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

by Elizabeth Bacon Custer

Diana, with the elastic heart of a coquette, had not only sped the parting, but welcomed the coming guest; for hardly had the sound of the trumpet died away, before a new officer began to frequent our parlor. It was then the fashion for men to wear a tiny neck-bow, called a butterfly tie. They were made on a pasteboard foundation, with a bit of elastic cord to fasten them to the shirt-stud. I knew of no pasteboard nearer than Leavenworth; but in the curly head there were devices to meet the exigency. I found Diana with her lap full of photographs, cutting up the portraits of the departed beaux, to make ties for the next. Whether the new suitor ever discovered that he was wearing at his neck the face of a predecessor, I do not know; but this I do remember, that the jagged, frayed appearance that the girl's dresses presented when turned inside out, betrayed where the silk was procured to make the neckties. She had clipped out bits of material where the skirt was turned in, and when we attempted to remodel ourselves and cut down the voluminous breadths of that time into tightly gored princesse gowns, we were put to it to make good the deficiencies, and "piece out" the silk that had been sacrificed to her flirtations.

Succeeding letters from my husband gave an account of his first experience with the perfidy of the Indians. The council had been held, and it was hoped that effectual steps were taken to establish peace. But, as is afterward related, the chiefs gave them the slip and deserted the village. Even in the midst of hurried preparations to follow the renegades, my husband stopped, in order that his departure might not make me depressed, to give an account of a joke that they all had on one of their number, who dared to eat soup out of an Indian kettle still simmering over the deserted fire. The General pressed the retreating Indians so closely, the very night of their departure, that they were obliged to divide into smaller detachments, and even the experienced Plainsmen could no longer trace a trail.

Meanwhile, as our officers were experiencing all sorts of new phases in life on their first march over the Plains, our vicissitudes were increasing at what seemed to be the peaceful Fort Riley. I had seen with dismay that the cavalry were replaced by negro infantry, and found that they were to garrison the post for the summer. I had never seen negroes as soldiers, and these raw recruits had come from plantations, where I had known enough of their life, while in Texas and Louisiana, to realize what an irresponsible, child's existence it was. Entirely dependent on some one's care, and without a sense of obligation of any kind, they were exempt from the necessity of thinking about the future. Their time had been spent in following the directions of the overseer in the corn-field or cotton brake by day, and beguiling the night with a coon-hunt or the banjo. The early days of their soldiering were a reign of terror to us women, in our lonely, unprotected homes. It was very soon discovered that the officer who commanded them was for the first time accustoming himself to colored troops, and did not know how to keep in check the boisterous, undisciplined creatures. He was a courteous, quiet man, of scholarly tastes, and evidently entertained the belief that moral suasion would eventually effect any purpose. The negroes, doubtless discovering what they could do under so mild a commander, grew each day more lawless. They used the parade-ground, which our officers had consecrated to the most formal of ceremonies, like dress-parades and guard-mount, for a playground; turning hand-springs all over the sprouting grass, and vaulting in leap-frog over the bent back of a comrade. If it were possible for people in the States to realize how sacred the parade-ground of a Western post is, how hurriedly a venturesome cow or loose horse is marshaled off, how pompously every one performs the military duties permitted on this little square; how even the color-sergeant, who marches at measured gait to take down and furl the garrison flag, when the evening gun announces that the sun has been, by the royal mandate of military law, permitted to set—they would then understand with what perturbation we women witnessed the desecration of what had been looked upon as hallowed earth. The sacrilege of these monkey acrobats turning somersaults over the ground, their elongated heels vibrating in the air, while they stood upon their heads in front of our windows, made us very indignant. When one patted "juba," and a group danced, we seemed transformed into a disconnected minstrel show. There was not a trace of the well-conducted post of a short time before.

All this frivolity was but the prelude to serious trouble. The joy with which the negroes came into possession of a gun for the first time in their lives would have been ludicrous had it not been extremely dangerous. They are eminently a race given over to display. This was exhibited in their attempts to make themselves marksmen in a single day. One morning we were startled by a shot coming from the barracks. It was followed by a rush of men out of the doors, running wildly to and fro, yelling with alarm. We knew that some disaster had occurred, and it proved to be the instant death of a too confiding negro, who had allowed himself to be cast for the part of William Tell's son. His accidental murderer was a man that had held a gun in his hand that week for the first time.

They had no sort of idea how to care for their health. The ration of a soldier is so large that a man who can eat it all in a day is renowned as a glutton. I think but few instances ever occur where the entire ration is consumed by one man. It is not expected, and, fortunately, with all the economy of the Government, the supply has never been cut down; but the surplus is sold and a company fund established. By this means, the meagre fare is increased by buying vegetables, if it happen to be a land where they can be obtained. The negroes, for the first time in possession of all the coffee, pork, sugar, and hardtack they wanted, ate inordinately. There was no one to compel them to cleanliness. If a soldier in a white regiment is very untidy the men become indignant, and as the voluminous regulations provide directions only for the scrubbing of the quarters and not of the men, they sometimes take the affair into their own hands, and, finding from their captain that they will not be interfered with, the untidy one is taken on a compulsory journey to the creek and "ducked" until the soldiers consider him endurable. The negroes at that time had no idea of encountering the chill of cold water on their tropical skins, and suffered the consequences very soon. Pestilence broke out among them. Smallpox, black measles and other contagious diseases raged, while the soldier's enemy, scurvy, took possession. We were within a stone's-throw of the barracks. Of course the illest among them were quarantined in hospital-tents outside the garrison; but to look over to the infested barracks and realize what lurked behind the walls, was, to say the least, uncomfortable for those of us who were near enough to breathe almost the same air.

Added to this, we felt that, with so much indiscriminate firing, a shot might at any time enter our windows. One evening a few women were walking outside the garrison. Our limits were not so circumscribed, at that time, as they were in almost all the places where I was stationed afterward. A sentinel always walked a beat in front of a small arsenal outside of the post, and, overcome with the grandeur of carrying a gun and wearing a uniform, he sought to impress his soldierly qualities on anyone approaching by a stentorian "Who comes thar?" It was entirely unnecessary, as it was light enough to see the fluttering skirts of women, for the winds kept our drapery in constant motion. Almost instantly after his challenge, the flash of his gun and the whizz of a bullet past us made us aware that our lives were spared only because of his inaccurate aim. Of course that ended our evening walks, and it was a great deprivation, as the monotony of a garrison becomes almost unbearable.

There was one person who profited by the presence of the negro troops. Our Eliza was such a belle, that she would have elevated them into too exalted a sphere to wait on us, had she not been accustomed to constant adulation from the officers' body-servants from the time, as she expressed it, when she "entered the service." Still, it was a distraction, of which she availed herself in our new post, to receive new beaux, tire of them, quarrel and discard them for fresh victims. They waited on her assiduously, and I suspect they dined daily in our kitchen, as long as their brief season of favor lasted. They even sought to curry favor with Eliza by gifts to me—snaring quail, imprisoning them in cages made of cracker-boxes, or bring dandelion greens or wild-flowers as they appeared in the dells. For all these gifts I was duly grateful, but I was very much afraid of a negro soldier, nevertheless.

At last our perplexities and frights reached a climax. One night we heard the measured tramp of feet over the gravel in the road in front of our quarters, and they halted almost opposite our windows, where we could hear the voices. No loud "Halt, who comes there!" rang out on the air, for the sentinel was enjoined to silence. Being frightened, I called to Eliza. To Diana and to me she was worth a corporal's guard, and could not be equaled as a defender, solacer and general manager of our dangerous situations—indeed, of all our affairs. Eliza ran up-stairs in response to my cry, and we watched with terror what went on. It soon was discovered to be a mutiny. The men growled and swore, and we could see by their threatening movements that they were in a state of exasperation. They demanded the commanding officer, and as he did not appear, they clenched their fists, and looked at the house as if they would tear it down, or at least break in the doors. It seemed a desperate situation to us, for the quarters were double, and our gallery had no division from the neighbors. If doors and windows were to be demolished, there would be little hope for ours. I knew of no way by which we could ask help, as most of the soldiers were colored, and we felt sure that the plan, whatever it was, must include them all.

At last Eliza realized how terrified I was, and gave up the absorbing watch she was keeping, for her whole soul was in the wrongs, real or fancied, of her race. Too often had she comforted me in my fears to forget me now, and an explanation was given of this alarming outbreak.

The men had for some time been demanding the entire ration, and were especially clamorous for all the sugar that was issued. Very naturally, the captain had withheld the supernumerary supplies, in order to make company savings for the purpose of buying vegetables. A mutiny over sugar may seem a small affair, but it assumes threatening proportions when a mob of menacing, furious men tramp up and down in front of one's house, and there is no safe place of refuge, nor any one to whom appeal can be made. Eliza kept up a continuous comforting and reassuring, but when I reminded her that our door had no locks, or, rather, no keys, for it was not the custom to lock army quarters, she said, "La, Miss Libbie, they won't tech you; you dun wrote too many letters for 'em, and they'se got too many good vittels in your kitchen ever to 'sturb you." Strong excitement is held to be the means of bringing out the truth, and here were the facts revealed that they had been bountifully fed at our expense. I had forgotten how much ink I had used in trying to put down their very words in love-letters, or family epistles to the Southern plantation. The infuriated men had to quiet down, for no response came from the commanding officer. They found out, I suppose from the investigations of one acting as spy, and going to the rear of the quarters, that he had disappeared. To our intense relief, they straggled off until their growling and muttering were lost in the barracks, where they fortunately went to bed. No steps were taken to punish them, and at any imaginary wrong, they might feel, from the success of this first attempt at insurrection, that it was safe to repeat the experiment. We women had little expectation but that the summer would be one of carousal and open rebellion against military rule. The commanding officer, though very retiring, was so courteous and kindly to all the women left in the garrison, that it was difficult to be angry with him for his failure to control the troops. Indeed, his was a hard position to fill, with a lot of undisciplined, ignorant, ungoverned creatures, who had never been curbed, except by the punishment of plantation life.