The Way West

In the summer of 1847 Maj. William Gilpin was placed in command of a battalion of Indian fighters bound for the western Santa Fe Trail.

German immigrants were recruited in St. Louis to fill one company of infantry, and one company of artillery. Very few of the recruits spoke English. Americans made up two more companies of mounted troops and another company of infantry completing “a motley aggregation of foreigners, misfits, and city lads who were to see their first Indians three weeks after joining the army.”

Known as the Separate Battalion of Missouri Volunteers, the promoted Lt. Col. Gilpin discovered that his battalion was under no particular jurisdiction. Gilpin and his men were virtually unsupported when the battalion left Fort Leavenworth inadequately supplied for an expedition beyond civilization. Col. Gilpin complained that he and his men were “ordered into the wilderness naked.”

Untrained and unprepared, the march to the southwest was plagued with conflict almost from the very start. A young German officer, First Lt. Amandus Schnabel expected trouble from the English-speaking troops. Despite his rank Lt. Schnabel was not a professional soldier. He had just enlisted in Company D at Fort Leavenworth and was apparently elected to his position.

Schnabel spread a rumor among his troops that one of the American companies was planning a surprise attack on the German troops. Schnabel was reprimanded when it was discovered that he was the source of the potentially damaging gossip.

By early November the troops arrived at Fort Mann (near present-day Dodge City), a small stockade consisting of four log cabins connected by timber walls from the corner of one cabin to the other. Fort Mann could only comfortably accommodate a few dozen men, which meant that approximately 250 men were destined to spend the winter in tents. Gilpin left his artillery and infantry units at the fort and continued west to spend the winter at Bent’s Fort in southeast Colorado.

By December animals were dying from lack of feed and a certain amount of neglect. Military protocol almost completely collapsed. Lt. Schnabel’s rumored German-American war was not just a fiction that he had concocted. Animosity between the two groups had festered to the point of conflict between the two infantry units that Gilpin had left stationed at Fort Mann. But cultural conflict was not Schnabel’s only concern.

The Lieutenant enjoyed a certain level of comfort that afforded some privacy in one of the log quarters. Throughout their occupation of the little log post on the plains Pvt. Bill Newcume was assigned to duty in Schnabel’s quarters.

In early December Pvt. Newcume deserted the post, stowed away in a prairie schooner as part of a wagon train ambling its way eastward. The runaway private regretted the decision sometime later and returned to Fort Mann. Evidently the private was allowed to return to duty with little censure in late December.

Four months earlier 22-year-old Elizabeth Caroline Newume was consumed in love for her 24-year-old First Lt. Amandus Schnabel. Schnabel did not want to leave her behind when he marched off to fight Indians. He must have been quite persuasive.

On the other hand, one writer believed that it was Elizabeth who would not be content with waving a tearstained handkerchief and keeping the home fires burning until her man came back from war.

Elizabeth enlisted in Gilpin’s Missouri volunteers at Fort Leavenworth on September 16, 1847. Schnabel was a virile young officer and made certain his darling pet was enrolled in his own company.

On her return to duty Elizabeth certainly endured unspeakable hardship. Military protocol had almost completely collapsed by mid-January as tensions escalated between the German-American troops. One soldier was killed by a Private Auguste Falbush who was later charged with murder. Soldiers were barely surviving. A dozen horses “barely able to stand upon their feet”, were all that was left out of the original seventyfive. Losses of mules and oxen brought wolves to Fort Mann for a daily feast.

By May the reason for Private Newcume’s desertion became evident. She was finally discovered as a woman when she could no longer hide the fact that she was pregnant! Private Newcume had stolen away in a passing wagon train at the urging of Schnabel when the couple realized she was going to have a baby.

Apparently, Elizabeth’s love for Schnabel prevailed, prompting her to return to her beau at Fort Mann. She was sent back to Fort Leavenworth and discharged on June 15, 1848. Lt. Schnabel was court martialed for “tenting, sleeping, and cohabitating with a female, thereby, defrauding the United States of a good and competent soldier.” Sadly, the lovers went separate ways, and nothing is known of the child that was famously conceived under military blankets on The Way West.

“The Cowboy,” Jim Gray is author of the book Desperate Seed: Ellsworth Kansas on the Violent Frontier, Ellsworth, KS. Contact Kansas Cowboy, 220 21st Road, Geneseo, Kan. Phone: (785) 531-2058 or kansascowboy@kans.com.