True West Magazine
In 1965, historian Robert M. Utley was in his second year as the National Park Service’s Chief Historian in Washington, D.C. Two years later he would publish Frontiersmen in Blue; the United States Army and the Indian, 1848-1865 (Macmillan) the follow-up to his first book, The Last Days of the Sioux Nation (Yale University, 1963).
I first met Robert M. Utley in May 1977. He came to Bloomington to receive a Distinguished Alumni Service Award from Indiana University. I was a graduate student in history at IU at that time, and as soon as I learned that Utley was coming to campus, I sought out my mentor, Martin Ridge, to beg for the opportunity to pick up our guest at the Indianapolis airport and deliver him back. I assured Ridge that I would positively die for the opportunity to meet Utley. He thought this but a slight ambition (and never tired of reminding me of it in later years), but agreed to allow me to play chauffer. This eventful meeting was as Bogart s
True West Magazine
Robert M. Utley (right), author of True West’s best Western history nonfiction book of 2020, The Last Sovereigns: Sitting Bull and the Resistance of the Free Lakotas (University of Nebraska Press), has been a Western history hero and mentor to fellow historian Paul Andrew Hutton (left) since their first meeting at Indiana University in 1977. Utley’s The Last Sovereigns is excerpted on pages 18-25, followed by Hutton’s profile of his mentor on pages 26-27.
– Courtesy Paul Andrew Hutton –
If 2020 taught us anything as readers of Western history and fiction, it was that we depend on our storytellers to help us endure hard times. Whether in person, curbside or from a bookseller’s website, we consumed Western history and fiction last year, not only because we love it but to help us through the isolation and remind ourselves of the strength and determination of those who came before us, all of whom overcame much greater odds and conditions than we endu