Customer Reviews

The Exploits of Ben Arnold: Indian Fighter, Gold Miner, Cowboy, Hunter, and Army Scout (Western Frontier Library)

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For an adventurous man who heard often "the call of the frontier" and responded accordingly, Ben Arnold's life is not that far out of the ordinary, though still remarkable. Apparently as an old man living in Pierre, SD, his daughter became interested in his stories and exploits as he related them to her, and she decided to write them down in notebooks. After his death in 1922, she worked on her notebooks and then took them to Lewis Crawford, head of the State Historical Society of North Dakota. He got them ready for publication. He decided to relate Arnold's story using the first person narrator - a good decision as it makes Arnold's accounts more immediate and personal.

Arnold relates nothing about his childhood, but begins with his soldiering in the Civil War. Three times he enlisted in Ohio regiments, deserting each time, the third time for good after getting into a feud with a fellow soldier near present-day Casper, WY. He headed west to Fort Hall in Idaho, where he operated a ferry (ferryman was a recurring occupation during Arnold's life). It was around this time that he changed his name to Ben Arnold (he was born Benjamin M. Connor).

The wanderlust bug struck and he drifted to Virginia City, where he did some mining, then bull-whacked around Fort Benton before going to Fort Union in North Dakota. Over the course of the next decade he was at Ft. Laramie, all over Nebraska, and was with Crook in his campaign against the Sioux as a dispatch rider, most notably at the Rosebud fight. Later he was a buffalo hunter in South Dakota and also homesteaded there. He died in Pierre in 1922.

The tone of the book is very matter-of-fact and to the point. Arnold was not a reflective man, apparently, for little of that is part of the book. Thus he is able to say, "A railroad was under construction [and] one of the engineers told me of a place where there would be a town; if I desired I could file on land within the proposed townsite. But I did not file. The town is now Douglas, Wyoming." That's that, no sorrow, no regrets.

The narrative stops about 20 years before his death because after that time he says "my experiences have not been unusual and are too common to be interesting." Perhaps. But what he's told us before, though not of the "I-fought-with-Custer" heroics, is definitely of interest. He was an adventurer in a land that was just beginning to be settled, a land that through his own exploits he would help create and define. The only wish I had while reading the book was for a modern editor, one who could annotate and explain further some things that Arnold tells about (Crawford attempts this in places, but not often, and gets some things wrong: Bovine, SD, a town Arnold founded, did not become present-day Capa but Van Metre.) But that's a minor quibble; I really enjoyed the book a lot. Highly recommended.

I live in south dakota and reading this book makes me understand the area more. I have visited the areas he taks about. The co writers husband made the cofin for Siting Bull. and the co writer was the secertary for Siting bull. I have visited a stone church that is only a short distance from where Sitting bull was slain. a good book for anyone who likes history.