About the Author

Mark L. Gardner is the coeditor if The Mexican War Correspondence of Richard Smith Elliott (University of Oklahoma Press). A consultant to the National Park Service, he has written interpretive booklets for both Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument and Washita Battlefield National Historic Site.

Historian Marc Simmons is a founder and the first president of the Santa Fe Trail Association. His forty-nine books include six about the Trail and The Last Conquistador: Juan de OÑate and the Settling of the Far Southwest.