Most fort histories end when the military lowers the flag for the last time and the soldiers march out. In contrast, Fort Robinson—occupied and used for more than fifty years since its abandonment by the U.S. army—has taken on new roles. This book recounts the story of this famous northwestern Nebraska army post as it underwent remarkable transformation in the first half of the twentieth century. In the early 1900s, Fort Robinson hosted the last of the African American buffalo soldiers to serve in Nebraska. In the 1920s and 1930s the fort procured and issued thousands of horses for the U.S. army’s largest remount depot. During World War II, Fort Robinson housed the army’s primary war dog training center and served as a major internment camp for German prisoners of war. After 1948, Fort Robinson became a beef research center and is now the state’s premier park. Fort Robinson and the American Century, 1900-1948, is based on more than twenty years of archival research as well as the personal recollections of the men and women who served at the fort. More than ninety photographs and five maps supplement the narrative.

Established in northwestern Nebraska in 1874, Fort Robinson served as a military post for nearly 75 years, playing a critical role in the settlement of the West. From here, soldiers marched out to participate in the Great Sioux War of 1876-1877. The famous Oglala leader Crazy Horse was killed at the post. In 1878, Dull Knife's band of Northern Cheyenne attempted to escape the post, resulting in more than 64 deaths. Troops from Fort Robinson were also sent to the Pine Ridge Agency during the Ghost Dance fervor in 1890, the last of the armed conflicts with the Lakota. The arrival of the railroad at Fort Robinson initiated a new role for the post in the 20th century. Between 1885 and 1907, Fort Robinson was home to the 9th and 10th Cavalry, the famous buffalo soldiers. In 1919, Fort Robinson became a remount depot where horses and mules were purchased and conditioned for issue to the army. During World War II, Fort Robinson included a German POW internment camp and the site of the army's largest war dog reception and training center. The fort closed in 1948 and was made a state park in 1972.

In this second volume of interviews conducted by Nebraska judge Eli S. Ricker, he focuses on white eyewitnesses and participants in the occupying and settling of the American West in the nineteenth century. In the first decade of the twentieth century, as the Old West became increasingly distant and romanticized in popular consciousness, Eli S. Ricker (1842–1926) began interviewing those who had experienced it firsthand, hoping to write a multivolume series about its last days, centering on the conflicts between Natives and outsiders. For years Ricker traveled across the northern Plains, gathering information on and off reservations, in winter and in summer. Judge Ricker never wrote his book, but his interviews are priceless sources of information about that time and place, and they offer more balanced perspectives on events than were accepted at the time. Richard E. Jensen brings together all of Ricker’s interviews with those men and women who came to the American West from elsewhere—settlers, homesteaders, and veterans. These interviews shed light on such key events as the massacre at Wounded Knee, the Little Bighorn battle, Beecher Island, Lightning Creek, the Mormon cow incident, and the Washita massacre. Also of interest are glimpses of everyday life at different agencies, including Pine Ridge, Yellow Medicine, and Fort Sill School; brief though revealing memoirs; and snapshots of cattle drives, conflicts with Natives, and the construction of the Union Pacific Railroad.

During World War II, thousands of Axis prisoners of war were held throughout Nebraska in base camps that included Fort Robinson, Camp Scottsbluff and Camp Atlanta. Many Nebraskans did not view the POWs as "evil Nazis." To them, they were ordinary men and very human. And while their stay was not entirely free from conflict, many former captives returned to the Cornhusker State to begin new lives after the cessation of hostilities. Drawing on first-person accounts from soldiers, former POWs and Nebraska residents, as well as archival research, Melissa Marsh delves into the neglected history of Nebraska's POW camps.

Until recently, histories of the American West gave little evidence of the presence--let alone importance--of African Americans in the unfolding of the western frontier. There might have been a mention of Estevan, slavery, or the Dred Scott decision, but the rich and varied experience of African Americans on the Great Plains went largely unnoted. This book, the first of its kind, supplies that critical missing chapter in American history.

The exodus of the Northern Cheyennes in 1878 and 1879, an attempt to flee from Indian Territory to their Montana homeland, is an important event in American Indian history. It is equally important in the history of towns like Oberlin, Kansas, where Cheyenne warriors killed more than forty settlers. The Cheyennes, in turn, suffered losses through violent encounters with the U.S. Army. More than a century later, the story remains familiar because it has been told by historians and novelists, and on film. In The Northern Cheyenne Exodus in History and Memory, James N. Leiker and Ramon Powers explore how the event has been remembered, told, and retold. They examine the recollections of Indians and settlers and their descendants, and they consider local history, mass-media treatments, and literature to draw thought-provoking conclusions about how this story has changed over time. The Cheyennes’ journey has always been recounted in melodramatic stereotypes, and for the last fifty years most versions have featured “noble savages” trying to reclaim their birthright. Here, Leiker and Powers deconstruct those stereotypes and transcend them, pointing out that history is never so simple. “The Cheyennes’ flight,” they write, “had left white and Indian bones alike scattered along its route from Oklahoma to Montana.” In this view, the descendants of the Cheyennes and the settlers they encountered are all westerners who need history as a “way of explaining the bones and arrowheads” that littered the plains. Leiker and Powers depict a rural West whose diverse peoples—Euro-American and Native American alike—seek to preserve their heritage through memory and history. Anyone who lives in the contemporary Great Plains or who wants to understand the West as a whole will find this book compelling.

While the role of the African American in American history has been written about extensively, it is often difficult to locate the wealth of material that has been published. African-Americans in Defense of the Nation builds on a long list of early bibliographies concerning the subject, bringing together a broad spectrum of titles related to the African-American participation in America's wars. It covers both military exploits—as African Americans have been involved in every American conflict since the Revolution—and their participation in the homefront support.