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

by Elizabeth Bacon Custer

Very few of the original appointments remained after a few years. Some who served on to the final battle of 1876, went through many struggles in gaining mastery of themselves. The General believed in them, and they were such splendid fighters, and such fine men when there was anything to occupy them, I know that my husband appreciated with all his soul what trials they went through in facing the monotony of frontier life. Indeed, he was himself enduring some hours of torture from restlessness and inactivity. It is hard to imagine a greater change than from the wild excitement of the Virginia campaigns, the final scenes of the war, to the dullness of Fort Riley. Oh! how I used to feel when my husband's morning duties at the office were over, and he walked the floor of our room, saying, "Libbie, what shall I do?" There were no books to speak of, for the Seventh was then too new a regiment to purchase company libraries, as we did later. . . . My husband never cared much for current novels, and these were almost the sole literature of the households at that time. At every arrival of the mail, there was absolute contentment for a while. The magazines and newspapers were eagerly read, and I used to discover that even the advertisements were scanned. If the General was caught at this, and accused of it, he slid behind his paper in mock humility, peeping roguishly from one side when a voice, pitched loftily, inquired whether reading advertisements was more profitable than talking with one's wife? It was hard enough, though, when the heaps of newspapers lay on the floor, all devoured, and one so devoted to them as he was condemned to await the slow arrival of another mail. The Harper's Bazar fashion-pages were not scorned in that dearth of reading, by the men about our fireside. We had among us a famous newspaper-reader; the men could not outstrip her in extracting everything that the paper held, and the General delighted in hunting up accounts of "rapscallions" from her native State, cutting out the paragraphs, and sending them to her by an orderly. But his hour of triumph was brief, for the next mail was sure to contain an account of either a Michigan or Ohio villain, and the promptness with which General Custer was made aware of the vagabondage of his fellow-citizens was highly appreciated by all of us. He had this disadvantage: he was a native of Ohio, and appointed to the Military Academy from there, and that State claimed him, and very proud we were to have them do so; but Michigan was the State of his adoption during the war, he having married there, and it being the home of his celebrated "Michigan brigade." . . . He was enabled, by that bright woman's industry, to ascertain what a large share of the population of those States were adepts in crime, as no trifling account, or even a pickpocket was overlooked. I remember how we laughed at her one day. This friend of ours was not in the least sensational, she was the very incarnation of delicate refinement. All her reading (aside from the search for Ohio and Michigan villains in the papers) was of the loftiest type; but the blood rose in wild billows over her sweet face when her son declared his mother such a newspaper devotee that he had caught her reading the "personals." We knew it was a fib; but it proves to what lengths a person might go from sheer desperation, when stranded on the Plains.

Fortunately, I was not called much from home, as there were few social duties that winter, and we devised all sorts of trumpery expedients to vary our life. There was usually a wild game of romps before the day was ended. We had the strangest neighbors. A family lived on each floor, but the walls were not thick, as the Government had wasted no material in putting up our plain quarters. We must have set their nerves on edge, I suppose, for while we tore up stairs and down, using the furniture for temporary barricades against each other, the dogs barking and racing around, glad to join in the fracas, the din was frightful.

The neighbors—not belonging to our regiment, I am thankful to say, having come from a circle where the husband brings the wife to terms by brute force—in giving a minute description of the sounds that issued from our quarters, accounted for the mêlée to those of the garrison they could get to listen, by saying that the commanding officer was beating his wife. While I was inclined to resent such accusations, they struck the General very differently. He thought it was intensely funny, and the gossip passed literally in at one ear and out at the other, though it dwelt with him long enough to suggest something about the good discipline a man might have if the Virginia law, never repealed, were now in vogue. I felt sure it would fare badly with me; for, though the dimensions of the stick with which a man is permitted to beat his wife are limited to the size of the husband's finger, my husband's hands, though in good proportion, had fingers the bones of which were unusually large. These strange fingers were not noticeable until one took hold of them; but if they were carefully studied, with the old English law of Virginia in mind, there well might be a family mutiny. I tried to beg off from further visits to certain families of this stamp, but never succeeded; the General insisted on my going everywhere. One of the women asked me one day if I rose early. Not knowing why she asked, I replied that I feared it was often 9 o'clock before we awoke, whereupon she answered, in an affected voice, that "she never rose early—it was so plebeian."

It was very discouraging, this first encounter with what I supposed would be my life-long associates. There were many political appointments in the army then. Each State was entitled to its quota, and they were frequently given for favoritism, regardless of soldierly qualities. There were also a good many non-commissioned officers, who, having done good service during the war, were given commissions in the new regiments. For several years it was difficult to arrange everything so satisfactorily in social life that no one's feelings would be hurt. The unvarying rule, which my husband considered should not be violated by any who truly desired harmony, was to visit every one in their circle, and exclude no one from invitations to our house, unless for positively disgraceful conduct.

We heard, from other posts, of the most amusing and sometimes the most uncomfortable of experiences. If I knew any one to whom this incident occurred, I should not venture to make use of it as an example of the embarrassing situations in the new order of affairs in the reorganized army. The story is true; but the names, if I ever knew them, have long since faded out of memory. One of the Irish laundresses at a Western post was evidently infatuated with army life, as she was the widow of a volunteer officer—doubtless some old soldier of the regular army, who held a commission in one of the regiments during the war—and the woman drew the pension of a major's widow. Money, therefore, could not have been the inducement that brought her back to a frontier post. At one time she left her fascinating clothes-line and went into the family of an officer, to cook, but was obliged to leave, from illness. Her place was filled satisfactorily, and when she recovered and came back to the officer's wife, she was told that the present cook was entirely satisfactory, but she might yet find a place, as another officer's wife (whose husband had been an enlisted man, and had lately been appointed an officer in the regular regiment stationed there) needed a cook. It seems that this officer's wife also had been a laundress at one time, and the woman applying for work squared herself off in an independent manner, placed her arms akimbo, and announced her platform: "Mrs. Blank, I ken work for a leddy, but I can't go there; there was a time when Mrs. —— and I had our toobs side by side."

How often, in that first winter, I thought of my father's unstinted praise of the regular army, as he had known it at Sackett's Harbor and at Detroit, in Michigan's early days. I could not but wonder what he would think, to be let down in the midst of us. He used to say, in reference to my future, "Daughter, marrying into the army, you will be poor always; but I count it infinitely preferable to riches with inferior society. It consoles me to think you will be always associated with people of refinement." Meanwhile, the General was never done begging me to be silent about any new evidences of vulgarity. There were several high-bred women at Fort Riley; but they were so discreet I never knew but that they had been accustomed to such associations, until after the queer lot had departed and we dared to speak confidentially to one another.

Soon after the officers began to arrive in the autumn, an enlisted man, whom the General had known about in the regular army, reported for duty. He had reënlisted in the Seventh, hoping ultimately for a commission. He was soldierly in appearance, from his long experience in military life, and excellently well versed in tactics and regimental discipline. On this account he was made sergeant-major, the highest non-commissioned officer of a regiment; and, at his request, the General made application almost at once for his appointment as a lieutenant in the Seventh Cavalry. The application was granted, and the sergeant-major went to Washington to be examined. The examining board was composed of old and experienced officers, who were reported to be opposed to the appointment of enlisted men. At any rate, the applicant was asked a collection of questions that were seemingly unanswerable. I only remember one, "What does a regiment of cavalry weigh?" Considering the differences in the officers, men and horses, it would seem as if a correct answer were impossible. The sergeant-major failed, and returned to our post with the hopelessness before him of five years of association with men in the ranks; for there is no escaping the whole term of enlistment, unless it is found that a man is under age. But the General did not give up. He encouraged the disappointed man to hope, and when he was ordered before the board himself, he went to the Secretary of War and made personal application for the appointment. Washington was then full of men and their friends, clamoring for the vacancies in the new regiments; but General Custer was rarely in Washington, and was guarded in not making too many appeals, so he obtained the promise, and soon afterward the sergeant-major replaced the chevrons with shoulder-straps. Then ensued one of those awkward situations, that seem doubly so in a life where there is such marked distinction in the social standing of an officer and a private; and some of the Seventh Cavalry made the situation still more embarrassing by conspicuous avoidance of the new lieutenant, carefully ignoring him except where official relations existed. This seemed doubly severe, as they knew of nothing in the man's conduct, past or present, to justify them in such behavior. He had borne himself with dignity as sergeant-major, living very much to himself, and performing every duty punctiliously. Shortly before, he had been an officer like themselves in the volunteer service, and this social ostracism, solely on account of a few months of service as an enlisted man, was absurd. They went back to his early service as a soldier, determined to show him that he was not "to the manner born." The single men had established a mess, and each bachelor officer who came was promptly called upon and duly invited to join them at table. There was literally no other place to be fed. There were no cooks to be had in that unsettled land, and if there had been servants to hire, the exorbitant wages would have consumed a lieutenant's pay. There were enough officers in the bachelors' mess to carry the day against the late sergeant-major. My husband was much disturbed by this discourteous conduct; but it did not belong to the province of the commanding officer, and he was careful to keep the line of demarkation between social and official affairs distinct. Yet it did not take long for him to think a way out of the dilemma. He came to me to ask if I would be willing to have him in our family temporarily, and, of course, it ended in the invitation being given. In the evening, when our quarters filled up with the bachelor officers, they found the lieutenant whom they had snubbed established as one of the commanding officer's family. He remained as one of us until the officers formed another mess, as their number increased, and the new lieutenant was invited to join them. This was not the end of General Custer's marked regard for him, and as long as he lived he showed his unswerving friendship, and, in ways that the officer never knew, kept up his disinterested loyalty, making me sure, as years advanced, that he was worthy of the old adage, "Once a friend, always a friend." Until he was certain that there was duplicity and ingratitude, or that worst of sins, concealed enmity, he kept faith and friendships intact. At that time there was every reason in the world for an officer whose own footing was uncertain, and who owed everything to my husband, to remain true to him.

Many of the officers were learning to ride, as they had either served in the infantry during the war, or were appointed from civil life, and came from all sorts of vocations. It would seem that hardly half of the number then knew how to sit or even to mount a horse, and the grand and lofty tumbling that winter kept us in a constant state of merriment. It was too bad to look on and laugh; but for the life of me I could not resist every chance I had to watch them clambering up their horses' sides, tying themselves hopelessly in their sabres, and contorting their heels so wildly that the restive animal got the benefit of a spur in unexpected places, as likely in his neck as in his flank. One officer, who came to us from the merchant marine, used to insist upon saying to his brother officers, when off duty and experimenting with his steed, "If you don't think I am a sailor, see me shin up this horse's foreleg."

Some grew hot and wrathy if laughed at, and that increased our fun. Others were good-natured, even coming into the midst of us and deliberately narrating the number of times the horse had either slipped from under them, turned them off over his head, or rubbed them off by running against a fence or tree-trunk. Occasionally somebody tried to hide the fact that he had been thrown, and then there was high carnival over the misfortune. The ancient rule, that had existed as far back as the oldest officer could remember, was, that a basket of champagne was the forfeit of a first fall. Many hampers were emptied that winter; but as there were so many to share the treat (and I am inclined to think, also, it was native champagne, from St. Louis), I don't remember any uproarious results, except the natural wild spirits of fun-loving people. After the secret was out and the forfeit paid, there was much more courage among the officers in letting the mishaps be known. They did not take their nags off into gullys where they were hidden from the post, and have it out alone, but tumbled off in sight of the galleries of our quarters, and made nothing of a whole afternoon of voluntary mounting and decidedly involuntary dismounting. One of the great six-footers among us told me his beast had tossed him off half a dozen times in one ride, but he ended by conquering. He daily fought a battle with his horse, and, in describing the efforts to unseat him, said that at last the animal jumped into the creek. How I admired his pluck and the gleam in his eye; and what a glimpse that determination to master gave of his successful future! for he won in resisting temptation, and conquered in making himself a soldier, and his life, though short, was a triumph.

I am obliged to confess that to this day I owe a basket of champagne, for I belonged to those that went off the horse against their will and then concealed the fact. My husband and one of his staff were riding with me one day, and asked me to go on in advance, as they wanted to talk over something that was not of interest to me. I forgot to keep watch of my fiery steed, and when he took one of those mad jumps from one side of the road to the other, at some imaginary obstacle, not being on guard I lost balance, and found myself hanging to the saddle. There was nothing left for me but an ignominious slide, and I landed in the dust. The General found Phil trotting riderless toward him, was terribly frightened, and rode furiously toward where I was. To save him needless alarm, I called out, "All right!" from my lowly position, and was really quite unharmed, save my crushed spirits. No one can serve in the cavalry and not feel humiliated by a fall. I began to implore the two not to tell, and in their relief at my escape from serious hurt they promised. But for weeks they made my life a burden to me, by direct and indirect allusions to the accident when a group of us were together. They brought little All Right, the then famous Japanese acrobat, into every conversation, and the General was constantly wondering, in a seemingly innocent manner, "how an old campaigner could be unseated, under any circumstances." It would have been better to confess and pay the penalty, than to live thus under the sword of Damocles. Still, I should have deprived my husband of a world of amusement, and every joke counted in those dull days, even when one was himself the victim.