Great Plains Studies, Center for
Date of this Version
Winter 2002
Citation
Great Plains Quarterly Vol. 22, No. 1, Winter 2002, pp. 57-58.
Abstract
Professional soldier, avid sportsman, boisterous raconteur, acute observer: this composite is vividly conveyed in Wayne R. Kime's superbly-edited journals of Lieutenant Colonel Richard Irving Dodge.
Written during intervals of intense military activity in 1878-1880, Dodge describes actions that reinforced federal Indian policy on the Great Plains. Ranging from Kansas to Indian Territory, the expanse that later became Oklahoma, Dodge was in his element and at the prime of his career at a significant juncture of frontier Plains history.
Dodge served as a field commander during the Northern Cheyenne outbreak and as commanding officer of Cantonment North Fork Canadian River, the six-company outpost he established during 1879 in Indian Territory as a restraint to subsequent Cheyenne and Arapaho movements. As subaltern to the mercurial Colonel Ranald S. Mackenzie during the Ute Campaign of summer 1880, Dodge again demonstrated the abilities that by year's end were recognized in his advancement as aide-de-camp to General of the Army William T. Sherman.
During this brief, frenetic period, Dodge's writings capture the rapid change and consequent impact experienced by Great Plains Indians, settlers, and soldiers. He describes the influence of stage and railroad networks, telegraphic and postal communications, and the displacement of bison by domestic cattle. Witnessing depredations committed by Indians along the route of the outbreak and, conversely, the encroachment of settlers and cattlemen on Indian lands, Dodge implied through his observations his frustration over a thinly-stretched army required to be a frontier constabulary yet restrained in authority and jurisdiction.
Reflecting the perennial conflict between military and civilian administration of Indian affairs, Dodge is naturally critical of the Indian Bureau, and particularly Indian agent John D. Miles. But he also acknowledges the paucity of congressional funding that the bureau and the army required to assimilate the Plains tribes effectively and secure a changing frontier for Americanization. Dodge's knowledge of and innate sympathy for the tribes' condition compelled completion of a manuscript for his third book, Our Wild Indians, a classic of its time, in 1880.
As the editor of two previous editions of Dodge's journals, Wayne R. Kime deftly fleshes out his subject's personality and milieu. His annotating is exhaustive, and each journal is preceded by a commentary interpreting the backdrop of national and regional developments against which Dodge's narrative unfolds. Kime's precise scholarship combines with Dodge's lively account to make this an important addition to Great Plains literature.
Comments
Copyright 2002 by the Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln