Carbine & Lance; The Story of Old Fort Sill

Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1951. Sixth printing (by offset) [stated]. Hardcover. Good/Good. xix, [1], 345, [3] pages. Some DJ wear. Frontis illustration. Illustrations. Appendices. Glossary. Index. Nye graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, Class of 1920. He retired as a U.S. Army Colonel. Colonel (Field Artillery) Wilbur Sturtevant Nye, United States Army, was awarded the Legion of Merit for exceptionally meritorious conduct in the performance of outstanding services to the Government of the United States as Commanding Officer, 173d Field Artillery Group, XV Corps, from 1944 to 1945. A noted author, he was also for a time Editor of the U.S. Army's Field Artillery Journal. Fort Sill is a United States Army post north of Lawton, Oklahoma, about 85 miles southwest of Oklahoma City. It covers almost 94,000 acres. The fort was first built during the Indian Wars. It is designated as a National Historic Landmark. It has played a significant role in every major American conflict since 1869. Fort Sill was staked out on 8 January 1869, by Maj. Gen. Philip H. Sheridan, who led a campaign into Indian Territory to stop tribes from raiding border settlements in Texas and Kansas. Sheridan's massive winter campaign involved six cavalry regiments accompanied by frontier scouts such as Buffalo Bill Cody and Wild Bill Hickok. Troops camped at the location of the new fort included the 7th Cavalry, the 19th Kansas Volunteers and the 10th Cavalry, a group of black "buffalo soldiers" who constructed many of the stone buildings still surrounding the post quadrangle. At first, the garrison was called "Camp Wichita" and was called by the Indians as "the Soldier House at Medicine Bluffs." Fort Sill, located in the heart of the old Kiowa-Comanche Indian country in southwestern Oklahoma, is known to a modern generation as the Field Artillery School of the United States Army. To students of American frontier history, it is known as the focal point of one of the most interesting, dramatic, and sustained series of conflicts in the records of western warfare. From 1833 to 1875, in a theater of action extending from Kansas to Mexico, the strife was almost uninterrupted. The U.S. Army, Kansas militia, Texas Rangers, and white pioneers and traders were arrayed against the fierce and heroic bands of the Kiowas, Comanches, Cheyennes, Arapahoes, and Kiowa-Apaches. The savage skirmishes with the southwestern Indians before the Civil War provided many army officers with a kind of training that proved indispensable to them in that later, prolonged conflict. When hostilities ceased, Sherman, Sheridan, Dodge, Custer, Grierson, and other commanders again resumed the harsh field of guerrilla warfare against their Indian foes—tough, hard fighters. With the inauguration of the so-called Quaker Peace Policy during President Grant's first administration, the hands of the army were tied. The Fort Sill reservation became a place of refuge for the marauding bands that went forth unmolested to raid in Texas, Oklahoma, and Mexico. The toll in human life reached such proportions that the government finally turned the southwestern Indians over to the army for discipline, and a permanent settlement of the bands was achieved by 1875. From extensive research, conversations with both Indian and white eyewitnesses, and his familiarity with Indian life and army affairs, Captain [later Colonel] Nye has written an unforgettable account of these stirring times. The delineation of character and the reconstruction of colorful scenes, so often absent in historical writing, are to be found here in abundance. His Indians are made to live again: his scenes of post life could have been written only by an army man.