This book chronicles all the years Fort Supply remained active. In the first ten years of the post's existence, from 1868 to 1878, its personnel were involved in three Indian uprisings and yet found time to protect the Cheyennes and Arapahoes from depredations by other Indian tribes, white stock thieves, and whisky traders from Kansas and New Mexico. In the decade of the 1880's, Fort Supply troops provided protection for the emerging cattle industry of western Indian Territory. As the frontier continued to diminish after 1890, Fort Supply performed its last role in history by serving as headquarters for the opening of the Cherokee Outlet to settlement.For roughly twenty-five years Fort Supply played a meaningful part in the lives of three important elements of Southern plains history: the red man, the cowboy, and the sodbuster. "The research is . . . based primarily on abundant unpublished official records and other contemporary sources. The book is generally well written, unusually interesting, and unquestionably definitive." ARIZONA AND THE WEST