author
Lawrence Kip
1836–1899
Best known for Army Life on the Pacific, this 19th-century writer drew on his own military service to tell vivid stories of the American West. He was also a soldier and sportsman whose life moved between frontier duty and New York’s Gilded Age society.
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 was an American army officer, author, and sportsman. He is chiefly remembered for Army Life on the Pacific (1859), a firsthand account based on the 1858 campaign against the Coeur d'Alene, Spokane, and Palouse peoples in the Pacific Northwest.
Kip graduated from West Point and served in the U.S. Army before and during the Civil War, where he later worked on the staff of General Philip Sheridan. Beyond his military career, he was known in elite New York social circles during the Gilded Age.
His writing is tied closely to his experience as an officer, giving his work the immediacy of a participant's view. Today, readers often encounter him through historical reprints and archives of Army Life on the Pacific, which remains the work most associated with his name.