Best known today as the author of The Plains of North American and Their Inhabitants (1877), Dodge recorded his observations and thoughts in volumes of journals, letters, and reports, as well as three popular published books. In this first biography of the soldier-author, Wayne R. Kime describes Dodge's early years, experiences as a writer, and forty-three-year career as an infantry officer in the U.s. Army, and sets his life in a rich historical context.

In these journals, Colonel Richard Irving Dodge, a well-known chronicler of western history and an authority on Plains Indians, provides an important account of conditions in Indian Territory from 1878 to 1880, a period of rapid transition. The Cheyenne-Arapaho reservation in present-day western Oklahoma was the center of Dodge’s activity. His writings offer a firsthand record of the 1878 retreat of the Northern Cheyenne, the conditions endured by Indians who remained on the reservation, and the jurisdictional conflicts between Army personnel and representatives of the Office of Indian Affairs. These journals also provide insight into Dodge’s character, with reports of his official duties as a military man and of several landmark events in his family life. Extensive commentaries and notes by Wayne R. Kime provide further detail, including a history of Cantonment North Fork Canadian River, a six-company post Dodge established and commanded in the region.

Lt. Col. Richard Irving Dodge’s journals, written with utter candor for his eyes only, are the fullest firsthand account we possess of Gen. George Crook’s Powder River Expedition against the Sioux and Cheyenne Indians, which culminated in Col. Ranald S. Mackenzie’s resounding destruction of Dull Knife’s forces on November 25, 1876. Editor Wayne R. Kime, with his customary flair, has transcribed the journals from Dodge’s pocket-size notebooks and has provided a pertinent introduction and well-crafted, thoroughly illuminating annotations. Dodge’s journals will clearly prove useful to specialists in U.S. -Indian relations and the Great Sioux War, but they will also appeal to a variety of readers because of Dodge’s lively style and his range of subject matter. With vigorous intelligence, he describes such topics as General Crook as a military leader and strategist, the merits of infantry versus cavalry against the Plains Indians, the effects of subzero weather in Wyoming on a large army far from its sources of supply, and of course, the elusiveness of military glory.

In summer 1883, General William Tecumseh Sherman took Colonel Richard Irving Dodge, his former aide-de-camp, with him on a 10,000-mile inspection tour across the northern tier of territories, on to the Pacific Northwest, south through California, and east through the Southwest to Denver. Dodge had no idea his journals would ever become public, so he wrote openly about his companions and their interactions, terrain and natural wonders, conditions of military posts, life in civilian communities, and what the future seemed to hold for the region and its changing population.

Daily journals recount a scientific expedition's five-month trek into the Black Hills of the Dakotas to determine if rumors of gold were true, which the author describes as the most delightful summer of my life. He describes the natural landscape and its wildlife, eccentric characters, and politic