Colonel Richard Irving Dodge, The Life and Times of a Career Army Officer

Few soldiers saw more of the late-nineteenth-century West and its peoples or made more friends and acquaintances, civilian and military, than the energetic and sociable Col. Richard Irving Dodge.

Best known today as the author of Our Wild Indians, The Plains of North America and, The Black Hills, Dodge recorded his observations and thoughts in volumes of journals, letters, and reports, as well as three popular published books.

Although the Sheridans, Crooks, and Custers of the western frontier set military policy and garnered headlines, the Regular Army's day-to-day effectiveness in the late 1800s depended on men like Dodge. Between 1848 and 1891 Dodge participated in the Civil War, aided in the building of the transcontinental railroad, the Great Sioux Wars, explored the Black Hills, founded cantonments and forts. commanded infantry regiments, and served as aide-de-camp to General William T. Sherman. Dodge never had the ambition, luck, or audacity to achieve fame or a general's rank, but he was personally engaged in the ongoing power struggle to open the West. (from the inside cover).