Soldier to be reburied 200 years after his death.—by Steve Liewer, World-Herald Staff Writer

(photo)—History Nebraska

Forensic anthropologists created this image from the skull of Lt. Gabriel Field, a U.S. Army officer who died in 1823 at Fort Atkinson after receiving a severe knife wound in his leg.

Lt. Gabriel Field was not yet 30 when he drew his last breath at the frontier outpost of Fort Atkinson, the victim of a knife wound that caused field surgeons to cut off his leg in a fruitless effort to save his life.

After his death April 16, 1823, the Kentucky native was buried under a limestone marker, a rare honor in the frontier military. His grave was lost, however, after Fort Atkinson was abandoned in 1827. But this Sunday—exactly 200 years after his death—he will be reburied with military honors at Fort Atkinson State Historical Park. The park is near Fort Calhoun, 17 miles north of Omaha.

It’s been a long journey for a soldier who led an interesting life, and whose remains had an interesting saga of their own.

“We have been trying to get the remains repatriated,” said Rob Bozell, a retired Nebraska state archaeologist. “I’m really happy, because there’s going to be some closure to the Gabriel Field story.”

A farmer’s plow dug up a chunk of Field’s tombstone in 1954, which led to the discovery of the remains of Field and several other people during archaeological digs that followed over the next several years. Excavated in 1958, Field’s remains were easy to identify because of the amputated leg buried next to him in a separate box.

Sunday, the Patriot Rider motorcycle veterans will escort Field’s remains from Omaha to Fort Atkinson for Sunday’s noon ceremony. Jason Grof, the park superintendent of Fort Atkinson, said re-enactors portraying 1820’s-era soldiers will follow the casket to the burial site at the park’s Monument to the Deceased. Guest speakers will pay tribute to the soldier.

The monument includes a modern headstone for Field, and a plaque recognizing 313 soldiers and civilians who died while serving at Fort Atkinson from 1819-27.

“Being a veteran myself, it’s a proud moment for me to give Lieutenant Field a proper burial,” said Grof, who service in the Army and Nebraska National Guard until 2010.

Three other sets of remains that were dug up near Field’s in the 1950’s will also be reburied. Those remains could not be identified. The outlines of Field’s life and Army service are known because of years of research by Gayle Carlson, Bozell’s friend and former state archaeologist with History Nebraska. Carlson died in 2015. “He dug really deep,” Bozell said.

Field was born near the settlement of Louisville, Kentucky, in 1794 or 1795, Carlson discovered. His parents came from prominent families who were among Kentucky’s earliest settlers. His father served as an officer in the Revolutionary War.

Field enlisted to serve in the War of 1812. He worked as a surveyor in Missouri Territory for two years, before rejoining the Army as an officer in 1817. He was assigned to an expedition commanded by Col. Henry Atkinson and tasked with establishing forts along the Missouri River.

In October 1819, the soldiers began setting up a winter camp called Cantonment Missouri near what is now DeSoto National Wildlife Refuge on the eastern side of the Missouri. Field was sent with 10 soldiers to survey a trail to the nearest settlement with a post office, in north-central Missouri.

His team returned in January 1820 to a camp in misery during the cold winter. The undersupplied expedition had no fruit or vegetables to eat. Most of the soldiers suffered scurvy, a disease characterized by lethargy and bleeding gums caused by a diet lacking in vitamin C. “It was a disaster,” Bosell said. “A whole lot of them died.”

Field contracted scurvy, but survived. One hundred sixty of his fellow soldiers did not.

Floods followed disease at Cantonment Missouri. In 1820 the soldiers moved across the river to higher ground on what was called Council Bluff, not to be confused with modern-day Council Bluffs in Iowa. There, they built Fort Atkinson—at the time, the westernmost Army post in the country.

During the next three years, Field did more survey work and served for a time as Fort Atkinson’s quartermaster. Carlson documented in the fort’s records that Field was injured March 31, 1823 while staying at a trading post near what is now N.P. Dodge Park in Omaha.

He was returned to Fort Atkinson, but his condition worsened. His right leg was amputated to the upper thigh April 12, and “he appears to be more at ease”, according to an officer’s diary.

Field’s relief didn’t last long. Four days later, he died. Col. Henry Leavenworth announced the officer’s death to his troops on April 17.

“It has become the painful duty of this (commanding colonel) to announce to his command that the gallant active and generous Lt. Gabriel Field is no more”, Leavenworth told his troops.

It's not exactly clear how Field cut himself. Whatever caused the wound, it’s likely infection and poor sanitation played a role in an era before anesthesia and antibiotics.

“We don’t know the full story,” Grof said.

Field was buried in the fort’s cemetery, but his grave and those of more than 300 others who died during its short history were lost when the fort was abandoned. So were Fort Atkinson’s structures. More than 130 years later, farmer Jack Rathjen in 1954 dug up a 16-inch fragment of limestone in his field about a mile northwest of the current Fort Atkinson.

Etched on the surface: “Gabriel Field, 1st Lieut. 6th Regt. Born in Jefferson Coun.”

That brought the director of the Nebraska state museum to the Rathjen farm and, over the next few years, several teams of University of Nebraska archaeologists.

(photo): “A portion of Lt. Gabriel Field’s original headstone—discovered by Jack Rathjen, a Fort Calhoun farmer in 1954 while plowing his field near the former Fort Atkinson—is on display at the Washington County Museum, along with Field’s bust”

A dig in 1956 uncovered the graves of two adults and two children. And in 1958, further excavation revealed a hexagonal grave containing a skeleton with a right leg cut off at the upper thigh. Nearby, the lower leg bones were in a separate box. Historians quickly realized it must be Field, the only Fort Atkinson soldier known to have had his leg amputated.

It still took some time to gather the historical records to prove Field’s identity.

At the time, Nebraska lacked a state physical anthropologist, so the remains were sent to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington for analysis, Bozell said. They remained there until about 1990, after a law was passed encouraging museums to return and rebury human remains—most of which were Native American—that they had in their possession. Carlson took an avid interest in the case, seeking out archives from the fort and frontier diaries. He found evidence of Field’s death and wounds.

“Very rarely do we know who people are. Gabe was the exception,” Bozell said. “He became sort of famous in this little world, because we were able to find out so much about him.”

No images existed of Field. But in 1991, Bozell took the skull to Oklahoma, to the studio of Betty Pat Gatliff, a renowned pioneer in the field of forensic facial reconstruction, who created a bust of Field. A copy is on display at the Washington County Museum in Fort Calhoun.

History Nebraska had always hoped to rebury Field at Fort Atkinson State Historical Park, but it took years to accomplish.

Permits were needed to allow the park to serve as a cemetery and accept human remains. It also took lots of paperwork to allow History Nebraska to relinquish the remains to the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission. A Game and Parks administrator, Bob Hanover, worked to track down any of Field’s descendants who might have wanted to claim the remains.

Bozell said they didn’t find any who knew of Gabriel Field. For 65 years, his remains lay in archival boxes, in Washington D.C. or Lincoln.

Now they will return to the place where he died, and the ground where he once rested.

(photo) A modern headstone for Lt. Gabriel Field, who died in 1823, stands at Fort Atkinson State Historical Park near Fort Calhoun. Exactly 200 years after his death, Field’s remains are being reburied Sunday with military honors.

“It’s a long time coming”, Grof said.—by Steve Liewer.

#2 Printed in the April 18, 2023 Pilot Tribune

--By Cheyenne Alexis, features, Enterprise Publishing

(photo) Lt. Gabriel Field's retirement ceremony was held on the 200th anniversary of his death Sunday at Fort Atkinson. Field's remains were recently discovered and given to the fort to lay him to rest in the Monument to the Deceased.

On the 200th anniversary of his death, Lt. Gabriel Field was retired and laid to rest at Fort Atkinson.

At a windy ceremony Sunday afternoon, Fort Atkinson employees and volunteers, guests, military members, veterans, Nebraska Game and Parks staff and members of the Patriot Guard Riders witnessed the procession and burial of Field’s remains, which were recently rediscovered and given to Fort Atkinson by the Nebraska State Historical Society.

Living History volunteers geared up in their historical clothing to lead the duo casket to the Monument to the Deceased on the fort’s grounds.

Jeff Fields, parks administrator for Nebraska Game and Parks, led the presentation portion of the ceremony.

Field, born in Jefferson County, Ky., in 1794, served in the War of 1812 before joining the Rifle Regiment and the U.S. 6th Infantry, serving at the frontier post of Fort Atkinson.

“Upon his accidental death, Col. (Henry) Leavenworth, commander of Fort Atkinson, lamented, ‘It’s become the painful duty of a colonel commanding to announce his command that the gallant, active and generous Lt. Gabriel Field is no more,’” Fields said. “Lt. Field died April 16, 1823, and was interred at Fort Atkinson. Today. 200 years later, he’s been brought home to his final resting place on the grounds where he once lived. The remains of other residents of Fort Atkinson will also be laid to rest today, with honor.”

Susan Juza, curator at Fort Atkinson, shared about Field’s life. “Serving in the military was a tradition in the Field family, Abner (Field’s father) served in the Revolutionary War, Gabriel would later volunteer in the War of 1812. He served in the Kentucky Volunteers and the Kentucky militia,” Juza said. “We know Gabriel Field hunted, he met with Native Americans and in the spring, Field was appointed as an escort to the engineer expedition. Gabriel guided them to the location near the Council Bluff, where they built Engineer’s Cantonment. “The military arrived here on the Council Bluff in the fall of 1819. The troops of the 6th Infantry under Col. Henry Atkinson, and the Rifle Regiment under Col. Talbot Chambers would build Cantonment or Camp Missouri near the river. Field was assigned to a special task — he was to blaze a trail from the Council Bluff to Chariton County, Mo. It was more than a trail — it was used for military transports. This road would be named Field’s Trace.”

During his time at the fort, Field contracted scurvy, a disease caused by lack of vitamin C in the body, in the spring of 1820.

After the scurvy epidemic, a flood destroyed the cantonment, and Fort Atkinson was constructed on the bluff, Juza said.

“When Gabriel Field was appointed order master to serve here, and also in 1822 when Rev. Salmon Giddings visited from St. Louis, it was Field that escorted him on the fort and out west to visit Native Americans.” Juza said Field’s last days alive are “vague.”

“He resigned his commission at the end of March in 1823,” she said. “Visiting a trading post off site, during an evening with friends, he received a severe injury to his leg. The leg eventually became infected. The surgeon at the fort, John Gale, had no choice but to amputate the leg.”

Despite the amputation, Field succumbed to the injury and died April 16.

Juza said Field was buried north of the fort, and his grave remained untouched until 1958, when a large piece of his tombstone was found, as well as his skeleton with an amputated leg.

“The remains were transferred to the Nebraska State Historical Society, and later to the Smithsonian Institution for analysis,” Juza said. “Facial reconstruction was done, so we know what Gabriel looked like. After the studies, the remains were returned to Nebraska State Historical Society, and steps for moving forward to transfer the remains to the fort were very time-consuming.”

Research showed Field did not have any descendants.

“Steps were taken to prepare for the reinterment of Field,” Juza said. “So, today, April 16, 2023… he is returning to his last military home.”

~~~Obituaries courtesy of the Nebraska Washington County Genealogical Society. Newspaper clippings on file in the Public Library, Blair, Nebraska ~~~

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