The Fetterman Massacre: The History and Legacy of the U.S. Army’s Worst Defeat during Red Cloud’s War Paperback – September 19, 2017

The books from Charles River Editors are an excellent resource to orient yourself to their topics. They are generally accurate, impartial and do not engage in any grand schemes to reshape history. This opinion comes from reading a number of their works on topics which I am familiar with. This is one of those topics and it captures the known facts and clearly states the on going debates. As always, an excellent survey of the topic.

I’m not sure if I’d ever heard of the Fetterman Massacre before reading this book. I suspect most people are more familiar with Custer’s last stand instead of this battle. The Fetterman Massacre was the first time that the Native Americans defeated and destroyed a large number of soldiers (81). The book starts out by describing the political background related to the desire of Americans wanting the land that the Native Americans had owned for centuries. Of course, treaties were made and broken. Next, the book describes the founding of Fort Kearny and its staffing. The book discusses the life of Red Cloud a major leader of the Sioux. The actual battle is shrouded in controversy because there were no survivors nevertheless several theories about what happened were described. The book also describes Col. Henry B. Carrington and his tactics or lack of tactics and relationship to fighting the Native Americans. The political consequences were described in detail. I think that anyone interested in the history of the wars with the Native Americans in the central plains would be interested in this book.

Book looses contact with the title of the book.

I am amazed at the consistently great books by Charles River Editors. They are interesting, accurate, and engaging written. I have read many of their books and I recommend this one to you.

All in all this was not a bad rendition of the Fetterman fiasco. It is a good read for a person who has limited time of interest in the incident and time period. There are a few mistakes made by whomever put this together that showed either lack of knowledge of carelessness, ie: Virginia City at the end of the Bozeman trail is not in Northern Nevada it is the Montana Virginia City and it is chief Gall not Galt. Carelessness? But an interesting take of the West that might get a person to pick up any one of a number of excellent books on the time and conflicts.

Didn’t order

Great summary history mostly forgotten. Yet this event is on par with Custer's Last Stand. I saw some typos and perhaps some mistakes in dates, etc. But well worth the effort to read. I also liked the balance of the writing when it airs opposing views on the event

Interesting facts about the US Calvary

Great book

When I see reviewers awarding four (and even five) stars here, I wonder if they have been reading the same book!Having had for many years Dee Brown's excellent book on the Fetterman Massacre, and also visited the Fort Phil Kearny, Fetterman battle and Wagon Box battle sites, I had hoped that this new (to me, anyway) book would add to my knowledge. When the Amazon package came, it was so thin I thought I had been sent a CD by mistake. Out dropped what I can only describe as an A5 booklet. I had never heard of a ‘boutique digital publisher’ before but get the impression that 'Charles River Editors' is a company that encourages and publishes budding authors – in itself, not a bad thing. However…..On the positive side, the book is reasonably well written and includes maps which, although small, do at least show the area referred to in the text. However, I thought that the description of the massacre after which the book is named was woefully insufficient, and much of the text was not directly relevant or missed out important characters. For example, I could find no reference to Ridgway Glover, the photographer, one of the most colourful, and perhaps tragic, participants in this story. Much of the detail is, I would say, glossed over.The book is poorly illustrated, with insufficient captions. There are no illustrations of the main protagonists in the Fetterman Battle, other than Colonel Carrington. I looked in vain for pictures of Captain Fetterman, after whom the battle is named, Lieutenants Brown and Grummond, and (astonishingly) the Sioux Chief Red Cloud himself! All these can be easily found with minimal research. There are, however, illustrations of Custer, Sitting Bull and General Crook, relating to the battles of the Rosebud and Little Bighorn which took place ten years later.In summary, had I been an editor reviewing this work, I would have sent the author back to try again and do some better research this time. I dislike raining on anyone’s parade but I have to be honest (and I hope fair) in my review. Have I been over-generous awarding two stars? Maybe. This book is really not up to scratch, and I cannot even recommend it to those reading about the Fetterman Massacre for the first time. Buy Dee Brown’s book instead.