Any fan of exploration will find this diary of two soldiers exploring the western United States trying to map territory to place a reservation. Some of the language and attitudes in this book are hard to read from a modern perspective, native Americans treated as savages and moved and shunted around so the land could be exploited for material gain, if anything this makes this book an important book for anybody interested in how mindsets have changed.

Side by side with the westward drift of white Americans in the 1830's was the forced migration of the Five Civilized Tribes from Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and Florida. Both groups were deployed against the tribes of the prairies, both breaking the soil of the undeveloped hinterland. Both were striving in the years before the Civil War to found schools, churches, and towns, as well as to preserve orderly development through government and laws.In this book Grant Foreman brings ...

Fort Gibson was not only the oldest and most celebrated military establishment in the annals of Oklahoma but in its early days it was the farthest west outpost of the United States, and in many respects continued for years to be one of the most important on that frontier. It was one of the chain of forts reaching from the northern to the southern boundaries of the nation, which included Fort Snelling, Fort Leavenworth, Fort Gibson, Fort Towson, and Fort Jesup, at times there were as many s...