Fort Gibson

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Fort Gibson
National Register of Historic Places
National Historic Landmark
Barracks building at Fort Gibson, as it was in 1934

Barracks building at Fort Gibson, as it was in 1934

Fort Gibson, Oklahoma
Paris plan pointer b jms.svg
location Fort Gibson , Oklahoma
Coordinates 35 ° 46 '14 "  N , 95 ° 15' 26"  W Coordinates: 35 ° 46 '14 "  N , 95 ° 15' 26"  W
surface 42
Built 1824
architect Matthew Arbuckle
NRHP number 66000631
Data
The NRHP added October 15, 1966
Declared as an  NHL December 19, 1960

Fort Gibson is a historic military post not far from today's City of Fort Gibson in Muskogee County , Oklahoma . He guarded America's western frontier in the Indian Territory from 1824 to 1888 . At the time of its construction, Fort Gibson was the westernmost military post in the United States . It was one link in a north-south chain of fortifications designed to ensure peace along the American West Frontier and to guard the southwestern border of the Louisiana Purchase . The fort was successful in its peacekeeping mission in that no massacres or battles were waged in the area. The fort site is now administered by the Oklahoma Historical Society as the Fort Gibson Historical Site . It is a National Historic Landmark .

Construction of the fort

Col. Matthew Arbuckle commanded the 7th Infantry Regiment out of Fort Smith . He moved some of his troops to found Cantonment Gibson on April 1, 1824 on the banks of the Grand River , just above its confluence with the Arkansas River . This base was part of a series of forts established by the United States to secure its western border and extensive Louisiana land purchase. The United States Army named the fort after the then Colonel and later General George Gibson, Commissary General of Subsistence. The post began taking meteorological observations in 1824 , and the records are the oldest known weather records in Oklahoma. Colonel Arbuckle also founded Fort Towson in the southern Indian Territory. In the early years of Fort Gibson, the troops built palisades , shelter , other facilities, and roads. They also calmed the conflict between the Osage Nation, who had been in the area since the 17th century, and the earliest Western settling groups of the Cherokee Nation.

Driving out the Indians

In 1830, the United States Congress passed the Indian Removal Act , which provided a new mission for Cantonment Gibson. Two years later, the Army renamed the military post to Fort Gibson to reflect the change from a temporary outpost to a semi-permanent garrison. The soldiers stationed here increasingly had to do with Indians displaced from the eastern states, who complained of hostility on the part of the Osagen and other plains Indians living in the region. Montfort Stokes , the former governor of North Carolina , set up a commission at Fort Gibson to resolve these issues, and his work was supported by the fort's troops. In 1832, American author Washington Irving accompanied troops exploring the southern plains west of Fort Gibson. This exploration and another one in 1833 neither revealed any significant traces of nomadic Indian tribes in the area; Irving wrote about his experiences on this trip in A Tour of the Prairies in 1835 .

General Henry Leavenworth led the First Dragoon Expedition westward on a peacekeeping mission in 1834 . The artist George Catlin drew with the dragoons and carried out various studies. General Leavenworth died during the march, so Colonel Henry Dodge took command. The expedition first made contact and negotiated the first contract with the migrating Indian tribes. Debilitating fevers struck and killed many of the men on these expeditions and posed a greater danger than the indigenous Indians. A West Point officer posted to Fort Gibson stated that participating in expeditions to the prairies in the 1830s was "a true death sentence". During those years, soldiers built roads at Fort Gibson, tended to incoming Indians displaced from the eastern states, and tried to secure peace between rival tribes and groups, particularly between the Osage and the Cherokee displaced from the south into Indian territory .

During the Texan War of Independence , the government sent most of the troops stationed at Fort Gibson to the Texas border region. Their absence weakened the military and peacekeeping capabilities at Fort Gibson, but the downsized garrison was able to maintain stability in the region.

At the height of the Native American expulsion in the 1830s, the Fort Gibson garrison was one of the largest in the country. The soldiers stationed here at least briefly included Stephen W. Kearny , Robert Edward Lee, and Zachary Taylor . The Army stationed Jefferson Davis , later President of the Confederate States of America , and over a hundred other cadets from West Point in the fort. Nathan Boone , the son of the explorer Daniel Boone , was also stationed here. Sam Houston of Tennessee owned a trading post in the area before later moving to Texas.

At a bitterly controversial meeting at Fort Gibson in 1836, the Muskogee majority accepted the existing tribal government, led by Chilly McIntosh, son of William McIntosh , and his group. Colonel Arbuckle tried to contain the tribal strife within the Cherokee, but Chief John Ross and his supporters refused to recognize the administration established by settlers who had previously arrived in Indian territory. After the Seminoles in Florida were defeated by the US Army in the Seminole Wars, many of them arrived "bitter and discouraged" in Indian territory. Fort Gibson officials prevented bloodshed and disagreement among the Indians.

Pacification and first abandonment of the base

When Colonel Arbuckle left Fort Gibson in 1841, he reported that despite the arrival of 40,000 negative Indians from the East, “he had received peace on this frontier, and at no time had the whites on our frontier or the reds on this frontier in any greater State of calm and security as they are now experiencing ”. The Indians displaced here gradually lost the desire for military protection.

Among the merchants doing business in Fort Gibson was John Allan Mathews , who was married to the half-Osagin Sarah Williams, daughter of William S. Williams .

In the 1850s, the Cherokee complained about the liquor and brothels at Fort Gibson. They tried to stop the sale of alcohol to their tribesmen. The Cherokee eventually asked Congress to close the fort, and the War Department complied. On May 7, 1857, Brevet Lt. General Winfield Scott issued General Orders No. 6, after which the fort was abandoned. The Cherokee were given ownership of the fort and founded the village of Kee-too-wah at this point . It became a center of traditionalists and eventually a federally recognized independent Cherokee tribe.

Civil War

Union troops occupied the post from time to time during the Civil War . In the summer of 1862, Union forces repulsed an attempt to invade the Confederate Indians into Indian territory. They left the fort and retired to Kansas. In April 1863, Colonel William A. Phillips of the Indian Home Guard (Union Indian Brigade) occupied Fort Gibson again and held it in the hands of the Union until the end of the war. The Army briefly renamed the fort Fort Blunt to honor Brigadier General James G. Blunt , Commander of the Department of Kansas . The fort dominated the junction between the Arkansas River and Texas Road , but the Confederates did not attack the fort, although an attack on grazing cattle nearby led to a clash at the Battle of Fort Gibson . The troops under General Blunt marched south in July 1863 and were victorious in the Battle of Honey Springs , the most important battle in Indian territory.

In the summer of 1864, a steamboat with a thousand barrels of flour and 15 tons of ham came up the Arkansas River to supply Union forces at Fort Gibson. Cherokee Gen. Stand Waite, who was largely cut off from the rest of the Confederate troops, did not want to sink the boat, but rather to capture it along with the food and equipment on board. The ensuing battle is the only one in the history of Indian territory in which the fleet was involved.

After the Civil War, the US Army initially occupied Fort Gibson. American soldiers did not attempt to make a lasting peace with the Indian tribes of the southern prairies until 1870, but most of this task shifted to forts further west. In 1871 most of the Fort Gibson crew was relocated to other locations. Only a quartermaster with an associated department remained on site.

Cavalry mission

Ft. Gibson in the 1870s

In 1872 the 10th Cavalry Regiment took up quarters at Fort Gibson. A little later, workers were sent to the region to build the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad from Baxter Springs , the first "cattle town" in Kansas , along the Texas border to the crossing over the Red River at Colbert's Ferry . The railroad would facilitate the transport of cattle and meat to the east as well as the transport of goods to the west. The cavalry was stationed at Fort Gibson as a police force for the labor camps. The soldiers tried to control exposure to outlaws , control whites' access to Indian land, tribal feuds and other problems. The size of the garrison varied during this period.

When the Kansas and Arkansas Valley Railway built its route through the area in 1888 , the city of Fort Gibson began to develop. In the summer of 1890 the army left Fort Gibson for good. Although troops occasionally camped at the fort's site when civil unrest required the presence of the army, the city gradually expanded to include the former military compound.

Historic Site

Fort Gibson in 2001

Established during Franklin D. Roosevelt's tenure , the Works Projects Administration reconstructed most or all of the fort's buildings in the 1930s. The work was part of the historic preservation and construction work paid for by the federal government of the United States to address the aftermath of the Great Depression to overcome. In December 1960, Fort Gibson was declared a National Historic Landmark . Fort Gibson has been listed as a Historic District on the National Register of Historic Places since October 1966 .

The old fort was located between Lee Street and Ash Street in what is now Fort Gibson. The site is opened to the public by the Oklahoma Historical Society . It includes a reconstruction of the early log cabin fort, original buildings from the 1840s to 1870s, and a visitor center with an attached museum showing the fort's history.

The Fort Gibson National Cemetery is located a few kilometers away.

See also

supporting documents

  1. ↑ a b Fort Gibson . In: National Historic Landmark summary listing . National Park Service. Archived from the original on December 14, 2009. Retrieved January 20, 2008.
  2. ^ National Register Information System . In: National Register of Historic Places . National Park Service . Retrieved January 23, 2007.
  3. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l Brad Agnew, "Fort Gibson" , Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture, accessed November 22, 2011
  4. ^ A history of John Allen Mathews
  5. ↑ General Orders No. 6
  6. ↑ Michael Overall: Oklahoma Remembers Cival War Naval Battle .
  7. ^ Fort Gibson Historic Site . Archived from the original on August 26, 2015. Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved October 29, 2018. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.exploresouthernhistory.com
  8. ^ A b Joseph Scott Mendingham: National Register of Historic Places Inventory-Nomination: Fort Gibson (PDF) National Park Service. 1975.
    Listing of National Historic Landmarks by State: Oklahoma. National Park Service , accessed February 7, 2020.
  9. ^ Fort Gibson on the National Register Information System. National Park Service , accessed February 7, 2020.

Used literature

  • Grant Foreman: "The Centennial of Fort Gibson" , Chronicles of Oklahoma 2: 2 (Junie 1924) pp 119-128
  • Murial H. Wright, George H. Shirk; Kenny A. Franks: Mark of Heritage . Oklahoma City: Oklahoma Historical Society, 1976.

Bibliography

  • Brad Agnew: Fort Gibson: Terminal on the Trail of Tears (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1980).
  • Grant Foreman: Fort Gibson: A Brief History (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1936). * Richard C. Rohrs, "Fort Gibson: Forgotten Glory," in Early Military Forts and Posts in Oklahoma, ed. Odie B. Faulk, Kenny A. Franks, and Paul F. Lambert (Oklahoma City: Oklahoma Historical Society, 1978) .
  • Robert W. Frazer: Forts of the West: Military Forts and Presidios, and Posts Commonly Called Forts, West of the Mississippi River to 1898 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1965).
  • William Peterfield Trent, George S. Hellman (Eds.): The Journals of Washington Irving . The Bibliophile Society, Boston 1919 (Retrieved October 22, 2016).

Web links

Commons : Fort Gibson  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files