Captain Eloy Hastings
Riley Fordham
Laughing Jack
Healy Stamps
Sam Palmer
General William Tecumseh Sherman—Commander, Military Division of the Missouri
Lieutenant-General Philip H. Sheridan—Commander, Military Dept. of the Platte
Lieutenant Caspar Collins
General Patrick E. Connor—Commander, Military Dept. of the Plains
Captain Henry Leefeldt—Co. K (Camp Marshall)
Captain A. Smith Lybe
Sergeant Amos Custard—11th Kansas Cavalry
First Sergeant William R. Moody—Co. I
Major Martin Anderson—Platte Bridge Station, post commander
Captain Henry Bretney—11th Ohio Cavalry
Lieutenant George Walker—Platte Station Adjutant
Corporal James Shrader—11th Kansas Cavalry
Captain Henry E. Palmer—Powder River Exped. Quartermaster
Colonel Henry E. Maynadier—Commander, Fort Laramie
Dr. Henry R. Porter—surgeon, 7th U. S. Cavalry, Ft. Hays
Captain Frederick W. Benteen—7th U. S. Cavalry
Major Wycliffe Cooper—7th U. S. Cavalry
Captain George W. Yates—7th U. S. Cavalry
Lieutenant Myles W. Moylan—7th U. S. Cavalry
Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer—7th U. S. Cavalry
Lieutenant Thomas Ward Custer—7th U. S. Cavalry
Major Joel H. Elliott—7th U. S. Cavalry
Captain Louis M. Hamilton—7th U. S. Cavalry
Lieutenant Lyman S. Kidder—2nd U. S. Cavalry
Lieutenant Edward Godfrey—7th U. S. Cavalry
Lieutenant/Captain James Murie (Co. B) Sgt. Bear Runs Him
Roman Nose—Cheyenne war chief Grass Singing—Pawnee
George Bent—half-breed Cheyenne son of fur trader Bent Black Kettle—Cheyenne
Blind Wolf—Cheyenne chief (father to High-Back Wolf) Pawnee Killer—Brule Spotted Wolf—Cheyenne Young Man Afraid—Oglalla He Dog—Oglalla High-Back Wolf—Cheyenne Turkey Leg—Cheyenne chief
Jim Bridger
Captain E. W. Nash—Omaha and Winnebago scouts (Powder River)
California Joe (Moses) Milner—Hancock Expedition
Jack Corbin—Hancock Expedition
James Butler Hickok—Hancock Expedition
Will Comstock—Platte River Expedition
Nathan (Nate) Deidecker—newsman, Omaha
Artus Moser
Samuel Hosking
Eldon Boatwright
Major Edward W. Wynkoop—government agent to the Cheyenne
Colonel Jesse W. Leavenworth—government agent to the Sioux
Sidney Gould—mercantile sutler, Fort Larned
It is not easy to visualize the enormous spread of frontier where these 6,000 [galvanized Yankees] marched and fought and endured the tedium of garrison duties. From Fort Kearney to Julesburg. From Julesburg to Laramie and along the Sweetwater through South Pass to Utah. From Julesburg up the South Platte to Denver, by Cache la Poudre to the Laramie Plains and Fort Bridger …. They made themselves a part of all the raw and racy names on that wild land of buffalo and Indians—Cottonwood Springs and Three Crossings, Lodgepole and Alkali Station, Medicine Creek and Sleeping Water, Fort Zarah and White Earth River, St. Mary’s, Fort Wicked, Laughing Wood, Soldier Creek, Rabbit Ear Mound, Dead Man’s Ranche, and Lightning’s Nest.
—Dee Brown
Led by desperate men … the guerillas, most of them only boys, fought a total war. West of the Mississippi they plunged a fairly stable … society into intense partisan conflict that was felt by every man, woman and child. This was not a war of great armies and captains, this was bloody local insurrection, a war between friends and neighbors—a civil war in the precise definition of that term. Here organized bands of men killed each other and the civil population hundreds of miles behind the recognized battlefronts. Here there was ambush, arson, execution and murder; warfare without rules, law or quarter.
—Richard S. Brownlee
Prologue
“THERE AIN’T TIME for you to make it back to town before dark,” the old frontiersman said. “I best make you comfortable here.”
Nate Deidecker marveled at the old man’s vitality. Something on the order of seventy-one years old now, and still the former plains scout stood as straight as a fresh-split fence rail. Only the careful, considered pace he gave to all things betrayed his true age.
“I appreciate that, Mr. Hook.”
