Fort Gibson, Oklahoma by Zina Abbott

 

I have read about and visited Fort Smith, Arkansas, which is just across the river from Oklahoma. I knew it played a large role in overseeing law and order within Indian Territory and, later, Oklahoma Territory. Fort Gibson, I discovered, was also right in the thick of things during much of early Indian Territory history.

In 1824, several years after the acquisition of the Louisiana Purchase but prior to the removal of the Five Civilized Tribes from east of the Mississippi River, marked the beginning of Fort Gibson. 

Colonel Matthew Arbuckle, who commanded the 7th Infantry Regiment (United States) from Fort Smith, Arkansas, moved some of his troops to establish Cantonment Gibson on 21 April 1824.  When it was constructed, the fort was farther west than any other military post in the United States. It formed part of the north–south chain of forts that was intended to maintain peace on the western frontier.

The US Army named the fort for Colonel (later General) George Gibson, Commissary General of Subsistence. It is located next to the modern city of Fort Gibson in Muskogee County, Oklahoma, where the three forks of the Arkansas, Verdigris, and Grand Rivers converge south of the Ozark Plateau. It was part of a series of forts established by the United States to protect its western border. It was part of a series of forts which the United States established to protect its western border and the land of the Louisiana Purchase. The troops constructed a stockade, barracks, other facilities, and roads. The fort provided the earliest known weather records in Oklahoma thanks to the post surgeon who began taking meteorological observations in 1824. It also served as a starting point for several military expeditions that explored the West.

The fort also served as an outpost on the Texas Road connecting settled Missouri with the new country of Mexico after it declared its independence from Spain in 1821. During the Texas Revolution against the weak Mexican government, the Army sent most of the troops stationed at Fort Gibson to the Texas border region.

 

Map of traditional Osage lands since 1700s

The Army designated the cantonment as Fort Gibson in 1832, reflecting its change from a temporary outpost to a semi-permanent garrison. Soldiers at Fort Gibson increasingly dealt with Indians removed from the eastern states to Indian Territory by being called upon to keep the peace between the indigenous Osages and Cherokees. When the Cherokees were first removed from North Carolina, the first bands to arrive were given land right in the middle of traditional Osage territory. The Osage did not accept the incursion well. The newcomers, not happy about being forced to leave their traditional homeland, complained about hostility from the Osage Nation and other Plains Indian tribes indigenous to the region.

Fort Gibson Commanding Officer Quarters

The fort figured prominently in the Indian removals. At the height of Indian removal in the 1830s, the garrison at Fort Gibson ranked as the largest in the nation. Notable American soldiers stationed at (or at least visiting) Fort Gibson include Stephen W. Kearny, Robert E. Lee, and Zachary Taylor. The Army stationed Jefferson Davis and more than 100 West Point cadets at the fort. The Army also assigned Nathan Boone, son of Daniel Boone, to the post. After leaving Tennessee, Sam Houston owned a trading post in the area before later moving to Texas.

 

Originally assigned Five Civilized tribes Indian Territory

At a bitterly contentious meeting at Fort Gibson in 1836, the majority faction of the Muscogee (Creek) reluctantly accepted the existing tribal government under the leadership of Chilly McIntosh, son of William McIntosh, and his faction. Colonel Arbuckle tried to prevent intratribal strife within the Cherokee, but Chief John Ross and his followers refused to acknowledge the government that earlier "Old Settlers" had established in Indian Territory. After suing for peace in the Florida Seminole Wars against the United States Army, many of the Seminole, dispirited and about their defeat, arrived in Indian Territory. Officials at Fort Gibson managed to prevent bloodshed and disunity among them.

When Colonel Arbuckle left Fort Gibson in 1841, he reported that despite the arrival of 40,000 eastern disgruntled Native Americans, "I have maintained peace on this frontier and at no period have the Whites on our border or the Red people of this frontier been in a more perfect state of quiet and Security than they enjoy now." The removed Native American nations gradually lost their desire for American military protection.

 

Postcard of reconstructed Fort Gibson

Fort Gibson was occupied through most of the Indian removal period, but then abandoned in 1857. This came about when, in the 1850s, the Cherokee complained about the liquor and brothels at Fort Gibson. In an effort to prevent the sale of alcohol to their people, they urged Congress to close Fort Gibson. The War Department honored their request.

The fort was reactivated during the Civil War. It was renamed Fort Blunt and served as the Union headquarters in Indian Territory. The army stayed through the Reconstruction and Indian Wars periods, combating the problem of outlaws and squatters.

Missouri-Kansas-Texas RR, also known as the Katy

In 1872 the Tenth Cavalry reoccupied Fort Gibson. Soon after, workers were sent to the area to build the Missouri–Kansas–Texas Railroad from Baxter Springs—the first Kansas "cow town"— to the Red River crossing at Colbert's Ferry, which was in Indian Territory, along the Texas border. The railroad improved transportation of cattle and beef to the east as well as shipping of goods from that area to the West. The cavalry from Fort Gibson was used to police the camps of local workers. Soldiers also tried to manage threats from outlaws, white encroachment on Indian lands, intra-tribal disputes, and other issues. The size of the garrison varied with the workload.

The Kansas and Arkansas Valley Railway built track through the area in 1888, and the town of Fort Gibson, Oklahoma began to develop. In the summer of 1890, the Army abandoned the military post of Fort Gibson, this time for good, although troops occasionally camped at the site when unrest brought them to the town of Fort Gibson. Eventually, the civilian town expanded into the former military grounds of the fort.

 

Fort Gibson Barracks -photo taken 1934

Fort Gibson was active on and off from 1824 to 1888. The fort succeeded in its peacekeeping mission for more than 50 years, as no massacres or battles occurred there. Abandoned in 1890, the fort was later the headquarters of the Dawes Commission which was tasked with enrolling members of the Five Tribes, particularly the Cherokee Freedmen.

 

My most recently published book is Joshua’s Bride, the first book in the Land Run Mail Order Brides series set in Oklahoma Territory about the same time Fort Gibson ended its service as a fort in Indian Territory. Although on opposite sides of the current state of Oklahoma, it has been interesting to learn more about the early history.

To find the book description and purchase options for my book, please CLICK HERE

 

 

 

 

Sources:

https://www.okhistory.org/publications/enc/entry.php?entry=FO033

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Gibson

https://www.okhistory.org/sites/fortgibson

SPECIAL NEEDS SCHOOLS IN INDIAN TERRITORY by CHERYL PIERSON

What did people on the prairie do for their special needs children? It must have been so hard on families, trying to do the right thing for their children who were deaf, sight-impaired, or with other special needs that, at that time, the world was unequipped to deal with. This is an article about two remarkable women who opened schools for the blind and the deaf with little to no funding for these projects. Take a look at what they accomplished!

The Oklahoma School for the Blind was truly a pioneer institution. In 1897 Miss Lura A. Rowland, a graduate of the Arkansas School for the Blind and "a frail wisp of a girl," solicited funds and undertook to establish a school for the blind children of Indian Territory at Fort Gibson, Oklahoma. She operated the school without any government assistance for ten years, though there are reams of correspondence indicating she implored governors, congressmen, and other public officials to assist her struggling organization. She did present a case sufficient to be permitted the use of the old Barracks Building to house her school.

Concurrently, a Territorial School for the Deaf had been established in Guthrie in 1897 under a five-year contract to care for deaf children under boarding school regulations.


LEARNING TO MAKE SHOES

Miss Rowland traveled all over Indian Territory, appearing before the various tribal councils, presenting her needs. Since few Native Americans were blind until Europeans brought diseases causing blindness to the tribes, there was not the acceptance that might have been the case otherwise. During the first four years the institution was supported solely by contributions from the people of the Indian Territory and sympathizing states. In 1900 the Choctaw and Cherokee Nations each made appropriations for the education of blind Choctaw and Cherokee children. Repeated but unsuccessful efforts were made to have Congress aid the school through the Bureau of Indian Affairs. In 1907 the school became a state-supported institution. For "reasons variously stated," it was moved to Wagoner but soon returned to Fort Gibson.

Miss Rowland, now Mrs. Lowery, had used her own resources, begged for furniture, and convinced other teachers it was their patriotic duty to help her with her project. In addition, schools from various parts of the United States had helped her from time to time. So frugal was her operation that her financial statement upon her retirement indicated that she had operated the school the first ten years on a total of $15,048.44, besides contributions by various persons, including herself. In those ten years she had held eleven school terms from six weeks to nine months long for a total enrollment of fifty pupils.

Oklahoma's first legislature appropriated $5,000 on May 29, 1908, for the maintenance of the "Lura A. Lowery School for the Blind," and provided in the same act that the school be under the control of the State Board of Education. As a state institution the school was supported by legislative appropriations, varying from twenty to thirty thousand dollars yearly. A headline in the Muskogee Times-Democrat March 11, 1911, read: "Perry Miller Saves Blind School." Miller had authored a bill in the State House of Representatives to move the Oklahoma School for the Blind. Slid Garrett of Fort Gibson had introduced a similar bill in the State Senate. Mr. Miller knew that if the school was not moved to Muskogee, it would be moved to Tulsa. It remained in temporary quarters at Fort Gibson until June, 1913, when the fourth legislature acted to move it to Muskogee, Oklahoma.

Upon moving the school to Muskogee in 1911, first in a couple of temporary locations locally, the state began construction on several beautiful buildings of English architecture with steep roofs. The tornado of 1945 destroyed most of those roofs, demolished the gymnasium, in which three girls were killed, and wounded several others. In the rebuilding, flat roofs replaced the originals.

The school is outstanding in the annals of education, and brave little Lura Lowery deserves a great deal of credit for initiating and carrying on such a program. Helen Keller honored the school with a visit February 17, 1915 and was very complimentary of its administration. Superintendent Mrs. O.W. Stewart was voted into the Oklahoma Hall of Fame in 1943 as a result of the outstanding record of the school. When Richard Carter retired as superintendent of the school in June 1979, after being associated with the school since 1939, he had completed the longest tenure of any like position in the nation and was considered an authority in the care and the teaching of the blind.

Following is a list of additional historical highlights:

1897 - 1907 Superintendent Mrs. Lura A. Lowery

1907 - 1911 Superintendent Mr. G.W. Bruce

1911 - 1925 Superintendent Mr. O.W. Stewart

1913 Oklahoma School for the Blind was moved to its present location in June in accordance with an act of the fourth Legislature. An 80 acre tract of land was donated by Governor C.N. Haskell.

1917 The Oklahoma Commission for the Adult Blind was established. The funds and services of this Commission were quite restricted and the primary thrust of the early program was the provision of limited home teaching services to the blind.

1920 The civilian Vocational Rehabilitation Program developed out of the effort to rehabilitate disabled veterans during and after WWI. On June 29, President Woodrow Wilson signed Public Law 66-236, creating the civilian rehabilitation act. This early program was limited in scope with primary services being counseling, guidance, job training and placement.

1920 Fifty acres of land south of the school was donated to the Oklahoma School for the Blind. This land is currently leased by the city of Muskogee and is known as Civitan Park.

1925 The Oklahoma Legislature passed enabling legislation empowering the State Board for Vocational Education to operate with the Federal Board of Vocational Education in the administration of an Act of Congress related to the promotion of vocational rehabilitation of persons disabled in industry or other, and their return to civil employment. However, this program was not funded by state appropriations until 1927.

Source Documents
"A History of the Oklahoma School for the Blind, 1897 - 1969", a document by Cleo Bowman Larason in 1953.
"A School History, 1897 - 1937, of the Oklahoma School for the Blind."