Disrupted Identities and Frontier Forts: Enlisted Men and Officers at Fort Lane, Oregon Territory, 1853–1856

Abstract

Frontiers are contingent and dynamic arenas for the negotiation, entrenchment, and innovation of identity, and the imposing materiality of frontier fortifications and their prominence in colonial topographies make them ideal laboratories in which to examine this dynamic. This article presents the results of large-scale excavations in 2011 and 2012 at the officers’ quarters and enlisted men's barracks at Fort Lane, a U.S. Army outpost used during the Rogue River Wars in southern Oregon between 1853 and 1856. We consider how, within this arena, the identities of social class, Confederate or Union, and East Coaster or frontiersman, were crafted in this pre–Civil War frontier setting at the dawn of the modern era.