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Boots and Saddles

by Elizabeth Bacon CUSTER (1842 - 1933)

The Burning of Our Quarters; Carrying the Mail

Elizabeth Custer has penned an engaging portrait of 1870’s life on a U.S. cavalry post in the Dakotas, just before her husband and his troops met their tragic deaths in the Battle of the Little Big Horn. “Our life,” she writes, “was often as separate from the rest of the world as if we had been living on an island in the ocean.” Her portrait of her husband, General George Armstrong Custer is laudatory—his intellect, his love of dogs (he kept a hunting pack of 40 at the post); but, Boots and Saddles is more than just a memorial. She observes with keen insight, the varied persons, from Indian scouts, to enlisted men, to officer’s wives, who make up the army “family,” on the post. Her sympathetic story about the regimental laundress and midwife, with its sad ending, should take a place in the army’s history of “don’t ask, don’t tell.” (Summary by Sue Anderson)

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Listen next episodes of Boots and Saddles:
A Day of Anxiety and Terror , A "Strong Heart" Dance , A Winter's Journey Across the Plain , An Indian Council , Breaking Up of the Missouri , Capture and Escape of Rain-in-the-Face , Curious Characters and Excursionists Among Us , Domestic Trials , Garrison Amusements , Garrison Life , General Custer's Library , General Custer's Literary Work , Improvements at the Post, and Gardening , Indian Depredations , Our Life's Last Chapter , Perplexities and Pleasures of Domestic Life , Religious Services; Leave of Absence , The Summer of the Black Hills Expedition