Tenting on the Plains; or, General Custer in Kansas and Texas

by Elizabeth Bacon Custer

This is not the last act in the harrowing scene. The soldier overtakes the column, loaded down with his saddle, if the train is too far away to deposit it in the company wagon. Then begins a tirade of annoying comments to this man, still grieving over the parting with his best friend. No one can conceive what sarcasm and wit can proceed from a column of cavalry. Many of the men are Irish, and their reputation for humor is world-wide. "Hullo, there! joined the doe-boys, eh?" "How do you like hoofing it?" are tame specimens of the remarks from these tormenting tongues; such a fusillade of sneers is followed not long after by perhaps the one most gibing of all flinging himself off from his horse, and giving his mount to the one he has done his best to stir into wrath. A cavalryman hates, beyond any telling, enforced pedestrianism, and "Share and share alike" is a motto that our Western soldiers keep in use.

If the wagons held merchandise only, by which the pioneer hoped to grow rich, the risk and suspense attending these endless marches were not worth commemorating; but the bulk of the freight was the actual necessities of life. Conceive, if you can, how these brave men felt themselves chained, as they drove or guarded the food for those living far in advance. There were not enough to admit of a charge on the enemy, and the defensive is an exasperating position for a soldier or frontiersman. He longs to advance on the foe; but no such privilege was allowed them, for in these toilsome journeys they had often to use precautions to hide themselves. If Indians were discovered to be roaming near, the camp was established, trains corralled, animals secured inside a temporary stockade; the fires for coffee were forbidden, for smoke rises like a funnel, and hangs out an instant signal in that clear air. Even the consoling pipe was smoked under a sage-bush or in a hollow, if there happened to be a depression of the ground. Few words were spoken, the loud oaths sank into low mutterings, and the bray of a hungry mule, the clank of wagon-chains, or the stamping of cattle on the baked earth, sounded like thunder in the ears of the anxious, expectant men.

Fortunately, our journey in these trains was not at once forced upon us at Leavenworth. The Kansas Pacific Railroad, projected to Denver, was built within ten miles of Fort Riley, and it was to be the future duty of the Seventh Cavalry to guard the engineers in building the remainder of the road out to the Rocky Mountains. It did not take us long to purchase an outfit in the shops, for, as usual, our finances were low, and consequently our wants were curtailed. We had the sense to listen to a hint from some practical officer who had been far beyond railroads, and buy a cook-stove the first thing, and this proved to be the most important of our possessions when we reached our post, so far from the land of shops. Not many hours after we left Leavenworth, the settlements became farther and farther apart, and we began to realize that we were actual pioneers. Kansas City was then but a small town, seemingly with a hopeless future, as the bluffs rose so steeply from the river, and even when the summit was reached, the ups and downs of the streets were discouraging. It seemed, then, as if it would never be worth while to use it as a site for a town; there would be a lifetime of grading. It is very easy to become a city forefather in such a town, for in the twenty-one years since then, it has grown into a city of over 132,000 inhabitants—but they are still grading. The lots which we could have had almost for the asking, sell now for $1,000 a front foot. Topeka, the capital, showed no evidence of its importance, except the little circle of stars that surrounded it on our atlas. There were but three towns beyond Fort Riley then, and those were built, if I may so express it, of canvas and dug-outs.

Our railroad journey came to an end about ten miles from Fort Riley. The laborers were laying track from that point. It had been a sort of gala day, for General Sherman, on one of his tours of inspection of the frontier posts, had been asked by railroad officials to drive the final spike of the division of the road then finished. We found a wagon waiting for our luggage, and an ambulance to carry us the rest of the journey. These vehicles are not uncomfortable when the long seats on either side are so arranged that they make a bed for the ill or wounded by spreading them out, but as traveling conveyances I could not call them a success. The seats are narrow, with no back to speak of, and covered with carriage-cloth, which can keep you occupied, if the country is rough, in regaining the slippery surface for any number of miles at a stretch. Fort Riley came in sight when we were pretty well tired out. It was my first view of a frontier post. I had either been afraid to confess my ignorance, or so assured there was but one variety of fort, and the subject needed no investigation, that Fort Riley came upon me as a great surprise. I supposed, of course, it would be exactly like Fortress Monroe, with stone walls, turrets for the sentinels, and a deep moat. As I had heard more and more about Indians since reaching Kansas, a vision of the enclosure where we would eventually live was a great comfort to me. I could scarcely believe that the buildings, a story and a half high, placed around a parade-ground, were all there was of Fort Riley. The sutler's store, the quartermaster and commissary storehouses, and the stables for the cavalry horses, were outside the square, near the post, and that was all. No trees, and hardly any signs of vegetation except the buffalo-grass that curled its sweet blades close to the ground, as if to protect the nourishment it held from the blazing sun. The post was beautifully situated on a wide plateau, at the junction of the Republican and Smoky Hill rivers. The Plains, as they waved away on all sides of us, like the surface of a vast ocean, had the charm of great novelty, and the absence of trees was at first forgotten in the fascination of seeing such an immense stretch of country, with the soft undulations of green turf rolling on, seemingly, to the setting sun. The eye was relieved by the fringe of cottonwood that bordered the rivers below us.

Though we came afterward to know, on toilsome marches under the sweltering sun, when that orb was sometimes not even hidden for one moment in the day by a grateful cloud, but the sky was spread over as a vast canopy of dazzling blue, that enthusiasm would not outlast such trials, still, a rarely exultant feeling takes possession of one in the gallops over the Plains, when in early spring they are a trackless sea of soft verdure. And the enthusiasm returns when the campaign for the summer is over, and riding is taken up for pleasure. My husband was full of delight over the exquisite haze that covered the land with a faint purple light, and exclaimed, "Now I begin to realize what all that transparent veil of faint color means in Bierstadt's paintings of the Rocky Mountains and the West." But we had little time to take in atmospheric effects, as evening was coming on and we were yet to be housed, while servants, horses, dogs and all of us were hungry after our long drive. The General halted the wagon outside the post, and left us to go and report to the commanding officer.

At that time I knew nothing of the hospitality of a frontier post, and I begged to remain in the wagon until our quarters were assigned us in the garrison. Up to this time we had all been in splendid spirits; the novelty, the lovely day and exhilarating air, and all the possibilities of a future with a house of our own, or, rather, one lent to us by Uncle Sam, seemed to fill up a delightful cup to the brim. We sat outside the post so long—at least it seemed so to us—and grew hungrier and thirstier, that there were evident signs of mutiny. The truth is, whenever the General was with us, with his determination of thinking that nothing could exceed his surroundings, it was almost impossible to look upon anything except in the light that he did. He gave color to everything, with his hopeful views. Eliza sat on the seat with the driver, and both muttered occasional hungry words, but our Diana and I had the worst of it. We had bumped over the country, sometimes violently jammed against the framework of the canvas cover, and most of the time sliding off from the slippery cushions upon the insulted dogs—for of course the General had begged a place for two of them. He had kept them in order all the way from the termination of the railroad; but now that he was absent, Turk and Byron renewed hostilities, and in the narrow space they scrambled and snarled and sprang at each other. When the General came back he found the little hands of our curly-headed girl clenched over the collar of Byron at one end of the ambulance, while Turk sat on my lap, swelling with rage because my fingers were twisted in the chain that held him, as I sat at the door shaking with terror. It was quick work to jerk the burly brute out of the door, and end our troubles for the time; but the General, after quieting our panic, threw us into a new one by saying we must make up our minds to be the guests of the commanding officer. Tired, travel-stained, and unaccustomed to what afterward became comparatively easy, we were driven to one of the quarters and made our entrance among strangers. I then realized, for the first time, that we had reached a spot where the comforts of life could not be had for love or money.

It is a strange sensation to arrive at a place where money is of little use in providing shelter, and here we were beyond even the commonest railroad hotel. Mrs. Gibbs, who received us, was put to a severe test that night. Already a room in her small house had been prepared for General Sherman, who had arrived earlier in the day, and now there were five of us bearing down upon her. I told her how I had begged to be allowed to go into quarters, even though there were no preparations, not even a fireplace where Eliza could have cooked us food enough over the coals to stay hunger; but she assured me that, having been on the Plains before the war, she was quite accustomed to a state of affairs where there was nothing to do but quarter yourself upon strangers; and then gave up her own room to our use. From that night—which was a real trial to me, because I felt so keenly the trouble we caused them all—dates the beginning of a friendship that has lasted through the darkest as well as the brightest hours of my life. I used to try to remember afterward, when for nine years we received and entertained strangers who had nowhere else to go, the example of undisturbed hospitality shown me by my first friend on the frontier.

The next day my husband assumed command of the garrison, and our few effects were moved into a large double house built for the commanding officer. There were parlors on one side, whose huge folding doors were flung open, and made our few articles of furniture look lonely and meagre. We had but six wooden chairs to begin with, and when, a few miles more of the railroad being completed, a party of one hundred and fifty excursionists arrived, I seated six of them—yes, seven, for one was tired enough to sit on a trunk—and then concluded I would own up that in the larger rooms of the house, into which they looked significantly, there were no more chairs concealed. I had done my best, and tried to make up for not seating or feeding them, by very busy talking. Meanwhile there were incessant inquiries for the General. It seems that he had begun that little trick of hiding from strangers, even then. He had seen the advancing column of tourists, and fled. One of the servants finally unearthed him, and after they had gone and he found that I had been so troubled to think I could do nothing for the citizens, and so worried because he was non est, he did not leave me in such strait again until I had learned to adapt myself to the customs of the country where the maxim that "every man's house is his castle" is a fallacy.

The officers who had garrisoned the post began to move out as our own Seventh Cavalry officers reported for duty. The colonel of the regiment arrived, and ranked us out of our quarters, in this instance much to our relief, as the barrack of a building would never fill up from the slow rate at which our belongings increased. This army regulation, to which I have elsewhere referred, was then new to me. The manner in which the Government sees fit to arrange quarters is still amusing to me, but I suppose no better plan has ever been thought out. In the beginning of a well-built post, there is but little choice. It is the aim to make the houses, except that of the commanding officer, exactly alike. From time to time new quarters are built. The original plan is not followed; possibly a few improvements are added to the newer houses. Ah! then the disturbance ensues! Fort Vancouver, in Washington Territory, is one of the old posts, quite interesting from the heterogeneous collection of quarters added through fifty years. I was spending a day or two, in 1875, with my husband's niece, whose husband was some distance down on the list, and consequently occupied a low log building, that dated back no one knows how far. Even in that little cabin they were insecure, for in reply to my question, "Surely you are permanently fixed, and won't be moved," they pathetically answered: "Not by any means! We live from hour to hour in uncertainty, and there are worse quarters than these, which we walk by daily with dread, as —— ranks us, and he is going to be married, so out we go!"