This Is A New Release Of The Original 1905 Edition.

The American Indian Wars, or Indian Wars, were the multiple conflicts between American settlers or the United States government and the native peoples of North America from the time of earliest colonial settlement until 1924. In some cases, wars resulted from conflicts and competition for resources between the European colonists and Native Americans. There was population pressure as settlers expanded their territory, generally pushing indigenous people northward and westward. Warfare and raiding also took place as a result of wars between European powers; in North America, these enlisted their Native American allies to help them conduct warfare against each other's settlements. Many conflicts were local, involving disputes over land use, and some entailed cycles of reprisal. Particularly in later years, conflicts were spurred by ideologies such as Manifest Destiny, which held that the United States was destined to expand from coast to coast on the North American continent. In the 1830s, the United States had a policy of Indian removal east of the Mississippi River, which was a planned, large-scale removal of indigenous peoples from the areas where Europeans were settling. Particularly in the years leading up to Congressional passage of the related act, there was armed conflict between settlers and Native Americans; some removal was achieved through sale or exchange of territory through treaties.

Originally published in 1904, Indian Fights and Fighters regularly appear in bibliographies of significant works on the history of the American West. Embracing almost three decades of Plains history, it contains not only Brady's clear, fast-paced accounts of the Plains wars, but also a number of eyewitness accounts, most of which were written especially for him and which are almost impossible to find elsewhere. The Powder River Expedition, the tragedy at Fort Phil Kearny, the Wagon Box Fight, the defense of Beecher's Island, the Fetterman Massacre, the battles of Washita and Summit Springs, and the campaigns of Crook, Custer, and Miles against the Sioux all are fully treated. The introduction by James T. King sketches Brady's career and evaluates his sources.

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. His diary covers the war from the enlisted men’s viewpoint, as he worries about what he will eat and 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 years of my life to [have] walked up to him and smacked him in the nose." To complete the picture of the Sioux War, and particularly the Powder River Expedition, Sherry Smith frames Private Smith’s narrative with contemporary accounts written by other participants in these events. She assembles a balanced, comprehensive history by also incorporating the testimony of officers, their Indian scouts and allies, and their enemy, the Northern Cheyennes. In camp on Christmas Eve, 1876, Smith bought a can of peaches, which cost him two dollars, to share with his bunkmate. Meanwhile, he sees another man give ten dollars for a bottle of whiskey. His own words best convey the feelings of a young man far from home at Christmas: "We had a regular Old Christmas Dinner, a little piece of fat bacon and hard tack and a half cup of coffee. You bet I thought of home now if ever I did. But fate was a gane me and I could not bee there. My Bunkey bought some candy and we ate it." Christmas candy and thoughts of home; some things never change, as readers will learn in this picture of military life unique in its eloquent honesty.