Thrilling Days in Army Life

Thrilling Days in Army Life describes one of the classic encounters between Indians and the frontier army. In the summer of 1868 George A. Forsyth led fifty scouts to search out Cheyennes who were raiding Kansas. In this book, he relates the six-day siege in september that pitted his small force against 750 Cheyennes and Sioux. Because the battle occurred in a dry bed of the Arickaree Fork of the Republican River in western Colorado and claimed the life of Forsyth's brave lieutenant, Frederick Beecher, it would be known to history as the Battle of Beecher Island.

Forsyth, who was breveted brigadier general for the 1868 battle, had an action-packed career. In 1882, as commander of the Fourth Cavalry in New Mexico, he pursued the Chiricahua Apaches across the border into Mexico. It was a raid full of dangerous traps, but he lived to tell about it.

Originally published in 1900, Thrilling Days in Army Life will be of interest to both frontier and Civil War buffs. Forsyth was an aid to Major General Philip H. Sheridan in 1864 and accompanied him on the dramatic ride to the rescue of Union troops at Cedar Creek. That episode is presented in a rush of detail. Forsyth ends with an eyewitness account of the surrender of the Confederacy at Appomattox Court House. Of special interest to readers will be the many drawings by Rufus Zogbaum, a leading military artist of his day.

Introducing this Bison Book edition of Thrilling Days in Army Life is David Dixon, an assistant professor of history at Slippery Rock University and the author of Hero of Beecher Island: The Life and Military Career of George A. Forsyth, also available from the University of Nebraska Press.