Twenty-Five Years among the Indians and Buffalo: A Frontier Memoir

by William D. Street, Warren R. Street (Editor), Richard W. Etulain (Foreword by)

Overview

A Kansas Notable Book

Nearing 60, William D. Street (1851–1911) sat down to write his memoir of frontier life. Street’s early years on the plains of western Kansas were both ordinary and extraordinary; ordinary in what they reveal about the everyday life of so many who went out to the western frontier, extraordinary in their breadth and depth of historical event and impact. His tales of life as a teamster, cavalryman, town developer, trapper, buffalo hunter, military scout, and cowboy put us squarely in the middle of such storied events as Sheridan’s 1868–1869 winter campaign on the southern Plains and the Cheyenne Exodus of 1878. They take us trapping beaver and hunting buffalo for hides and meat, and driving cattle on the Great Western Cattle Trail. They give us insight into his evolving understanding of his multi-decade relationship with the Lakota. And they give us a front-row seat at the founding and development of Jewell and Gaylord, Kansas, and a firsthand look at the formation of Jewell’s “Buffalo Militia.”

In later life Street rose to prominence as a newspaper publisher, state legislator, and regent of the Kansas State Agricultural College. At the time of his death—noted in the New York Times—he was still at work on his memoir. Handed down through his family over the past century and faithfully transcribed here, Street’s story of frontier life is as rich in history as it is in character, giving us a sense of what it was to be not just a witness to, but a player in, the drama of the plains as it unfolded in the late nineteenth century. Edited by Street’s great-grandson, with an introduction by Richard Etulain, a leading scholar of the West, this memoir is history as it was lived, recalled in sharp detail and recounted in engaging prose, for the ages.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780700636167
Publisher:	University Press of Kansas
Publication date:	11/17/2023
Pages:	560
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.14(d)

About the Author

Warren R. Street is professor emeritus of psychology at Central Washington University, Ellensburg, Washington.

Table of Contents

Introduction, Richard W. Etulain

Editor’s Foreword, Warren R. Street

I. Early Years in Kansas: 1861–1867

1. Boyhood Becomes Early Manhood: 1861–1867

2. Frontier Teamster: Summer 1867

II. Nineteenth Kansas Volunteer Cavalry: 1868–1869 Winter Campaign

3. On the March to Camp Supply: October–November 1868

4. The Balance of Forces on the Plains: 1868

5. Custer at the Washita: November 1868

6. Winter March from Camp Supply to Fort Cobb: December 1868

7. Arrival at Fort Cobb: December–January 1868–1869

8. Winter Camp at Fort Cobb: January 1869

9. Winter March to the New Fort Sill: January 1869

10. Fort Sill. Exploring the Wichita Mountains: January–February 1869

11. Fort Sill. Indian Legends: January–February 1869

12. Fort Sill. A Soldier’s Discontents: January–February 1869

13. March from Fort Sill to Fort Hays: February–March 1869

14. Fort Sill to Fort Hays. Joining Custer’s Command: February–March 1869

15. Fort Sill to Fort Hays. Custer Pursues Medicine Arrow: February–March 1869

16. Fort Sill to Fort Hays. Custer Declines to Attack: February–March 1869

17. Fort Sill to Fort Hays. White Captives Released. Troops Eat Their Mules: March–April 1868

18. Mustered Out. Following the Family Westward: March–April 1868

19. Homesteading in Jewell County: May 1869

III. Frontier Patrols With the Kansas State Militia: 1869–1870

20. Company D Patrols North Central Kansas: May–October 1869

21. Contacts with Settlers and Kansas Geological Survey: May–October 1869

22. My First buffalo Kill: Fall 1869

23. Discharged from the Militia and Trapping Beaver: November 1869

24. Hunting and Trapping Forays: Winter 1869–1870

IV. Jewell City Beginnings: 1870

25. The Buffalo Militia and Fort Jewell: Spring 1870

26. Jewell City Celebrates the Fourth of July: May–1870

27. Organizing Jewell County: July–September 1870

V. Settling Smith County: 1870–1872

28. Locating Townsites for Gaylord and Cedarville: September 1870

29. The First building in Gaylord: 1871

30. Organizing Smith County: Fall–Spring 1871–1872

VI. Following the Frontier West to Decatur County: 1872–1873

31. Exploring Decatur County: Fall–Winter 1872–1873

32. Homesteading in Decatur County: Winter–Fall 1873

VII. Hunting and Trapping Adventures on the Great Plains: 1873–1874

33. An Omaha Indian Buffalo Hunt in Northwestern Kansas: October 1873

34. On the Range for Buffalo, Beaver, Otter, and Wolves; October –November 1873

35. More Hunting Adventures: November–December 1873

36 Buffalo Camp on the Republican River: December 1873

37. Beaver Trapping Tactics: January–March 1874

38. Hunting and Trapping on Big Timber Creek: March#8211;April 1874

39. Hunting Buffalo on the State Line Trail: April 1874

40. A Prairie Storm Scatters the Horses: April 1874

41. Two Lance’s Lakotas Visit the Camp: May 18774

42. Buffalo Hunting on the Republican and Big Timber: June–August 1874

43. A Friendly Parting of the Ways: August–October 1874

44. A Moonlight Hunt on the Republican: October 1874

45. Buffalo Camp on the North Fork of the Republican: October 1874

VIII. Life With the Lakota: 1874–1875

46. A Visit from Sitting Bull and Big Horse: November–December 1874

47. Lakota Neighbors on the Republican: December 1874

48. Lessons in Tribal Justice: January 1875

49. Storms in Eastern Colorado: January 1875

50. Taking Hides to Julesburg, Colorado: February 1875

51. Accused of Stealing Indian Ponies: March 1875

52. Hired to Recover Stolen Horses: March–April 1875

53. Cheyenne Massacre on the Middle Fork of the Sappa

IX. On the Trail of Horse Thieves: 1875

54. Captured by Horse Thieves: June 1875

55. Hunting Down the Outlaws: Summer 1875

56. The Fate of the Horse Thieves: Fall 1875

X. Two Years as a Cowboy: 1876–1878

57. An Introduction to Cattle Herding: Spring 1876

58. Herding for High and Mayfield and the Adair Brothers:April–July 1876

59. Riding for Quinlan and Montgomery and Elwin Webber: Summer–Fall 1876

60. A Big Roundup on the Smoky Hill River: 1878

61. Driving a Herd on the Great Texas Cattle Trail:July 1878

62. Giving Lessons to Greenhorns: August 1878

63. Headed Home to a Crisis: August–September 1878

XI. Cavalry Messenger and Scout: 1878

64. In Pursuit of Northern Cheyenne Bands: September–November 1878

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Editorial Reviews

"William D. Street’s memoir of life on the central and northern Great Plains as a teamster, soldier, homesteader, trapper, buffalo hunter, scout and cowboy is about as exciting as it gets for a vivid, page-turning reminiscence of the Old West. This is an important and highly recommended memoir."—John Monnett, author of Tell Them We Are Going Home: The Odyssey of the Northern Cheyennes

"Twenty-Five Years among the Indians and Buffalo offers an interesting, highly readable, and informative personal narrative covering events and experiences of real significance for early, post-Civil War settlement of Kansas and the Great Plains. The narrator, Bill Street, who goes on to become a Kansan of some notoriety in the latter part of the nineteenth century, recounts in great detail his experiences as a teenage muleskinner in the 1860s, a trooper in the Nineteenth Kansas Volunteer Cavalry involved in the famous Winter Campaign of 1868-69, a homesteader and town builder in Jewell and Decatur counties, a High Plains hunter and trapper, a cowboy, and more. This is a significant contribution to the literature in the tradition of many other ‘eyewitness’ accounts from the nineteenth century."—Virgil Dean, editor of John Brown to Bob Dole: Movers and Shakers in Kansas History

"Twenty-five Years among the Indians and Buffalo, the memoir of William Street’s exciting decade on the Central Plains during the 1870s, is a treasure house for those interested in the history both of Kansas and of the American West. During this seminal decade of westward expansion, Street was an Indian fighter, a soldier, a buffalo hunter, a trapper, a homesteader, a town founder, and a cowboy. (Like Jack Crabb in Thomas Berger’s great novel, Little Big Man, Street seems to have been an active participant in nearly every occupation of the Old West.) Recorded in the early twentieth century, after Street had become a newspaper editor (which perhaps explains the clarity of his engaging prose), we gain new ground-level insights into activities, since mythologized, that were quotidian events for Street and his contemporaries."—Jim Hoy, author of Flint Hills Cowboys: Tales from the Tallgrass Prairie

From the Publisher