"His narrative is griping....Mr. Utley transforms Sitting Bull, the abstract, romanticized icon and symbol, into a flesh-and-blood person with a down-to-earth story....THE LANCE AND THE SHIELD clears the screen of the exaggerations and fantasies long directed at the name of Sitting Bull."
THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW
Reviled by the United States government as a troublemaker and a coward, revered by his people as a great warrior chief, Sitting Bull has long been one of the most fascinating and misunderstood figures in American history. Now, distinguished historian Robert M. Utley has forged a compelling new portrait of Sitting Bull, viewing the man from the Lakota perspective for the very first time to render the most unbiased and historically accurate biography of Sitting Buil to date.
WINNER OF THE SPUR AWARD FOR BEST WESTERN NONFICTION
HISTORICAL BOOK OF 1993
A MAIN SELECTIN OF THE HISTORY BOOK CLUB
A FEATURED ALTERNATE SELECTION OF THE QUALITY PAPERBACK BOOK
CLUB

2021 Spur Award Winner for Best Historical Nonfiction from the Western Writers of America True West Magazine's 2020 Best Author and Historical Nonfiction Book of the Year The Last Sovereigns is the story of how Sioux chief Sitting Bull resisted the white man's ways as a last best hope for the survival of an indigenous way of life on the Great Plains-a nomadic life based on buffalo and indigenous plants scattered across the Sioux's historical territories that were sacred to him and his people. Robert M. Utley explores the final four years of Sitting Bull's life of freedom, from 1877 to 1881. To escape American vengeance for his assumed role in the annihilation of Gen. George Armstrong Custer's command at the Little Bighorn, Sitting Bull led his Hunkpapa following into Canada. There he and his people interacted with the North-West Mounted Police, in particular Maj. James M. Walsh. The Mounties welcomed the Lakota and permitted them to remain if they promised to abide by the laws and rules of Queen Victoria, the White Mother. But the Canadian government wanted the Indians to return to their homeland and the police made every effort to persuade them to leave. They were aided by the diminishing herds of buffalo on which the Indians relied for sustenance and by the aggressions of Canadian Native groups that also relied on the buffalo. Sitting Bull and his people endured hostility, tragedy, heartache, indecision, uncertainty, and starvation and responded with stubborn resistance to the loss of their freedom and way of life. In the end, starvation doomed their sovereignty. This is their story.

Assigned to the District of Utah during the Civil War, physician John Vance Lauderdale spent the next twenty-five years on army posts in the American West, serving in California, Arizona, New Mexico, South Dakota, and Texas. Throughout his career he kept a detailed journal and sent long letters home to his sister in upstate New York. This selection of Lauderdale's writings, edited and annotated by a premier historian of the American West, offers an insightful account of army life that will teach readers much about the settlement and growth of the West in a time of rapid change.

Lauderdale's observations are keen and critical. He writes about fellow officers, his army superiors, the civilians and American Indians he encountered, life on officers' row, and the day-to-day functioning of the army medical service. Particularly valuable are his insights into military interactions with local communities of Mormons, American Indians, and Hispanos.

""Britton Davis's account of the controversial "Geronimo Campaign" of 1885-86 offers an important firsthand picture of the famous Chiricahua warrior and the men who finally forced his surrender. Davis knew most of the people involved in the campaign and was himself in charge of Indian scouts, some of whom helped hunt down the small band of fugitives Robert M. Utley's foreword reevaluates the account for the modern reader and establishes its his torical background.

The first major battle between the U.S. Army and the Cheyenne Indians took place on the south fork of the Solomon River in present-day northwest Kansas. In this stirring account, William Y. Chalfant recreates the human dimensions of what was probably the only large-unit sabre charge against the Plains tribes, in a battle that was as much a clash of cultures as of cavalry and Cheyenne warriors.

In May 1857 the U. S. First Cavalry, under Col. E. V. Summer, had marched out of Fort Leavenworth to find and "severely punish" the Cheyennes for their attacks on immigrants and other travelers during the previous year-attacks precipitated largely by the army's earlier assaults on the Cheyennes. Two columns of soldiers moved westward, penetrating the territory of the southern bands of Cheyennes between the Santa Fe and Oregon-California trails, where few whites had been before.

When the cavalry columns were reunited, early in July, the combined forces left their supply train behind and marched southeast across the plains. They were braving the extreme heat of summer with limited rations and little water when they finally met their quarry on the south fork of the Solomon. Resplendent in war finery, the Cheyennes had formed a grand line of battle such as was never again seen in the Plains Indian wars.

William Chalfant recaptures the drama of the confrontation in his narrative: "As one the troopers reached down, and then 300 sabres arced above them, the bright afternoon sunshine flashing across the burnished steel as if the air were torn by a shower of flame. For an instant the blades were held aloft, then came down to the tierce point. At the same time the troopers gave out a mighty yell. And so they thundered across the valley of the Solomon, directly at the oncoming Cheyennes."

In terms of history, the First Cavalry's campaign against the Cheyennes was a microcosm of relations between white civilization and Plains Indian. This exciting narrative penetrates the Indian and white cultures to show the battle marked the end of one era in Indian-white relations and the beginning of another.

George Armstrong Custer. The name evokes instant recognition among Americans and people around the world. No figure in the history of the American West has more powerfully moved the human imagination. This new, lavishly illustrated book combines over 300 photographs and paintings, many in color, with a revised edition of Robert M. Utley's classic biography, "Cavalier in Buckskin."

Drawing on twelve years of additional research on Sitting Bull and the Battle of the Little Bighorn, Utley has dramatically changed his original interpretations of Custer's Last Stand in this revised edition, and has brought the reference list completely up to date for the benefit of students, scholars, and western history buffs.

Bringing to life vivid images of the western military frontier, Custer presents George Armstrong Custer, the man and the legend, and illuminates the challenges he faced in warfare with the Indians of the Great Plains.

Taking a novel approach to the military history of the post-Civil War West, distinguished historian Robert M. Utley examines the careers of seven military leaders who served as major generals for the Union in the Civil War, then as brigadier generals in command of the U.S. Army's western departments. By examining both periods in their careers, Utley makes a unique contribution in delineating these commanders' strengths and weaknesses. While some of the book's subjects - notably Generals George Crook and Nelson A. Miles - are well known, most are no longer widely remembered. Yet their actions were critical in the expansion of federal control in the West. The commanders effected the final subjugation of American Indian tribal groups, exercising direct oversight of troops in the field as they fought the wars that would bring Indians under military and government control. After introducing readers to postwar army doctrine, organization, and administration, Utley takes each general in turn, describing his background, personality, eccentricities, and command style and presenting the rudiments of the campaigns he prosecuted. Crook embodied the ideal field general, personally leading his troops in their operations, though with varying success. Christopher C. Augur and John Pope, in contrast, preferred to command from their desks in department headquarters, an approach that led both of them to victory on the battlefield. And Miles, while perhaps the frontier army's most detestable officer, was also its most successful in the field. Rounding out the book with an objective comparison of all eight generals' performance records, Utley offers keen insights into their influence on the U.S. military as an institution and on the development of the American West.

This biography of the seventh director of the National Park Service brings to life one of the most colorful, powerful, and politically astute people to hold this position. George B. Hartzog Jr. served during an exciting and volatile era in American history. Appointed in 1964 by Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall, he benefited from a rare combination of circumstances that favored his vision, which was congenial with both President Lyndon Johnson's "Great Society" and Udall's robust environmentalism. Hartzog led the largest expansion of the National Park System in history and developed social programs that gave the Service new complexion. During his nine-year tenure, the system grew by seventy-two units totaling 2.7 million acres including not just national parks, but historical and archaeological monuments and sites, recreation areas, seashores, riverways, memorials, and cultural units celebrating minority experiences in America. In addition, Hartzog sought to make national parks relevant and responsive to the nation's changing needs.

Elden Duane Rogers died on March 19, 1945, one of the eight hundred who perished on the aircraft carrier USS Franklin that day. It was his nineteenth birthday. Write home often, the navy told sailors like Elden, thinking it would keep up morale among sailors and those waiting for them stateside. But they were told not to write anything about where they were, where they had been, where they were going, what they were doing, or even what the weather was like. Spies were presumed everywhere, and loose lips could sink ships. Before a sailor's letter could be sealed and sent, a censor read it and with a razor blade cut out words that told too much. So Long for Now reconstructs the lost world of a sailor's daily life in World War II, piecing together letters from Elden's family in Vega, Texas, and from his girlfriend, the untold stories behind Elden's own letters, and the context of the war itself. Historian Jerry L. Rogers delves past censored letters limited to small talk and local gossip to conjure the danger, excitement, boredom, and sacrifices that sailors in the Pacific theater endured. He follows Elden from enlistment in the navy through every battle the USS Franklin saw. Flight deck crashes, kamikaze hits, and tensions and alliances aboard ship all built to the unprecedented chaos and casualties of the Japanese air attack on March 19. ""So long for now,"" Elden signed off - never ""Goodbye."" This moving work poignantly confronts the horrors of war, giving voice to a young sailor, the country he served, the family and friends he left behind, and the hope that has sustained them.

A renowned biographer compares the lives and times of American outlaw Billy the Kid and his Australian counterpart Ned Kelly The oft-told exploits of Billy the Kid and Ned Kelly survive vividly in the public imaginations of their respective countries, the United States and Australia. But the outlaws' reputations are so weighted with legend and myth, the truth of their lives has become obscure. In this adventure-filled double biography, Robert M. Utley reveals the true stories and parallel courses of the two notorious contemporaries who lived by the gun, were executed while still in their twenties, and remain compelling figures in the folklore of their homelands. Robert M. Utley draws sharp, insightful portraits of first Billy, then Ned, and compares their lives and legacies. He recounts the adventurous exploits of Billy, a fun-loving, expert sharpshooter who excelled at escape and lived on the run after indictment for his role in the Lincoln Country War. Bush-raised Ned, the son of an Irish convict father and Irish mother, was a man whose outrage against British colonial authority inspired him to steal cattle and sheep, kill three policemen, and rob banks for the benefit of impoverished Irish sympathizers. Utley recounts the exploits of the notorious young men with accuracy and appeal. He discovers their profound differences, despite their shared fates, and illuminates the worlds in which they lived on opposite sides of the globe.

When the gun smoke cleared, four men were found dead at the hardware store in a rural East Texas town. But this December 1934 shootout was no anomaly. San Augustine County had seen at least three others in the previous three years, and these murders in broad daylight were only the latest development in the decade-long rule of the criminal McClanahan-Burleson gang. Armed with handguns, Jim Crow regulations, and corrupt special Ranger commissions from infamous governors 'Ma' and 'Pa' Ferguson, the gang racketeered and bootlegged its way into power in San Augustine County, where it took up robbing and extorting local black sharecroppers as its main activity. After the hardware store shootings, white community leaders, formerly silenced by fear of the gang's retribution, finally sought state intervention. In 1935, fresh-faced, newly elected governor James V. Allred made good on his promise to reform state law enforcement agencies by sending a team of qualified Texas Rangers to San Augustine County to investigate reports of organized crime. In East Texas Troubles, historian Jody Edward Ginn tells of their year-and-a-half-long cleanup of the county, the inaugural effort in Governor Allred's transformation of the Texas Rangers into a professional law enforcement agency. Besides foreshadowing the wholesale reform of state law enforcement, the Allred Rangers' investigative work in San Augustine marked a rare close collaboration between white law enforcement officers and black residents. Drawing on firsthand accounts and the sworn testimony of black and white residents in the resulting trials, Ginn examines the consequences of such cooperation in a region historically entrenched in racial segregation. In this story of a rural Texas community's resurrection, Ginn reveals a multifaceted history of the reform of the Texas Rangers and of an unexpected alliance between the legendary frontier lawmen and black residents of the Jim Crow South.

George Armstrong Custer, America's most famously unfortunate soldier, has been the subject of scores of books, but "The Custer Reader" is unique as a substantial source of classic writings about and by him. Here is Custer as seen by himself, his contemporaries, and leading scholars. Even those steeped in Custeriana will discover new insights in these pieces. Combining first-person narratives, essays, and photographs, this book provides a complete introduction to Custer's controversial personality and career and the evolution of the Custer myth.

"Custer and the Great Controversy" was the first book to focus on the origins of what has come to be called the Custer myth. The Battle of the Little Bighorn has always been wrapped in mystery and controversy because none of Custer's men survived to tell what happened, because press accounts circulated much misinformation and editors politicized the event, because popular writers repeated the errors of journalists, because a court of inquiry issued in bitter debate, and because Indian testimony was hard to gauge. This book, originally published in 1962, helps the reader understand the sources of the confusion and controversy surrounding the Custer fight and the beginning of the legend.

"Custer and the Great Controversy" was Robert M. Utley's debut, coming after six years of service as a ranger-historian at the Little Bighorn National Monument. His distinguished career as a historian has produced many books, including "Frontiersmen in Blue: The United States Army and the Indian, 1848-1865" and "Frontier Regulars: The United States Army and the Indian, 1866-1891," both available as Bison Books.

A Special Report on the Early Cattle Industry of the Big Bend Country of Texas.

Additional Editor Is A. R. Mortensen. Introduction By Ray A. Billington. Contributing Authors Include France Scholes, Dale Morgan, And Many Others.

Hailed as "a rip-snortin', six-guns-blazin' saga of good guys and bad guys who were sometimes one and the same," Robert M. Utley's Lone Star Justice captured the colorful first century of Texas Ranger history. Now, in the eagerly anticipated conclusion, Lone Star Lawmen, Utley once again chronicles the daring exploits of the Rangers, this time as they bring justice to the twentieth-century West.
Based on unprecedented access to Ranger archives, this fast-paced narrative stretches from the days of the Mexican Revolution (where atrocities against Mexican Americans marked the nadir of Ranger history) to the Branch Davidian saga near Waco and the recent bloody standoff with "Republic of Texas" militia. Readers will find in these pages one hundred years of high adventure. Utley follows the Rangers as they pursue bank robbers, bootleggers, moonshiners, and "horsebackers" (smugglers who used mule trains to bring liquor across the border). We see these fearless lawmen taming oil boomtowns, springing the ambush of Bonnie and Clyde, facing down angry lynch mobs, and tracking the "Phantom Killer" of Texarkana. Utley also highlights the gradual evolution of this celebrated force, revealing that while West Texas Rangers still occasionally ride the range on horseback and crack down on smugglers and rustlers, East Texas Rangers--who work mostly in big cities--now ride in high-powered cars and contend with kidnappers, forgers, and other urban criminals. But East or West, today's Rangers have become sophisticated professionals, backed by crime labs and forensic science.
Written by one of the most respected Western historians alive, here is the definitive account of the Texas Rangers, a vivid portrait of these legendary peace officers and their role in a changing West.

Was Sheriff William Brady a willing pawn in the hands of a crooked political faction or was he an honest man dedicated to law and order? After his extensive research, Donald R. Lavash thinks Brady deserves a more realistic evaluation of his part in the Lincoln County Was in New Mexico. In 1873, crime and violence were rampant in Lincoln County, New Mexico. Land fraud, cattle and horse stealing were common. Outlaws, including Billy the Kid, swarmed in to join hands with dishonest citizens. Although Brady tried to stem the growing tide of anarchy, his efforts ended when he was ambushed by Billy the Kid and his gang. This book is not only a biography of a man but the history of an era in the American Southwest. More information on this controversial period will be found in these other Sunstone Press books: "Alias Billy the Kid" by Donald Cline, "Sheriff Pat Garrett's Last Days" by Colin Rickards, "The Death of Billy the Kid" by John William Poe, "The Real Billy the Kid" by Miguel Antonio Otero, "Stalking Billy the Kid" by Marc Simmons, "The Authentic Life of Billy the Kid" by Pat Garrett, "Kit Carson's Own Story of His Life" by Blanche Grant, and "Dynamite and Six-Shooter" by Jeff Burton. Donald R. Lavash was a historian on the staff of the New Mexico State Records Center and Archives and was a specialist in American Southwest history. An author of numerous articles and the book, "A Journey Through New Mexico History" also published by Sunstone Press, he received his Ph.D. from the International Institute for Advanced Studies.

On September 8, 1886, soldiers and Indians gathered on the parade ground of a frontier post nestled amid cactus-studded hills. A cordon of blueclad troopers formed around a train of open wagons loaded with Indian families. As a military band drawn up at the base of the flagstaff played "Auld Lang Syne," the procession moved out of the fort and headed north. The post was Fort Bowie, Arizona, for a quarter of a century a lonely bastion in Apache Pass, the heart of Apacheria. The Indians were Geronimo and his band of Chiricahua Apaches, for more than a decade scourges of the southwestern frontier. Now the warfare had ended, and with a touch of musical irony the victors bade farewell as the vanquished were escorted to the railroad cars that would bear them eastward to an uncertain future. Today the gaunt ruins of Fort Bowie, set in an environment otherwise uncluttered by man's works, recall a dramatic and significant phase of the American past"Ythe struggle of a dynamic and aggressive people to conquer the wilderness, and the struggle of a proud and independent people to retain the wilderness and the way of life they had known.

In "Custer and Me," renowned western historian and expert on historic preservation, Robert M. Utley, turns his talents to his own life and career. Through lively personal narrative, Utley offers an insider's view of Park Service workings and problems, both at regional and national levels, during the Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, and Carter administrations. Utley also details the birth of the Western History Association, early national historic-preservation programs, and the many clashes over "symbolic possession" of what is now the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument. Readers will discover how a teenager smitten with Custermania came as an adult to appreciate the full complexity of the Battle of the Little Bighorn and its interpretation and to research and write narrative histories of the American West that have appealed to popular audiences while winning highest honors from the scholarly and writing communities.

In 1807, a year after Lewis and Clark returned from the shores of the Pacific, groups of trappers and hunters began to drift West to tap the rich stocks of beaver and to trade with the Native nations. Colorful and eccentric, bold and adventurous, mountain men such as John Colter, George Drouillard, Hugh Glass, Andrew Henry, and Kit Carson found individual freedom and financial reward in pursuit of pelts. Their knowledge of the country and its inhabitants served the first mapmakers, the army, and the streams of emigrants moving West in ever-greater numbers. The mountain men laid the foundations for their own displacement, as they led the nation on a westward course that ultimately spread the American lands from sea to sea.

General Richard Henry Pratt, best known as the founder and longtime superintendent of the influential Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania, profoundly shaped Indian education and federal Indian policy at the turn of the twentieth century. Pratt's long and active military career included eight years of service as an army field officer on the western frontier. During that time he participated in some of the signal conflicts with Indians of the southern plains, including the Washita campaign of 1868-1869 and the Red River War of 1874-1875. He then served as jailor for many of the Indians who surrendered. His experiences led him to dedicate himself to Indian education, and from 1879 to 1904, still on active military duty, he directed the Carlisle school, believing that the only way to save Indians from extinction was to remove Indian youth to nonreservation settings and there inculcate in them what he considered civilized ways. Pratt's memoirs, edited by Robert M. Utley and with a new foreword by David Wallace Adams, offer insight into and understanding of what are now highly controversial turn-of-the-century Indian education policies.

"A splendid, indeed brilliant new work by an outstanding historian of the American West." —Howard Lamar,  author of The New Encyclopedia of the American West, Sterling Professor Emeritus of History at Yale University

"A thorough job...a fine book." —Larry McMurtry

From The Lone Ranger to Lonesome Dove, the Texas Rangers have been celebrated in fact and fiction for their daring exploits in bringing justice to the Old West. In Lone Star Justice, best-selling author Robert M. Utley captures the first hundred years of Ranger history, in a narrative packed with adventures worthy of Zane Grey or Larry McMurtry. The Rangers began in the 1820s as loose groups of citizen soldiers, banding together to chase Indians and Mexicans on the raw Texas frontier. Utley shows how, under the leadership of men like Jack Hays and Ben McCulloch, these fiercely independent fighters were transformed into a well-trained, cohesive team. Armed with a revolutionary new weapon, Samuel Colt's repeating revolver, they became a deadly fighting force, whether battling Comanches on the plains or storming the city of Monterey in the Mexican-American War. As the Rangers evolved from part-time warriors to full-time lawmen by 1874, they learned to face new dangers, including homicidal feuds, labor strikes, and vigilantes turned mobs. They battled train robbers, cattle thieves and other outlaws--it was Rangers, for example, who captured John Wesley Hardin, the most feared gunman in the West. Based on exhaustive research in Texas archives, this is the most authoritative history of the Texas Rangers in over half a century. It will stand alongside other classics of Western history by Robert M. Utley--a vivid portrait of the Old West and of the legendary men who kept the law on the lawless frontier.

Two men played a crucial role in the creation and early history of the National Park Service: Stephen T. Mather, a public relations genius of sweeping vision, and Horace M. Albright, an able lawyer and administrator who helped transform that vision into reality.

In Creating the National Park Service, Albright and his daughter, Marian Albright Schenck, reveal the previously untold story of the critical "missing years" in the history of the service. During this period, 1917 and 1918, Mather's problems with manic depression were kept hidden from public view, and Albright, his able and devoted assistant, served as acting director and assumed Mather's responsibilities.

Albright played a decisive part in the passage of the National Park Service Organic Act of 1916; the formulation of principles and policies for management of the parks; the defense of the parks against exploitation by ranchers, lumber companies, and mining interests during World War I; and other issues crucial to the future of the fledgling park system.

Rich in detail and insight, with sharply drawn personalities and engaging anecdotes, this authoritative behind-the-scenes history sheds light on the early days of the most popular of all federal agencies while painting a vivid picture of American life in the early twentieth century.

"A fine book...In the twenty-two chapters that comprise the background and the campaign narrative, the author is at his best when he moves away from the Washington scene to detail the field operations. But it is the second part of the book--seven chapters labeled "Facets"--that moves Centennial Campaign into the realm of the exceptional. Here Dr. Gray combines impressive research, careful analysis, and sound deduction to reconstruct Indian movements, locations, and concentrations."--Western Historical Quarterly