Fort Gibson, Oklahoma - Transcribed & submitted by Nalora Burns! - Genealogy - http://maxpages.com/mygenroots/Fort_Gibson_pg

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FORT GIBSON - A Brief History, continued

Fort Gibson was still a young fort when it was discovered that the green logs of which the houses were built were rapidly decaying & constant repairs were required to make them habitable. It was a sickly place and the great number of deaths which occurred there gave it the name of the charnel house of the army. From the time of its founding to December 8, 1835, eleven and a half years, 561 privates and 9 officers had died at the post. During the years 1834 and 1835 the deaths numbered 293 privates and 6 officers. In the summertime, in order to avoid the miasmic breezes carrying disease from the surrounding swamps & canebrakes, detachments of troops were ordered to camp on the hill above, or seven miles east on Bayou Manard at a place known as Clark's Springs, where at one time the Cherokee agency, and later the home known as the McLain place, were situated.

Probably no fort in the West exerted a greater influence for the civilization of the surrounding country than did Fort Gibson, and this became the purpose of its maintenance for many years. With the appointment of the Stokes Indian Commission in 1832, efforts were made to bring representatives of the wild tribes to Fort Gibson for the purpose of making treaties with them and impressing them with the sovereignty of the United States; it was hoped that they would conform their conduct accordingly & become friends of the whites and of the Indian immigrants from the East who were to be the new owners of the Indian Territory. Ellsworth's efforts in 1832, when Irving accompanied him, failed to accomplish this result. In 1833 another expedition set out from Fort Gibson commanded by Lieutenant Colonel James Many. In his command were two select companies of the Seventh Infantry and three companies of Rangers commanded by captains Bean, Ford, and Boone, the latter Nathan Boone, son of the famous Daniel. They went as far as the country on the Washita, Blue, and Red rivers, but returned empty-handed after suffering tremendous hardships.

The third effort to make contact with these Western Indians was successfully carried out in 1834, by what became known as the famous Dragoon Expedition. General Henry Leavenworth arrived at Fort Gibson April 28 of that year and assumed command of the post, which he held until June 12 when he departed in command of the expedition. This expedition included also Colonel Henry Dodge, Colonel Stephen Watts Kearney, and Major R. B. Mason. Jefferson Davis, a lieutenant a few years out of West Point, was in command of one company. This train of five hundred mounted troops, a large number of white-covered baggage wagons, and seventy head of beeves made an imposing procession. It was accompanied by eleven Osage, eight Cherokee, six Delaware, and seven Seneca Indians who went along to serve as guides, hunters, interpreters, and as representatives of their respective nations. They crossed the Arkansas River below the mouth of Grand River, passed over the prairies near the site of the future Muskogee, traveled southwest to the mouth of the Washita River, then northwest, where they visited the site of a Comanche village at the western end of the Wichita Mountains.

This was a disastrous expedition which resulted in the deaths of nearly 150 men from disease and the effects of excessive hot weather and poor water upon the unseasoned and undisciplined soldiers lately recruited from private life in the North and East. Included among the casualties of this expedition was that of General Leavenworth, who died July 21 near the Washita River.

However, they did succeed in bringing back to Fort Gibson representatives of the Kiowa, Wichita, and Waco tribes, and after their return invitations were extended to all the Indians within reach to attend a grand council at the post--Choctaws, Cherokees, Creeks, Senecas, Osages, Delawares, and others. Here, on September 2, 1834, began one of the most interesting and important Indian councils ever held in the country. On this occasion every effort was made to impress the wild Indians who had never made a treaty with the United States and make them understand the changed political condition of the country. There were 150 Indians participating in the council, & with their numerous women & children, tepees & tents, they made one of the most picturesque scenes ever witnessed at any army post.

Governor Stokes and the army officers who attended did not have authority at this time to enter into a treaty, but, with the potent influence of Colonel A. P. Chouteau, who participated in the council, the commissioners secured an agreement with the wild Indians to meet in treaty council the following year. And so the plans which were launched and carried out at Fort Gibson resulted in a treaty council begun August 24, 1835, at Fort Mason on the Canadian River near the present Purcell, Oklahoma, where was negotiated the first treaty ever entered into by a number of these western tribes.

In 1837 members of the Kiowa, Apache, and Tawakoni tribes were induced to send representatives to Fort Gibson, where on May 26 another important treaty, the first with these Indians, was negotiated. These treaties gave assurance of peace on the part of the Indians and guarantees of safe passage for the traders over the Santa Fe route.

After the return of the Dragoon Expedition there were a number of resignations of young officers who were thoroughly tired of frontier service. An amusing incident growing out of the tension between them resulted in a charge of insubordination against Lieutenant Jefferson Davis by Major R. B. Mason, followed by a court martial of the young officer at Fort Gibson. The court found him guilty but attached no criminality to the facts, and the judgment was that he be acquitted. While the records and decision were being considered by General E. P. Gaines, commander of the Southwestern Military Department at Memphis, Tennessee, Lieutenant Davis resigned from the army and went to Kentucky, where he met and married Sarah Knox, the daughter of General Zachary Taylor, whom he had wooed when he was serving under her father at Fort Crawford on the upper Mississippi River.

This statement, based on the life of Davis written by his widow, and other authentic accounts, disposes of the romantic but wholly fictitious yarn that Davis and his bride eloped from Fort Gibson; equally apocryphal is a house nearby that formerly was pointed out by the credulous as the "Jeff Davis house," since during the period of scarcely more than a year that young Lieutenant Davis served there, he and the other members of the Dragoons did not live in a house but were quartered in tents half a mile from the fort.

At Fort Gibson were planned and launched other important military expeditions among the wild Indians to the west that made possible the negotiation of numerous essential treaties with these tribes. A number of picturesque Indian councils were held at the fort, with representatives of many tribes from large areas of the West and Southwest participating. These councils and negotiations exerted a profound influence over the country, and Fort Gibson became known far and wide as the source of important information concerning this remote country. The early newspapers of the East consequently carried a Fort Gibson date line more often than that of any other place west of the Mississippi.

This ancient fort performed a multitude of other services in connection with the civilization of this western country. Through the years numerous military escorts were provided for the protection of parties engaged in exploring meandering streams and surveying boundaries of the lands occupied by different Indian tribes, pursuant to treaties made from time to time. In the effort to prevent the introduction of whiskey into the Indian country, detachments frequently were sent out from the fort to seize shipments of that contraband or arrest and remove across the line whiskey peddlers who were engaged in this unlawful activity; others were employed either on land or in boats in patrolling the Arkansas River for the same purpose.

The commandant at the fort was frequently called upon by the authorities in Washington to aid parents or other relatives living in Texas in the rescue of children captured in raids by Kiowa and Comanche Indians. Emissaries were sent out to bring their captive children to the fort, where a ransom was effected and the children turned over to grateful relatives.

From several points of view Fort Gibson enjoyed a unique association with the growth of the army. In 1832 a call was made for six companies of mounted troops known as Rangers for service in the Black Hawk War in Illinois. Before the companies had all been recruited the orders were changed, and the Rangers were directed to proceed to Fort Gibson to aid in preparing that country for the reception of the tribes about to be emigrated from the East. The company commanded by Captain Jesse Bean was the first to reach the fort, and they went on the scouting tour, already mentioned, that was accompanied by Washington Irving.

The next year it was decided to discontinue the Ranger organization and merge the six companies with the regiment of Dragoons authorized that year by Congress. Major Henry Dodge headed this regiment, Major Stephen Watts Kearney was lieutenant colonel, and Captain Richard B. Mason was appointed major. Five companies were recruited & concentrated at Jefferson Barracks. After a proud send-off by the citizens of St. Louis, they departed for Fort Gibson where they arrived on December 17, 1834. They were not quartered in the fort but had their own reservation on land about half a mile south of it, and for a time lived in tents. This regiment began its distinguished service by the tragic expedition of that year which left so many of its members in unmarked graves along the route, and in the little cemeteries around the fort. They were accompanied by George Catlin, the artist, who not only painted many portraits of the Indians he saw, but wrote an interesting account of the experiences of the regiment.

One company of this regiment did not go on this celebrated expedition because it was engaged, under Captain Clifton Wharton, in escorting a company of traders on the Santa Fe Trail as far as the Spanish boundary. In the summer of 1836 three troops of the Dragoon regiment, with six companies of the Seventh Infantry, marched from Fort Gibson to Nachitoches to aid the Texans in resisting what was thought to be an impending attack by a large force of Mexicans. The peril did not materialize and the troops returned to Fort Gibson after an arduous campaign of several months involving a march of a month each way. During their absence, and due to an exaggerated alarm of war with Mexico; several hundred men in Arkansas were mustered in as volunteers and remained in camp at Fort Gibson for months.

Again, in 1837, a company under Captain Eustace Trenor escorted Colonel A. P. Chouteau to his trading house near the present Purcell, Oklahoma, where he called the wild Indians to a conference in an effort to counteract the machinations of the emissaries from Mexico and Texas who were trying to enlist them in their respective controversies.

And in 1839 a detachment of Dragoons commanded by Lieutenant James M. Bowman escorted the famous trading expedition headed by Dr. Josiah Gregg to the limits of the United States on the way to Santa Fe and Chihuahua. Captain Nathan Boone headed a command of Dragoons that left Fort Gibson May 14, 1843, and followed an interesting route over the Santa Fe Trail and through the country west of this post in order to afford protection to traders from Texas. The Dragoons continued to police the West until this service was interrupted by the Mexican War, in which it distinguished itself in several important battles.

Frequent reports came to Fort Gibson of the hostilities of the Plains Indians against the people of Texas, along with rumors that the Mexicans were aiding and abetting them. Requests were made for the authorities at Fort Gibson to aid in making peace with these Indians on both sides of the Red River. The Secretary of War directed this to be done and in March, 1843, Cherokee Agent Pierce Butler left the post, and with an escort attended a council on Tawakoni Creek in Texas, where, however, nothing definite was accomplished. Another effort was made in the fall when Butler was accompanied by eighty men commanded by Colonel Harney. Again the Indians were elusive and non-committal. The next summer in 1844, another effort was made when Captain Nathan Boone, with a company of the First Dragoons, left the post September 25 and went to the rendezvous in Texas; but the Indians had left when Boone arrived and he returned to Fort Gibson unsuccessful, after an absence of six weeks. A fourth attempt was made when in January, 1846, Governor Butler departed from Fort Gibson with a large company of civilian hunters & adventurers & representatives of the Creek, Cherokee, Chickasaw, and Seminole tribes. Butler was finally successful, and on May 15, 1846, at Council Springs, Texas, negotiated a treaty of peace with the Comanche, Anadarko, Caddo, Wichita, Waco, and other western tribes that brought a sense of security to the frontier settlers of Texas.

Officers and men went from Fort Gibson to take their places in the war with Mexico; the veteran commander Colonel Gustavus Loomis was the last high ranking officer to leave, when he departed in February, 1848, for his post in Mexico City. After that many war veterans who had seen service in Mexico became part of the military establishment at Fort Gibson.

Captain Braxton Bragg, who was to become a celebrated commander in the Confederate Army, arrived at Fort Gibson from St. Louis on October 31, 1853, at the head of Company C of the Third Artillery and assumed command of the post, which he retained until June 20 of the following year.

Indian hostilities were harassing a large extent of the surrounding country and Colonel Pitcairn Morrison was ordered out from Fort Gibson with three companies of the Seventh Infantry, numbering 235 officers and men. They left in June and went out over the Santa Fe Trail in Kansas to Fort Mann and Bent's Fort, where Morrison held councils with the chiefs of the Kiowa, Comanche, Arapaho, Apache, & Cheyenne Indians. He then returned and arrived at Fort Gibson October 15. And so the policing of the western country from Fort Gibson went on and on.

Soon after Morrison's return, the post entertained the Second Cavalry just created by Congress, which was on its way to Fort Belknap, its station in Texas, to police that country against the Indians. They left Jefferson Barracks near St. Louis October 27, 1855, and a month later arrived at Fort Gibson, where they remained a few days to shoe their horses and give them a much needed rest. This regiment was commanded by Colonel Albert Sidney Johnston; other officers of the regiment were Colonel E. V. Sumner, Colonel J. E. Johnston, Colonel W. H. Emory, Delos B. Sackett, J. E. B. Stuart, and other men who became known to history. Colonel Robert E. Lee was second in command of the regiment, George H. Thomas was a major, Edmund Kirby Smith was a captain, and John B. Hood a lieutenant.

After the Mexican War the First Dragoons continued as regulators of the wild Indians throughout the West. On August 3, 1861, its designation was changed to the First United States Cavalry, and it served with distinction during the Civil War. For the next seventy-one years this veteran organization maintained its fine traditions. Less than two years ago, after a hundred years of service in the saddle, this organization ceased to exist as a mounted regiment and was removed by gas power from Marfa, Texas to Fort Knox, Kentucky.

Fort Gibson was a haven of refuge for many classes of people. When the emigration of the Creeks began in 1828 the first arrivals settled on the Verdigris and Arkansas rivers near the fort to enjoy the protection it afforded against the wild Indians occupying their lands to the west.

Jacque Hopkins Wolski
P O Box 1412
Idaho Falls	Idaho	83403-1412
hopkinsj@ida.net

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