The Captain of the Gray-Horse Troop was published by Harper & Brothers in 1902, and it was Garland’s most commercially successful novel — a bestseller that introduced the Western setting that would dominate his later career.
Captain George Curtis is a young Army officer assigned to the reservation of the Tetong Sioux, where his duties require him to protect the tribe’s lands from the encroachment of cattlemen who want to open the reservation to grazing. The conflict between the ranchers (backed by local political power) and the Sioux (legally protected but practically helpless) provides the novel’s dramatic structure, and Garland’s sympathies are firmly with the indigenous people — an unusual position for a popular novelist in 1902.
Garland had spent time on Western reservations and had developed genuine relationships with Native Americans, and his depiction of Sioux life — their customs, their politics, their dignity in the face of dispossession — has an authenticity that distinguishes it from the stereotypes of contemporary fiction. The novel argues that the reservation system is a form of imprisonment, that the government’s treatment of Native Americans is a national disgrace, and that the only honorable course is to defend their rights against the greed of white settlers.
Collecting The Captain of the Gray-Horse Troop
First edition (Harper & Brothers, New York, 1902): Cloth binding with pictorial cover.
Market values:
- First edition: $25–$80
- Later editions: $8–$15