Tattoo: Military Music, Peacekeeping, and the American Cavalry Experience

Despite the direct links between European and colonial American military cultures, few American mounted units had associated military bands before the Civil War. Buglers, those assigned to troops (organizations equivalent to companies in the infantry branch) to relay orders, make periodic appearances in the book, only to be quickly described as functional musicians who learned largely on the job, only to disappear until the next era. George Custer apparently had a love for regimental bands that the officers commanding the other nine cavalry regiments after the Civil War did not. [...]the discussion of Indian Wars bands is heavily, if unavoidably, focused on Custer's practices. During the war, his command, the Army of the West, headed for California, and included a squadron (equivalent to an infantry or artillery battalion) of the First Dragoons among its units.