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摘要
摘要
Books, art, and movies most often portray the frontier army in continuous conflict with Native Americans. In truth, the army spent only a small part of its frontier duty fighting Indians; as the main arm of the federal government in less-settled regions of the nation, the army performed a host of duties. The Frontier Army in the Settlement of the West examines the army's nonmartial contributions to western development. Dispelling timeworn stereotypes, Michael L. Tate shows that the army conducted explorations, compiled scientific and artistic records, built roads, aided overland travelers, and improved river transportation. Army posts offered nuclei for towns, and soldiers delivered federal mails, undertook agricultural experiments, and assembled weather records for forecasting.
The "multipurpose" army also provided telegraph service, extended relief to destitute civilians, and protected early national parks.
评论 (2)
《书目》(Booklist)书评
Tate, an established historian of the West, provides a valuable overview of the army's role in U.S. expansion beyond the Mississippi, a role that included much more than protecting whites from Indians. The army surveyed and explored, directly and as part of other expeditions, and provided extensive logistic support to westward movement before as well as after the Civil War. It was crucial in developing the national infrastructure of roads, railroads, river navigation, water supplies, and everything else on which civilization depends. Finally, officers and enlisted men alike frequently were also settlers, craftsmen, and entrepreneurs, both during and after their military service. Sometimes entrepreneurship was not disinterested; General Custer had investments in the mining companies that were trying to open the Lakotah territories in the Black Hills to settlement. The volume's frame of reference suggests that Tate intends it for a scholarly audience, but its admirable synthesis of existing research makes it vital to any serious student of the history of the American West. --Roland Green
Choice 评论
Situating his study between a populist romanticization of the frontier army, on the one hand, and, on the other, its demonization by New West historians who stylize it as "destroyer of the Native American way of life, protector of corporate interests, or enemy of the working class," Tate sees the function of the military in holistic terms. That is, he narrates and describes its multipurpose role in opening and developing the American West. The significance of the frontier army, Tate maintains, is measured in tangible accomplishments. Members of the military served as explorers, military scientists, ethnographers, and artists. The army built and maintained roads and lines of communication to the West. The military was, by turn, lawman, contractor, agriculturist, doctor, protector of national parks, and perhaps surprisingly, advocate of Native American rights. Tate's survey of these many tasks and contributions both fills a gap in the literature and integrates the frontier army more fully into the history of the West. Thus students of the US army and the American West will find this a valuable, informative, well-balanced, and accessible contribution to the history and historiography of the 19th-century frontier. All levels. M. Morrison; Purdue University
目录
List of Illustrations | p. vii |
Preface | p. ix |
Acknowledgments | p. xvii |
Chapter 1. Discoverers: Military Scientists, Ethnologists, and Artists in the New Empire | p. 3 |
Chapter 2. Encountering the Elephant: Army Aid to Emigrants on the Platte River Road | p. 29 |
Chapter 3. Across and On the Wide Missouri: The Army's Role in Western Transportation and Communication | p. 52 |
Chapter 4. Posse Comitatus in Blue: The Soldier as Frontier Lawman | p. 80 |
Chapter 5. Dining at the Government Trough: Army Contracts and Payrolls as Community Builders | p. 111 |
Chapter 6. Uncle Sam's Farmers: Soldiers as Agriculturalists and Meteorologists | p. 150 |
Chapter 7. Hippocrates in Blue: Army Doctors on the Frontier | p. 174 |
Chapter 8. Reform the Man: Post Chapels, Schools, and Libraries | p. 193 |
Chapter 9. Sharpening the Eagle's Talons for Domestic Duties: The Army in Public Relief Work and in Protecting the National Parks | p. 213 |
Chapter 10. In Defense of "Poor Lo": Military Advocacy for Native American Rights | p. 237 |
Chapter 11. Documenting the Experience: Soldier Journalists, Autobiographers, and Novelists | p. 260 |
Chapter 12. Life after Soldiering: Entrepreneurs, Investors, and Retirees | p. 282 |
Conclusion | p. 304 |
Notes | p. 319 |
Bibliography | p. 371 |
Index | p. 437 |