SOLDIERS WEST - BIOGRAPHIES FROM THE MILITARY FRONTIER by Hutton, Paul Andrew

University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, NE, 1987. Hardcover. Book Condition: VG/VG ( light dj edge wear), 6 x 9, xiii, 276 pages, index, b&w photos, 4 maps. introduction by Robert M. Utley. ---------------------------------Heroic advance guards of civilization or perpetrators of brutality—both sides of the popular image of soldiers in the Old West contain elements of truth, but neither is correct. "The story of the military frontier of the American West is far more complex," writes Paul Andrew Hutton in his preface to Soldiers West.The biographies in this collection emphasize the wide diversity of style, temperament, activity, and occupation that marked the careers of frontier soldiers. The officers in the anthologyrepresent the soldier as explorer, topographer, engineer, administrator, writer, scientist, combat officer, policy formulator, and subaltern. Included in the ranks are William Clark, agent of empire; Stephen H. Long, explorer and engineer; William S. Harney, pre-Civil War Indian fighter; James Henry Carleton, controversial commander in the Southwest during the Civil War; Philip H. Sheridan, commander of the post-Civil War frontier army; George Armstrong Custer, more famous in defeat than most officers were in victory; George Crook, who defended in peacetime the Indians he had warred against; John G. Bourke, best known for his ethnological studies of the Indians he fought; Benjamin H. Grierson, whose liberalism towardblacks and Indians mired him in controversy; RanaId S. Mackenzie, a leading combat officer; William B. Hazen, an officer constantly embroiled in military and political disputes; Nelson A. Miles, the "Brave Peacock," worthy of his honors; Frank D. Baldwin, now forgotten post-Civil War military hero; and Charles King, a soldier who wrote scores of novels that helped stereotype the frontier army.