Writings collected here from contemporary officers, enlisted men, and their wives sustained this heroic stereotype. Both views of the frontier soldier contain truth and fallacy. Through the wealth of information, differing perspectives and voices in this collection, scholars will gain a better understanding of the misunderstood frontier officer and cavalryman. With this collection, scholars can trace the path of Manifest Destiny across the West. These volumes chronicle the destruction of tribal organizations, confinement of Indians to reservations, outlawing of tribal religious observances, and allotment of Indian land, and reveal the white man's belief that his settlement of the land and civilization of its native peoples was preordained.
Indian resistance is also strongly detailed.
Matching the white man's invocation of Manifest Destiny with their own call to the great spiritual power of the earth, Indians challenged the frontier army on several fronts. One of these conflicts, over the establishment of the Bozeman Trail through Western Sioux land, resulted in two years of sustained warfare as Red Cloud repeatedly led his warring braves off their reservation. Settlement of the conflict included the discontinuation of the Bozeman Trail and the relocation of the Western Sioux to a reservation in southwestern Dakota Territory. While the frontier army was charged with fighting the Indians, the soldier lived among them. This conflict between the soldier's dual roles of policeman and neighbor forms a noteworthy tension throughout the collection.