Sagebrush Soldier: Private William Earl Smith's View of the Sioux War of 1876

Sagebrush Soldier is an account of military life during the Indian Wars in the late nineteenth-century West. Private William Earl Smith describes daily camp life, battle scenes, and the behavior of famous men--Ranald Mackenzie and George Crook--in public and private poses. He covers the war from the enlisted man's viewpoint, as he worries about what he will eat, how he will keep warm in freezing conditions, and how he will keep calm when bullied by the sergeant major, of whom he says he would give "five year of my life to [have] walked up to him and smacked him in the nose." Sherry Smith assembles a balanced, comprehensive history by incorporating the testimony of officers, Indians scouts and allies, and their enemy, the Northern Cheyennes.