Custer Into the West, by Jeff Broome, $45
There’s little question that the Battle of the Little Bighorn was George Armstrong Custer’s worst day. But the Civil War’s revered Boy General had suffered a few bad times before that tragic encounter.
In this well-researched work, illustrated with maps by Lt. Henry Jackson, a cavalry officer under Custer, historian Jeff Broome zeroes in on the campaign of 1867, a year that challenged Custer, as well as hardened him.
Among the disappointments that Custer faced that year were his arrest and court-martial, the suicide of his second-in-command, heavy desertions and deaths — plus what the author calls “Custer’s First Stand,” his fight against Pawnee Killer’s band of Cheyennes.
“Into the West,” the 11th in the Custer Trails series, adds to Custeriana by publishing Jackson’s diary for the first time. In his record of July 12, for example, Jackson devotes the same space to a description of the campsite as to the discovery of the bodies of 12 mutilated soldiers.
Men of Color to Arms! Black Soldiers, Indian Wars, and the Quest for Equality, by Elizabeth D. Leonard, $27.95
Gen. Custer might have avoided the Little Bighorn if he had accepted the offer to command the black Ninth Cavalry. But Custer thought he was too good to head a black regiment, writes Elizabeth D. Leonard in “Men of Color to Arms!”
His attitude was not unusual. Although 180,000 African-Americans had served in the Civil War, with more than a dozen earning the Medal of Honor, many military men thought these soldiers were unfit for service.
“Let us have . . . men who can read and think for themselves — men who know right from wrong,” wrote one.
Blacks themselves were eager for military service, and many of these soldiers were highly regarded. The citizens of one Texas town wrote a letter praising the black soldiers stationed there. But others faced prejudice. One officer tied a group of black soldiers to a wagon that pulled them 400 miles over a 19-day period. Once in camp, the men were forced to march carrying 25-pound logs until midnight. Fortunately, the officer was court-martialed.
“Men of Color to Arms!” draws on many personal accounts as it chronicles the lives of black soldiers from the Civil War into the 1890s.
African Americans of Denver, by Ronald J. Stephens, La Wanna M. Larson and the Black American West Museum, $19.99
Denver had its share of famous African- Americans — Jim Beckwourth, Barney Ford, Aunt Clara Brown, Mme. C.J. Walker and Justina Ford, to name a few. But it also has had a strong black middle class. And it’s those Denverites who are featured in “African Americans of Denver.”
They include citizens such as Ulysses Baker, Denver’s first African-American detective, attorney Samuel Cary and teacher Sarah Fountain — and more recently, Wellington Webb, Cleo Parker Robinson and Rachel Noel. But this is far more than a portrait gallery of Denver’s black people. What makes the book so appealing is its historic photographs of everyday citizens.
There are shots (generally in Five Points) of the famous (and infamous) Rossonian Lounge and the musicians who played there and elsewhere, and street scenes of the Colored YWCA and the YMCA, Tal Green’s billiards parlor, the operators at the Grandberry Beauty Salon. Taken together, these photographs depict the history of a significant part of Denver’s population.
Italy in Colorado: Family Histories from Denver and Beyond, by Alisa Zahller, $29.95
Hearing that the mountains of Colorado “were amazing furnaces of gold metal,” four Garbarino brothers left Italy in 1858 and sailed for America, a niece relates. Despite setbacks, including an Indian attack, they arrived in Colorado Territory, where instead of finding gold, they opened hotels, restaurants and saloons.
The brothers were among thousands of Italians who emigrated to Colorado to work in mining and construction and to establish their own enterprises.
Zahller, associate curator of Decorative and Fine Arts at the Colorado Historical Society, has put together a comprehensive book on the Italians in the state. There is a general history, but mostly, this book is a compilation of family histories of the ordinary, the famous and the infamous.
There was, of course, Denver’s mafia, the Smaldones. But the Italians who worked the wrong side of the law, Zahller makes clear, were far outweighed by the law-abiding Italians who contributed to Denver’s growth and prosperity.
Sandra Dallas is a Denver novelist who writes regularly about new regional nonfiction releases.
