Customer Reviews

Soldiers, Sutlers, and Settlers: Garrison Life on the Texas Frontier (Clayton Wheat Williams Texas Life Series)

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For the generation before the present one (or two), John Wayne in "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon" and similar films epitomized the public's image of the U.S. Army on the 19th century American frontier. Such depictions made it clear that the military life had at least as much to do with social interaction and raising families and alleviating boredom as it did with actually suppressing the Indians. Frontier garrison life has always intrigued me, perhaps because I grew up on army posts myself. And while there were a great many similarities among posts, whether they were located in Montana or Arizona, the Texas experience did have a number of unique features. For one thing, Texas was never federal land but an independent republic, with its own military -- on the Indian frontier, that meant the Rangers -- and when the U.S. Army did move in, after the conclusion of the War with Mexico, it had to contend with an already-existing Anglo settlement culture, even in west Texas, where the government found it useful to establish several rings of forts along the Rio Grande and Texas's other major rivers to contain both the Indians and the pressure of settlement. This was a dynamic process, not a static defensive presence, with new forts being build and old ones abandoned as the settlement moved westward, so life among the soldiers, officers, dependents, and mercantile service people never really had the chance to settle down. Wooster takes all this into account in a series of chapters on the Army's move into Texas, the process of locating and constructing a fort, the soldiers who manned it, the officer corps who commanded them, the dependents and other civilians who accompanied the Army, the nature of routine duty ("routine" being the operative word), day-to-day economic concerns on a post, the details of evolution in uniforms and weapons, life in the field when the post's raison d'ętre was put to work, cultural activities and entertainment on the post, the nature of the Army's social caste system on the frontier, and the eventual passing of the frontier itself -- a matter of less than fifty years. The author combines academic rigor and lots of footnotes with an agreeable and entirely accessible style, and Jack Jackson's detailed (and usually very accurate) line drawings enhance the experience. A sixteen-page bibliographical essay will lead the reader to all the most important primary sources (especially diaries and memoires) from which the book was drawn. Highly recommended to anyone with an interest in the American military experience at home.