Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Before Custer: Surveying the Yellowstone, 1872 Volume 33

Before Custer: Surveying the Yellowstone, 1872 Volume 33

Lubetkin, M. John

Hardcover

Series: Frontier Military, Book 33

19th Century United States HistoryRegional: West

ISBN10: 0870624318
ISBN13: 9780870624315
Publisher: Arthur H. Clark Company
Published: Feb 25 2015
Pages: 328
Weight: 1.60
Height: 1.23 Width: 6.94 Depth: 9.53
Language: English

Hoping to complete its transcontinental route, the Northern Pacific Railroad set out in 1872 to survey the Yellowstone Valley. An emissary from the Lakota chief Sitting Bull had warned the two surveying expeditions (eastern and western) not to enter the valley. But no one--certainly no Northern Pacific investor--was worried about taking the Indian threat seriously.

As it turned out, the Indians were deadly serious--and successful. The firsthand accounts compiled here by M. John Lubetkin document the survey's three-month struggle with the Lakotas and other Plains Indian people. Before Custer: Surveying the Yellowstone, 1872 tells the story of a military and public relations disaster. Much to the surprised dismay of U.S. Army strategists and railroad executives, the Indians repeatedly harrassed army forces of nearly a thousand men. One surveying party turned back, without meeting its objectives, after a determined attack led by Sitting Bull. The other also retreated, and one ambush it encountered resulted in the death of a member of President Ulysses S. Grant's family and the narrow escape of the railroad's lead engineer.

The previously unpublished documents that Lubetkin has collected and annotated also tell a parallel story: that of the dire consequences of the railroad's problems for the country. When the Northern Pacific's expansion plans were thwarted, the nation's largest private banking house failed, leading to the Panic of 1873. The fighting brought Sitting Bull to national attention and led directly to George Armstrong Custer's transfer to the Department of Dakota.

The vivid eyewitness accounts artfully assembled here reveal the failures of alcoholic army commanders and show personal encounters between soldiers and Indians, among them the formidable Lakota warrior known as Gall. Before Custer tells of a little-known but crucial episode in the history of westward expansion and Native peoples' efforts to halt that expansion.

Also in

19th Century United States History

View All