Italian immigrants entered the Great Plains first as missionaries such as Fra Marco da Nizza (1495-1558) and Eusebio Francisco Kino (1645-1711), and later as adventurers such as Count Leonetto Cipriani (1816-1888) and Italian American Charles Siringo (1855-1928).

Since Italy was not a unified country until the Risorgimento (1860-70), early sojourners were either in the service of Spain or France or were individual agents. In the mid-1800s the combination of economic and political conditions encouraged some Italians, like the six officers and enlisted men in Gen. George Armstrong Custer's Seventh Cavalry Regiment, to find adventure on the Plains.

Read more

Source: Encyclopedia of the Great Plains