Wagner (1939-2008) was a serious student of the Indian wars in the western US for four decades while he worked a day job. Here he draws on first-hand journals and memoirs to trace an expedition of the US Army to punish bands of Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho that had attacked white emigrants and commercial traffic moving west along the Oregon Trail. The expedition did not fare well, and indeed proved to be both the opening of a long war between the US and American natives, and the end of the volunteer army of the Civil War era. A main concern of the account is the movement of supplies from the east and the scurvy and other effects of being ill-provisioned from the beginning. Annotation 2009 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
