MacKenzie's Last Fight with the Cheyennes (Expanded, Annotated)

With the tension and excitement of a novelist, and the humor of a Mark Twain, soldier-scholar John G. Bourke wrote about one of the most important battles of the Great Sioux War, of which he was a participant. John Bourke’s contribution to the history of the so-called Indian Wars cannot be overestimated. It is not as a soldier that he is best remembered, but as an anthropologist, ethnologist, folklorist, scientist, and writer—amazing for a man who was in uniform from the ages of 16 to 50. Here he detailed Ranald MacKenzie's final fight with the Cheyenne under Dull Knife in the bitter cold of winter, 1876. These were some of the same warriors who had months earlier sent General George Armstrong Custer and five companies of 7th Cavalry troopers to an early grave at the Little Bighorn. Written as only Bourke could have done, this short account is a forgotten American classic.