We crossed the old
bridge over the Niobrara River, and entered the post. The snow
lay already on the brown and barren hills, and the place struck a
chill to my heart.
The Ninth Cavalry took care of all the officers' families until
we could get established. Lieutenant Bingham, a handsome and
distinguished-looking young bachelor, took us with our two
children to his quarters, and made us delightfully at home. His
quarters were luxuriously furnished, and he was altogether
adorable. This, to be sure, helped to soften my first harsh
impressions of the place.
Quarters were not very plentiful, and we were compelled to take a
house occupied by a young officer of the Ninth. What base
ingratitude it seemed, after the kindness we had accepted from
his regiment! But there was no help for it. We secured a colored
cook, who proved a very treasure, and on inquiring how she came
to be in those wilds, I learned that she had accompanied a young
heiress who eloped with a cavalry lieutenant, from her home in
New York some years before.
What a contrast was here, and what a cruel contrast! With blood
thinned down by the enervating summer at Tucson, here we were,
thrust into the polar regions! Ice and snow and blizzards,
blizzards and snow and ice! The mercury disappeared at the bottom
of the thermometer, and we had nothing to mark any degrees lower
than 40 below zero. Human calculations had evidently stopped
there. Enormous box stoves were in every room and in the halls;
the old-fashioned sort that we used to see in school-rooms and
meeting-houses in New England. Into these, the soldiers stuffed
great logs of mountain mahogany,and the fires were kept roaring
day and night.
A board walk ran in front of the officers' quarters, and,
desperate for fresh air and exercise, some of the ladies would
bundle up and go to walk. But frozen chins, ears and elbows soon
made this undesirable, and we gave up trying the fresh air,
unless the mercury rose to 18 below, when a few of us would take
our daily promenade.
We could not complain of our fare, however, for our larder hung
full of all sorts of delicate and delicious things, brought in by
the grangers, and which we were glad to buy. Prairie-chickens,
young pigs, venison, and ducks, all hanging, to be used when
desired.
To frappe a bottle of wine, we stood it on the porch; in a few
minutes it would pour crystals. House-keeping was easy, but
keeping warm was difficult.
It was about this time that the law was passed abolishing the
post-trader's store, and forbidding the selling of whiskey to
soldiers on a Government reservation. The pleasant canteen, or
Post Exchange, the soldiers' club-room, was established, where
the men could go to relieve the monotony of their lives.
With the abolition of whiskey, the tone of the post improved
greatly; the men were contented with a glass of beer or light
wine, the canteen was well managed, so the profits went back into
the company messes in the shape of luxuries heretofore unknown;
billiards and reading-rooms were established; and from that time
on, the canteen came to be regarded in the army as a most
excellent institution. The men gained in self-respect; the
canteen provided them with a place where they could go and take a
bite of lunch, read, chat, smoke, or play games with their own
chosen friends, and escape the lonesomeness of the barracks.
But, alas! this condition of things was not destined to endure,
for the women of the various Temperance societies, in their
mistaken zeal and woeful ignorance of the soldiers' life,
succeeded in influencing legislation to such an extent that the
canteen, in its turn, was abolished; with what dire results, we
of the army all know.
Those estimable women of the W. C. T. U. thought to do good to
the army, no doubt, but through their pitiful ignorance of the
soldiers' needs they have done him an incalculable harm.
Let them stay by their lectures and their clubs, I say, and their
other amusements; let them exercise their good influences nearer
home, with a class of people whose conditions are understood by
them, where they can, no doubt, do worlds of good.
They cannot know the drear monotony of the barracks life on the
frontier in times of peace. I have lived close by it, and I know
it well. A ceaseless round of drill and work and lessons, and
work and lessons and drill - no recreation, no excitement,no
change.
Far away from family and all home companionship, a man longs for
some pleasant place to go, after the day's work is done. Perhaps
these women think (if, in their blind enthusiasm, they think at
all) that a young soldier or an old soldier needs no recreation.
At all events, they have taken from him the only one he had, the
good old canteen, and given him nothing in return.
Now Fort Niobrara was a large post. There were ten companies,
cavalry and infantry, General August V. Kautz, the Colonel of the
Eighth Infantry, in command.
And here, amidst the sand-hills of Nebraska, we first began to
really know our Colonel. A man of strong convictions and abiding
honesty, a soldier who knew his profession thoroughly, having not
only achieved distinction in the Civil War, but having served
when little more than a boy, in the Mexican War of 1846. Genial
in his manners, brave and kind, he was beloved by all.
The three Kautz children, Frankie, Austin, and Navarra, were the
inseparable companions of our own children. There was a small
school for the children of the post, and a soldier by the name of
Delany was schoolmaster.
