Visiting Fort Gibson

Today I visited old Fort Gibson at Lee and Ash Streets in the town of Fort Gibson, Oklahoma. The fort was strategically situated by the U.S. Army in 1824 on the northern side of the confluence of the Grand River with the Arkansas to keep peace between the plains Indians and the Osage in Indian Territory. Colonel Matthew Arbuckle, commander of the 7th Infantry Regiment, designed the fort along with Fort Towson in far Southern Indian Territory. Upon passage of the Indian Removal Act in 1830, the fort also served to facilitate the resettlement of several thousands of Native Americans from the Southeastern United States – most notably the Cherokee, Creek, and Seminole. Later, during the American Civil War, Fort Gibson intermittently served as a Union post. It was from Fort Gibson on July 16, 1863 that General James G. Blunt of the Department of Kansas led Union forces southward to defeat a larger force of Confederates at the Battle of Honey Springs the next day. (I grew up just a few miles north of that battlefield near the town of Oktaha.) In the summer of 1864, General Stand Waite (the only Native American general of the Confederate States during the war) attacked a steamboat on the Arkansas that was attempting to resupply the fort.

Famous men of the West who spent time at Fort Gibson include the United States Army officers Stephen W. Kearny, Robert E. Lee, and Zachary Taylor. One of my favorite painters of the American West – George Catlin – also spent some time here. Nathan Boone, son of pioneer Daniel Boone, also visited Ft. Gibson. Boone surveyed the boundary line between the Cherokee and Creek Nations in Indian Territory. I believe an old boundary marker of that line remains just beyond a stone’s throw from the front door of my house in Muskogee today.

Ft. Gibson is a National Historic landmark and the park is operated today by the Oklahoma Historical Society.

Brian