Review of Sagebrush Soldier: Private William Earl Smith's View of the Sioux War of 1876.

Authors

Thomas W. Dunlay, University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Date of this Version

1991

Document Type

Article

Comments

Published in GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY 11:4 (Fall 1991). Copyright © 1991 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska–Lincoln.

Abstract

It is only in recent decades that the Trans-Mississippi Indian wars have become the subject of considerable scholarly as well as popular investigation and writing. It is even more recently that such study has gone beyond indignation at the fate of the Indians themselves. Sherry L. Smith's book is an attempt to understand both sides, and in particular those generally unheard participants, the enlisted men of the regular army. William Earl Smith was the author's great-grandfather, and a major part of the book is his journal of the campaign of General George Crook against the Sioux and Northern Cheyennes in the fall of 1876, culminating in the battle on the Red Fork of the Powder River.