UTLEY : Frontier regulars (fülszöveg)
In 1890, the year of Wounded Knee, four transcontinental railroads spanned the West—in 1866 there had been none. In 1890, eight and one-half million settlers occupied the North American Indian's former hunting grounds—in 1866 there had been fewer than two million. By 1880, the thirteen million buffalo that had darkened the plains in 1866 had disappeared. The Regular Army had secured the West.
Robert M. Utley, distinguished historian of the American West, combines scholarship and drama in this sweeping chronicle of the final, massive drive by die Regular Army to subdue and control the American Indian and open the West during the twenty-five years following the Civil War.
The Army's campaign against die Indian was directed by Maj. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman, hero of Atlanta and in 1866 ruler of a military domain stretching west from the Mississippi to the Rocky Mountains and north from Texas to the British boundary. Operating independently of the United States War Department, his Army fought to secure the West for over a third of a century—and many of its officers would be forever associated with the bloodiest battles of the Indian wars: Maj. Gen. Philip Henry Sheridan, Gen. Winfield Scott Hancock, Lt. Col. George A. Custer.
Robert Utley skillfully juxtaposes his analysis of the postwar condition of Sherman's Army with brilliant descriptions of military maneuvers, guerrilla tactics, and flaming battles. He scrutinizes the Army at different stages in its development: its relations with Congress and the people; its mode of operation, equipment, recruitment; its lifestyle. He presents a traditional organization of men and forts unprepared for unconventional warfare, and examines military doctrine in urgent need of reform.
At the core of the book stand Robert Utley's incisive accounts of the military campaigns waged against the Indian—from the first skirmishes with the Sioux over the Bozeman Trail defenses in 1866, to the final defeat and subjugation of the Northern Plains Indians in 1890. As battles became more ferocious, debate between peace advocates and military leaders intensified. Treaties were signed which established reservations. Signed and broken. Concentration, education, "civilization," and agricultural self-support were offered the Indian as a new and better way of life. But across the West the Indian resisted the reservation. Hostilities raged on. The Red River War, Sitting Bull's War and Little Big Horn, the conquest of the Sioux, the defeat of the Nez Percé, the Mexican border conflicts, war in Texas, Geronimo and the Apache wars, the desperate Ghost Dance phenomenon—all were manifestations of the Indian's refusal to submit to false treaties and abandon his lands.
In December 1890, the Sioux died at Wounded Knee. The struggle to secure the West had ended.
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| KATALÓGUS | TARTALOM |
