Life and Manners in the Frontier Army

by Oliver Knight

Book by Knight, Oliver

288 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 1993

Reviews

[Michael Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very unusually for a well-regarded volume of social history, Knight’s book is based less on original reportorial sources than on the Victorian novels of Captain Charles King, whose active military career was brief -- from West Point graduation in 1866 to what would today be considered retirement on disability in 1879, following his inability to fully recover physically from wounds suffered a few years before in an Indian fight in Arizona. King was a natural soldier, however, and very observant besides, and his time in the Fifth Cavalry, as well as on detached duty in New Orleans and elsewhere, formed an extremely accurate and detailed background for his several dozen novels and scores of short stories. By the turn of the 20th century, and on through the 1920s, he was one of the most popular novelists in America and was esteemed throughout the Army itself for his grasp of frontier military life and Indian-fighting tactics. Knight, a prize-winning historian of the Western frontier, mined King’s books for information and produced an organized, critical survey of day-to-day life in the Old Army, the character of the typical officer and his family (who generally regarded him as a knight errant, the frequent squalor of their physical establishment in isolated posts notwithstanding), the relationship between officers and noncoms and privates, the garrison as extended or substitute family, the role of romantic matchmaking by Army wives among young bachelor officers, the generally rigid caste system (again, promoted more by the ladies than by their husbands), the details of daily routine from staff meetings to meals to guard house detail, and the nomadic nature of Army life in the West generally. And there were also those tense periods when the troops were engaged in field campaigns against the Indians, leaving their families back at the post hungry for reports and letters. Knight’s style is very easy and highly readable, though footnotes are frequent and there’s an excellent bibliography. As a source for background and flavor of the American military west, this is an excellent starting point.

[Fredrick Danysh · Rating 3 out of 5]

Life on the Western frontier was rough especially in the poorly paid Army both for the soldiers and any wives. Wives of enlisted men often had to take in laundry to help the family survive. Officer wives were little better off frequently having to do their own housework. Food for all was usually poor quality and in short supply.