Forts and supplies

About this book

For fifteen years prior to the Civil War, the American army was the major force in the Southwest's economic development. The military opened new roads into the West and built forts in the midst of Indian country, which encouraged homesteaders and farmers as well as ranchers and miners to follow and settle.There quickly emerged between soldier and citizen a system of trade and barter that revolved around the army's demand for local products. Robert Frazer offers here the first book-length study of the economic impact of the military in the Southwest during the early years of U.S. occupation. Utilizing a wealth of largely unpublished materials, Frazer provides a detailed account of the emergence and growth of the military-supported economy in the area from Taos to El Paso and Arizona to the Texas border. He reconstructs the daily life of commercial transaction between the forts and those anglos and Hispanos who profited from the trade. The need to supply the army resulted in a reorientation of the agricultural and commercial patterns inherited from the colonial period, and it brought on such effects as inflation, changes in diet, and wrangling over bid procedures. In addition, they army's need for goods and services invariably conflicted with the government's drive to economize: commanding officers repeatedly tried to reorganize the supplying of their troops, including one attempt to make the forts self-sufficient through raising cattle and putting in farms and gardens. The economic role of forts in the West is a fascinating part of military history that brings a new dimension of understanding to conventional accounts of the frontier army.