As the chilly November weather is heralding the approach of Thanksgiving, many of us find ourselves reflecting on past holiday gatherings and special times with our loved ones.

As anyone in the military community knows all too well, this lifestyle offers no guarantees of spending holidays with extended family members.

Instead, we know to embrace the blessing of family time with gratitude and joy when those opportunities arrive, but to always expect the unexpected. 

My husband and I have certainly experienced some unusual Thanksgivings during our years with the Army.

Our first married Thanksgiving was spent apart from each other, thanks to a deployment, and our second one was spent without extended family or friends, thanks to a recent PCS.

Rather than cooking an entire Thanksgiving feast for just two people, we ate Thanksgiving dinner at a local restaurant.

In some ways, it was a strange experience: just the two of us in a new area, at a restaurant we had never been to before, surrounded by strangers, and returning to a quiet house with just our little dog for company.

For my husband, who comes from a large, loving, and boisterous family, such a Thanksgiving was strange indeed.

But, none of our experiences can possibly rival the experience Frances M. A. Roe described in her fantastic work, Army Letters from an Officer’s Wife, 1871-1888. 

France M. A. Roe: A Frontier Army Wife 

Frances Roe was a relatively new Army wife when she spent Thanksgiving with her husband and other officers at Fort Lyon, Colorado. She and her husband, Fayette (or Faye, as she called him), were married in 1871 after Faye graduated from West Point (Utley).

They then traveled to Fort Lyon, which Frances described as a rather small, remote post in Colorado Territory.

In a letter to an unidentified recipient, she wrote that Fort Lyon “reminds one of a prim little village built around a square, in the center of which is a high flagstaff and a big cannon” (Roe, 5).

Her letters contain numerous insights into frontier Army life. Notably, Frances is credited with being the first to record that the Native Americans called black soldiers “buffalo soldiers” (NPS, “The Buffalo Soldiers”).

Additionally, Frances chronicled her own thoughts of and interactions with Native Americans, which she often described in derogatory language, sadly. Apart from these social commentaries, Frances’s letters are an intriguing and informative depiction of life as a nineteenth century Army wife (Myers; Utley).

In just the first few letters in the collection, for example, she described her frustration with having to leave some of her clothes behind and the embarrassment of making several social faux pas as she adjusted to living amongst officers and soldiers (Roe, 4-6).

Frances’s Thanksgiving at Fort Lyon 

While some experiences that Frances wrote of remain common amongst military spouses to this day (I have certainly made my own share of military social faux pas!), Frances’s first Thanksgiving with the Army was an unusual way to celebrate the holiday.

Rather than spending the day with her own and her husband’s families, she embraced a uniquely frontier mode of enjoying the feast. In her letter dated November 1871, she told her correspondent of her recent adventures of “learning to ride and shoot” and attending hunts with the officers and men stationed at Fort Lyon (Roe, 10).

For Thanksgiving, the men decided that they would enjoy having buffalo for their dinner! Of course, this required that a hunting party be put together to get this poor creature (Roe, 10).

In her letter, Frances recalled “how proud and delighted” she was when the officers and soldiers in the hunting party requested that she join them on their buffalo hunt (Roe, 10). 

Frances embraced this opportunity wholeheartedly. She braved an early morning (breakfast and laborious preparations were completed by seven in the morning) and incredibly cold weather (Roe, 10).

In fact, she was so frigid after riding twelve long miles in the cold and wind that her husband suggested she stay behind at a ranch where the party rested briefly (Roe, 11).

But, Frances was determined to see the adventure through and so she carried on, and soon they did indeed find a buffalo – but not exactly in the manner they expected (Roe, 11).

This first animal they saw was an old, majestic, but dying buffalo. Frances wrote in detailed, descriptive language of the compassion she felt for it, and of her disgust when a soldier suggested that she shoot the forlorn animal so that she could claim a kill of her own (Roe, 11).

Shortly after this tragic encounter, the hunting party found the herd and the actual hunt commenced. Frances and Faye watched the hunt from a safe distance, which allowed Frances to recall the practiced and skillful manner in which the men encircled the herd and singled out individual targets (Roe, 11-12).

Frances described how the men killed the buffalos with precision, and without injury to their own horses (Roe, 12-13). Ultimately, the party managed to get four animals for their Thanksgiving feast (Roe, 13). Once she had returned to Fort Lyon, she was so exhausted from twelve long hours in the saddle that she fell to the ground when she dismounted her horse (Roe, 13).

Embracing Opportunities 

After such an experience, it is unfortunate that Frances did not describe the actual Thanksgiving dinner, but I would imagine that it was quite the meal! She did, thankfully, record her overall impression of the hunt.

In her letter, she wrote,

“The hunt was a grand sight, and something that probably I will never have a chance of seeing again – and, to be honest, I do not want to see another, for the sight of one of those splendid animals running for his life is not a pleasant one” (Roe, 13).

As an animal lover myself, I am glad that Army life these days does not include opportunities to attend buffalo hunts.

However, one part of this experience is still applicable to military spouses today, and that is Frances’s willingness to embrace all that Army life has to offer.

Whether or not she missed her family on Thanksgiving is unknown, but her eagerness to embrace new experiences and make the best of every opportunity the Army presented is an amazing example of “hunting the good stuff” and fostering a mindset of resiliency.

Even though she was not eager to repeat the experience of the hunt, she still demonstrated an optimistic spirit that was willing to try new things and enjoy Army life adventures.

When we find ourselves in less than perfect circumstances during the holidays, perhaps we can remember Frances and her buffalo hunt and find ways that we too can embrace new opportunities and experiences wherever the military takes us! 

*Happy Thanksgiving from Mission:Milspouse to all of you. For more from Anna, you can find past posts HERE.

References

Roe, Frances M. A. Army Letters from an Officer’s Wife, 1871-1888. Teddington, Middlesex, England: Echo Library, 2007.

Utley, Robert M. Review of Army Letters from an Officer’s Wife, by Frances M. A. Roe. Great Plains Quarterly (Fall 1982): 249-250. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/greatplainsquarterly/1630.

National Park Service. “Buffalo Soldiers.” Presidio of San Francisco: National Park Service. Last updated February 9, 2022. https://www.nps.gov/prsf/learn/historyculture/buffalo-soldiers.htm. 

Myers, Sandra L. “Army Women’s Narratives as Documents of Social History: Some Examples from the Western Frontier, 1840-1900.” New Mexico Historical Review 65, no. 2 (April 1990): 175-198. https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2965&context=nmhr.