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.
General
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