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

by Elizabeth Bacon Custer

One troop of the Seventh Cavalry was left to garrison Fort Wallace, while the remainder of the regiment was scouting. The post was then about as dreary as any spot on earth. There were no trees; only the arid plain surrounded it, and the sirocco winds drove the sands of that desolate desert into the dug-outs that served for the habitation of officers and men. The supplies were of the worst description. It was impossible to get vegetables of any kind, and there was, therefore, no preventing the soldier's scourge, scurvy, which the heat aggravated, inflaming the already burning flesh. Even the medical supplies were limited. None of the posts at that time were provided with decent food—that is, none beyond the railroad. I remember how much troubled my husband was over this subject, when I joined him at Fort Hays. The bacon issued to the soldiers was not only rancid, but was supplied by dishonest contractors, who slipped in any foreign substance they could, to make the weight come up to the required amount; and thus the soldiers were cheated out of the quantity due them, as well as imposed upon in the quality of their rations. It was the privilege of the enlisted men to make their complaints to the commanding officer, and some of them sent to ask the General to come to the company street and allow them to prove to him what frauds were being practiced. I went with him, and saw a flat stone, the size of the slices of bacon as they were packed together, sandwiched between the layers. My husband was justly incensed, but could promise no immediate redress. The route of travel was so dangerous that it was necessary to detail a larger number of men to guard any train of supplies that attempted to reach those distant posts. The soldiers felt, and justly too, that it was an outrage that preparations for the arrival of so large a number of troops had not been perfected in the spring, before the whole country was in a state of siege. The supplies provided for the consumption of those troops operating in the field or stationed at the posts had been sent out during the war. It was then 1867, and they had lain in the poor, ill-protected adobe or dug-out storehouse all the intervening time—more than two years. At Forts Wallace and Hays there were no storehouses, and the flour and bacon were only protected by tarpaulins. Both became rancid and moldy, and were at the mercy of the rats and mice. A larger quantity of supplies was forwarded to that portion of the country the last year of the war than was needed for the volunteer troops sent out there, and consequently our Seventh Cavalry, scouting day and night all through that eventful summer, were compelled to subsist on the food already on hand. It was the most mistaken economy to persist in issuing such rations, when it is so well known that a well-filled stomach is a strong background for a courageous heart. The desertions were unceasing. The nearer the troops approached the mountains, the more the men took themselves off to the mines.

In April of that year no deaths had occurred at Fort Wallace, but by November there were sixty mounds outside the garrison, covering the brave hearts of soldiers who had either succumbed to illness or been shot by Indians. It was a fearful mortality for a garrison of fewer than two hundred souls. If the soldiers, hungry for fresh meat, went out to shoot buffalo, the half of them mounted guard to protect those who literally took their lives in their hands to provide a few meals of wholesome food for themselves and their comrades. At one company post on the South Platte, a troop of our Seventh Cavalry was stationed. In the mining excitement that ran so high in 1866 and 1867, the captain woke one morning to find that his first sergeant and forty out of sixty men that composed the garrison, had decamped, with horses and equipments, for the mines. This left the handful of men in imminent peril from Indian assaults. The wily foe lies hidden for days outside the garrison, protected by a heap of stones or a sage-bush, and informs himself, as no other spy on earth ever can, just how many souls the little group of tents or the quarters represent. In this dire strait a dauntless sergeant, Andrews, offered to go in search of the missing men. He had established his reputation as a marksman in the regiment, and soldiers used to say that "such shooting as Andrews did, got the bulge on everybody." He was seemingly fearless. The captain consented to his departure, but demurred to his going alone. The sergeant believed he could only succeed if he went into the mining-camp unaccompanied, and so the officer permitted him to go. He arrested and brought away nine, traveling two hundred miles with them to Fort Wallace. There was no guard-house at the post, and the commanding officer had to exercise his ingenuity to secure these deserters. A large hole was dug in the middle of the parade-ground and covered with logs and earth, leaving a square aperture in the centre. The ladder by which they descended was removed by the guard when all were in, and the Bastile could hardly be more secure than this ingenious prison.

Two separate attacks were made by three hundred Dog-soldiers (Cheyennes) to capture Fort Wallace that summer. During the first fight, the prisoners in their pit heard the firing, and knew that all the troops were outside the post engaged with the Indians. Knowing their helplessness, their torture of mind can be imagined. If the enemy succeeded in entering the garrison, their fate was sealed. The attacks were so sudden that there was no opportunity to release these men. The officers knew well enough, that, facing a common foe, they might count on unquestionable unity of action from the deserters. Some clemency was to be expected from a military court that would eventually try them, but all the world knows the savage cry is "No quarter!" In an attack on a post, there is only a wild stampede at the sound of the "General" from the trumpet. There is a rush for weapons, and every one dashes outside the garrison to the skirmish-line. In such a race, every soldier elects to be his own captain till the field is reached. I have seen the troops pour out of a garrison, at an unexpected attack, in an incredibly short time. No one stands upon the order of his going, or cares whose gun or whose horse he seizes on the way. Once the skirmish-line is formed, the soldierly qualities assert themselves, and complete order is resumed. It is only necessary to be in the midst of such excitement, to realize how readily prisoners out of sight would be forgotten.

After the fight was over, and the Indians were driven off, the poor fellows sent to ask if they could speak with the commanding officer, and when he came to their prison for the interview, they said, "For God's sake, do anything in future with us that you see fit—condemn us to any kind of punishment, put balls and chains on all of us—but whatever you do, in case of another attack, let us out of this hole and give us a gun!" I have known a generous-minded commanding officer to release every prisoner in the guard-house and set aside their sentences forever, after they have shown their courage and presence of mind in defending a post from Indians, or other perils, such as fire and storms.

The brave sergeant who had filled the pit with his captures, asked to follow a deserter who had escaped to a settlement on the Saline River. He found the man, arrested him, and brought him away unaided. When they reached the railway at Ellsworth, the man made a plea of hunger, and the sergeant took him to an eating-house. While standing at the counter, he took the cover from a red-pepper box and furtively watching his chance, threw the contents into the sergeant's eyes, completely blinding him. The sergeant was then accounted second only to Wild Bill as a shot, and not a whit less cool. Though groaning with agony, he lost none of his self-possession. Listening for the footfall as the deserter started for the door, he fired in the direction, and the man fell dead.

Our regiment was now passing through its worst days. Constant scouting over the sun-baked, cactus-bedded Plains, by men who were as yet unacclimated, and learning by the severest lessons to inure themselves to hardships, made terrible havoc in the ranks. The horses, also fresh to this sort of service, grew gaunt, and dragged their miserably fed bodies over the blistering trail. Here and there along the line a trooper walked beside his beast, wetting, when he could, the flesh that was raw from the chafing of the saddle, especially when the rider is a novice in horsemanship.

Insubordination among the men was the certain consequence of the half-starved, discouraged state they were in. One good fight would have put heart into them to some extent, for the hopelessness of following such a will-o'-the-wisp as the Indians were that year, made them think their scouting did no good and might as well be discontinued. Some of the officers were poor disciplinarians, either from inexperience or because they lacked the gift of control over others, which seems left out of certain temperaments. Alas! some had no control over themselves; and no one could expect obedience in such a case. In its early days the Seventh Cavalry was not the temperate regiment it afterward became. Some of the soldiers in the ranks had been officers during the war, and they were learning the lesson, that hard summer, of receiving orders instead of issuing them. There were a good many men who had served in the Confederate army, and had not a ray of patriotism in enlisting; it was merely a question of subsistence to them in their beggared condition.