Forty Miles a Day on Beans and Hay: The Enlisted Soldier Fighting the Indian WarsThe 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. |
Contents
Infantry barracks at Fort Leavenworth about 1874 | 2 |
War in the West | 3 |
Enlistment in the Regular Army | 17 |
The Wagon Box Fight August 2 1867 facing page | 18 |
The Recruit Depots and Introduction to Army Life | 33 |
Privates Noncoms and Officers | 50 |
A wounded man of General Crooks command 1876 | 50 |
Companies and Regiments | 75 |
Recreation Relaxation and Outside Interests | 185 |
Captured Crow Indians 1887 | 210 |
Campaign Preparation Equipment and the Hostiles | 214 |
Field Service in the West | 239 |
Infantrymen digging trenches 1889 | 242 |
Combat | 270 |
First Cavalrymen playing poker about 1890 | 274 |
Cowardice Heroism and the Aftermath of Combat | 301 |
Fifth Infantrymen in winter campaign outfit 1877 | 82 |
Routine Duty at the Western Posts | 88 |
Adobe barracks Fort Robinson about 1890 | 96 |
Fatigue party cutting ice about 1880 | 114 |
Material Factors of Enlisted Life at Western Posts | 116 |
Discipline and the Frontier Desertion Problem | 137 |
Crime Vice and Punishment | 156 |
Barrack room Third Cavalry 1885 | 178 |
Other editions - View all
Forty Miles a Day on Beans and Hay: The Enlisted Soldier Fighting the Indian ... Don Rickey No preview available - 1963 |