Trobriand describes being snowed in his cabin at Fort Stevenson. His cook cannot deliver his breakfast and after a couple of hours, he opens his door to see four feet of snow. His cook can't even leave the kitchen. A tiny 1/2" opening on one door resulted in a snow reaching everywhere within one room. A few of the younger officers have their wives with them. They and their children share in their husband's suffering. Of these women, he wrote:
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Those whom I admire in all t his, as much indeed as I pity, are these young women who brave all these mishaps -- I might say for them all this suffering -- with courage and a heroic gaiety. If they complain, it is with a gently resigned air which clearly indicates that they have high spirit to be the first to laugh at their misadventures and to prefer the cmic to the tragic side of it all. The American women have indeed true breeding; courage in danger, constancy in sacrifices, resignation under privations, abnegation in their devotion, seem to be inherent virtues in their character. No one could adapt oneself more resolutely to circumstances, accommodate oneself better to adventures, nor brave with such humor the harness of military life upon the frontier.
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pages 211-12.
There is a book by a modern historian about the army wives of the frontier.
Glittering Misery. Haven't read it myself.