Ten Days on the Plains (The DeGolyer Library Publication Series, Volume Two).

Dallas, Texas:: Southern Methodist University Press, 1985.. 1st Edition, thus.. Hardbound . BINDING/CONDITION: paper covered boards with cloth at the spine; a Very Good+ book, with a Very Good+ dust jacket.. 8vo (about 9.5 inches tall) . Index. Description: The jacket art reproduces the painting Great Royal Buffalo Hunt by Louis Maurer. Well illustrated in black and white with historic photographs and other illustrations. This was originally published in 1871 in a limited edition; this is a first printing of this reprint edition, and is Volume Number Two in The DeGolyer Library Publication Series. Taken from the jacket blurb: The book is a memento of a hunting expedition -- hosted by Lieutenant General Philip H Sheridan -- designed to impress influential business and civic leaders with the role of the frontier army. Covering almost 200 miles in ten days, the hunters left a trail of empty champagne bottles and animal carcasses from Nebraska to Kansas. Over 600 buffalo were slaughtered, along with hundreds of elk, antelope, and wild turkeys. To guide the hunters Sheridan secured the services of a young scout, William F Cody, who was already beginning to develop the image he eventually perfected on eastern stages. It is no exaggeration to say that Cody and Sheridan invented the Wild West show on that autumn expedition. In his introduction and annotations, Paul Andrew Hutton addresses the close working relationship between the frontier military and the eastern business community, as well as the callous slaughter of western wildlife represented by the trip. Hutton also discusses the emergence of Cody as hero-type out of the post-Civil War frontier.