Forty Miles a Day on Beans and Hay: The Enlisted Soldier Fighting the Indian Wars

by Don Rickey Jr.

Overview

The 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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780806111131
Publisher:	University of Oklahoma Press
Publication date:	12/15/1973
Pages:	416
Sales rank:	641,851
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Don Rickey, Jr., who holds the Ph.D. degree from the University of Oklahoma, is park interpretive planner, National Park Service, Midwest Region, in Omaha, and an authority on the military history of the American West.

Editorial Reviews

This volume most certainly helps to reveal both the nature and the character of those who participated in the last Indian wars of the trans-Mississippi West. As such, it is a substantial addition not only to American military history in general but also a contribution to the literature of the western frontier.”— American Historical Review

From the Publisher