SoldiersLife2

Soldier's Life in a Frontier Fort
During the Plains Indian Wars

FAR FROM LIVING THE ADVENTUROUS LIFE,

     the frontier soldier led a hard, boring, isolated existence. They often worked with poor equipment and were frequently underfed. They suffered from inadequate health care and often substandard housing. Campaigns, while a break from garrison life, caused even more hardships. In spite of this, they did accomplish their mission on protecting the frontier.

     The Indian Wars (1872-1891) soldiers were all volunteers, mostly uneducated and illiterate. Although many were immigrants, statistics show that over half of the men were native-born and most were Civil War veterans. Men joined the army for several reasons--to escape from the law or home life, to seek adventure, to fight Indians, to find a way westward, to have a job, or to learn English.

     According to Army records, the average age for a first-time enlistment was 23 years old, and 32 years old for a second enlistment. The term of enlistment was five years, and many of the men who enlisted for a second term spent a few years as civilians between enlistments. During most of the Indian Wars period, the basic enlisted man's salary was $13 a month. Low pay, combined with boredom, were major reasons for the high desertion rate.

A trooper's average day involved drills, guard duty, inspections and fatigue details. During their free time, soldiers could attend school (if one existed), read, picnic, ride horseback, attend parties and dances, participate in sports or visit bawdy houses. Food on the frontier was not of the highest quality. The mainstays of the enlisted man's menu were hash, stew, hardtack, salt, vinegar and molasses. Scurvy was a common disease among the men due to the lack of frest fruits and vegetables.

     Each day's activities were carried on within a rigidly organized routine, from reveille until 'lights out' at 9:30 p.m. There were one or more 'calls' almost every hour. Here's a look at the typical routine for a common soldier.

     5:45 Assembly for trumpeters
     6:00 Reveille and roll call
     6:30 Mess (breakfast)
     7:30 Fatigue call (work details)
     8:00 Sick call
     8:55 Assembly of trumpeters
     9:00 Assembly of guard detail
     9:45 Recall from fatigue details
     10:00 Drill
     11:00 Recall from drill (infantry and artillery)
     11:30 Recall from drill (cavalry)
     11:45 First sergeants' call (for morning reports)
     12:00 Mess (lunch)
     1:00 Drill for target practice (Mon., Wed., Fri.)
     2:00 Fatigue call
     4:15 Recall from fatigue duty
     4:30 Stable call (care for horses)
              No evening mess call, expect by gongs or triangles.
              Five minutes before sundown, assembly of entire
              garrison in dress uniform for retreat and roll call.
     8:55 Assembly for trumpeters' call
     9:00 Last call (soldiers in company formations)
     9:30 Lights out

     Boredom was associated with garrison life for the soldiers of the frontier forts. This was partly relieved by dances and plays put on by the soliders themselves, or by attending musical performances by the post band. The post trader's store was the main location for cards and billiards, and a lot of time was spent drinking and gambling.

    Troopers would often visit "hog ranches" (drinking establishments and houses of prostitution) located on the edge of the military reservations. Many soldiers at Fort Abraham Lincoln spent their free evening at "My Lady's Bowery" or the "Dew Drop Inn," two such establishments located on the east side of the Missouri River.

     During the summer months, favorite forms of recreation by the soldiers included fishing, hunting, reading, horseback riding and baseball. The Benteen Baseball Club was a well-organized, enthusiastic team whose players served in Captain Frederick W. Benteen's company of the 7th Cavalry at Fort Abraham Lincoln during the years immediately preceding the Battle of the Little Big Horn. Benteen's Ball Club played teams from Fort Randall, Fort Rice, and from Yankton, South Dakota.

     Given all the problems faced by the Indian-fighting cavalry, their record was, in fact, astonishingly successful. The main handicap was simple weakness in Civil War the US Army was always understrength. In June 1853, for example, only 6,918 officers and men were actually stationed in the 54 Western posts, out of a total authorized Army strength of 13,821 all ranks. Nor did the situation improve greatly. In 1866 total authorized strength was 37,133, and this was decreased to 27,000 in 1874; yet by the latter year the Army was responsible for manning 200 posts.

     During the Civil War—which represented only four years out of 40, and which was by no means typical of the overall picture—the Plains cavalry was both stronger and of better quality than was the case during the rest of this period. In 1863, Maj.Gen. Henry Halleck (in practice, if not in title, the Army's chief of staff) was able to report: 'The number of troops now stationed in the frontier departments and Territories is much larger than in time of peace.' On the whole the quality of both officers and men was also superior during these years. They were drawn from among frontiersmen, used to horses and weapons and often of a higher educational level than was generally found in the Regular Army. Being locally recruited volunteers, they had better motivation to defend the country¬side; they were more familiar with the Indians, and less frightened of them, since they drew on first¬hand experience rather than blood-curdling dime novels; and they were physically stronger and more active than the urban poor among whom the Army recruited before and after the Civil War.

     For much of the period covered by this book the small Army was spread very thinly over a large number of posts. A 3rd Cavalry officer wrote in 1876: 'I am captain of Company D. I am absent on sick-leave; my first lieutenant is absent on recruiting service; my second lieutenant is an aide-de-camp to General Crook, and there is not an officer on duty with the company.' The 7th Cavalry fought at the Little Bighorn with 15 officers missing out of an authorized establishment of 43. In 1877 there was only one first lieutenant serving with the 5th Cavalry.

     One serious consequence of the wide dispersion of cavalry units on the frontier was the lack of opportunity for training or operations at any level higher than the single troop or company. Sgt. Percival Lowe wrote that his company of the ist Dragoons had never served with another company during his whole five-year enlistment. This made for poor training of all ranks.

     When officers first joined their commands they were usually proficient enough. In the 1840’s and 1850’s many were veterans of the Mexican War, and in the 1870’s and 1880’s their places were taken by Civil War veterans, as the older men either moved up to higher command appointments or retired. Officers who were not veterans of active service were generally graduates of the US Military Academy at West Point; and there was also a scattering of good men commissioned from the enlisted ranks for proven ability. Once in their posts, however, too many officers seem to have simply stagnated: and there was little reason for them to do anything else.

Promotion was criminally slow. An analysis made in 1877 indicated that a newly commissioned second lieutenant could not expect to become a major for at least 26 years, while it would take at least 37 years to attain the rank of colonel. This was partly because promotion up to captain was within the individual regiment, and by 'arm'—with candidates for a rank being considered from within the cavalry as a whole—only for the field ranks. If there were a number of young company officers in a lieutenant's regiment, he might stay a lieutenant for many weary years. Another part of the problem was the lack of any official retirement age.

While the officers at least started out well trained, the same could not be said of the enlisted men. From the earliest years there had been a cavalry training station at Jefferson Barracks, Missouri; and a cavalry basic training facility was later established at Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania. Here the new-recruit was supposed to learn how to ride a horse, how to perform a limited amount of dismounted drill, and how to handle his weapons. Such training was vitally necessary, since the average recruit was simply not used to horses. He was generally from a city background, poor and uneducated, and quite possibly of foreign birth. Studies indicate that before the Civil War about half the US Army had been born in Ireland and a fifth in Germany. Between 1865 and 1874, 20 per cent came from Ireland and 12 per cent from Germany. Most enlisted to fill their bellies; a number of depressions swept the country during these decades, and hunger, as always, made a good recruiting sergeant. Some, at least, joined up to escape the attentions of the law. But while their need for training was obvious, it hardly seems to have been fulfilled.

   Testifying at the court martial of Maj. Reno following the Custer massacre, Sgt. Ferdinand A. Culbertson of the 7th Cavalry stated that 'most of G Company were recruits, about half; and about a third of A Company—I don't know about M. And they had very little training. They were poor horsemen and would fire at random. They were brave enough, but had not the time or opportunity to make soldiers. Some of them were not fit to take into action. About all of the instruction they had in the duties of a soldier was what Major Reno had given them that spring. Most of the time they were on some other duty that gave them no chance to learn how to fight.' According to Lt. George D. Wallace's testimony, 'Many of the men had never been on a horse until that campaign, and they lost control of their horses when galloping into line.' And this was a regiment considered to be one of the better Indian-fighting units on the Plains.

     Most of the recruit's instruction was actual 'on the job' training. To keep an Army trained in this way at a high level of efficiency requires a constant core of good, long-service soldiers; and in this, too, the US Army failed, since its turnover of personnel was quite remarkably high. The enlisted ranks were depleted by between 25 and 40 per cent annually during the years after the Civil War. (In 1853 the Secretary of War had reported that some 1,300 out of 10,000 enlisted men would take their discharge that year.) And discharge was an almost insignificant drain on manpower when compared with desertion.

     In 1856, out of an Army of 15,000 men, no less than 3,233 deserted. In 1871 a full 32.6 per cent of the Army's total strength deserted; but at least we may record that this almost incredible figure did represent an all-time peak. More typically, the Adjutant General was to report that between 30 June 1873 and 30 June 1874 there were 4,606 desertions—19 per cent of the Army. Local commands sometimes lost dramatically more than the average for the Army as a whole, when specific causes presented themselves. The combination of nearby gold strikes and inconsiderate officers could produce remarkable results, as in Custer's 7th Cavalry on the Platte River—which lost 40 men in 1 single night.

     It must be acknowledged that those who remained in the ranks had little reason to do so. Certainly, the wages were nothing to write home about. Before the Civil War a cavalry private earned $8 a month, and a sergeant $13. This rose to $ 16 a month for a private during the Civil War, but dropped back to $13 thereafter. Moreover, the troops were paid in paper money, which was not yet readily accepted in the West and which had to be changed, at a loss, for coin.

     The rations were less than attractive, consisting of poor quality salt or fresh beef or pork; hard bread (or soft, if the fort was large enough to justify a bake oven); large amounts of strong coffee; beans, pease and rice. This was supplemented with locally hunted game, and occasionally with greenstuff from 'private enterprise' vegetable gardens—though the location of many posts in harsh terrain limited the possibilities of gardening. Post sutlers might offer the occasional imported treat, such as canned oysters, hams and sardines. In the later years of the century the Army did make some attempt to improve and balance diets by issuing dried fruit and vegetables, but these were unappetizing and not well received.

     In isolated frontier posts boredom was a serious problem: Hollywood notwithstanding, it was not a matter of hitting the trail after pesky Redskins' day after day. The soldier's life was more commonly a repetitive round of morning formation, breakfast and sick call, drill, and various work details. In fact, the work details were a good deal more common than the drill. Some soldiers petitioned Congress in 1878, complaining that instead of real soldiering they were put to 'building quarters, stables, storehouses, bridges, roads and telegraph lines; involving logging, lumbering, quarrying, adobe and brick making, lime-burning, mason-work, plastering, carpentering, painting etc. We are also put at teaming, repairing wagons, harness, etc., blacksmithing, and sometimes wood-chopping and hay-making.' The legionaries of ancient Rome would have found the life entirely familiar.

The reason for all this labour is not hard to understand. Each post on the Plains was, in effect, a small and necessarily self-sufficient community, far from other communities and dependent on its own skills and effort. Since enlisted Engineers were almost unknown on the Plains, the garrisons themselves had to build and maintain their posts, and do all the other work involved in maintaining a community and its immediate links with the outside world, such as roads, bridges and telegraph lines.

Since the men were even less well trained in building than they were in riding and fighting, the posts they constructed for themselves often left much to be desired. Troopers in Col. Harney's 2nd Dragoons wintered in the upper Missouri area in 1855-56 in unlighted log cabins with dirt floors which were mud around the fireplaces and frozen in the corners. Rough wooden bunks were thrown up, and covered with straw.

Is was rare for wall or defensive works to be built around the frontier posts. Most were little more than a collection of buildings huddled together in the middle of the featureless Plains-a barracks for the men facing a building for the officers, with one room for the commander, and a stable block. Larger posts may also have had a stockade, a warehouse, a sutler's stor, a post headquarters office, and even a mess hall with bake ovens. The buildings were grouped around a parade ground, over which flew the US flag. As the decades passed, of course, those forts which remained in active use, such as Fort Sill, Oklahoma, tended to become more sophisticated and better built; but many of the small, one-troop forts scattered throug the wilderness were hardly improved at all before they were finally abandoned.

     If the men fell sick from exposure, bad living or inadequate diet, they were in real trouble: the average post did not boast its own surgeon. It was lucky if it had the services of a hired civilian doctor-often little more than a quack-or of a hospital steward. This latter was an enlisted man who was supposed to have picked up some knowledge of medicine in civilian life or by studying under a doctos. Medicines were few, considering the vast number of threats to the system of the frontier soldier. Little consideration was given to maintaining high standards of hygiene. Cholera, acute dysentery, fevers, respiratory ailments, scurvy and venereal diseases were all common, and killed many more bluecoats than Indian arrows ever did.

     Records indicate that of every 1,800 men treated by surgeons, 1,550 were suffering from disease and only 250 from wounds.

     As well as indicating the frequency of disease, these figures hint at the rarity of battle. A man could easily spend his entire five-year enlistment without ever firing his weapon in action. In fact, the average trooper probably fought in one minor action, if at all, during his enlistment. And since the average trooper seems to have enlisted for no more than one hitch, it was a rare man who saw anything like a major battle on the Plains.

When he did fight, the bluecoat had two advantages over the Indians which usually outweighed their local superiority in numbers and their far superior fieldcraft and horsemanship. The cavalry fought as disciplined soldiers, acting on command; the Indian brave fought as an individual, and hardly ever under active and coordinating leadership. Secondly, the cavalry en¬joyed a great advantage in firepower. Although many Plains warriors carried guns during the 1860’s—80’s, they were limited by their lack of skilled smiths to maintain and repair them; and by a chronic shortage of ammunition, which prevented enough practice to bring proficiency. Co-ordinated, concentrated firing, even by men lacking more than rudimentary training in marksmanship, often gave the outnumbered bluecoats the victory.

     On those occasions when the Indians did appear to be winning, generally because of overwhelming numbers, there is ample evidence that the cavalrymen killed themselves rather than face the torture which they felt sure would follow capture. One veteran remembered, years later: 'When we fought with the Indians we had to fight for our lives, because they took no prisoners, or if they did, only to torture them to death.' Sgt. Samuel Gibson recalled that at the Wagon Box Fight many of the soldiers made preparations to kill themselves if overrun, 'rather than be captured and made to endure the inevitable torture'. Lt. Frederick W. Sibley, sent out on a scout by Gen. Crook on 7 July 1876, ran into a band of Cheyenne. 'As the volume ?f Indian fire seemed to increase,' he wrote, '"No surrender!" was the word passed around the thin skirmish line. Each of us would, if he found it necessary, have blown out his own brains rather than fall alive into Indian hands.

     Terror of the enemy was one factor in making a soldier's life less than pleasant; the discipline meted out by his own officers was another. With time weighing so heavily on their hands, the men seem to have been quick to get into trouble, and their officers quick to discipline them. Some officers went too far—Custer was court martialled for sending men after deserters with orders to shoot them out of hand, which even the Army brass found too strong!—but enough other forms of punishment were available to satisfy the most sadistic martinet. Before the Civil War flogging and even branding were common. Even after the war punishments included 'bucking and gagging', suspending by the thumbs, and confinement in a 'sweatbox'. Punishments also seem to have been awarded rather arbitrarily; the character or mood of an individual officer determined how apt he was to hand out harsh punishments without explanation. The Articles of War, dating from 1806, were vaguely phrased, and left too much to the individual officer's discretion. It was not until almost the end of this period that a movement directed towards reform of the Army's disciplinary system really began to make headway.

Records indicate the freedom with which courts martial were convened. During a ten-month period in 1875-1876, when the Army's total strength stood at only 25,000, there were 4,587 court martial convictions.

Off-duty hours brought little relief. Officers stayed apart from their men. Being generally better educated, they tried to alleviate the suffocatin boredom of life in a small, isolated fort by staging amateur dramatics and musical evenings, reading, holding dinner parties, and arranging picnics. They had a major advantage over their men in that many married officers had their wives and children living with them, which brightened their daily lives considerably. They paid for the pleasure in a cruel coin, howvever; as in every 'colonial' army of this period, the US Cavalry's posts included pathetic cemeteries of small graves. The life of the frontier was sometimes killingly hard on women and children.

     The enlisted men had little to do in their off-duty hours. Most sutlers sold liquor, especially light beer and various wines, and the soldier's main leisure activity was drinking. This naturally contributed to the disciplinary problems: during that ten-month period of 1875-76, 1,568 of the 4,587 court martial convictions were for drunkenness. The second most popular pastime was probably gambling—at least, on those rare occasions when the trooper still had a few cents in his pocket. Since the single greatest cause of illness was venereal disease, we may infer that there were women available near many of the posts, often in neighbouring 'hog ranches'. These establishments were a powerful attraction for the off-duty trooper, particularly after 2 February 1881, when the sale of liquor was banned on military property. It was only after the Indian Wars period that post canteens were finally built, and to some extent put the 'hog ranches' out of business. There were few more edifying pastimes for the cavalry trooper. Some of the larger forts did establish post libraries, at least towards the end of the period. Chaplains occasionally offered schooling, which was helpful to the many men who were unable to read or write English. Dances and parties were occasionally organized, especially to mark holidays: hut these were rare pleasures.

     The life of the Plains cavalry, officer and man alike, was grindingly hard and brought meagre rewards; and the military quality of the average trooper was not impressive. At times he fought notably well; but it was not brilliant soldiering which beat the Plains tribes. It was the overwhelming weight of the white man's growing numbers; the dogged patience of the US Army's operations, over decades; and the superiority of the bluecoats' firepower.

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