"As to this, I really cannot attempt to explain what I consider a good joke": One Soldier's Misadventure in Comedy on the American Frontier
In American Indian Wars, 1830-1898, a Readex collection detailing decades of interactions between the U.S. Army, white settlers, and the Indigenous peoples who occupied what would become the Western United States, thousands of stories await in letters, official reports, and diary pages. Alongside accounts of treaty negotiations and battle reports, snapshots of the lives of people otherwise absent from the historical record fill these documents. A look at a handful of pages of military correspondence reveals one such person: an amateur comedian on the 19th century American frontier who garnered a slightly larger audience than he anticipated.
It is difficult for an American of the 21st century to imagine the life of a soldier posted to one of the dozens of outposts and forts that represented federal authority many months travel from Washington, D.C. These men were responsible for securing a vast swath of territory that started at the Mexican border, swept up the eastern side of the Rocky Mountains, and encompassed almost 2,000 miles of U.S-Canadian border country. Although American settlement and exploitation of the half-continent between the Pacific Ocean and the Mississippi River was already in full swing by the 1870s, frontier forts were physically isolated, dependent upon unreliable mail couriers for communication, and obliged to tolerate decaying infrastructure and inadequate provisioning.
What's more, decades of intermittent conflict and bad-faith treaties with the Indigenous peoples west of the Mississippi had failed to fully pacify the tribes of the Great Plains and American Southwest, meaning that patrols beyond a fort's walls carried with them the risk of contact with armed, mounted, and frequently unfriendly warriors. The other inhabitants of this frontier often made matters worse, with outbreaks of settler-driven unrest and incursions by outlaws from the beyond the porous Mexican border common.
In this environment of uncertainty and privation, it is unsurprising that some soldiers would find solace in humor. One such man was Captain Henry A. Ellis, 15th U.S. Infantry, who commanded Fort Garland, a post in Colorado Territory charged with guarding the San Luis Valley, in the winter of 1871. He purchased "a small printing machine, about as large as ones hand" from an unidentified source and, leaning on the knowledge of a printer-turned-sergeant in his command, set about producing "several small slips of paper, with what I considered rather interesting and amusing matter."
The end result, the Fort Garland Herald, dated February 3, was what a modern reader might call a newsletter, albeit one with a comedic focus and a scattershot structure that might be expected from an inexperienced hobbyist. The three-page curiosity was evidently intended solely for circulation amongst the soldiers and soldiers' families stationed at Fort Garland, but less than a month later, a copy had made its way far further and the end recipient found that Ellis' "amusing matter" was anything but.
On February 19, 1871, Captain Ellis penned a response to a letter sent by the Office of the Assistant Adjutant General for the District of New Mexico in Santa Fe, then a hub for U.S. Army administration in the American Southwest. The text of the missive from Santa Fe is not reproduced in the American Indian Wars collection, but from Ellis' reply, it seems that someone of significance found the content of the short collection of anecdotes and musings "scurrilous." Indeed, the perceived offense was so great that threat of a court martial is mentioned, specifically under Article 83 of the Articles of War, "conduct unbecoming of an officer and a gentleman."
Responding to this charge, Ellis took it upon himself to explain the context and intent behind every single "article" in his work, although the substance of his explanations suggest irritation with or even indignance at the whole affair.
Some explanatory notes were reasonable, like the clarification that a joke about the amputation of a toe was, in fact, inspired by a recent amputation at the fort, or that the rhyme "General Grant and General Jackson, British and Rebels turned their backs on!" was a taunt directed at the United States' old foes and not two of its most famous officers. Other explanations were more dubious, like Ellis' attempt to explain away a note on the hanging of an African American in New Mexico that is glib to the point of being sinister, far from being a simple regional news report, as the captain claims.
The most resonant aspect of this point-by-point response for a modern reader is likely the frustration of a man asked to explain his sense of humor, or in Ellis' words, "as to this, I really cannot attempt to explain what I consider a good joke."
So, is the Fort Garland Herald actually funny?
Humor is subjective and no doubt some of the material can only be appreciated with knowledge of the specific context of life at Fort Garland in early 1871. Nevertheless, it seems unlikely that the disjointed collection of crude jokes intermixed with positive and seemingly genuine commentary on members of the fort community could have held much appeal to anyone other than its author, even at the time of its creation.
Through a modern lens, those parts of the bespoke newsletter that are comprehensible are generally offensive, whether Ellis is reveling in the mutilation of deserters, comparing overweight people to geese being fattened to produce foie gras, or noting a probable lynching with tacit approval. And yet, for all that, the Fort Garland Herald and its coerced authors' commentary are still unique and valuable historical documents, offering a perspective on American history quite distinct from reports of famous battles and biographies of influential personalities.
The materials of the American Indian Wars collection do not offer an explicit resolution for the troubles faced by Captain Ellis (although correspondence sent from Fort Garland suggests that the outpost had a different commanding officer by the spring of 1871) and it is unlikely that any reader today can truly judge if the Fort Garland Herald constituted a grievous breach of gentlemanly conduct of the time. From a historical perspective, however, the consequences faced by the author or even the quality of his work are far less important than the fact that the work existed and that curious researchers can still experience it well over a century after its creation.
To see the full documents referenced in this article or explore other accounts of Americans and Indigenous peoples in 19th century, please take a look at American Indian Wars, 1830-1898 yourself.
