USA > Oklahoma > A standard history of Oklahoma; an authentic narrative of its development from the date of the first European exploration down to the present time, including accounts of the Indian tribes, both civilized and wild, of the cattle range, of the land openings and the achievements of the most recent period, Vol. I > Part 32
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44
7 Colonel Phillips had been led to believe that there was a possi- bility of winning Col. D. N. McIntosh, of the First Creek Regiment,
304
HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA
Early in February, 1863, Colonel Phillips moved over to Tahle- quah from the state line for the purpose of protecting the (Union) Cherokee council, which was in session for some days, and also for the purpose of sending scouting parties into the surrounding region. (The council of the Cherokees in alliance with the Confed- erate States had met some months earlier and had voted to depose John Ross from the chieftainship and selected Stand Watie as his successor.8) From this time on until the end of the war, there was a semblance of rival Cherokee tribal governments, Thomas Pegg acting as principal chief of the Union Cherokees in the absence of John Ross.9 It was not until the spring of 1863 that the Federal
over to the Union. He reported that he had talked the matter over with two intimate friends of the latter and that he had arranged to have an interview with Colonel McIntosh himself but that the order for his immediate departure had made it impossible for him to keep the appointment which had been made at his own request. He also stated that in the destruction of Fort Davis he had spared the home of Colonel McIntosh, which was located nearby. At that time, Colonel Phillips was a pronounced advocate of the policy of concilia- tion in dealing with the Indians because he sincerely hoped to be able to induce them to abandon their attitude of hostility to the Union. He also urged that if the Government would offer to feed and clothe the destitute Choctaws and Creeks, which were at least nominally hostile, it would be preferable to having to fight them .- Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Vol. XXII, Part II, pp. 61-2 and 126.
8 Report of Maj. Gen. Thomas C. Hindman, C. S. Army, Offi- cial Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Vol. XXII, Part II, p. 42.
9 The recruiting and organization of the Fourth and Fifth regi- ments of the Indian Home Guard was authorized by the War De- partment at Washington, early in February, 1863. The disintegra- tion of the Cherokee Confederate Regiment of Col. John Drew, some of the officers and most of the men of which went over to the Union and formed the nucleus for the organization of the Third Indian Home Guard Regiment, had led the Federal authorities to hope that there might be similar defections among the Creek and Choctaw regiments in the Confederate service. If the consummation of such a hope was possible in the beginning, it was probably defeated through the lack of prompt and proper support to the forces which occupied the Cherokee country for the Federal Government, for, like the Confederate forces in the Indian Territory, they were often neglected in the matter of support and supplies. A few officers were commissioned for the Fourth and Fifth regiments of the Indian Home Guard, but the work of recruiting and completing the organizations of the same was never pushed to a successful issue.
305
HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA
forces were permanently established in the Cherokee country. The Indian Brigade arrived at Park Hill (near Tahlequah). April 12; a detachment in advance also occupying Fort Gibson. The refugee Indians, who had been in Kansas for fifteen months, arrived at Tahlequah about the same time. Within less than a weck Colonel Phillips had taken up a position with most of his brigade at Fort Gibson, which was thenceforth the center of Federal military activi- ties in the Indian Territory until the end of the war. While this post occupied a commanding position near the junctions of the Grand and the Verdigris with the Arkansas, it was disadvanta- geously situated in that it was a long way from its base of supplies, which was at Fort Scott, Kansas. Indeed, during the two years intervening between that and the end of the war, fully half of the campaigning which was done from Fort Gibson was in protecting its line of communications and in convoying supply trains.
In December, 1862, Brig. Gen. William Steele was assigned to the command of the Confederate forces in the Indian Territory. He assumed command at Fort Smith, January 8, 1863, and main- tained his headquarters at that place for more than six months. The Confederate Indian brigade remained under the command of Col. Douglas H. Cooper. There was also a brigade of Texas troops, the regiments constituting which were changed more or less fre- quently as were the brigade commanders also, Colonels John W. Speight and Smith P. Bankhead and Gen. William L. Cabell serv- ing respectively in succession.
After the occupation of Fort Gibson there were no operations of more than minor importance on the part of either army for three months. At Fort Gibson, Colonel Phillips kept his command busily engaged in drilling and in strengthening the defensive position of that post.10 General Steele, on the other side, was laboring to secure
10 The activity and energy of the Federal commander at Fort Gibson seemed tireless. He operated grist mills, saw mills and salt works to supply his command and the dependent refugee Indians. He erected commissary buildings and built ferry boats and enclosed fifteen or sixteen acres at Fort Gibson with defensive works that made the post impregnable by any force that the enemy could hope to send against it. And, all the while, he was also whipping a three-regiment brigade of Indians, who were by nature careless and regardless of the restraints and responsibilities of discipline, into a well-trained and efficient body of soldiers. In addition to the per- formance of these duties, which were either purely military or based upon military necessity, he was also the administrator of the affairs of several thousand Indian refugees who were gathered in the im- Vol. I-20
306
HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA
supplies of arms and ammunition and to improve the morale of his command, which was at a low ebb.11 Phillips was hopefully look- ing forward to an opportunity to make a successful descent upon Fort Smith. Steele, on the other hand, hoped to so recruit and sup- ply his command that, with the aid of reinforcements for which he had applied, he might drive the Federal forces out of Fort Gibson and compel them to abandon the Indian country altogether.
Among the minor movements in the spring of 1863 was that of a detachment which crossed the Arkansas River from Fort Gibson on the 24th of April and, after making a night march of thirty miles, attacked Col. Stand Watie's command at Webbers Falls. where the Confederate Cherokees had planned to hold a session of their national council on the 25th. The Confederate troops were driven away and the proposed session of their legislative council was prevented.12
mediate vicinity of the post and personally directed a military in- telligence bureau by means of which he kept well informed as to the movements and plans of the enemy.
11 General Steele, who had been educated at West Point and had spent the intervening years in the regular army, was a strict disciplinarian. He found his command in the Indian Territory with little or no discipline. While its strength, on paper, was quite respectable, its actual, effective strength, owing to absences either with or without leave and to desertions, was but a mere fraction of what it should have been. The transactions of the disbursing offi- cers of the command were loosely and extravagantly conducted. For details, see report of Maj. W. C. Schaumburg, assistant in- spector general, Trans-Mississippi Department of the Confederate Army, Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Vol. XXII, Part II, pp. 151-3.
12 After the fight was over, two ladies came to the Federal lines from a plantation a mile or two below Webbers Falls and asked that a surgeon be sent to attend a wounded Confederate soldier. Dr. Rufus Gillpatrick, a surgeon who accompanied Colonel Phillips, immediately volunteered to visit the wounded man. Colonel Phil- lips asked if he did not want an escort but the offer was laughingly declined, the doctor stating that he was in no danger when going on such an errand. Nevertheless, as he approached the house where the wounded Confederate soldier lay, he was attacked and wantonly slain, before he could complete his errand of mercy, by some of the enemy who had been skulking in the brush. The ladies, at whose request he had gone to the aid of a wounded foeman, tried to per- suade the assassins from committing the deed but without avail. Doctor Gillpatrick was of a most pleasing personality and his popu- larity among the rank and file of the command at Fort Gibson was such that his tragic death so enraged the troops composing the expe-
307
HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA
During the late spring and early summer of 1863 there were frequent scouting expeditions by detachiments of both armies and there were severe skirmishes in the vicinity of Fort Gibson, at Cabin Creek and elsewhere, but no general engagements that have been designated as battles. June 11th, Gen. James G. Blunt, the dis- trict commander, arrived at Fort Gibson with reinforcements and immediately prepared to take the offensive. With a force of about 3,000 men, he crossed the Arkansas River near Fort Gibson and
NF,
DOUGLAS H. COOPER
marched against the Confederate command of Gen. Douglas H. Cooper,13 which were encamped near Elk Creek, on the Texas Road, about twenty miles distant. Striking the enemy's outposts several miles from Elk Creek on the morning of July 17th, they were
ditionary force that they set fire to the Village of Webbers Falls .--- Personal information secured from Maj. B. F. Hackett by the writer; also Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Vol. XXII, Part I, pp. 315-6.
13 Douglas H. Cooper had been promoted from colonel to briga- dier general to rank as such from May 2, 1863. General Cooper was a Mississippian. He had served as a captain in the regiment of the Mississippi Volunteers which was commanded by Col. Jefferson Davis during the war with Mexico. He was United States Indian agent for the Choctaw and Chickasaw Nations at the outbreak of the war. He became colonel of the First Choctaw and Chickasaw Regi- ments in the Confederate service, subsequently becoming a brigadier general. He was in command of the Confederate forces in the Indian Territory at the time of the surrender. After the close of the war he continued to live at Fort Washita where he died in April, 1879.
308
HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA
driven back toward the Confederate camp. While the two forces were probably fairly matched as to numerical strength, they were certainly not on a parity as to discipline and equipment.14 The Federals were not only better armed, but they had three four-gun batteries of artillery to one four-gun battery which the Confederates had. But the disparity did not end even at that, for the ammunition of General Cooper's troops was practically worthless. The battle resulted in the defeat and withdrawal of the Confederate forces which sustained severe losses in killed, wounded and captured. The Confederate forces destroyed extensive commissary stores in retreating.15 This engagement has been known as the battle of Elk Creek or Honey Springs.16
After the battle of Honey Springs, General Steele took the field in person. His command moved up and encamped again near the place where the battle had been fought. For several weeks there was little if any apparent activity on either side. Then the
14 The official reports of the Union and Confederate command- ers, as subsequently published, show some striking discrepancies. Blunt claimed to have less than 3,000 men in his command and that Cooper had 6,000; Cooper asserted that Blunt had 4,000 and that this force was superior to his own. Blunt reported the finding and burying of 150 Confederate dead and estimated the wounded at 400 and claimed to have captured seventy-seven prisoners; Cooper admitted a loss of killed and wounded amounting to 134 and that forty-seven had been captured. Blunt reported his own loss in killed and wounded to have been seventy-seven; Cooper estimated it at 200. Cooper claimed to have saved all of his wagon train except one ambulance; Blunt reported that he had captured and destroyed fifteen wagons. Blunt claimed to have remained in pos- session of the field; Cooper asserted that Blunt withdrew and hur- riedly marched off toward Fort Gibson.
15 Personal information secured by the writer from Hon. W. H. Makemson, Georgetown, Texas, who was a soldier in the Fifth Texas Partisan Rangers. The commissary was a large building which had been used as a store or trading establishment. It con- tained a large amount of flour, salt pork and other provisions and several hundred barrels of sorghum molasses were ricked up out- side. All were burned to keep it from falling into the hands of the enemy. The Mexican powder which had been supplied to Cooper's troops absorbed moisture till it was pasty and worthless.
16 The battle began a short distance northeast of the Town of Oktaha, in the southern part of Muskogee County and ended at Honey Springs, a mile south of Elk Creek. The Confederate dead are buried in a plot of ground southeast of the spring. The site of the burial ground is unmarked except that it is not under culti- vation.
.
309
HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA
Confederate forces moved down the Texas Road and took a posi- tion south of the Canadian River. August 22d General Blunt again crossed the Arkansas from Fort Gibson and, with a force of 4,500 men started southward for the purpose of attacking General Steele's command, which he (Blunt) claimed to consist of 9,000 men. Its actual effective strength probably did not exceed half that number. The Confederate forces scattered when they learned of the approach of the expedition, McIntosh and the Creek regiments going west- ward up the valley of the Canadian; Cabell's brigade marched to- ward Fort Smith, and General Steele, with the commands of Cooper and Watie retired toward Boggy Depot and the Red River Valley. As the latter were retreating along the well traveled Texas Road, they were promptly pursued by the Federal cavalry and light artillery. The latter overtook the Confederate rear guard at Perry- ville where it made a strong show of resistance but was soon dis- lodged. The village of Perryville was a Confederate depot, well stocked with commissary stores which were all destroyed by burn- ing.17 Taking the brigade of Col. W. F. Cloud with him, General Blunt then marched against Fort Smith, which he occupied without opposition on the first of September.
It is but fair to state that the Federal successes in the Indian Territory during the latter part of the summer of 1863 were not due to superior generalship, skill or valor so much as they were to the demoralized condition of the Confederate forces to which it had been opposed. The Confederate troops were unpaid, poorly clothed, not always well fed and, as for arms and ammunition, utterly unfit to cope with the well equipped troops of their adver- saries. The discipline was also not what it should be, especially among the Indian regiments. The latter insisted upon choosing their own officers and. these were invariably too lenient and indul- gent in the enforcement of discipline. Indeed, General Steele con- trasted these organizations unfavorably with the Indian regiments in the Union service, which were partially if not principally, offi- cered by white men. This demoralization led to numerous deser- tions, thus rapidly depleting the strength of the various regiments and battalions of which General Steele's force was composed.18
During the summer of 1863, because of the activity of the
17 Perryville was a few miles south of McAlester, in Pittsburg County.
18 Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies. Vol. XXII, Part II, letters of Gen. William Steele, pp. 862, 883, 1048 and 1064.
310
HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA
Federal forces at Fort Gibson, which were constantly scouting and foraging over the surrounding country, most of the families of the Indians who had taken a stand on the side of the Confederacy left their homes and went south to the Red River country or to Texas. From that time on until the end of the war, these refugee noncombatant Indians were an added burden to the Confederate authorities of the Trans-Mississippi Department, who were obliged to feed and clothe them with the certainty that, if they were not thus supplied, they would go over to the Union in a body and the Indian troops with them. Thus was compounded the perplexities of a serious situation, for it was known that the Federal authorities would quickly seize the opportunity to win over the Indians by such a means.
Most serious of all the influences which tended toward demorali- zation in the Confederate military organization in the Indian Ter- ritory, however, was the lack of harmony among officers of high rank. General Cooper, who had been rather active in some of the incidents that led to the retirement of Gen. Albert Pike, whom he hoped to succeed, was evidently piqued at the assignment of Gen- eral Steele to the command of the forces in the Indian Territory. He affected to believe that the latter was his junior in rank. When this was effectually settled by a statement from the Confederate War Department at Richmond, it developed that a seditious cam- paign had been entered into for the purpose of discrediting General Steele and having himself promoted to the grade of major general and assigned to the command of a separate department to include the Indian Territory. Although the effort proved abortive, Gen- eral Steele felt that his influence and usefulness had been weakened by such unfair means and he accordingly asked to be relieved from the command.19 By the same order which relieved him Brig. Gen. Samuel B. Maxey was assigned to succeed him.
If selfishness and jealousy characterized the dispositions of some of those who were high in rank and authority in the Confederate service, it wrought equal harm in the Union army and, to some extent at least, affected the progress of affairs in the Indian Ter- ritory. At the outbreak of the war, with the official personnel of its army depleted by the wholesale resignation of officers of every rank and grade who wished to cast their fortunes with the insur- .
19 Ibid., letter of Douglas H. Cooper, pp. 1037-8; letters of Wil- liam Steele, pp. 1077-8 and 1108; also communications of John C. Robinson and others, pp. 1116-25.
311
HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA
rectionary states, the Government appointed many officers because of political influence. Some of these were distinguished more for their zeal than for their ability or efficiency. It was inevitable that there should be a lack of harmony between officers of this class and those of the professional military class who had been trained in the service of the regular military establishment. As a rule, the reg- ular army officer, while not less patriotic than his comrade who had been suddenly elevated to high rank, either directly from civil life or from the volunteer line, lacked in the element of fervor and sentiment so characteristic of political partisans and was therefore regarded by those of the other class as being lukewarm and half- hearted. West of the Mississippi River, where the struggle over the slavery question in Kansas during its territorial period was yet fresh in the public mind, the spirit of partisan vindictiveness rankled deeply. James H. Lane, one of the senators from the new state, eccentric and irresponsible as he was, typified this spirit in a way and, during the first year of the war, before he was thoroughly understood, exerted considerable influence with the administration at Washington because of the position which he filled.
Gen. S. R. Curtis, who commanded the Department of Missouri. embracing all the Union forces in Missouri, Arkansas and the In dian Territory in 1862, though a man of military education (hav- ing graduated at West Point in 1831), had been in civil life with the exception of the time spent in the volunteer service during the war with Mexico. He had been a civil engineer, a lawyer, a poli- tician and a member of Congress. When he was called upon to cope with the rampant radicalism of the followers of Senator Lane in Kansas and with the serious factional feud in Missouri, he was not able to free himself from the biased zeal of the partisan. James G. Blunt was a Kansas politician of the Lane school, who had entered the volunteer service as a lieutenant colonel and had been rapidly promoted through the intervening grades to the rank of major general. John M. Schofield, a regular army officer, entered the volunteer service in Missouri with the rank of major and was successively promoted through the various grades to the rank of major general. He was a type of the professional soldier, who eschewed politics and the methods of the politician. He never wrote a stump speech into a military report, did not boast, avoided bom- bast and never resorted to the demagoguery of playing for popular approval. It was but natural that he should disapprove of the plans and proposals of the partisan zealot and the vindictive factionalist. That he should incur personal enmity and unpopular-
312
HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA
ity in certain quarters was, under the circumstances, only to have been expected.
General Blunt and General Schofield each commanded military districts under General Curtis, who was in commmand of the Department of the Missouri. When the latter was relieved and General Schofield was appointed to succeed to the command of the department, General Blunt felt aggrieved. Moreover, like General Cooper, of the Confederate Indian Brigade, he aired his grievances in a most unmilitary way, by attempting to open communications concerning the same directly with the President, who was com- mander-in-chief of the armies, regardless of the fact that such cor-
BATTLE OF HONEY SPRINGS Leslie's Reproduction
respondence should have been forwarded through the regular mili- tary channels.20 Such were the conditions existing in the Federal military department which included the Indian Territory during the summer and fall of 1863. General Blunt was relieved of the command of the Military District of the Frontier (which included the Indian Territory) by virtue of an order issued from the depart- ment headquarters, October 19, 1863, Brig. Gen. John McNeil being assigned to the command of the district.21
20 Letters of Gen. James G. Blunt to President Lincoln, Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Vol. LIII, pp. 565 and 571.
21 General Blunt wrote to General Schofield from Fort Scott, Kansas, acknowledging receipt of the order relieving him of his com- mand. Inasmuch as the order had been addressed to him at Fort Smith, he professed to believe that he should return to that post
313
HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA
General Blunt had left Fort Smith, October 4, accompanied by his staff, brigade band and a cavalry escort of two companies num- bering about 100 men, en route for Fort Scott, Kansas. At Baxter Springs, Kansas, near the state line, two days later this little column was surprised and attacked by a Confederate guerilla band which was led by William C. Quantrill. The escort became panic stricken and fled ingloriously. About eighty-five members of the Federal command were killed, including members of the band and teamsters (all noncombatants),22 also two members of General Blunt's staff. General Blunt and several members of his staff escaped. The guer- rilla band, which numbered about 600 men, moved on toward the south after looting and burning the wagons.23
for the purpose of formally relinquishing the command of the dis- trict. He also promised to report, as directed, at Fort Leavenworth. . When he reached Fort Smith he remained there under the pretext of recruiting a new regiment of negro troops under authority of the War Department and boasted of his refusal to obey the order direct- ing him to report at Fort Leavenworth. Ibid., Vol. XXII, Part II, letter of General Blunt to Secretary E. M. Stanton, pp. 735-7, and letters of Champion Vaughan to General Schofield, pp. 738-9 and 742-3.
22 Riding in the band wagon with the members of the band was James O'Neill, who was a special artist of Frank Leslie's Weekly, whose sketch of the Battle of Honey Springs, or Elk Creek, is repro- duced in this volume. Mr. O'Neill was ruthlessly killed and his body, with those of the members of the band, was thrown under the wagon which was then set afire.
23 In his official report of the Baxter Springs affair to General Price, Quantrill concludes his narrative as follows : "So, at 5 p. m., I took up the line of march due south on the old Texas Road. We marched fifteen miles and encamped for the night. From this place to the Canadian River we caught about 150 Federal Indians and negroes in the Nation gathering ponies. We brought none of them through." This report was signed "W. C. Quantrill, Colonel, Com- manding."-Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Vol. XXII, Part I, pp. 700-1.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.