The Life of Yellowstone Kelly

Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2006 Book. Very fine. Hardcover. 1st Edition. First edition. xxi, [1], 377pp. Illustrated with photographs. Notes, bibliography, index. Maroon cloth, gilt. A very fine copy with pictorial dust jacket. The first full-length biography of Luther Sage "Yellowstone" Kelly (1849-1928), utilizing Kelly's own memoirs issued in 1926 as well as personal correspondence and other papers. Kelly knew the frontier of the American West and recorded his impressions of that time and place with a fluid, literary pen. Kelly joined the army at the close of the Civil War, spending three years at lonely outposts in Minnesota and Dakota. At the conclusion of his enlistment, he headed west to begin life as a frontiersman, explorer, and army scout and came to know the Upper Missouri and Yellowstone River valleys as well as any white man of his era..