The Frontier Soldier

The life of a soldier in a frontier camp or garrison often consisted of boring routine, and it could be lonely. Diversions consisted of simple games in the off-duty hours, like checkers and backgammon. Cards and dice were forbidden, but the men still used them on penalty of punishment if caught by the officers. The men also gambled. More strenuous activities like prisoner’s base and dancing also took up some off-duty time. There was rarely any excitement at frontier fortifications, as there were few Indian conflicts during this period.

Little time was available for socializing and recreation, however. A soldier’s day was rigidly structured and repetitive, much of it filled with parades, inspections, and drilling and marching with muskets.

When not busy marching and countermarching the men were kept busy with fatigue duties like policing the camp, cutting timber and splitting wood, building or repairing items, blacksmithing, maple sugaring, bringing water into camp, airing bedding, and digging new “sinks,” or latrines. Another duty was sweeping the fort’s chimneys, a task carried out by a non-commissioned officer and two privates on the mornings of the first and third Mondays of each month.

More responsible men were given more sensitive duties, like working in the hospital and caring for the sick. “A careful man will be appointed to take care of the Sick and an Orderly man will be allowed to do the Drudgery work of the Hospital,” Col. John Francis Hamtramck of the 1st U.S. Infantry ordered in 1801. Other soldiers were detailed to act as servants, “waiters” or “batmen” to officers (“bat” being an archaic word for personal belongings and equipment).

Such responsible men were also assigned to instruct recruits. Col. Hamtramck directed that “the officer Commanding the Company assign a recruit to . . . an old Soldier for a Comrade, who is qualified to instruct him in the duties of a Soldier; teach him to clean himself, arms & accoutrements . . . When he is Smartened up and completed as before directed he will be put on duty.”^[2]Record Group 98, NARA, Orderly Book, Clemson’s Company, 1st Infantry Regiment, 1807, Standing Orders of the 1st U.S. Infantry, 1801. A multitude of other duties awaited the hapless private, and idle hands and feet were never knowingly allowed in a military camp. Officers and sergeants were very creative in seeing that their men had little or no free time. Most fatigue duties rewarded the men with an extra gill (1/4 of a pint) of whiskey each day, one of the few comforts these men could anticipate.

Frontier Forts

In a frontier fort, soldiers ordinarily lived in small, crowded barracks, or when on maneuvers slept five or six men in a tent we would call a pup tent today. In barracks many slept on bunks made of boards with straw on top as cushioning; others were lucky enough to have straw mattress ticks. Each soldier was issued one woolen blanket; most barracks bunks slept two soldiers on each level, so they could share their blankets.

The barracks were heated by open fireplaces, which were also where the men cooked their food. The fires further provided light on dark winter evenings. Most barracks and fort walls were built of logs chinked with mud, with stone fireplaces and log chimneys daubed with mud on the inside.

Cooking was allowed only in the kitchen areas of tent encampments or the fireplaces of rooms in a fort. The cook prepared the food to be consumed by his messmates at specific times of the day. Only two meals, breakfast and dinner (at that time the midday or noontime meal), were cooked. The evening meal consisted of leftovers and was eaten cold.

A Soldier’s Daily Schedule

A good way to understand how a soldier lived during the period is to take a look at how his day was structured. Each of the day’s events was heralded by an individual and recognizable call on the drum, sometimes accompanied by a fife. Larger garrisons might have full bands of musicians to call the men to their daily duties. The schedule was endlessly repetitive, and ran something like this:

1/2 hour before sunrise: Musician’s Call
Sunrise Reveille
5–7 am: Drill
8 am: Breakfast
9 am: Provisions Issued and Morning Roll Call
10 am: Sick Call, Daily Fatigue Duties Begin
11–1 pm: Music Practice for Musicians; Drill for Infantrymen
Noon: Roll Call
1 pm: Dinner
2 pm: Fatigue Duties
4–6 pm: Music Practice for Musicians, Drill for Soldiers
6 pm: Grand Parade of the Garrison, Reviewed by the Commanding Officer, for all Musicians and Soldiers
7 pm: Supper
8 pm: Retreat and Roll Call; Punishments Meted Out
8:30 pm: Tattoo or “retreat”; the Soldiers Must Return to their Tents or Huts. Inspection of Quarters
9 pm: Lights out^[3]James Ripley Jacobs, The Beginning of the U.S. Army, 1783-1812 (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1947), 199. This list was also compiled from Bert Joseph Griswold, Fort Wayne, … Continue reading

This routine varied slightly from garrison to garrison. In conjunction with rigid schedules like these, a fortification would probably fire an artillery piece at reveille and retreat, and hold a ceremony of raising a garrison flag at sunrise and lowering and storing the flag at retreat.

Regular inspections were essential, according to Baron Von Steuben‘s manual for the U.S. Army,^[4]Baron Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben, Baron von Steuben’s Revolutionary War Drill Manual (1794; reprint, New York: Dover Publications, 1985). 98-89. and included scrutinizing arms, ammunition, food, clothing, barracks, tents, and personal cleanliness. Drill was of paramount importance because the same orders and movements used on the parade ground were used in tactical situations and actual combat. Von Steuben’s manual was specific about each motion of the drill, from the step and speed of march to the evolutions of great numbers of men on the battlefield.

In rotation with his regular duties, a soldier was expected to serve on guard. How frequently a soldier served on guard rather than participating in the usual round of daily events depended upon how many men were in the garrison and how big the perimeter was that needed guarding. Commanders preferred a perimeter about 300 paces from most camps. A unit of soldiers became the “guard” of the post for a 24-hour period.

During that time a detail (roughly a third) of this unit spent two hours on guard and four off, relieved in turn by the second and third details. Most posts had a specific guard house designated as the area where the guard unit lived during their 24 hours on duty. This was due to the fact that men were constantly coming and going every two hours, even during the middle of the night, and there was no reason to disturb the sleep of other soldiers in the barracks. Guards were posted on the even hours (8, 10, 12, 2, 4 o’clock, etc.) throughout the day and night. An average guard at Fort Bellefontaine consisted of two sergeants, three corporals and 21 privates.^[5]Steuben, 91-112; Fort Bellefontaine Order Book, 1808-1810, Missouri Historical Society Archives.

Special Detail Duties

On addition to fatigue and guard duties within military posts and camps across the country, small groups of men were often chosen for specific missions away from the post. These “details” might be formed for hunting, scouting, felling trees for firewood, carrying messages, or escorting people or provisions from place to place.

Such details would, for the most part, be a welcome relief from the general boredom of camp or garrison life and its grinding and seemingly never-ending routine. It is little wonder that men misbehaved often; and understandable why many privates were so willing to volunteer for the Lewis and Clark Expedition. The Corps of Discovery offered a chance for adventure and variety no army post could match.

On Christmas Day at Fort Mandan in 1804, Private Whitehouse reported, “The men . . . prepared one of the rooms, and commence dancing, we having with us Two Violins & plenty of Musicians in our party.” By “musicians” he may merely have meant that some of the men were fond of playing improvised percussion instruments—pots and pans, blacksmith Shields’ anvil and hammer, or borrowed Indian drums—to accompany Pierre Cruzatte‘s fiddling. Otherwise, perhaps he was acknowledging the good singers in the group, who might have chimed in with words to some of the dance tunes. In any case, the Corps of Discovery’s roster did not include anyone with the rank of musician.

In the U.S. Army from the Revolutionary War to the Civil War, musicians were not entertainers, but specialists whose job was to telegraph commands to soldiers in camp and in battle by playing signals on drums. Their distinctive rank was reflected in the pay scale. Privates earned five dollars per month; musicians, six.^[7]See on this site Soldier Pay.

What did an army musician practice? Standard military regulations were quite clear on that point. However, Steuben implied, in his chapter, “Of the different Beats of the Drum,” that the traditional signals were too well known to require explanation to anyone of the rank of “musician.”^[8]Frederick William Baron von Steuben, Regulations For the Order and Discipline of the Troops of the United States (1794; reprint, New York: Dover, 1985), 89-91.

The Corps of Discovery had neither a drum nor a drummer. The company was small enough that voice commands would have been audible to all, when they were needed. The four “tin blowing trumpets,” see The Sounding Horn, Lewis bought in Philadelphia served to communicate certain commands at a distance, as when summoning soldiers to return to their boats, or to reassure overdue hunters in the hope they were within earshot.

Joe Whitehouse’s remark on Christmas Day, 1805, that the Corps had “plenty of Musicians” undoubtedly referred to good singers. There was no one with the rank of “musician” in the Corps.

Regulations for Drummers

Baron von Steuben’s Regulations included precise instructions concerning their responsibilities and their repertoire: