For travelers arriving on the Santa Fe Trail, Fort Larned looked more like a small town than a fortified place. In the early years, about 150 soldiers lived there in the summers, and during the Indian Wars as many as 400 troops called it home. In the open spaces around the post, civilian travelers, freighters, craftsmen, Santa Fe traders, and sutlers mingled with government Indian agents, scouts, cavalrymen, infantry soldiers, and commissioned officers. Many of the common soldiers in the barracks had recently come to America from Germany, eastern Europe, France, and Ireland, and these bunkhouses were open living spaces where enlisted men had no right to privacy. Skilled civilians such as wheelwrights, tinsmiths, painters, and blacksmiths kept the hundreds of government wagons on the Trail rolling and after hours could work on civilian wagons, while carpenters made furniture for the post and coffins. Officers and their wives lived in the best quarters amid fine furnishings and servants brought from the East, trying to maintain an upper-class lifestyle in what most considered primitive and dangerous surroundings, and unmarried officers often hired personal servants called strikers from among the enlisted men. Post surgeons, who were commissioned Army officers, served as the town doctor for military and civilian patients alike, and sometimes Plains Indians also sought modern medicine from the Army's doctors. Sutlers, civilians permitted by the military to sell non-government-issue goods and offer recreation, ran stores where soldiers could play pool, bowl, and buy small luxuries, and these stores became frontier melting pots where Santa Fe Trail travelers might encounter scouts like Buffalo Bill, journalists, Hispanic and Anglo teamsters, and even Cheyenne and Kiowa inspecting the goods.