Frontier Regulars

The United States Army and the Indian, 1866-1891

Robert M. Utley

• Publisher: Bison Books
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780803295513
• eBook ISBN: 9780803295681
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

In Frontier Regulars Robert M. Utley combines scholarship and drama to produce an impressive history of the final, massive drive by the Regular Army to subdue and control the American Indians and open the West during the twenty-five years following the Civil War.

Here are incisive accounts of the campaign directed by Major General William Tecumseh Sherman—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. Utley's brilliant descriptions of military maneuvers and flaming battles are juxtaposed with a careful analysis of Sherman's army: its mode of operation, equipment, and recruitment; its lifestyle and relations with Congress and civilians.

Proud of the United States Army and often sympathetic toward the Indians, Utley presents a balanced overview of the long struggle. He concludes that the frontier army was not "the heroic vanguard of civilization" as sometimes claimed and still less "the barbaric band of butchers depicted in the humanitarian literature of the nineteenth century and the atonement literature of the twentieth." Rather, it was a group of ordinary (and sometimes extraordinary) men doing the best they could.

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Maps
• Errata
• Introduction
• One: Return to the Frontier
• Two: The Postwar Army: Command, Staff, and Line
• Three: The Problem of Doctrine
• Four: The Army, Congress, and the People
• Five: Weapons, Uniforms, and Equipment
• Six: Army Life on the Border
• Seven: Fort Phil Kearny, 1866
• Eight: Hancock’s War, 1867
• Nine: The Peace Commission of 1867
• Ten: Operations on the Southern Plains, 1868–69
• Eleven: Beyond the Plains, 1866–70
• Twelve: Grant’s Peace Policy, 1869–74
• Thirteen: The Red River War, 1874–75
• Fourteen: Sitting Bull, 1870–76
• Fifteen: The Conquest of the Sioux, 1876–81
• Sixteen: Nez Percé Bid for Freedom, 1877
• Seventeen: Bannock, Paiute, Sheepeater, and Ute, 1878–79
• Eighteen: Mexican Border Conflicts, 1870–81
• Nineteen: Geronimo, 1881–86
• Twenty: Ghost Dance, 1890–91
• Bibliography
• Index
• Back Cover