With General Crook in the Indian Wars by Captain John G. Bourke

 

In 1866, savages, somewhat more daring than usual, attacked and massacred the last of a party of eighty-six Chinamen on the way to the mines near Boise, when even frontier stoicism and military apathy were aroused to a semblance of vitality, and everybody agreed with owl-like solemnity that “something must be done.” But who has to do it? Who was to bell this cat that, with the subtlety of the serpent, the agility of the tiger, and the cruelty of both, preyed upon ranchos and mines and wagon trains? Fortunately, the questions suggested his own answer, and without a dissentient voice that answer was General Crook.

This brief nonfiction narrative first appeared in The Century Magazine, the March issue of 1891. It is much on par with Bourke’s equally excellent, On the Border With Crook which is an expansion of this work.

This brief work is vital, alive, rife with incident and compelling in a way that fiction can seldom touch.

Captain Bourke has done us all a favor by recording what he saw, what he experienced.

Highest recommendation.