Overview Stotts relates his experiences joining the army at St. Louis in 1866 and traveling over the Great Plains to Fort Lyon, Colorado. He describes killing buffalo and witnessing a Native American killing a bison; an encounter with members of a Native American village near [Zara?], Colorado; Fort Dodge and Buffalo Bill; Bent's Fort and the Bent family; flooding of Fort Lyon and the construction of New Fort Lyon; and the wars with Native American tribes, including comments on Satanta (Set-Tainte,...

Overview

Richard Blake was a sutler, or civilian provisioner, at Fort Wallace, Kansas, during the 1860s. He wrote several letters to relatives about life on the army post. Included with the letters were seven photographs made by a visitor to Fort Wallace, Dr. William A. Bell, who was the photographer for the Kansas Pacific Railway Expedition.