Caution To The Winter Wind

'Caution To The Winter Wind'.
Though very liable to change, this is the current name for the story about Mr Fetterman and his massacre in 1866. It starts on December 19th and crawls up to after the event on December 21st, in the hope that's it's pretty accurate but not too much just like a historical factual novel. Which is going to probably prove tough after the extensive research.
It's split into three (or four) parts, depending on how carried away I get, and so far, parts of each have been written with a short, un-edited Prologue. All writing is, currently, suspended though in favour to research a bit more before I end up running in pelmel and re-writing everything. Which is what usually happens.
Still haven't learnt though. :D
About the research so far though. After writing notes from a few history books about the overview of the American West and finding out the hard way I need to find more specialised things about the subject, I started to write down questions to answer. These were much about the quota I thought I would have though, relating mainly to times, distances and events, which each testimony, letter and report I've read seems to dispute.
Some, luckily, have so far been answered but with each answered, another unanswered one pops up. Testimonies printed off for annotations are: Major Powell's (who was the man who Mr Fetterman took the place of to relieve the corralled and attacked wood train) and Ten Eyck's (the man who went out to relieve Fetterman's force, too late it appeared afterwards).
Powell's, so far, seems to be awful faulty, with a huge amount of corrections from his senior, the commander of the post, Carrington. He seems to think a big thing of himself, saying that he took the command of a lot of details that he actually didn't, and there are so many corrections that I am doubtful that he's actually telling the truth. Though, I'm not sure who's telling the truth at that Fort. Which is a problem, obviously.
I haven't read through Ten Eyck's yet but, from a quick look over, he seems pretty reliable, because of the fact most of it is from a diary which he would have no reason to lie to.
From the other testimonies I'm going to look through though, I suppose I'm going to have to compare them and write down the comparisons to sift through and find what seems to be vaguely truthful and not. How long that will take I'm not sure.
Also, a diary as some of the main characters (namely Carrington, Fetterman and maybe Powell) could help with personalities, as that will, again, be a problem as we don't really know what they were truly like. Should be fun though trying to give them some type of voice and life.
I may post the Prologue at some point but as with the rest of the story, that's far off.
One thing for sure though, I can't wait to start.
Katie x