Part 3

Except for short intervals, General Arbuckle commanded at Fort Gibson for 17 years until 1841 when, because of the dilapidated condition of the buildings there, he removed his department headquarters (but not the garrison), to Fort Smith. Soon afterward the command was given to General Zachary Taylor. When Taylor departed for service in Mexico, Arbuckle was returned to the command of Fort Gibson and remained there through the years of trouble and turmoil of his Indian neighbors of the Cherokee Nation, with whom he was more or less involved.

Fort Gibson was garrisoned by detachments of the Seventh Infantry from its inception in 1824 to February 7, 1839, when the troops left for service in Florida and were replaced by the Fourth Infantry that had arrived the day before, after a long, weary march from that remote Seminole battleground. For a time three companies of the Third Infantry served at the fort until the spring of 1840. The next year General Arbuckle was relieved of his command and it was transferred for a time to Colonel Alexander Cummings of the Fourth Infantry.

In 1843 the post was garrisoned by three troops of Dragoons and four companies of the Sixth Infantry under the command of Colonel William Davenport. Another well-known officer who was in command of the post in 1850 was General W. G. Belknap of the Fifth Infantry. Belknap and Arbuckle died in 1851.

The conclusion of the Civil War returned Fort Gibson to the unimportant status to which it was reduced by its abandonment in 1857. For years, however, the large number of substantial buildings of the post were found useful from time to time. It was reoccupied in July, 1872, by two companies of the Tenth Cavalry under Colonel Benjamin H. Grierson who was sent there to cope with the lawless element attracted by the movement of the railroad camps engaged in building the Missouri, Kansas, and Texas Railroad from the Kansas line to the Red River.

After the brief stay of the Tenth Cavalry a company of the Sixth Cavalry and a detachment of the Fifth Infantry were assigned to the post to help police the country, with Lieutenant Thomas M. Woodruff of the Fifth Infantry in command. They were mainly occupied in aiding the Cherokee agent in resisting the encroachment of intruding white men unlawfully seeking to settle in the Cherokee Nation. In order to maintain communication with the outside world a telegraph line was constructed to the fort from the railroad at Gibson Station. Men engaged in cutting poles for the line were crossing the Grand River on a ferry flatboat on April 20, 1874, when in the middle of the river, by awkward handling of the front guy rope, the boat was allowed to swing broadside to the current; this caused it to fill with water and sink. As a result six soldiers of the Fifth Infantry and the Sixth Cavalry and one civilian drowned.

Later, in 1879, a detachment of the Twenty-second Infantry under the command of Major A. S. Hough was stationed at the post endeavoring to aid the civilian authorities in suppressing a gang of forty or fifty thieves and desperadoes that had been plundering and terrorizing the country, particularly in the Chickasaw Nation and on the Potawatomi reservation. To this duty Hough had been ordered by General Sheridan.

During the Creek trouble of 1883, called the Green Peach War, part of the Twentieth Infantry was stationed at Fort Gibson and detachments were sent out to Muskogee, Eufaula, and Okmulgee to police the country. One detachment went to the Sac and Fox agency and captured several hundred Creeks who were brought to Fort Gibson where they were detained for a time and given protection from the hostile faction. The Adjutant General on August 22, 1890, issued a final order for the abandonment of the fort, directing the withdrawal of the troops and disposition of the public property there. In 1899, when the little disturbance greatly exaggerated by the name of the “Snake Uprising” caused some discussion, a company of the Ninth Infantry was for a short time stationed at the old post.

For a number of years the Cherokee agency was conducted at Fort Gibson, first by Montford Stokes, former governor of North Carolina, and by his successor, Pierce M. Butler, former governor of South Carolina, who left Fort Gibson to return to his home and organize the Palmetto Regiment which he was commanding in the Mexican War when he was killed August 20, 1847, at Churubusco.

Even after the removal of the agency the old fort was the scene of amazing activities during some of the payments to the Cherokees, notably the payment of 1852 and that of 1894. These were festive occasions when there were nearly as many white men as Indians, come to take what advantage they might from the large amount of currency in circulation. Many of them were creditors of the Indians who had come to collect their dues; others were vendors of every conceivable sort of merchandise calculated to tempt the Indians to part with their suddenly acquired wealth. The payment of over a million dollars in 1894 was made in the old barracks building. The money was piled on a table in front of the clerks, while a dozen armed Indians stood guard on either side, and the Indians came up as their names were called and received their shares.

Among the many interesting visitors to Fort Gibson was the picturesque Sam Houston, who came in 1829 and established himself about three miles northwest of the post at a place which he called Wigwam Neosho. Here he was in close touch with the fort, the Creek agency, and the trading post on the Verdigris River an equal distance to the northwest, where he carried on his intrigues with the Indians, and drank and played poker with the army officers and traders. There he lived and enjoyed the solace of his pretty Cherokee companion, Diana Rogers, until 1832 when he left for his adventures in Texas. It may have been in a measure the recollection of Houston and his companionship that later influenced the movement of troops from Fort Gibson for the relief of beleaguered Texans.

One officer of outstanding interest who served at Fort Gibson was the Frenchman, B. L. E. Bonneville of the Seventh Infantry. In 1824, while he was a lieutenant, he secured a leave of absence and as secretary accompanied General Lafayette to France after his triumphal tour of the United States. Eight years later he secured another leave and made a protracted expedition in the Rocky Mountains. He kept voluminous notes of his experiences, which were purchased by Washington Irving who made them into the fascinating book, The Adventures of Captain Bonneville.

In 1888 Colonel J. J. Coppinger of the Eighteenth Infantry was in command at Fort Gibson, and in March made an inventory of the buildings at the post together with a general description of them. He reported seven stone buildings and ten frame, nearly all large, substantial buildings which ranged in condition from fair to good.

These buildings fell into private ownership and most of them were razed for the material that was in them. Four of the stone buildings are standing. The barracks was originally 23 by 154 feet in size, containing ten rooms for the accommodation of two companies of Infantry. The north half of this building was torn down and the material used in the construction of a house.

The Oklahoma Historical Society purchased the remaining south half of the barracks building, the stone ammunition building, and the great brick oven, together with the land on which they stand. Considerable money was expended in the restoration of these buildings, and the barracks building is now occupied by a custodian and his family who will show the place to visitors. The most picturesque exhibit at Fort Gibson is the reconstructed log stockade built on the site of the first log fort. This work was directed by a commission created by the State of Oklahoma.

The best-preserved relic of the old fort is the commanding officer’s residence, facing what was the parade ground of the fort. Colonel William Babcock Hazen came to command the fort in January 1871. He brought there his bride who, as his widow, was later to become the wife of the Spanish-American hero, Admiral George Dewey. Lieutenant Colonel John Joseph Coppinger, commandant of the fort, occupied the building in 1886 with his family. James G. Blaine, father of Mrs. Coppinger, visited his daughter in this residence and was confined there at one time by illness. The cornerstone of the building bears the inscription: “Erected A. D. 1867, A. S. Kimball, Capt. A. Q. M. U. S.”

The story of Fort Gibson is an epic of the prairies; a tale of the winning of the great Southwest; an account of the conquest of the fleet warriors of the plains; a narrative of the security of trade and contact with old Santa Fe and California. Fort Gibson saw the beginning and the end of the keelboat and the whole career of the river steamboat.

Unknown to the present generation, the old fort and the few relics of that venerable establishment that have escaped the hand of the vandal should still have a claim on our consideration. Around them cluster associations with the past and reminders of early attempts at the civilization of this western country. The activities of this frontier post, the toil and hardship, sickness and death endured there, the picturesqueness of its population, the pageantry of its activities and functions—all these are calculated to stir the imagination of the beholder and stimulate in him an interest in the fascinating history of this country.

APPENDIX I _National Cemetery_

There were several small cemeteries around Fort Gibson in which the dead were buried from the earliest days of the fort. The number of interments was increased to such an extent during the Civil War that more space was required, and in 1869 the National Cemetery was established on land that was originally part of the military reservation of Fort Gibson. After the abandonment of the fort, the reservation was transferred to the Department of the Interior on February 11, 1891, a parcel of seven acres being reserved for cemeterial purposes.

On August 6, 1872, William W. Belknap, Secretary of War, gave instructions to have the remains of his father, General William Goldsmith Belknap, removed from Fort Washita, where they were interred in 1851, to the cemetery at Keokuk, Iowa, the home of the Secretary. At the same time he directed the quartermaster general to arrange for the removal of the remains of other soldiers and their families found at Fort Washita, Fort Towson and Fort Arbuckle, to the National Cemetery at Fort Gibson. Bids were advertised for, and a contract was let to P. J. Byrne of Fort Gibson, who succeeded in removing the remains of forty-six persons in 1872; only two of them, however, were definitely known to be soldiers. Owing to the careless manner in which the men who served at these remote posts had been buried, and the fact that fires had been permitted to run through the cemeteries and burn off all wooden headboards, and the difficulty of finding other marks of identification in the graves, or indeed, of finding the remains and the boxes containing them in such condition that they could be removed at all, instructions were given to abandon further removal. However, information was later acquired of forty-six additional graves at Fort Washita: fifty-four at Fort Arbuckle, and eighteen at Big Sandy Creek on the Fort Smith and Fort Arbuckle road. Efforts were then renewed, and another contractor undertook to remove the remains to the Fort Gibson National Cemetery but this effort proved abortive also.

In 1873 it was reported to the office of the Adjutant General at Washington that the bodies of one hundred and twenty-five soldiers killed in the Battle of the Washita were buried on that battlefield. This again stimulated interest in the subject of removal, and the visitor will see in the Officers’ Circle in the National Cemetery the grave of Major Joel H. Elliott of the Seventh Infantry, killed on November 27, 1868, at the Battle of the Washita.

The removal of remains from all these burial places was attended with much difficulty because of the lack of identifying marks. It was impossible to determine whether they were removing soldiers or civilians, and the whole undertaking was attended with much confusion. It appeared that during the Civil War a large number of Confederates died and were buried near Fort Washita. The correspondence relating to the subject would indicate that removal of the dead from this cemetery was limited to those known to have been in the service of the Union Army, and the Confederate dead were probably not disturbed.

The result was summarized in a report of December 31, 1893, which accounted for graves in the National Cemetery at Fort Gibson, of 231 known to be soldiers and 2,212 whose identity and service were unknown. Of the comparatively few who are identified by inscriptions on monuments, the greatest number are to be seen within what is known as the Officers’ Circle. Among these is Flora, the young Cherokee wife of Lieutenant Daniel H. Rucker, who died at Fort Gibson June 26, 1845. Her husband survived her to become in later years Quartermaster General of the United States Army. John Decatur, brother of Stephen Decatur, died on November 12, 1832, while a sutler at Fort Gibson. Lieutenant John W. Murray of the West Point Class of 1830, of the Seventh Infantry, was killed on February 14, 1831, by being thrown from his horse. Murray’s classmate, Lieutenant James West, died at Fort Gibson on September 28, 1834.

On May 27, 1831, Lieutenant Frederick Thomas of the Seventh Infantry, a West Point graduate of 1825, was drowned in the Arkansas River. His classmate, Lieutenant Benjamin W. Kinsman, also of the Seventh Infantry, died May 14, 1832. Lieutenant Thomas C. Brockway, a graduate of West Point of the class of 1828, died at Fort Gibson, September 28, 1831. Among those removed from Fort Towson were West Point graduates of the class of 1826, Lieutenants Charles L. C. Minor and Alexander G. Baldwin, both of the Fifth Infantry, who died at Fort Towson in 1833 and 1835 respectively, and Lieutenant James H. Taylor of the Third Infantry, who was drowned near Fort Towson in the Cositot River, in 1835. Also in the Officers’ Circle is the monument of Captain Billy Bowlegs, the celebrated Seminole warrior, who served in the Union Army and died during the Civil War, and who is buried in another part of the cemetery.

General John Nicks (also buried in this cemetery) acquired his title from the appointment, by the Governor of Arkansas Territory, as commanding general of the Arkansas militia. He was later sutler at Fort Gibson, where he died December 31, 1831. He was survived by his widow, Sallie Nicks, who continued to “sutle” at the post. Sallie was a popular young widow whose charms were enhanced by the fact that the estate left by the General was valued at $20,000. When Washington Irving visited the post in 1832, he recorded in his notebook that several of the officers at the post paid court to her, and the quartermaster serenaded her so often and so vigorously that he disturbed the sleep of others, and made himself a good deal of a nuisance in the post. According to Irving, General William Clark and Colonel Arbuckle were both fascinated by the young widow, and a civilian named Lewis paid such ardent court that all of the officers united against him.

Sutlers were licensed to do business in the post, and there was considerable rivalry for the privilege, as the profits were tempting. At one time Sam Houston was an aspirant for the position of sutler at Fort Gibson. During his absence in the East on a political mission, he heard that General Nicks was to be removed from his post as sutler, and on his way back to Fort Gibson he wrote a letter to the Secretary of War, making application for the post. Houston was returning with a keelboat load of supplies for Wigwam Neosho, his little store northwest of Fort Gibson. They included nine barrels of whiskey, brandy, gin, rum, wine and other goods with which he meant to stock the sutler’s store he intended to take over if Nick’s removal should pave the way for his appointment. However, after arriving at Fort Gibson and learning of the gossip said to have emanated from Washington concerning him, he indignantly withdrew his application with an excoriating letter to the Secretary of War, obviously written while he was drunk.

To one who wonders what care the soldiers at Fort Gibson took of their personal appearance, a long inventory of merchandise in the sutler’s store at Fort Gibson in 1845 will be illuminating. The following is about one-sixth of the total list. It was submitted to the commandant for the purpose of establishing the prices at which these articles might be sold to the soldiers:

Cigars, shaving boxes, round shaving soap, transparent soap, flotant soap, chrystalline wash balls, whisker pomatum, spontaneous compound, oleophane, bear’s oil, philocome, fancy soap, perfume boxes, fancy cologne water, round cologne water, farina cologne water, prevost cologne water, red and white powder, sweeping brush, clamp brush, horse brush, shoe brush, counter brush, hat brush, hair brush, wall brush, cloth brush, shaving brush, teeth brush, ivory brush, nail brush, violin strings, razor strops, mirrors, shirt butts, cotton purses, silk purses, pencil cases, whalebone, suspenders, snuff boxes, necklaces, fishing lines, guard chains, flasks, thimbles, court plaisters, hooks and eyes, silk guards, pocket combs, English combs, dressing combs.

APPENDIX II

List of officers who commanded at Fort Gibson, with beginning date of service; graduates of United States Military Academy, West Point, are indicated by year of graduation following name. Names of temporary commanding officers are indented.