By KAREN MADORIN
Recently, local historians and metal detectorists Denis Vine and Gordon Solomon packed the museum when they shared a 7th Cavalry artifact PowerPoint with Trego County Historical Society guests. What a thrill to listen to their stories!
I love people whose imaginations allow them to think about this region sans section lines, county roads, state highways, I-70, neon lights, gas stations and quick shops, utility poles, and other modern development. Every attendee avidly imagined life’s difficulties with limited communication and supplies.
Once the government began building railroads and offering homesteads, military squads, platoons and companies frequently camped nearby to protect crews and settlers. Those troops required water and game so they identified creeks, rivers, and springs to establish location and supplies. If there was water, game used it too which simplified providing camp meat and forage.
It also intensified resource competition with native occupants. While occupying stations for weeks or months, soldiers used canned and bottled goods, wore out their clothing and tack, and occasionally lost curry combs, knives or razors.
To find left behind artifacts, metal-detecting historians study old documents, maps, and the landscape to identify potential sites. Some share information so others can further research an area. As a bonus, relic hunters often discover communal trash pits full of bottles.
Following retirement, Denis and Gordon turned their inner history hunters loose, finding cans, tack, bullets, knives, military equipment like epaulets, buttons, cross sabers from hats, and more. They’ve also dug trash pits filled with tossed cans and bottles. According to Denis, cans offer a chance to familiarize the finder with specific soldiers roaming the prairies.
He noted industry canned food soldiers carried into isolated regions without supply depots. Unfortunately, no one had yet invented p-38 or p-51 can openers. As a result, these guys used knives or perhaps axes to access peaches and other canned goods. Looking at the artifacts, some cut the lid into quarters and peeled back edges to access contents. Others cut or chopped around edges until they could bend the left, right, top or bottom side enough to reach paydirt.
You clearly saw patterns troopers used to open their can and could assume the same guy opened any container sharing such characteristics.
In addition to finding cans at former camps, Denis and Gordon have detected scores of buttons. Most are military but not always. They commented that either soldiers didn’t know how to sew buttons securely or they had weak thread. I’m guessing a combination of both resulted in thousands of U.S. Army buttons peppering miles of Kansas prairie. Some of their discoveries still had fabric attached to the shank, triggering guesses as to what happened. Possibilities multiplied the longer folks thought.
This presentation made me wonder about young men who joined the military and came West so soon after the Civil War. Our nation needed to rebuild financially and physically, so for many enlistees military life offered steady pay, regular meals, uniforms and transportation.
In addition to U.S. citizens, immigrants enlisted to serve their new homeland. It’s not surprising to search military cemeteries or records and find Irishmen and Germans among Iowans, Missourians and other U.S. enlistees.
Few absolute answers exist to answer questions about men who spent months and sometimes years protecting this prairie we call home. We do know they opened cans without a can opener and more than a good share performed their job missing buttons.
Karen Madorin is a retired teacher, writer, photographer, outdoors lover, and sixth-generation Kansan.