Before Custer. Surveying The Yellowstone, 1872

LUBETKIN, M. JOHN [EDITED BY]

Publication: The Arthur H Clark Company, 2015, Norman

First edition. 8vo. Blue cloth, titles stamped in gold gilt on the front cover and spine, 326 pp., contents, illustrations, maps, introduction, appendices, bibliography, acknowledgements, index. In 1872 the Northern Pacific Railroad set out to survey the Yellowstone Valley. An emissary from the Lakota chief Sitting Bull had warned the two surveying expeditions not to enter the valley, but no one heeded his warning. The firsthand accounts compiled here by M. John Lubetkin document the survey’s three-month struggle with the Lakotas and other Plains Indian people, telling the story of a military and public relations disaster. The Indians repeatedly harassed army forces. One surveying party turned back, without meeting its objectives, after a determined attack led by Sitting Bull. The other also retreated, and one ambush it encountered resulted in the death of a member of President Ulysses S. Grant’s family and the narrow escape of the railroad’s lead engineer. Collected documents also tell a parallel story: that of the dire consequences of the railroad’s problems for the country. When the Northern Pacific’s expansion plans were thwarted, the nation’s largest private banking house failed, leading to the Panic of 1873. As new, unread copy in dust jacket.

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