[Illustration: _G. A. Custer._]
“BOOTS AND SADDLES”
OR LIFE IN DAKOTA WITH GENERAL CUSTER
BY
ELIZABETH B. CUSTER
WITH PORTRAIT AND MAP
NEW YORK
HARPER & BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE
Copyright, 1885, by HARPER & BROTHERS.
_All rights reserved._
Dedicated
TO
MY HUSBAND
THE ECHO OF WHOSE VOICE HAS BEEN MY INSPIRATION
PREFACE.
One of the motives that have actuated me in recalling these simple
annals of our daily life, has been to give a glimpse to civilians of
garrison and camp life--about which they seem to have such a very
imperfect knowledge.
This ignorance exists especially with reference to anything pertaining
to the cavalry, which is almost invariably stationed on the extreme
frontier.
The isolation of the cavalry posts makes them quite inaccessible to
travellers, and the exposure incident to meeting warlike Indians does
not tempt the visits of friends or even of the venturesome tourist. Our
life, therefore, was often as separate from the rest of the world as if
we had been living on an island in the ocean.
Very little has been written regarding the domestic life of an army
family, and yet I cannot believe that it is without interest; for
the innumerable questions that are asked about our occupations,
amusements, and mode of house-keeping, lead me to hope that the actual
answers to these queries contained in this little story will be
acceptable. This must also be my apology for entering in some instances
so minutely into trifling perplexities and events, which went to fill
up the sum of our existence.
E. B. C.
_148 East 18th Street,
New York City._
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER PAGE
I. CHANGE OF STATION 9
II. A BLIZZARD 17
III. WESTERN HOSPITALITY 30
IV. CAVALRY ON THE MARCH 37
V. CAMPING AMONG THE SIOUX 49
VI. A VISIT TO THE VILLAGE OF “TWO BEARS” 60
VII. ADVENTURES DURING THE LAST DAYS OF THE MARCH 73
VIII. SEPARATION AND REUNION 86
IX. OUR NEW HOME AT FORT LINCOLN 94
X. INCIDENTS OF EVERY-DAY LIFE 104
XI. THE BURNING OF OUR QUARTERS.--CARRYING THE MAIL 115
XII. PERPLEXITIES AND PLEASURES OF DOMESTIC LIFE 124
XIII. A “STRONG HEART” DANCE! 131
XIV. GARRISON LIFE 138
XV. GENERAL CUSTER’S LITERARY WORK 140
XVI. INDIAN DEPREDATIONS 154
XVII. A DAY OF ANXIETY AND TERROR 159
XVIII. IMPROVEMENTS AT THE POST, AND GARDENING 167
XIX. GENERAL CUSTER’S LIBRARY 174
XX. THE SUMMER OF THE BLACK HILLS EXPEDITION 181
XXI. DOMESTIC TRIALS 194
XXII. CAPTURE AND ESCAPE OF RAIN-IN-THE-FACE 203
XXIII. GARRISON AMUSEMENTS 216
XXIV. AN INDIAN COUNCIL 225
XXV. BREAKING UP OF THE MISSOURI 229
XXVI. CURIOUS CHARACTERS AND EXCURSIONISTS AMONG US 240
XXVII. RELIGIOUS SERVICES.--LEAVE OF ABSENCE 247
XXVIII. A WINTER’S JOURNEY ACROSS THE PLAINS 253
XXIX. OUR LIFE’S LAST CHAPTER 261
APPENDIX: WITH EXTRACTS OF GENERAL CUSTER’S LETTERS 271
[Illustration:
OUTLINE MAP
_of portions of_
MONTANA & DAKOTA
Copyright, 1885, by HARPER & BROTHERS
]
BOOTS AND SADDLES.
CHAPTER I.
CHANGE OF STATION.
General Custer graduated at West Point just in time to take part in the
battle of Bull Run. He served with his regiment--the 5th Cavalry--for a
time, but eventually was appointed aide-de-camp to General McClellan.
He came to his sister’s home in my native town, Monroe, Michigan,
during the winter of 1863, and there I first met him. In the spring
he returned to the army in Virginia, and was promoted that summer, at
the age of twenty-three, from captain to brigadier-general. During
the following autumn he came to Monroe to recover from a flesh-wound,
which, though not serious, disabled him somewhat. At that time we
became engaged. When his twenty days’ leave of absence had expired
he went back to duty, and did not return until a few days before our
marriage, in February, 1864.
We had no sooner reached Washington on our wedding-journey than
telegrams came, following one another in quick succession, asking him
to give up the rest of his leave of absence, and hasten without an
hour’s delay to the front. I begged so hard not to be left behind that
I finally prevailed. The result was that I found myself in a few hours
on the extreme wing of the Army of the Potomac, in an isolated Virginia
farm-house, finishing my honeymoon alone. I had so besought him to
allow me to come that I did not dare own to myself the desolation
and fright I felt. In the preparation for the hurried raid which my
husband had been ordered to make he had sent to cavalry head-quarters
to provide for my safety, and troops were in reality near, although I
could not see them.
The general’s old colored servant, Eliza, comforted me, and the
Southern family in the house took pity upon my anxiety. It was a sudden
plunge into a life of vicissitude and danger, and I hardly remember the
time during the twelve years that followed when I was not in fear of
some immediate peril, or in dread of some danger that threatened. After
the raid was ended, we spent some delightful weeks together, and when
the regular spring campaign began I returned to Washington, where I
remained until the surrender and the close of the war.
After that we went to Texas for a year, my husband still acting
as major-general in command of Volunteers. In 1866 we returned to
Michigan, and the autumn of the same year found us in Kansas, where the
general assumed charge of the 7th (Regular) Cavalry, to which he had
been assigned, with the rank of lieutenant-colonel in the Regular Army.
We remained in Kansas five years, during which time I was the only
officer’s wife who always followed the regiment. We were then ordered,
with the regiment, to Kentucky. After being stationed in Elizabethtown
for two years, we went to Dakota in the spring of 1873.
When orders came for the 7th Cavalry to go into the field again,
General Custer was delighted. The regiment was stationed in various
parts of the South, on the very disagreeable duty of breaking up
illicit distilleries and suppressing the Ku-klux. Fortunately for us,
being in Kentucky, we knew very little of this service. It seemed
an unsoldierly life, and it was certainly uncongenial; for a true
cavalryman feels that a life in the saddle on the free open plain is
his legitimate existence.
Not an hour elapsed after the official document announcing our change
of station had arrived before our house was torn up. In the confusion I
managed to retire to a corner with an atlas, and surreptitiously look
up the territory to which we were going. I hardly liked to own that
I had forgotten its location. When my finger traced our route from
Kentucky almost up to the border of the British Possessions, it seemed
as if we were going to Lapland.
From the first days of our marriage, General Custer celebrated every
order to move with wild demonstrations of joy. His exuberance of
spirits always found expression in some boyish pranks, before he could
set to work seriously to prepare for duty. As soon as the officer
announcing the order to move had disappeared, all sorts of wild
hilarity began. I had learned to take up a safe position on top of the
table; that is, if I had not already been forcibly placed there as a
spectator. The most disastrous result of the proceedings was possibly a
broken chair, which the master of ceremonies would crash, and, perhaps,
throw into the kitchen by way of informing the cook that good news had
come. We had so few household effects that it was something of a loss
when we chanced to be in a country where they could not be replaced.
I can see Eliza’s woolly head now, as she thrust it through the door
to reprimand her master, and say, “Chairs don’t grow on trees in these
yere parts, gen’l.” As for me, I was tossed about the room, and all
sorts of jokes were played upon me before the frolic was ended. After
such participation in the celebration, I was almost too tired with the
laughter and fun to begin packing.
I know that it would surprise a well-regulated mover to see what short
work it was for us to prepare for our journeys. We began by having a
supply of gunny-sacks and hay brought in from the stables. The saddler
appeared, and all our old traps that had been taken around with us so
many years were once more tied and sewed up. The kitchen utensils were
plunged into barrels, generally left uncovered in the hurry; rolls of
bedding encased in waterproof cloth or canvas were strapped and roped,
and the few pictures and books were crowded into chests and boxes.
When these possessions were loaded upon the wagon, at the last moment
there always appeared the cook’s bedding to surmount the motley pile.
Her property was invariably tied up in a flaming quilt representing
souvenirs of her friends’ dresses. She followed that last instalment
with anxious eyes, and, true to her early training, grasped her red
bandanna, containing a few last things, while the satchel she scorned
to use hung empty on her arm.
In all this confusion no one was cross. We rushed and gasped through
the one day given us for preparation, and I had only time to be glad
with my husband that he was going back to the life of activity that
he so loved. His enforced idleness made it seem to him that he was
cumbering the earth, and he rejoiced to feel that he was again to have
the chance to live up to his idea of a soldier. Had I dared to stop
in that hurried day and think of myself all the courage would have
gone out of me. This removal to Dakota meant to my husband a reunion
with his regiment and summer campaigns against Indians; to me it meant
months of loneliness, anxiety, and terror. Fortunately there was too
much to do to leave leisure for thought.
Steamers were ready for us at Memphis, and we went thither by rail to
embark. When the regiment was gathered together, after a separation of
two years, there were hearty greetings, and exchanges of troublous or
droll experiences; and thankful once more to be reunited, we entered
again, heart and soul, into the minutest detail of one another’s
lives. We went into camp for a few days on the outskirts of Memphis,
and exchanged hospitalities with the citizens. The bachelors found an
elysium in the society of many very pretty girls, and love-making went
on either in luxurious parlors or in the open air as they rode in the
warm spring weather to and from our camp. Three steamers were at last
loaded and we went on to Cairo, where we found the trains prepared to
take us into Dakota.
The regiment was never up to its maximum of twelve hundred men, but
there may have been eight or nine hundred soldiers and as many horses.
The property of the companies--saddles, equipments, arms, ammunition,
and forage--together with the personal luggage of the officers, made
the trains very heavy, and we travelled slowly. We were a week or more
on the route. Our days were varied by the long stops necessary to
water the horses, and occasionally to take them out of the cars for
exercise. My husband and I always went on these occasions to loose the
dogs and have a frolic and a little visit with our own horses. The
youth and gamins of the village gathered about us as if we had been
some travelling show. While on the journey one of our family had a
birthday. This was always a day of frolic and fun, and even when we
were on the extreme frontier, presents were sent for into the States,
and we had a little dinner and a birthday cake. This birthday that
came during the journey, though so inopportune, did not leave utterly
without resources the minds of those whose ingenuity was quickened by
affection. The train was delayed that day for an unusually long time;
our colored cook, Mary, in despair because we ate so little in the
“twenty-minutes-for-refreshments” places, determined on an impromptu
feast. She slyly took a basket and filled it at the shops in the
village street. She had already made friends with a woman who had a
little cabin tucked in between the rails and the embankment, and there
the never absent “eureka” coffee-pot was produced and most delicious
coffee dripped. Returning to the car stove, which she had discovered
was filled with a deep bed of coals, she broiled us a steak and baked
some potatoes. The general and I were made to sit down opposite each
other in one of the compartments. A board was brought, covered with a
clean towel, and we did table-legs to this impromptu table. We did not
dare move, and scarcely ventured to giggle, for fear we should overturn
the laden board in our laps. For dessert, a large plate of macaroons,
which were an especial weakness of mine, was brought out as a surprise.
Mary told me, with great glee, how she had seen the general prowling in
the bakers’ shops to buy them, and described the train of small boys
who followed him when he came back with his brown paper parcel. “Miss
Libbie,” she said, “they thought a sure enough gen’l always went on
horseback and carried his sword in his hand.”
We were so hungry we scarcely realized that we were anything but
the embodiment of picturesque grace. No one could be otherwise than
awkward in trying to cut food on such an uncertain base, while Mary
had taken the last scrap of dignity away from the general’s appearance
by enveloping him in a kitchen towel as a substitute for a napkin.
With their usual independence and indifference to ceremony, troops of
curious citizens stalked through the car to stare at my husband. We
went on eating calmly, unconscious that they thought the picture hardly
in keeping with their preconceived ideas of a commanding officer.
When we thanked Mary for our feast, her face beamed and shone with a
combination of joy at our delight and heat from the stove. When she
lifted up our frugal board and set us free, we had a long stroll,
talking over other birthdays and those yet to come, until the train was
ready to start.