Frontier Duty: The Army in Northern
Idaho, 1853 - 1876
by Donna M. Hanson

First-person accounts, maps and drawings tell the story of the Palouse and North Central Idaho in the most recent addition to the Northwest Historical Manuscript Series published by the University of Idaho Library.  Frontier Duty: The Army in Northern Idaho, 1853-1876,  was compiled and transcribed by Donna Hanson, librarian and professor emerita of the University of Idaho.

Readers can discover how the unfarmed landscape of the region bounded by the Snake and Clearwater Rivers on the south, the Spokane River and Lake Coeur d'Alene on the north, the Bitterroot Mountains on the east, and the channeled scablands on the west appeared to early military expeditions. They can also see how the Nez Perce and Coeur d'Alene cultures were interpreted by the military personnel via the reports submitted to their superiors in Washington. Hanson selected mostly unpublished materials from the National Archives, the Smithsonian Institution and the Library of Congress to offer insights into the ecological and political history of the region.