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Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888
In the summer of 1871, Frances Marie Antoinette Mack married Fayette Washington Roe, fresh out of West Point, and left the East behind to join his infantry regiment at Fort Lyon, Colorado, where her sprightly account of frontier life begins. As a western army wife Frances Roe found herself in the shadow of the Rockies—Lt. Roe was stationed at Piegan Agency, Montana Territory, as well as in the Cheyenne country of Colorado and Indian Territory—and her book is filled with the beauty of the wilderness. She records the problems of camp and garrison life with servants, sand, and shortages, and the pleasures of parties and new friends, of hunting, fishing, and camping trips, and of long romps with her dog Hal. One chapter reports a fine summer's outing to twelve-year-old Yellowstone National Park in 1884.
In the cavalcade of men's western memoirs, books written by frontier women have too often gone unheralded and almost unnoticed. Yet women were among the keenest observers of the nineteenth-century West and its inhabitants, as seen nowhere better than in Frances Roe's vivid account of life with the western army.
In the cavalcade of men's western memoirs, books written by frontier women have too often gone unheralded and almost unnoticed. Yet women were among the keenest observers of the nineteenth-century West and its inhabitants, as seen nowhere better than in Frances Roe's vivid account of life with the western army.
- GenresHistoryNonfiction
387 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1909
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
May 13, 2010
I'm a sucker for primary sources. These letters from 1871 to 1888 provide a unique look at life on Army posts in the west--mostly Montana. A fun read, especially for the insights into Mrs. Roe herself.
A map would have been helpful as many of the posts mentioned no longer exist.
A map would have been helpful as many of the posts mentioned no longer exist.
January 29, 2018
My own grandmother, born within memory of the West as it was, yearned to go and see it. I imagine her reading this book as a girl, a few years after it came out. This book, and that of Laura Ingalls Wilder, are so evocative of that Frontier, post Civil War, bordering on the Century of most of our births, that I begin to wonder whether women could see the West best, and paint it for our modern eye, in a way men did not.
In any case, the bravery, grit, and good spiritedness of this woman amazes me. Frances M. A. Roe seems characteristic of military wives, who support their soldier, making a home for him, even in desperate locations. In the second half of the book, she states that she and the other wives know the importance of this, even if the Army and the old bachelors (she often kindly makes fun of) do not.
Frances Roe is adventurous. Her middle initials are M.A., for Mary Antoinette, suggesting her parents had a very different image of her future life. The book covers the changing West. At its start, her husband had graduated West Point, the US Military Academy, and is being posted to the Frontier. She is making her first long trips West before trains, and must leave so much behind, and then do it again when the wagons do not have enough room for her baggage. By the end of the book, the wagon rides have given ride to trains, and places she has lived are so different, that she does not recognize them. Now that there are trains she says, Congressmen and others are eager to come out and see the West, she says. But she saw it -- and describes for us -- the West as it was.
In those early days (and really, they remain, beyond the reach of the trains), she often approaches her time there with a sense of adventure, sometimes understandable concern, and often real joy. I think of the way she takes to weeklong mountain journeys, long pic nics she calls one, after she has been in a city too long. She takes to riding horses, so well that men marvel at her talent in riding, and training them (22 horses, either un-gentled, or un-ridden by a woman before, by her count). She flies over the prairie, despite the thousands of prairie dog holes that can trip her horse and leave her with broken bones for dead. She seems to live for these rides at times, despite the most dangerous of the tribes, the Cheyenne, sand storms, rough men, animal predators, sudden freezing falling temps, and hail stones the size of balls. Oh, and floods. But still she takes to her horse and flies.
There are so many other brave things she does, and takes in stride. She confronts men twice her size, uses quick thinking to get out of bad situations, stands her ground when others run, is over-run herself by dust storms that madden horses, alkali quick sands that take down her horse and her, nearly leaving no trace of them, rides through wolves challenging her and her horse, calls out the garrison in a way that it appears saves her husband's life.
At times, she talks of experiences so challenging that she sounds almost as if she has illness from them. A modern might describe them as short breakdowns. She is not afraid to show her tears, but neither does not dwell on these in so many letters home, and seems remarkably resilient, and quick to recover. At one point, after years on the frontier, she simply has to go home East. But go home she does for a few weeks. Then is back to her beloved frontier. (There are also postings back to the South, and to General's staffs, but these go largely unremarked on, except for her surprising sorrow at leaving the frontier, and her dog or horse, and others at the fort communities she has forged relations with).
As she focuses on building a life for her and her husband and in her community, and is so focused on her animals, one occasionally wonders that she and her husband had no children for the 17 years of this book, and the cost that that may have taken as well. Perhaps the secret personal tragedies of life on the frontier, though she never makes an issue of it. One wonders what else she does not mention.
She goes to the West when there are still buffalo herds, and she participates in a hunt, tho she cannot bring herself to kill one of them.
She is afraid of Indians, but also entertains them in her home, and there are often strange standoffs. For those in the East, like myself, who know the Cherokee allied tribes, and the shame of the trail of tears imposed on them, some of her impressions seem wrong. But she is living on the Frontier with the Cheyenne. And when one looks into the accounts of Cheyenne warfare, and treatment of women and children, it is amazing the fear that her husband the West Point Officer must have had for his wife, and she for him. These accounts rival the worst war crimes I have heard of other cultures. She does not speak of these. But in not speaking of them, still I know one could not but think of them. (I think for one example of the shocking and tragic Parker raid).
Well loved frontier Indian relations of mine by marriage are mentioned, and it is amazing to think that at later times in the book she is describing to me my favorite Aunt's people, and what they saw across the mountains and sky. My aunt's grandmother could have met Frances Roe based on her travels thru their territories, and some of those she describes.
There are Indian tragedies hinted at, as Sitting Bull on Reservation calls for the Army to remove half white and half Indian people using his land, and the Garrison does, she says regretfully. She is not the soldier, but one senses her feelings about things are a true echo of their reflections in calmer moments. The true Indian wars would have been still occurring, but they do not seem to occur at her husband's postings. This of course may be "the tyranny of the text." Someone could do good work on a History honor's or master's thesis if they mapped out just what was happening parallel to this text, and in the region.
She speaks -- in the first recorded instance -- of the Buffalo Soldiers, the African American Indian fighting cavalry troops. She gives high marks to their bravery and character. She also speaks of integration, then segregation, as one commander follows another. And of her conflicted feelings in hearing a Souza march Souza wrote for her old home regiment being played by African American troops. At first she is glad to hear it, and then possessive -- who are they to play her old home's march, she asks. And then complementary that they did it well.
There is something of a non-PC character arc occurring over the course of her letters. That arc seems in one way to reach across her 17 years, and in another way, reach from Frances M.A. Roe, to us in our present day. We are all still working out Martin Luther King's Dream. But I was somewhat encouraged to hear her move from speaking of how she would not have a Chinese cook (semi-horrified of them and their practices), to taking one into employment, to power struggles (of a sort) to maintain control in her own kitchen from her Chinese cook (his own issues with women, perhaps). Altho imperfect, this then grows to a sort of grudging accommodation, then respect, and then endearment for her succession of Chinese cooks (and possibly this was a two way street). Each of these cooks was a different person. But to see her grow in this from a place of semi-horror of their ways (which I found both honest on her part and embarrassing) to a place of a sort of friendship and protection (where her Chinese cook watched out for her in a way), to tears at the parting some ten years later, suggests a character arc, and a good momentum to that arc.
People will find both encouragement and disappointment in her discussion of these things (and there are tragedies to these things, and lost opportunities), but actually, these matters are infrequent relative to the volume. --Her focus is on the joys of community amongst the small band of the forts, the kindness and respect of the other wives, and soldiers. --The laughter of the men together -- despite the hard natural conditions -- and often, it seems, somehow, because of these conditions. The men laugh and laugh, as they work together. I thought, perhaps laughter is the second most common of the substantive words in this book. If so, a close first and third common word is fear, and tears. But as I think of it, surely more than all three is her sense of joy in the frontier, and the love she and her husband have (tho I do not think she uses that word). Her happiness in adventure, making do, and wanting to be a good wife to her husband, to make the life of those who stop by her home a little more comfortable, with a sense of their far away home. She uses the curious word "dainty" to describe the dinners and type of table delicacies she tries to set. Perhaps the word was common, but I think it is more that it is in contrast to the rough hewn men and surroundings, that she seeks to employ it. I love the pride she has in her work, and the work of the other women there.
Frances Roe is intelligent, brave (tho often self-effacing, and so one suspects even braver than she lets on). She seems respected among the officers, enlisted, and even rough men of the West. One gets the sense that she is exactly the right woman for this man to have married, and that he must have been envied for her ways and heart.
I would have loved to have met her. And in my grandmother and aunt, I almost feel I have met a type of Frances M. A. Roe. As I write this, I think too that I will miss her. And tho I know intelligent and challenging women, those among my family included, I wonder if we will see many of her character, or her husband's, as America roles ever onward, into our techno-soft, atomized futures. I will miss her, and the Frontier that once defined my country. Her book is like -- exactly like -- letters and scenic post cards from a place and time we never can visit again.
In any case, the bravery, grit, and good spiritedness of this woman amazes me. Frances M. A. Roe seems characteristic of military wives, who support their soldier, making a home for him, even in desperate locations. In the second half of the book, she states that she and the other wives know the importance of this, even if the Army and the old bachelors (she often kindly makes fun of) do not.
Frances Roe is adventurous. Her middle initials are M.A., for Mary Antoinette, suggesting her parents had a very different image of her future life. The book covers the changing West. At its start, her husband had graduated West Point, the US Military Academy, and is being posted to the Frontier. She is making her first long trips West before trains, and must leave so much behind, and then do it again when the wagons do not have enough room for her baggage. By the end of the book, the wagon rides have given ride to trains, and places she has lived are so different, that she does not recognize them. Now that there are trains she says, Congressmen and others are eager to come out and see the West, she says. But she saw it -- and describes for us -- the West as it was.
In those early days (and really, they remain, beyond the reach of the trains), she often approaches her time there with a sense of adventure, sometimes understandable concern, and often real joy. I think of the way she takes to weeklong mountain journeys, long pic nics she calls one, after she has been in a city too long. She takes to riding horses, so well that men marvel at her talent in riding, and training them (22 horses, either un-gentled, or un-ridden by a woman before, by her count). She flies over the prairie, despite the thousands of prairie dog holes that can trip her horse and leave her with broken bones for dead. She seems to live for these rides at times, despite the most dangerous of the tribes, the Cheyenne, sand storms, rough men, animal predators, sudden freezing falling temps, and hail stones the size of balls. Oh, and floods. But still she takes to her horse and flies.
There are so many other brave things she does, and takes in stride. She confronts men twice her size, uses quick thinking to get out of bad situations, stands her ground when others run, is over-run herself by dust storms that madden horses, alkali quick sands that take down her horse and her, nearly leaving no trace of them, rides through wolves challenging her and her horse, calls out the garrison in a way that it appears saves her husband's life.
At times, she talks of experiences so challenging that she sounds almost as if she has illness from them. A modern might describe them as short breakdowns. She is not afraid to show her tears, but neither does not dwell on these in so many letters home, and seems remarkably resilient, and quick to recover. At one point, after years on the frontier, she simply has to go home East. But go home she does for a few weeks. Then is back to her beloved frontier. (There are also postings back to the South, and to General's staffs, but these go largely unremarked on, except for her surprising sorrow at leaving the frontier, and her dog or horse, and others at the fort communities she has forged relations with).
As she focuses on building a life for her and her husband and in her community, and is so focused on her animals, one occasionally wonders that she and her husband had no children for the 17 years of this book, and the cost that that may have taken as well. Perhaps the secret personal tragedies of life on the frontier, though she never makes an issue of it. One wonders what else she does not mention.
She goes to the West when there are still buffalo herds, and she participates in a hunt, tho she cannot bring herself to kill one of them.
She is afraid of Indians, but also entertains them in her home, and there are often strange standoffs. For those in the East, like myself, who know the Cherokee allied tribes, and the shame of the trail of tears imposed on them, some of her impressions seem wrong. But she is living on the Frontier with the Cheyenne. And when one looks into the accounts of Cheyenne warfare, and treatment of women and children, it is amazing the fear that her husband the West Point Officer must have had for his wife, and she for him. These accounts rival the worst war crimes I have heard of other cultures. She does not speak of these. But in not speaking of them, still I know one could not but think of them. (I think for one example of the shocking and tragic Parker raid).
Well loved frontier Indian relations of mine by marriage are mentioned, and it is amazing to think that at later times in the book she is describing to me my favorite Aunt's people, and what they saw across the mountains and sky. My aunt's grandmother could have met Frances Roe based on her travels thru their territories, and some of those she describes.
There are Indian tragedies hinted at, as Sitting Bull on Reservation calls for the Army to remove half white and half Indian people using his land, and the Garrison does, she says regretfully. She is not the soldier, but one senses her feelings about things are a true echo of their reflections in calmer moments. The true Indian wars would have been still occurring, but they do not seem to occur at her husband's postings. This of course may be "the tyranny of the text." Someone could do good work on a History honor's or master's thesis if they mapped out just what was happening parallel to this text, and in the region.
She speaks -- in the first recorded instance -- of the Buffalo Soldiers, the African American Indian fighting cavalry troops. She gives high marks to their bravery and character. She also speaks of integration, then segregation, as one commander follows another. And of her conflicted feelings in hearing a Souza march Souza wrote for her old home regiment being played by African American troops. At first she is glad to hear it, and then possessive -- who are they to play her old home's march, she asks. And then complementary that they did it well.
There is something of a non-PC character arc occurring over the course of her letters. That arc seems in one way to reach across her 17 years, and in another way, reach from Frances M.A. Roe, to us in our present day. We are all still working out Martin Luther King's Dream. But I was somewhat encouraged to hear her move from speaking of how she would not have a Chinese cook (semi-horrified of them and their practices), to taking one into employment, to power struggles (of a sort) to maintain control in her own kitchen from her Chinese cook (his own issues with women, perhaps). Altho imperfect, this then grows to a sort of grudging accommodation, then respect, and then endearment for her succession of Chinese cooks (and possibly this was a two way street). Each of these cooks was a different person. But to see her grow in this from a place of semi-horror of their ways (which I found both honest on her part and embarrassing) to a place of a sort of friendship and protection (where her Chinese cook watched out for her in a way), to tears at the parting some ten years later, suggests a character arc, and a good momentum to that arc.
People will find both encouragement and disappointment in her discussion of these things (and there are tragedies to these things, and lost opportunities), but actually, these matters are infrequent relative to the volume. --Her focus is on the joys of community amongst the small band of the forts, the kindness and respect of the other wives, and soldiers. --The laughter of the men together -- despite the hard natural conditions -- and often, it seems, somehow, because of these conditions. The men laugh and laugh, as they work together. I thought, perhaps laughter is the second most common of the substantive words in this book. If so, a close first and third common word is fear, and tears. But as I think of it, surely more than all three is her sense of joy in the frontier, and the love she and her husband have (tho I do not think she uses that word). Her happiness in adventure, making do, and wanting to be a good wife to her husband, to make the life of those who stop by her home a little more comfortable, with a sense of their far away home. She uses the curious word "dainty" to describe the dinners and type of table delicacies she tries to set. Perhaps the word was common, but I think it is more that it is in contrast to the rough hewn men and surroundings, that she seeks to employ it. I love the pride she has in her work, and the work of the other women there.
Frances Roe is intelligent, brave (tho often self-effacing, and so one suspects even braver than she lets on). She seems respected among the officers, enlisted, and even rough men of the West. One gets the sense that she is exactly the right woman for this man to have married, and that he must have been envied for her ways and heart.
I would have loved to have met her. And in my grandmother and aunt, I almost feel I have met a type of Frances M. A. Roe. As I write this, I think too that I will miss her. And tho I know intelligent and challenging women, those among my family included, I wonder if we will see many of her character, or her husband's, as America roles ever onward, into our techno-soft, atomized futures. I will miss her, and the Frontier that once defined my country. Her book is like -- exactly like -- letters and scenic post cards from a place and time we never can visit again.
June 5, 2010
Frances Roe is a woman worth knowing-- a vivid and intelligent personality. This collection of her letters places the reader in the middle of life on frontier military posts.
Like military wives through the ages (my mom, for one) she had to follow her husband from post to post at the whim of the Army: she tells of the personal impact of rules-and-regs and reassignments.
She glories in hunting, fishing, and riding even the most intractable horses. She lovingly cares for her greyhound pup and pet squirrel. Her description of military socializing is fascinating, especially when she explains how elegant parties were furnished in the middle of nowhere. (One of my favorite parts of the book was her construction of a fabulous disguise for a masked ball!)
I love reading history straight from the pens of those who lived it.
Like military wives through the ages (my mom, for one) she had to follow her husband from post to post at the whim of the Army: she tells of the personal impact of rules-and-regs and reassignments.
She glories in hunting, fishing, and riding even the most intractable horses. She lovingly cares for her greyhound pup and pet squirrel. Her description of military socializing is fascinating, especially when she explains how elegant parties were furnished in the middle of nowhere. (One of my favorite parts of the book was her construction of a fabulous disguise for a masked ball!)
I love reading history straight from the pens of those who lived it.
September 26, 2024
I enjoyed this memoir describing army life in the American west during the late 19th century. Told from a woman's perspective it describes in detail the living conditions, social life, Army politics concerning housing, as well as vivid portraits of the land, animals and people. It is a must read for anyone wanting an unfiltered view of life for the American Army and their families during this period.
September 10, 2024
These letters from 1871 to 1888 provide a unique look at life on Army posts in the west.
July 29, 2011
This is an excellent read for anyone who is really interested in the life of an army wife. There are times when I was irritated with her less than politically correct opinions of people and races, but those were the views in those days and it is wrong to expect political correctness in days before it existed. THose were the widely accepted opinions in those days and we must accept them for what they were. But to ride and travel with her was thrilling. Moving from camp to camp, the deprivations she cheerfully accepted as part of life and the things she experienced were wonderful. A great read.
October 9, 2011
This is a collection of letters written by a woman in the 1870s who moved to "The Far West" (Colorado Territory). It's really interesting so far! Lots of discussion of the local tribes and the buffalo soldiers. She was really on the leading edge of American expansion into the west. She was incredibly brave (she was scared silly and did it anyway for her husband), and a real adventurer, whether she liked it or not.
October 13, 2013
I really enjoyed reading this book. Largely because of the humor I found in the similarities to life in the the military in 1871 compared to 2013. Funny what things don't change. If you have a familiarity to being in the military, this book should give you a good laugh. Its an easy read and I enjoyed reading about the author's perspective of American Indians, the quick death of the American Buffalo and even her observations of the Mormons.
April 18, 2016
Read between January & June 1984.
Original notes on book from 1984: Good book. True. Interesting history.
Original notes on book from 1984: Good book. True. Interesting history.
October 4, 2019
Enjoyable read!
I always enjoy historical accounts from the perspective of the actual day to day living. This writer did it in an entertaining style!
I always enjoy historical accounts from the perspective of the actual day to day living. This writer did it in an entertaining style!
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews