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

by Elizabeth Bacon Custer

It was amusing to notice the indifferent manner in which some of the officers saw the careful and frugal preparing for the campaign. That first spring's experience was repeated in every after preparation. There were always those who took little or nothing themselves, but became experts at casual droppings in to luncheon or dinner with some painstaking provider, who endeavored vainly to get himself out of sight when the halt came for eating. This little scheme was occasionally persisted in merely to annoy one who, having shown some signs of parsimony, needed discipline in the eyes of those who really did a great deal of good by their ridicule. Among one group of officers, who had planned to mess together, the only provision was a barrel of eggs. It is only necessary to follow a cavalry column over the crossing of one creek, to know the exact condition that such perishable food would be in at the end of the first day. There were two of the "plebes," as the youngest of the officers were called—as I recall them, bright, boyish, charming fellows—who openly rebelled against the rebuffs they claimed were given them, when they attempted to practice the dropping-in plan at another's meals.

After one of these sallies on the enemy, they met the repulse with the announcement that if "those stingy old mollycoddles thought they had nothing to eat in their own outfit, they would show them," and took the occasion of one of their birthdays to prove that their resources were unlimited. Though the two endeavored to conceal the hour and place of this fête, a persistent watcher discovered that the birthday breakfast consisted of a bottle of native champagne and corn bread. The hospitality of officers is too well known to make it necessary to explain that those with any tendency to penuriousness were exceptions. An army legend is in existence of an officer who would not allow his hospitality to be set aside, even though he was very short of supplies. Being an officer of the old army, he was as formal over his repast as if it were abundant, and, with all ceremony, had his servant pass the rice. The guest, thinking it the first course, declined, whereupon the host, rather offended, replied, "Well, if you don't like the rice, help yourself to the mustard." This being the only other article on the bill of fare, there need be no doubt as to his final choice. When several officers decide to mess together on a campaign, each one promises to provide some one necessary supply. On one of these occasions, after the first day's march was ended, and orders for dinner were given to the servant, it was discovered that all but one had exercised his own judgment regarding what was the most necessary provision for comfort, and the one that had brought a loaf of bread instead of a demijohn of whiskey was berated for his choice.

In the first days of frontier life, our people knew but little about preparations for the field, and it took some time to realize that they were in a land where they could not live upon the country. It was a severe and lasting lesson to those using tobacco, when they found themselves without it, and so far from civilization that there was no opportunity of replenishing their supply. On the return from the expedition, the injuries as well as the enjoyments are narrated. Sometimes we women, full of sympathy for the privations that had been endured, found that these were injuries; sometimes we discovered that imagination had created them. We enjoyed, maliciously I am afraid, the growling of one man who never erred in any way, and consequently had no margin for any one that did; calculating and far-seeing in his life, he felt no patience for those who, being young, were yet to learn those lessons of frugality that were born in him. He was still wrathful when he gave us an account of one we knew to be delightfully impudent when he was bent on teasing. When the provident man untied the strings of his tobacco-pouch, and settled himself for a smoke, the saucy young lieutenant was sure to stroll that way, and in tones loud enough for those near to hear him, drawl out, "I've got a match; if any other fellow's got a pipe and tobacco, I'll have a smoke."

The expedition that was to leave Fort Riley was commanded by General Hancock, then at the head of the Department of the Missouri. He arrived at our post from Fort Leavenworth with seven companies of infantry and a battery of artillery. His letters to the Indian agents of the various tribes give the objects of the march into the Indian country. He wrote:

"I have the honor to state, for your information, that I am at present preparing an expedition to the Plains, which will soon be ready to move. My object in doing so at this time is, to convince the Indians within the limits of this Department that we are able to punish any of them who may molest travelers across the Plains, or who may commit other hostilities against the whites. We desire to avoid, if possible, any troubles with the Indians, and to treat them with justice, and according to the requirements of our treaties with them; and I wish especially, in my dealings with them, to act through the agents of the Indian Department as far as it is possible to do so. If you, as their agent, can arrange these matters satisfactorily with them, we shall be pleased to defer the whole subject to you. In case of your inability to do so, I would be pleased to have you accompany me when I visit the country of your tribes, to show that the officers of the Government are acting in harmony. I shall be pleased to talk with any of the chiefs whom we may meet. I do not expect to make war against any of the Indians of your agency, unless they commence war against us."

In General Custer's account, he says that "the Indians had been guilty of numerous thefts and murders during the preceding summer and autumn, for none of which had they been called to account. They had attacked the stations of the overland mail-route, killed the employees, burned the stations and captured the stock. Citizens had been murdered in their homes on the frontier of Kansas; and murders had been committed on the Arkansas route. The principal perpetrators of these acts were the Cheyennes and Sioux. The agent of the former, if not a party to the murder on the Arkansas, knew who the guilty persons were, yet took no steps to bring the murderers to punishment. Such a course would have interfered with his trade and profits. It was not to punish for these sins of the past that the expedition was set on foot, but, rather, by its imposing appearance and its early presence in the Indian country, to check or intimidate the Indians from a repetition of their late conduct. During the winter the leading chiefs and warriors had threatened that, as soon as the grass was up, the tribes would combine in a united outbreak along the entire frontier."

There had been little opportunity to put the expedition out of our minds for some time previous to its departure. The sound from the blacksmith's shop, of the shoeing of horses, the drilling on the level ground outside of the post, and the loading of wagons about the quartermaster and commissary storehouses, went on all day long. At that time the sabre was more in use than it was later, and it seemed to me that I could never again shut my ears to the sound of the grindstone, when I found that the sabres were being sharpened. The troopers, when mounted, were curiosities, and a decided disappointment to me. The horse, when prepared for the march, barely showed head and tail. My ideas of the dashing trooper going out to war, clad in gay uniform and curbing a curveting steed, faded into nothingness before the reality. Though the wrapping together of the blanket, overcoat and shelter-tent is made a study of the tactics, it could not be reduced to anything but a good-sized roll at the back of the saddle. The carbine rattled on one side of the soldier, slung from the broad strap over his shoulder, while a frying-pan, a tin-cup, a canteen, and a haversack of hardtack clattered and knocked about on his other side. There were possibly a hundred rounds of ammunition in his cartridge-belt, which took away all the symmetry that his waist might otherwise have had. If the company commander was not too strict, a short butcher-knife, thrust into a home-made leather case, kept company with the pistol. It was not a murderous weapon, but was used to cut up game or slice off the bacon, which, sputtering in the skillet at evening camp-fire, was the main feature of the soldier's supper. The tin utensils, the carbine and the sabre, kept up a continual din, as the horses seemingly crept over the trail at the rate of three to four miles an hour. In addition to the cumbersome load, there were sometimes lariats and iron pichet-pins slung on one side of the saddle, to tether the animals when they grazed at night. There was nothing picturesque about this lumbering cavalryman, and, besides, our men did not then sit their horses with the serenity that they eventually attained. If the beast shied or kicked—for the poor thing was itself learning to do soldiering, and occasionally flung out his heels, or snatched the bit in his mouth in protest—it was a question whether the newly made Mars would land on the crupper or hang helplessly among the domestic utensils suspended to his saddle. How sorry I was for them, they were so bruised and lamed by their first lessons in horsemanship. Every one laughed at every one else, and this made it seem doubly trying to me. I remembered my own first lessons among fearless cavalrymen—a picture of a trembling figure, about as uncertain in the saddle as if it were a wave of the sea, the hands cold and nerveless, and, I regret to add, the tears streaming down my cheeks! These recollections made me writhe when I saw a soldier describing an arc in the air, and his self-freed horse galloping off to the music of tin and steel in concert, for no such compulsory landing was ever met save by a roar of derision from the column. Just in proportion as I had suffered for their misfortunes, did I enjoy the men when, after the campaign, they returned, perfect horsemen and with such physiques as might serve for a sculptor's model.

At the time the expedition formed at Fort Riley, I had little realization what a serious affair an Indian campaign was. We had heard of the outrages committed on the settlers, the attacking of the overland supply-trains, and the burning of the stage-stations; but the rumors seemed to come from so far away that the reality was never brought home to me until I saw for myself what horror attends Indian depredations. Even a disaster to one that seemed to be of our own family, failed to implant in me that terror of Indians which, a month or two later, I realized to its fullest extent by personal danger. I must tell my reader, by going back to the days of the war, something of the one that first showed us what Indian warfare really was. It was a sad preparation for the campaign that followed.

After General Custer had been promoted from a captain to a brigadier-general, in 1863, his brigade lay quietly in camp for a few days, to recruit before setting out on another raid. This gave the unusual privilege of lying in bed a little later in the morning, instead of springing out before dawn. For several mornings in succession, my husband told me, he saw a little boy steal through a small opening in the tent, take out his clothes and boots, and after a while creep back with them, brushed and folded. At last he asked Eliza where on earth that cadaverous little image came from, and she explained that it was "a poor little picked sparrow of a chile, who had come hangin' aroun' the camp-fire, mos' starved," and added, "Now, Ginnel, you mustn't go and turn him off, for he's got nowhar to go, and 'pears like he's crazy to wait on you." The General questioned him, and found that the boy, being unhappy at home, had run away. Enough of his sad life was revealed to convince the General that it was useless to attempt to return him to his Eastern home, for he was a determined little fellow, and there was no question that he would have fled again. His parents were rich, and my husband evidently knew who they were; but the story was confidential, so I never knew anything of him, except that he was always showing signs of good-breeding, even though he lived about the camp-fire. A letter that my husband wrote to his own home at that time, spoke of a hound puppy that one of his soldiers had given to him, and then of a little waif, called Johnnie, whom he had taken as his servant. "The boy," he wrote, "is so fond of the pup he takes him to bed with him." Evidently the child began his service with devotion, for the General adds; "I think he would rather starve than to see me go hungry. I have dressed him in soldier's clothes, and he rides one of my horses on the march. Returning from the march one day, I found Johnnie with his sleeves rolled up. He had washed all my soiled clothes and hung them on the bushes to dry. Small as he is, they were very well done."

Soon after Johnnie became my husband's servant, we were married, and I was taken down to the Virginia farm-house, that was used as brigade headquarters. By this time, Eliza had initiated the boy into all kinds of work. She, in turn, fed him, mended his clothes, and managed him, lording it over the child in a lofty but never unkind manner. She had tried to drill him to wait on the table, as she had seen the duty performed on the old plantation. At our first dinner he was so bashful I thought he would drop everything. My husband did not believe in having a head and foot to the table when we were alone, so poor little Johnnie was asked to put my plate beside the General's. Though he was so embarrassed in this new phase of his life, he was never so intimidated by the responsibility Eliza had pressed upon him that he was absent-minded or confused regarding one point: he invariably passed each dish to the General first. Possibly my husband noticed it. I certainly did not. There was a pair of watchful eyes at a crack in the kitchen-door, which took in this little incident. One day the General came into our room laughing, his eyes sparkling with fun over Eliza's description of how she had noticed Johnnie always serving the General first, and had labored with him in secret, to teach him to wait on the lady first. "It's manners," she said, believing that was a crushing argument. But Johnnie, usually obedient, persistently refused, always replying that the General was the one of us two that ranked, and he ought to be served first.