An officer and cavalry commander during the Civil War and Indian wars, General George Armstrong Custer (1839-76) was well known in his lifetime for his personal daring and his aggressive approach to warfare. After his "last stand" in 1876, he was even more famous as the commander who led his entire unit to annihilation by a massive coalition of Native American tribes at the Battle of the Little Bighorn. A few years before the fatal clash, Custer...

How did the heroics of a frontier Kansas cattleman and post trader vault him into a commission with the famous Fifth Cavalry and a leading role in the Indian Wars of the 1870s? In 1925, former cowboy, rancher, bullwhacker, Rocky Mountain miner, post-trader, Indian scout, and cavalry officer Col Homer W. Wheeler would write of his many hair-raising adventures on the Plains and Rocky Mountain frontier in his narrative titled, "Buffalo Days: Forty Years...