Book Review

A descriptive cartoon accompanying this well-written text might portray a pair of frontier soldiers conversing during an Indian attack while arrows and gun smoke filled the air. "I hope this is over soon," one would say to his beleaguered comrade. "The road crew assembles in fifteen minutes."

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Actually, the author Michael L. Tate's prose suffices to demonstrate that Hollywood and most histories have overly simplified the role of the nineteenth-century military as keeper of the peace while neglecting its multidimensional responsibilities in the American West. Activities consuming the bulk of the army's agenda ranged from agriculture to weather forecasting, with interspersions of religion, education, public health, relief, transportation, communication, and protection of national parks. While John Ford and John Wayne popularized the heroic myth of Winning the West, later films, inspired by criticism of contemporary foreign policy, created the impression that frontier soldiers filled their days systematically butchering Native American populations. Like-minded historians augmented this negative view by widening the focus only enough to characterize the troops as spare-time strike-breaking corporate lackeys.

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