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, blacksmiths, and carpenters worked to keep government wagons on the Trail rolling, also repairing civilian wagons, making furniture for the post, and building coffins. Officers and their wives lived in the best quarters with fine furnishings and servants brought from the East, trying to maintain an upper-class lifestyle in surroundings many considered primitive and dangerous, while unmarried officers often hired enlisted men as personal servants called strikers. Post surgeons served as the town doctor, caring 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, provided places where soldiers could play pool, bowl, and buy small luxuries, and their stores became frontier melting pots where Trail travelers might encounter scouts like Buffalo Bill, journalists, Hispanic and Anglo teamsters, and even Cheyenne and Kiowa examining the goods.