The Reading Warehouse

This is the first volume of a four-volune work. The total work represents the culmination of more than twenty years of painstaking research. It is an exhaustive delineation, in words and pictures, of every aspect of the attire and equipment of that most exciting of all United States military forces--the cavalry.

Volume I covers the Revolutionary period, with a detailed account of the "sires" of the United States Cavalry, the Continental Light Dragoons. Then come the War of 1812 and the formation of the United States Mounted Ranger Battalion, and later the United States Dragoons. The uniforms, insignia, decorations, arms, horse equipment, accoutrements, and saddles are described and profusely illustrated in 11 color plates and 96 black-and-white drawings. Appended are sections defining the nomenclature of the horse, horse equipment, and arms, as well as a roster of cavalry bugle calls.

In the work Steffen, a widely renowned military artist and historian, presents American military history from a perspective until now only superficially viewed. Historians, military specialists, and researchers will find a wealth of hard-to-find detail. The author's color plates and meticulously detailed drawings, reproduced from actual uniforms and equipment and official government specifications, show us the cavalryman as he actually looked, wherever he was stationed, whatever his war, wherever he was sent to be a horse soldier for his country.

Randy Steffen, who died early in 1977, while these volumes were in production, was born in Maverick County, Texas of part Sioux-Cheyenne Indian descent. He was the author of more than a thousand articles on military and western history. His paintings, drawings, and sculpture have appeared in exhibits and publications in this country, Europe, South Africa, and Australia. In 1976 he was presented the George Washington Award by the Freedoms Foundation at Valley Forge for his contributions to American history. At the time of his death he was a Governor of the Company of Military Historians. He was the author of United States Military Saddles (1973), also published by the University of Oklahoma Press.