On a September day in 1877, hundreds of Sioux and soldiers at Camp
Robinson crowded around a fatally injured Lakota leader. A young
doctor forced his way through the crowd, only to see the victim
fading before him. It was the famed Crazy Horse. From intense
moments like this to encounters with such legendary western figures
as Calamity Jane and Red Cloud, Valentine Trant O'Connell
McGillycuddy's life (1849-1939) encapsulated key events in American
history that changed the lives of Native people forever. In
Valentine T. McGillycuddy: Army Surgeon, Agent to the Sioux, the
first biography of the man in seventy years, award-winning author
Candy Moulton explores McGillycuddy's fascinating experiences on
the northern plains as topographer, cartographer, physician, and
Indian agent.Drawing on family papers, interviews, government
documents, and a host of other sources, Moulton presents a colorful
character - a thin, blue-eyed, cultured physician who could
outdrink trail-hardened soldiers. In fresh, vivid prose, she traces
McGillycuddy's work mapping out the U.S.-Canadian border; treating
the wounded from the battles of the Rosebud, the Little Bighorn,
and Slim Buttes; tending to Crazy Horse during his final hours; and
serving as agent to the Sioux at Pine Ridge, where he clashed with
Chief Red Cloud over the government's assimilation policies. Along
the way, Moulton weaves in the perspective of McGillycuddy's
devoted first wife, Fanny, who followed her husband west and wrote
of the realities of camp life. McGillycuddy's doctoring of Crazy
Horse marked only one point of his interaction with American
Indians. But those relationships were also just one aspect of his
life in the West, which extended well into the twentieth century.
Enhanced by more than 20 photographs, this long-overdue biography
offers general readers and historians an engaging adventure story
as well as insight into a period of tumultuous change.
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