Five Years a Dragoon (Barnes & Noble Digital Library): And Other Adventures on the Great Plains

In 1849, the author enlisted as a private in the First U.S. Dragoons B Troop, assigned to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. This 1906 military memoir by an enlisted solider tells of forts, canal boats, mule trains, cholera outbreaks, Native American battles, and other encounters in the course of keeping the pre-Civil War West safe for settlers.