Fort Gibson: A Brief History

by Grant Foreman; Carolyn Thomas Foreman

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, and 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.

In 1836 the remainder of the Creek Indians were forcibly removed from their homes in Alabama. After appalling suffering and many deaths on the way, their conductor brought them to Fort Gibson. Ten thousand of them, cold, destitute, and broken spirited, were encamped through the winter around the fort where they were given food enough to sustain life until spring, when they could be removed to the land intended for them. Later, when the Seminole Indians were brought as prisoners from their old home in Florida, they were landed from the boats at Fort Gibson. Several thousand of them were established in camps in this locality where rations were issued to them; some of them remained several years before they could be induced to remove to the lands intended for them. At one time a few hundred Seminole Negroes were located at the same place. They had surrendered to General Jesup in Florida, and claimed that they had been promised emancipation in return for their surrender. Some of the wealthier Seminoles claimed them as slaves, and they were retained in the custody of the garrison while their status was being investigated and determined by the authorities in Washington. They were employed in 1845 and 1846 in the construction of the stone buildings at the fort.

Some of the Creek immigrants who had ventured to locate on their lands in the more remote part of their country near the present site of Holdenville, in 1843 became involved with a band of Wichita Indians, four of whom were killed by the Creeks. A call for help was sent in to the settlements and a general alarm spread over the Creek country. The Creeks became panic stricken, and women and children came flocking into Fort Gibson. The Creek agent and some of the traders on the Verdigris also rushed to the post for protection. Captain Boone was sent with his company to the mouth of Little River and returned a week later with the report that the alarm was unfounded.

Fort Gibson was employed also as a base for the establishment of other garrisons; thus in 1833 Fort Smith was temporarily re-established by a detachment of the Seventh Infantry from Fort Gibson commanded by Captain John Stuart. Two years later this detachment was again removed up the river thirteen miles to make Fort Coffee, to which point a road was constructed from Fort Gibson. In 1838 they were removed from Fort Coffee to create, near the Arkansas line, an establishment called Fort Wayne, another subsidiary to Fort Gibson. In the summer of 1834, under the direction of General Leavenworth, Camp Arbuckle at the mouth of the Cimarron River and Fort Holmes at the mouth of Little River were established, and the necessary buildings erected by detachments of the Seventh Infantry sent out from Fort Gibson.

In the spring of 1841 a detachment from Fort Gibson commanded by Captain B. D. Moore was dispatched to select a location for a fort on the Washita River; it was visited the next year by General Zachary Taylor who approved the site for the fort, which he named Fort Washita.