After the American Civil War ended, the reorganized and vastly reduced United States Army was assigned the task of pacifying the Plains Indians west of the Mississippi. For much of the next quarter century, the army would be in constant movement westward establishing posts and forts throughout the great expanse of the American west. Dependentsùespecially wives, but also childrenùaccompanied some of the more senior Army personnel. These dependents had to deal with primitive conditions and with the constant fear of attack. This paper will focus on how the wives of Frontier Army officers overcame the many hardships and obstacles they faced in fashioning a day to day existence.
Much has been written about the dangers and privations experienced by soldiers serving in the Frontier Army in the perilous American west during the last half of the nineteenth century. Relatively little attention has been paid to the experiences of the wives of the Army officers who accompanied their husbands to these desolate and inhospitable outposts. Despite this lack of recognition, however, these wives made important, positive, and yet usually unrecognized contributions to the success of the Frontier Army. Some of this lack of attention may be due to the unfortunate tendency of some historians to focus on the uninspired actions of some Frontier Army wives. Another cause may simply be that within the greater
narrative of the frontier wars, filled with rampaging Indians, sweeping plains, and the privations of the Army, the role of the Army wives has simply gotten lost in the cacophony.
This excerpt from an army wife's journal gives an example of what frontier living was like for these indomitable women:
The isolation of the cavalry posts makes them quite inaccessible to travelers, 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 ofte...