Scalping, Big Braves & Butchery: An Irish Indian Fighter Writes Home to His Mother in Dublin

Originally posted on Irish in the American Civil War:

I recently came across the remarkable letters of Sergeant Thomas Mangan, which are here transcribed for the first time. The 22-year-old Dubliner was a recent emigrant from Ireland, who within a year of arriving in his new home found himself in the midst of the savage and brutal struggle for control of the Western Plains. Written from an isolated military post in Colorado Territory in 1866 and 1867, Thomas’s letters travelled over 4,000 mi...