Nebraskaland

40 Nebraskaland • April 2023 31, 1823, at Robidoux's trading post, also known as Cabanne's, located near what is now N.P. Dodge Park in northern Omaha. He was brought back to Fort Atkinson by boat and, on April 5, partially relieved of his duties "since illness may only be temporary." On April 12, he was relieved of all duties, and his leg was amputated. He died on April 16. "It has become the painful duty of the Col. Comdg to announce to his command that the gallant active and generous Lieut. Gabriel Field is no more. He died last evening at 10 o'clock in consequence of an accidental wound in the thigh with a sharp pointed knife by which the main artery and nerve were severed," Leavenworth announced to his troops on April 17, 1823. According to an account published in the Blair Courier in September 1890, Capt. Benjamin Contal, who lived at Fort Atkinson as a boy, said the injury was by Field's own hand. "Lieutenant Field was playing with his knife, shutting it and throwing it one day, and it slipped and struck him in the thigh. This caused the amputation of his leg." The journal of another soldier also mentions the amputation. Yet military records and surgeon Gale's log say nothing about his injury or the amputation of his leg. Jason Grof, superintendent of Fort Atkinson, and Susan Juza, a historian at the park, speculate Field had already been discharged from the military and was preparing to return to Kentucky. Trading posts were off limits to soldiers because of the alcohol they might procure there. Yet that is where Field and Capt. Charles Pentland ended up. When Pentland showed up for roll call the next day, he had to answer to where his friend, Field, was. Court martial records from later that year show Pentland was charged with neglect of duty for leaving his post unattended. Witnesses say he was intoxicated. Field is mentioned, but nothing specifi c. Grof and Juza believe that is because he was a civilian and not under military law. "It's all speculation, but I'll say because of the place it happened, we can assume alcohol was involved," Grof said. Regardless of how the accident occurred or what Field's military status was at the time, Grof and Juza aren't surprised at the outcome. The lack of sanitation and available medical science on the frontier would have been similar to that of the Civil War era, when it is well documented that many soldiers would have survived their wounds had it not been for the infection that followed. There were no antibiotics to ward off infection, and no anesthesia to accompany the amputations that were often conducted to try and stop its spread. "Just a shot of whiskey and a block of wood [to bite down on]" Juza said. "Even though they amputated his leg, personally, I don't think he would have survived," Grof said. "Everything was stacked against him." Discovery of Tombstone and Remains When Fort Atkinson was abandoned in 1827, so was the cemetery that contained the graves of the hundreds of soldiers and civilians who died there. As was the case with the fort's structures, they had mostly deteriorated and disappeared by the time settlers began arriving in the 1850s. Soon, the town of Fort Calhoun and farm fi elds covered An 1820 sketch by Titian Ramsay Peale shows Engineer Cantonment and the steamboat Western Engineer on the Missouri River north of Omaha. During the Yellowstone Expedition in 1819, Field and a party of soldiers accompanied Maj. Stephen Long from Kansas to this winter camp. It was the farthest a steamboat had traveled up the river. AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY

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