Frontier Cooking: Soldiers and Settlers

A crucial influx into western territories came with the military—by 1850 nearly all of the U.S. Army was deployed to seventy-nine military posts below St. Joseph, Missouri, assisting the overland immigrants with a network of armed forces, Indian agents, surveyors, road builders, and mail carriers. Many soldiers were Civil War veterans who had primed their muzzle loaders with the same gunpowder that “salted” their stew—potassium nitrate, or saltpeter, had the same zing as salt, and they found slight improvement in the military fare served in the West, where they were sustained at mealtime by paltry portions of coffee, hardtack, raw salt pork, and the interminable soaked beans. Nutritional shortcuts meant that military food was of poor quality and often spoiled. Soldiers’ provisions were bland and monotonous; meats arrived in camp worm ridden, beans and potatoes were tainted with mold, and the hardtack had been nibbled by mice. By the 1870s the increased use of canned goods, transported by railroad, offered a more varied selection. Included were the ubiquitous tinned oysters—one of the most popular canned foods in the West. During long campaigns, soldiers hungered for a taste of potato. In winter they shot prairie chickens or woodcocks, or they waited patiently for shipments of government beef to catch up so that the cook could make oxtail soup, often from salted beef—a welcome change from a larder stocked only with bacon, flour, beans, coffee, tea, rice, sugar, and dried apples.