Carbine and Lance

Carbine and Lance PDF

Author: Wilbur Sturtevant Nye

Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press

Published: 2013-07-10

Total Pages: 468

ISBN-13: 0806187182

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Fort Sill, located in the heart of the old Kiowa-Comanche Indian country in southwestern Oklahoma, is known to a modern generation as the Field Artillery School of the United States Army. To students of American frontier history, it is known as the focal point of one of the most interesting, dramatic, and sustained series of conflicts in the records of western warfare. From 1833 to 1875, in a theater of action extending from Kansas to Mexico, the strife was almost uninterrupted. The U.S. Army, Kansas militia, Texas Rangers, and white pioneers and traders were arrayed against the fierce and heroic bands of the Kiowas, Comanches, Cheyennes, Arapahoes, and Kiowa-Apaches. The savage skirmishes with the southwestern Indians before the Civil War provided many army officers with a kind of training that proved indispensable to them in that later, prolonged conflict. When hostilities ceased, Sherman, Sheridan, Dodge, Custer, Grierson, and other commanders again resumed the harsh field of guerrilla warfare against their Indian foes—tough, hard fighters. With the inauguration of the so-called Quaker Peace Policy during President Grant’s first administration, the hands of the army were tied. The Fort Sill reservation became a place of refuge for the marauding bands that went forth unmolested to raid in Texas, Oklahoma, and Mexico. The toll in human life reached such proportions that the government finally turned the southwestern Indians over to the army for discipline, and a permanent settlement of the bands was achieved by 1875. From extensive research, conversations with both Indian and white eyewitnesses, and his familiarity with Indian life and army affairs, Captain Nye has written an unforgettable account of these stirring times. The delineation of character and the reconstruction of colorful scenes, so often absent in historical writing, are to be found here in abundance. His Indians are made to live again: his scenes of post life could have been written only by an army man.

Adobe Walls

Adobe Walls PDF

Author: T. Lindsay Baker

Publisher: Texas A&M University Press

Published: 1986-04-04

Total Pages: 456

ISBN-13: 9781585441761

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In the spring of 1874 a handful of men and one women set out for the Texas Panhandle to seek their fortunes in the great buffalo hunt. Moving south to follow the herds, they intended to establish a trading post to serve the hunter, or "hide men." At a place called Adobe Walls they dug blocks from the sod and built their center of operations After operating for only a few months, the post was attacked one sultry June morning by angry members of several Plains Indian tribes, whose physical and cultural survival depending on the great bison herd that were rapidly shrinking before the white men's guns. Initially defeated, that attacking Indians retreated. But the defenders also retreated leaving the deserted post to be burned by Indians intent on erasing all traces of the white man's presence. Nonetheless, tracing did remain, and in the ashes and dirt were buried minute details of the hide men's lives and the battle that so suddenly changed them. A little more than a century later white men again dug into the sod at Adobe Walls. The nineteenth-century men dug for profits, but the modern hunters sere looking for the natural time capsule inadvertently left by those earlier adventurers. The authors of this book, a historian and an archeologists, have dug into the sod and into far-flung archives to sift reality form the long-romanticized story of Adobe Walls, its residents, and the Indians who so fiercely resented their presence. The full story of Adobe Walls now tells us much about the life and work of the hide men, about the dying of the Plains Indian culture, and about the march of white commerce across the frontier.

Without Quarter

Without Quarter PDF

Author: William Young Chalfant

Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press

Published: 1991

Total Pages: 194

ISBN-13: 9780806123677

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Without Quarter is the story of the first major U.S. army expedition against the Comanches between the Mexican and Civil wars. Chalfant first sets the historical context, then traces events to the climax at Crooked Creek on May 13, 1859.

Tribal Wars of the Southern Plains

Tribal Wars of the Southern Plains PDF

Author: Stan Hoig

Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press

Published: 1993

Total Pages: 364

ISBN-13: 9780806124636

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Few people who cross the Great Plains today recollect that for centuries the land was a battleground where Indian nations fought one another for their own survival and then stood bravely against the irrepressible forces of white civilization. Even among those aware of the history, Plains Indian conflicts have been seen largely in terms of American conquest. In this readable narrative history, well-known Indian historian Stan Hoig tells how the native peoples of the southern plains have struggled continually to retain their homelands and their way of life. Tribal Wars of the Southern Plains is a comprehensive account of Indian conflicts in the area between the Platte River and the Rio Grande, from the first written reports of the Spaniards in the sixteenth century through the United States-Cheyenne Battle of the Sand Hills in 1875. The reader follows the exploits and defeats of such chiefs as Lone Wolf, Satanta, Black Kettle, and Dull Knife as they signed treaties, led attacks, battled for land, and defended their villages in the huge region that was home to the Wichitas, Comanches, Cheyennes, Arapahos, Kiowas, Osages, Pawnees, and other Indian nations. Unlike many previous studies of the Plains Indian wars, this one-volume synthesis chronicles not only the Indian-white wars but also the Indian-Indian conflicts. Of central importance are the intertribal wars that preceded the arrival of the Spaniards and continued during the next three centuries, particularly as white incursions on the north and east forced tribes from those regions onto the Great Plains. Stan Hoig details the numerous battles and the major treaties. He also explains the warrior ethic, which persists even among Plains Indian veterans today; the dual societal structure of peace and war chiefs within the tribes, in which both sometimes acted at cross-purposes, much the same as the U.S. government and frontier whites; techniques and tactics of Plains Indian warfare; and the role of medicine men, the Sun Dance, and spirituality in Plains warfare. This is a perfect introduction to an important era in the Indian history of North America by an acknowledged expert.

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