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On December 21, 1866, Red Cloud and a band of Oglala Lakota and Cheyenne warriors defeated a U.S. Army force led by Captain William J. Fetterman. The Fetterman defeat ended Red Cloud’s war for control of the Bozeman Trail with the signing of the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868. President Ulysses S. Grant came to office the following year on a reform platform that included Indian peace policy.
Grasshoppers in Summer tells the epic story of making and breaking the Fort Laramie Treaty as seen through the eyes of opposing political, military, and tribal leaders. Relentless fraud, corruption, cultural and political pressures frustrated Grant’s effort to reform Indian policy. A conspiracy of military, railroad, and mining interests destroyed the Fort Laramie Treaty, leading to the drumbeat of war. The plains tribes’ last great victory at Greasy Grass would win the bitter spoils of total defeat.
“They came from the land of the Great Father, as many as grasshoppers in summer. With them the spirits of the people were driven from the land.”
-- Autumn Snow, Tsitsistas (Cheyenne)
Publisher’s Weekly on "Boots and Saddles: A Call to Glory" wrote:Done with authority. I bought it as history.
Kirk Elllis, Spur Award- winning author wrote:Colt’s sweeping and historically vivid portrayal of the punitive expedition…makes this novel an exciting and stunning success.
Paul Colt understands that the secret to good historical fiction is a firm grounding in the facts and a lively sense of character and period.
