Health of the Seventh Cavalry

Health of the Seventh Cavalry

Author: P. Willey

Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press

Published: 2015-09-01

Total Pages: 539

ISBN-13: 080615330X

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With its charismatic leader George Custer and its memorable encounters with Plains Indians, including the Battle of the Little Bighorn, the Seventh Cavalry serves as the iconic regiment in the post–Civil War U.S Army. Voluminous written documentation as well as archaeological and osteological research suggest that the soldiers of the Seventh represented a cross section of the men who joined the army as a whole at the time. In Health of the Seventh Cavalry, editors P. Willey and Douglas D. Scott and their co-contributors—experts in history, medicine, human biology, epidemiology, and human osteology—examine the Seventh’s medical records to determine the health of the nineteenth-century U.S. Army, and the prevalence and treatment of the numerous conditions that plagued soldiers during the Indian Wars. Building on previous comparisons of archaeological evidence and medical records, Willey and Scott follow multiple lines of inquiry to assess the health of the Seventh, from its organization in 1866 to its 1884 station on the Northern Great Plains. Pairing general overviews of nineteenth- and twentieth-century health care with essays on malaria, injuries, post-traumatic stress disorder, and other specific ailments, Health of the Seventh Cavalry provides fresh insights into the health, disease, and trauma that the regiment experienced over two decades. More than 100 tables, graphs, and maps track the troops’ illnesses and diseases by month, season, year, and location, as well as their stress periods, desertions, and deaths. A glossary of medical terms rounds out the volume. As an ideal exemplar of regiments of its time, the Seventh Cavalry affords scholars and enthusiasts a better understanding of nineteenth-century health and medicine. This volume reveals the struggles that the post–Civil War Seventh, and the entire U.S. Army, faced on the battlefield and elsewhere.


American Trinity

American Trinity

Author: Larry Len Peterson

Publisher: Sweetgrass Books

Published: 2017-09-11

Total Pages: 548

ISBN-13: 1591522056

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American Trinity is for everyone who loves the American West and wants to learn more about the good, the bad, and the ugly. It is a sprawling story with a scholarly approach in method but accessible in manner. In this innovative examination, Dr. Larry Len Peterson explores the origins, development, and consequences of hatred and racism from the time modern humans left Africa 100,000 years ago to the forced placement of Indian children on off-reservation schools far from home in the late 1800s. Along the way, dozens of notable individuals and cultures are profiled. Many historical events turned on the lives of legendary Americans like the "Father of the West," Thomas Jefferson, and the "Son of the West," George Armstrong Custer - two strange companions who shared an unshakable sense of their own skills - as their interpretation of truths motivated them in the winning of the West. Dr. Peterson reveals how anti-Indian sentiments were always only obliquely about them. They were victims but not the cause. The Indian was a symbol, not a real person. The politics of hate and racism directed toward them was also experienced in prior centuries by Jews, enslaved Africans, and other Christians. Hatred and racism, when taken into the public domain, are singularly difficult to justify, which is why Europeans and Americans have always sought vindication from the highest sources of authority in their cultures. In the Middle Ages it was religion supplemented later by the philosophy of the Enlightenment. In nineteenth-century Europe and America, religion and philosophy were joined by science and medicine to support Manifest Destiny, scientific racism, and social Darwinism, all of which had profound consequences on Native Americans and the Spirit of the West. Presenting research in anthropology, archaeology, biology, history, law, medicine, religion, philosophy, and psychology, Dr. Peterson provides the latest observations that delineate why the Native American's life was destroyed. American Trinity is a stunning portrait, a view at once unique, panoramic, and intimate. It is a fascinating book that will make you think about the differences between belief and knowledge; about the self-skepticism of science and medicine; and about what aspects of the world we take on faith.


Deliverance from the Little Big Horn

Deliverance from the Little Big Horn

Author: Joan Nabseth Stevenson

Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press

Published: 2012-11-09

Total Pages: 227

ISBN-13: 0806187921

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Of the three surgeons who accompanied Custer’s Seventh Cavalry on June 25, 1876, only the youngest, twenty-eight-year-old Henry Porter, survived that day’s ordeal, riding through a gauntlet of Indian attackers and up the steep bluffs to Major Marcus Reno’s hilltop position. But the story of Dr. Porter’s wartime exploits goes far beyond the battle itself. In this compelling narrative of military endurance and medical ingenuity, Joan Nabseth Stevenson opens a new window on the Battle of the Little Big Horn by re-creating the desperate struggle for survival during the fight and in its wake. As Stevenson recounts in gripping detail, Porter’s life-saving work on the battlefield began immediately, as he assumed the care of nearly sixty soldiers and two Indian scouts, attending to wounds and performing surgeries and amputations. He evacuated the critically wounded soldiers on mules and hand litters, embarking on a hazardous trek of fifteen miles that required two river crossings, the scaling of a steep cliff, and a treacherous descent into the safety of the steamboat Far West, waiting at the mouth of the Little Big Horn River. There began a harrowing 700-mile journey along the Yellowstone and Missouri Rivers to the post hospital at Fort Abraham Lincoln near Bismarck, Dakota Territory. With its new insights into the role and function of the army medical corps and the evolution of battlefield medicine, this unusual book will take its place both as a contribution to the history of the Great Sioux War and alongside such vivid historical novels as Son of the Morning Star and Little Big Man. It will also ensure that the selfless deeds of a lone “contract” surgeon—unrecognized to this day by the U.S. government—will never be forgotten.


Regular Army O!

Regular Army O!

Author: Douglas C. McChristian

Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press

Published: 2017-05-04

Total Pages: 783

ISBN-13: 0806159030

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“The drums they roll, upon my soul, for that’s the way we go,” runs the chorus in a Harrigan and Hart song from 1874. “Forty miles a day on beans and hay in the Regular Army O!” The last three words of that lyric aptly title Douglas C. McChristian’s remarkable work capturing the lot of soldiers posted to the West after the Civil War. At once panoramic and intimate, Regular Army O! uses the testimony of enlisted soldiers—drawn from more than 350 diaries, letters, and memoirs—to create a vivid picture of life in an evolving army on the western frontier. After the volunteer troops that had garrisoned western forts and camps during the Civil War were withdrawn in 1865, the regular army replaced them. In actions involving American Indians between 1866 and 1891, 875 of these soldiers were killed, mainly in minor skirmishes, while many more died of disease, accident, or effects of the natural environment. What induced these men to enlist for five years and to embrace the grim prospect of combat is one of the enduring questions this book explores. Going well beyond Don Rickey Jr.’s classic work Forty Miles a Day on Beans and Hay (1963), McChristian plumbs the regulars’ accounts for frank descriptions of their training to be soldiers; their daily routines, including what they ate, how they kept clean, and what they did for amusement; the reasons a disproportionate number occasionally deserted, while black soldiers did so only rarely; how the men prepared for field service; and how the majority who survived mustered out. In this richly drawn, uniquely authentic view, men black and white, veteran and tenderfoot, fill in the details of the frontier soldier’s experience, giving voice to history in the making.


Custer's Best

Custer's Best

Author: French L. MacLean

Publisher: Schiffer Pub Limited

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 239

ISBN-13: 9780764337574

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This is the story of George Custer's best cavalry company at the 1876 Battle of the Little Bighorn – Company M. With a tragically-flawed, but extremely brave Company Commander and a no-nonsense First Sergeant, Company M maintained a disciplined withdrawal from the skirmish line fighting, saving Major Marcus Reno's entire detachment and possibly the rest of the regiment from annihilation. Presented here is the most-detailed work on a single company at the Little Bighorn ever written – the product of multi-year research at archives across the country and detailed visits to the battlefield by a combat veteran who understands fields of fire, weapons' effects, training, morale, decision-making, unit cohesion and the value of outstanding non-commissioned officers.


Congressional Record

Congressional Record

Author: United States. Congress

Publisher:

Published: 1917

Total Pages: 1082

ISBN-13:

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The Congressional Record is the official record of the proceedings and debates of the United States Congress. It is published daily when Congress is in session. The Congressional Record began publication in 1873. Debates for sessions prior to 1873 are recorded in The Debates and Proceedings in the Congress of the United States (1789-1824), the Register of Debates in Congress (1824-1837), and the Congressional Globe (1833-1873)


Comanche

Comanche

Author: Barron Brown

Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing

Published: 2017-01-12

Total Pages: 101

ISBN-13: 1787209040

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Comanche, first published in 1935 and beautifully illustrated by the book’s author Barron Brown, is an account of the U.S. Army horse “Comanche,” who survived General George Armstrong Custer’s detachment of the United States 7th Cavalry at the Battle of the Little Bighorn in 1876. “Comanche” was bought by the U.S. Army in 1868 in St. Louis, Missouri and sent to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. He was captured in a wild horse roundup on April 3, 1868. Captain Myles Keogh of the 7th Cavalry liked the 15 hands (60 inches, 152 cm) gelding and bought him for his personal mount, to be ridden only in battle. In 1868, while the army was fighting the Comanche in Kansas, the horse was wounded in the hindquarters by an arrow but continued to carry Keogh in the fight. He named the horse “Comanche” to honor his bravery. “Comanche” was wounded many more times but always exhibited the same toughness. It was on June 25, 1876 that Captain Keogh rode “Comanche” at the Battle of the Little Bighorn, led by Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer, in which their entire detachment was killed. U.S. soldiers found “Comanche,” badly wounded, two days after the battle. After being transported to Fort Lincoln, he was slowly nursed back to health. After a lengthy convalescence, “Comanche” was retired. In June 1879, “Comanche” was brought to Fort Meade by the Seventh Regiment, where he was kept like a prince until 1887. He was taken to Fort Riley, Kansas. As an honor, he was made “Second Commanding Officer” of the 7th Cavalry. “Comanche” died of colic on November 7, 1891, believed to be 29 years old at the time. He is one of only three horses in U.S. history to be given a military funeral with full military honors, the others were “Black Jack” and “Sergeant Reckless.” His remains were sent to the University of Kansas and preserved, where the taxidermy mount can still be seen today in the university’s Natural History Museum.