"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.
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