Boots and Saddles

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By Listen TheBook Posted on May 31, 2023

In Category - War & Military, Memoirs

Authors: Elizabeth Bacon Custer In Year : 1885

Book Language: English

Audiobook: Boots and Saddles

Dedication, Preface, Change of Station
A Blizzard
Western Hospitality
Cavalry on the March
Camping Among the Sioux
A Visit to the Village of Two Bears
Adventures During the Last Days of the March
Separation and Reunion
Our New Home at Fort Lincoln
Incidents of Everyday Life
The Burning of Our Quarters; Carrying the Mail
Perplexities and Pleasures of Domestic Life
A "Strong Heart" Dance
Garrison Life
General Custer's Literary Work
Indian Depredations
A Day of Anxiety and Terror
Improvements at the Post, and Gardening
General Custer's Library
The Summer of the Black Hills Expedition
Domestic Trials
Capture and Escape of Rain-in-the-Face
Garrison Amusements
An Indian Council
Breaking Up of the Missouri
Curious Characters and Excursionists Among Us
Religious Services; Leave of Absence
A Winter's Journey Across the Plain
Our Life's Last Chapter

Elizabeth Custer has penned an engaging portrait of 1870’s life on a U.S. cavalry post in the Dakotas, just before her husband and his troops met their tragic deaths in the Battle of the Little Big Horn. “Our life,” she writes, “was often as separate from the rest of the world as if we had been living on an island in the ocean.” Her portrait of her husband, General George Armstrong Custer is laudatory—his intellect, his love of dogs (he kept a hunting pack of 40 at the post); but, Boots and Saddles is more than just a memorial. She observes with keen insight, the varied persons, from Indian scouts, to enlisted men, to officer’s wives, who make up the army “family,” on the post. Her sympathetic story about the regimental laundress and midwife, with its sad ending, should take a place in the army’s history of “don’t ask, don’t tell.” (Summary by Sue Anderson)