Mountain Scouting: A Handbook for Officers and Soldiers on the Frontiers

excellent read!

This work has long been in demand by the historian and collector of works on the US Army in the Indian Wars post Civil War; written after the Lakota Souix, formerly woodland Indians in Minnesota, had become horse warriors and the long loomimg threat of Indian war had become open confrontation and contention for the northern plains, the Rockies, and the Oregon country.Compare this with with the situation twenty years earlier covered so ably by Randolph Marcy. The prairie traveler ; a hand-book for overland expeditions : with illustrations, and intineraries of the principal routes between the Mississippi and the Pacific / by Randolph B. Marcy, Captain U.S. Army  His work was indispensible for the emigrant wagon trains departing from Independence, MO, and other jumpoffs.At the time Marcy made his first trips, the Mexican-American War had just been over and the emigrants simply wanted to pass through the northern mountains and prairies peacefully and safely to the west where soil, water supply and forests were similar to the East where they came from.The only real Indian trouble in Marcy's time was rustling, stampeding, and petty thievery, however, solitary travel was quite dangerous and travelers were urged to travel in large groups.