On July 17, 1866, two soldiers and six wagoners were killed by Sioux Indians. In the next two weeks, fourteen more men died in Sioux attacks. The attacks continued through the summer and fall. On December 21, disaster struck. Recklessly pursuing Indians across a wooded ridge, Brevet Lieutenant Colonel William Fetterman and his company fell into an ambush. It was the worst military blunder of the Indian Wars before the Battle of the Little Big Horn ten years later. Margaret Irvin Carrington, like many officers’ wives, kept a journal of her stay in the outposts of the West. She recorded her impressions of the scenery and the inhabitants of Absaraka, in present-day Wyoming, Montana, and the western Dakotas. As the wife of the commander of Fort Phil Kearny, Colonel Henry B. Carrington, she experienced the sequence of events and the heightening of tensions that led to that bloody December day. She could not have known that her journal would come to such a shocking climax, with her husband's career at stake.

A reassessment of the military's role in developing the Western territories moves beyond combat stories and stereotypes to focus on more non-martial accomplishments such as exploration, gathering scientific data, and building towns.

Fort William Henry and Fort Phil Kearny were both military outposts of the North American frontier. Both lasted but briefly--about two years from construction until their walls went up in flames. And both saw what were termed "massacres" by Indians outside their walls. This book reexamines the traumatic events at both forts. The Fort William Henry Massacre was condemned by both the British and the French as barbaric. Yet these European powers proved capable of similar crimes. The Fort Phil Kearny defeat, traditionally attributed to Captain William Fetterman's having disobeyed orders, has been scrutinized in recent years. Did the women present at that time write a distorted version of events? It would appear that his second-in-command, the rash Lieutenant George Grummond, led the charge over Lodge Trail Ridge. Or did he?