Customer Reviews

Fort Davis National Historic Site, Texas (024-005-00187-5)

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Robert M. Utley was a career historian for the National Park Service, interested primarily in the military history of the American West. This handbook was completed soon after creation of Fort Davis National Historic Site in West Texas. He sets the park in the context of US military history. Early pages make some pro forma references to the Apache and Comanche tribes but Utley really focuses on Euro-American efforts to build transportation routes through West Texas. He tells the stories of explorations and fort construction, while also discussing the daily life of frontier soldiers. He discusses the Buffalo Soldiers, African-American regiments with white officers who were stationed at the fort, in a couple of pages.

Utley's main interest in this pamphlet, and throughout his career with the NPS, is telling the military story in the West. Much of the pamphlet (pp. 31-48) recounts the Indian raids, cavalry retaliation, and longer campaigns in 1867-80. His language reflects its time, with unflattering adjectives for the Apaches (sneaking or marauding) but not for the US soldiers. Only fifty pages long, this is a still- serviceable brief introduction to the history of the US cavalry at Fort Davis. However, Robert Wooster's 1994 pamphlet, about the same length, would be a better bet.