Indian Fights and Fighters

Cyrus Townsend Brady's Indian Fights and Fighters: The Soldier and the Sioux opens as a richly illustrated, carefully researched history of the American West, shaped by official records, letters, interviews, battlefield testimony, and even Native accounts. Brady presents the book as both a tribute to courage and an effort to preserve fading memories before they are lost, while insisting on fairness to soldiers and Native peoples alike. He also challenges easy labels such as "massacre," arguing that frontier battles like Fetterman and Little Big Horn were desperate, deadly struggles rather than one-sided slaughter. The narrative moves into the Powder River Expedition and the fight to protect the Bozeman trail, where Fort Phil Kearney stands as a besieged post on contested northern plains. General Henry B. Carrington leads a difficult mission to establish and defend a chain of forts amid wagon trains, broken peace talks at Fort Laramie, and Red Cloud's decision for war. From there, the book traces major frontier conflicts, including Beecher's Island, the Modoc and Nez Percé wars, and Little Big Horn, blending battlefield drama, military biography, and disputed history into a vivid chronicle of conquest, resistance, and endurance. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.