingly isolated, sometimes caught in the lightning moments of desperate battle.

Read more less

'Easily the most significant book yet published on the Battle of the Little Bighorn."--Paul L. Hedren, Western Historical Quarterly "[Gray] has applied rigorous analysis as no previous historian has done to these oft-analyzed events. His detailed time-motion study of the movements of the various participants frankly boggles the mind of this reviewer. No one will be able to write of this battle again without reckoning with Gray"--Thomas W. Dunlay, Journal of American History "Gray challenges many time~honored beliefs about the battle. Perhaps most significantly, he brings in as much as possible the testimony of the Indian witnesses, especially that of the young scout Curley, which generations of historians have dismissed for contradictions that Gray convincingly demonstrates were caused not by Curley but by the assumptions made by his questioners ...The contrasts in [this] book...restate the basic components of what still attracts the imagination to the Little Bighorn."--Los Angeles Times Book Review "Gray's analysis, by and large, is impressively drawn; it is an immensely logical reconstruction that should stand the test of time. As a contribution to Custer and Indian wars literature, it is indeed masterful."--Jerome A. Greene, New Mexico Historical Review John S. Gray was a distinguished historian whose books included the acclaimed Centennial Campaign: The Sioux War of 1876. Custer's Last Campaign is the winner of the Western Writers of American Spur award and the Little Bighorn Associates John M. Carroll Literary Award.

Read more less

Taking a novel approach to the military history of the post-Civil War West, distinguished historian Robert M. Utley examines the careers of seven military leaders who served as major generals for the Union in the Civil War, then as brigadier generals in command of the U.S. Army's western departments. By examining both periods in their careers, Utley makes a unique contribution in delineating these commanders' strengths and weaknesses. While some of the book's subjects - notably Generals George Crook and Nelson A. Miles - are well known, most are no longer widely remembered. Yet their actions were critical in the expansion of federal control in the West. The commanders effected the final subjugation of American Indian tribal groups, exercising direct oversight of troops in the field as they fought the wars that would bring Indians under military and government control. After introducing readers to postwar army doctrine, organization, and administration, Utley takes each general in turn, describing his background, personality, eccentricities, and command style and presenting the rudiments of the campaigns he prosecuted. Crook embodied the ideal field general, personally leading his troops in their operations, though with varying success. Christopher C. Augur and John Pope, in contrast, preferred to command from their desks in department headquarters, an approach that led both of them to victory on the battlefield. And Miles, while perhaps the frontier army's most detestable officer, was also its most successful in the field. Rounding out the book with an objective comparison of all eight generals' performance records, Utley offers keen insights into their influence on the U.S. military as an institution and on the development of the American West.

Read more less

George Armstrong Custer. The name evokes instant recognition among Americans and people around the world. No figure in the history of the American West has more powerfully moved the human imagination. This new, lavishly illustrated book combines over 300 photographs and paintings, many in color, with a revised edition of Robert M. Utley's classic biography, Cavalier in Buckskin.Drawing on twelve years of additional research on Sitting Bull and the Battle of the Little Bighorn, Utley has dramatically changed his original interpretations of Custer's Last Stand in this revised edition, and has brought the reference list completely up to date for the benefit of students, scholars, and western history buffs.Bringing to life vivid images of the western military frontier, Custer presents George Armstrong Custer, the man and the legend, and illuminates the challenges he faced in warfare with the Indians of the Great Plains.

Read more less

In 1807, a year after Lewis and Clark returned from the shores of the Pacific, groups of trappers and hunters began to drift West to tap the rich stocks of beaver and to trade with the Native nations. Colorful and eccentric, bold and adventurous, mountain men such as John Colter, George Drouillard, Hugh Glass, Andrew Henry, and Kit Carson found individual freedom and financial reward in pursuit of pelts. Their knowledge of the country and its inhabitants served the first mapmakers, the army, and the streams of emigrants moving West in ever-greater numbers. The mountain men laid the foundations for their own displacement, as they led the nation on a westward course that ultimately spread the American lands from sea to sea.

Read more less

2021 Spur Award Winner for Best Historical Nonfiction from the Western Writers of America True West Magazine's 2020 Best Author and Historical Nonfiction Book of the YearThe Last Sovereigns is the story of how Sioux chief Sitting Bull resisted the white man’s ways as a last best hope for the survival of an indigenous way of life on the Great Plains—a nomadic life based on buffalo and indigenous plants scattered across the Sioux’s historical territories that were sacred to him and his people. Robert M. Utley explores the final four years of Sitting Bull’s life of freedom, from 1877 to 1881. To escape American vengeance for his assumed role in the annihilation of Gen. George Armstrong Custer’s command at the Little Bighorn, Sitting Bull led his Hunkpapa following into Canada. There he and his people interacted with the North-West Mounted Police, in particular Maj. James M. Walsh. The Mounties welcomed the Lakota and permitted them to remain if they promised to abide by the laws and rules of Queen Victoria, the White Mother. But the Canadian government wanted the Indians to return to their homeland and the police made every effort to persuade them to leave. They were aided by the diminishing herds of buffalo on which the Indians relied for sustenance and by the aggressions of Canadian Native groups that also relied on the buffalo. Sitting Bull and his people endured hostility, tragedy, heartache, indecision, uncertainty, and starvation and responded with stubborn resistance to the loss of their freedom and way of life. In the end, starvation doomed their sovereignty. This is their story.

Read more less

A renowned biographer compares the lives and times of American outlaw Billy the Kid and his Australian counterpart Ned Kelly The oft-told exploits of Billy the Kid and Ned Kelly survive vividly in the public imaginations of their respective countries, the United States and Australia. But the outlaws’ reputations are so weighted with legend and myth, the truth of their lives has become obscure. In this adventure-filled double biography, Robert M. Utley reveals the true stories and parallel courses of the two notorious contemporaries who lived by the gun, were executed while still in their twenties, and remain compelling figures in the folklore of their homelands. Robert M. Utley draws sharp, insightful portraits of first Billy, then Ned, and compares their lives and legacies. He recounts the adventurous exploits of Billy, a fun-loving, expert sharpshooter who excelled at escape and lived on the run after indictment for his role in the Lincoln Country War. Bush-raised Ned, the son of an Irish convict father and Irish mother, was a man whose outrage against British colonial authority inspired him to steal cattle and sheep, kill three policemen, and rob banks for the benefit of impoverished Irish sympathizers. Utley recounts the exploits of the notorious young men with accuracy and appeal. He discovers their profound differences, despite their shared fates, and illuminates the worlds in which they lived on opposite sides of the globe.

Read more less

Custer and the Great Controversy was the first book to focus on the origins of what has come to be called the Custer myth. The Battle of the Little Bighorn has always been wrapped in mystery and controversy because none of Custer’s men survived to tell what happened, because press accounts circulated much misinformation and editors politicized the event, because popular writers repeated the errors of journalists, because a court of inquiry issued in bitter debate, and because Indian testimony was hard to gauge. This book, originally published in 1962, helps the reader understand the sources of the confusion and controversy surrounding the Custer fight and the beginning of the legend. Custer and the Great Controversy was Robert M. Utley’s debut, coming after six years of service as a ranger-historian at the Little Bighorn National Monument. His distinguished career as a historian has produced many books, including Frontiersmen in Blue: The United States Army and the Indian, 1848–1865 and Frontier Regulars: The United States Army and the Indian, 1866–1891, both available as Bison Books.

Read more less

Britton Davis's account of the controversial "Geronimo Campaign" of 1885–86 offers an important firsthand picture of the famous Chiricahua warrior and the men who finally forced his surrender. Davis knew most of the people involved in the campaign and was himself in charge of Indian scouts, some of whom helped hunt down the small band of fugitives Robert M. Utley's foreword reevaluates the account for the modern reader and establishes its historical background.

Read more less