Cursive in Pre-Typewriter Era

For the "Gathering of the Tribes" chapter in "The Great Pasture", I had to go through two thousand government documents (mostly letters) written in the 1860s. While I appreciate good penmanship in cursive, I'm thankful for the typewriter and word processor era that standardized styles to make reading far easier. Here's a couple examples of what I faced:

This fellow's cursive was pretty readable, but imagine my dismay when I came to this "tipsy" style of writing:

After hitting one of the missives written like that one, I was thankful that the first Fort Hall Indian Agent, Chas. Powell, was left-handed and a bit neater in his writing efforts:

Most of the letters were brief, due in great part to the requirement of copying them in triplicate—and later, quintuplicate (is that a word?)—for the sake of record-keeping. I must admit, I may have missed some important information since I focussed on records between Fort Hall Agents Powell and Danilson and the territorial authorities. I bypassed almost fifty pages in sworn testimony regarding the killing in Boise City of a prominent Shoshone man who was protecting his female partner from an assault by four white men. He failed, taking a knife through the eye and into his skull which ended up being a fatal wound. Despite the testimony of several natives (whose testimony wasn't accepted as evidence due to their status in the area then) and that of those accompanying the main perpetrator, the killer was set free not once but twice despite his obvious guilt. That singular act was instrumental in setting the creation of the Fort Hall Reservation and the long trek from the Boise area by tribal members there to southeast Idaho—a six week journey.

You can delve into that story by getting a copy of "The Great Pasture" or by perusing the documents yourself in the National Archives. "History Hub" is a government service for those seeking any sort of document which the government might possess—take advantage and satisfy your curiosity.