author
Lawrence Kip
1836–1899
A soldier, sportsman, and man about town, he wrote vivid first-hand accounts of army life in the American West. His books capture both the movement and the mindset of mid-19th-century frontier campaigns.
1 Audiobook
The Indian Council in the Valley of the Walla-Walla. 1855
by Lawrence Kip
About the author
Born in Morristown, New Jersey, in 1836, Lawrence Kip became known as an American soldier, author, and sportsman. Contemporary reference sources identify him as a prominent figure in Gilded Age New York society, and his writing grew directly out of his military experience in the West.
Kip is best remembered for Army Life on the Pacific (1859), a journal-based account of the 1858 expedition against the Coeur d'Alene, Spokane, and Palouse peoples. He also wrote The Indian Council in the Valley of the Walla-Walla (1855). For listeners coming to his work today, the appeal is its immediacy: he writes as a participant, describing travel, camp life, and military action in a brisk, eyewitness style.
He died in 1899. Because Kip wrote from within the U.S. Army during campaigns against Native peoples, his books are also historical documents that reflect the attitudes and assumptions of his era as much as the events themselves.