McAlester News-Capital, McAlester, OK

Features

April 10, 2010

Historical outpost tested young soldiers

The rise and fall of Fort Washita

By Lois Eddington

The great state of Oklahoma was once home to the Choctaw, Chickasaw, Cherokee, Seminole and Osage Indians. It was a beautiful, exciting place and eventually became home not only for the Indians, but also cowboys, soldiers and outlaws.

In 1841, General Zachary Taylor, nicknamed “Old Rough and Ready,” and a small detachment of troops, rode from Fort Smith, Ark., deep into Indian Territory. Their mission was to find a suitable place for a third fort in Indian Territory. The first requirement for a fort was a good supply of water nearby.

The general saw the Red River and a nearby smaller river called the Washita River. Washita in Indian language means “The Big Hunt.” General Taylor chose the name Washita for the new fort. It comprised a large parcel of land, framed with trees of all sizes and kinds with an abundant supply of prairie grass. It was 18 miles north of the Red River and one and a half miles from the Washita River. General Taylor felt the site met all requirements for a new military fort.

The site was beautiful, but isolated and crude even by frontier standards. Captain George Blake and Companies A and F of the Second Dragoons, the early cavalry, were soon cutting trees and making them into logs for the first barracks at Fort Washita. Under the skillful hands and watchful eyes of Captain Blake, the first of several barracks stood proudly on the grounds of Fort Washita. The buildings were temporary but served much longer than anticipated. It would be 1850 before the large south barracks would be built of sandstone.

Much of the camp’s food had to be secured from the area. The fort was located in the Chickasaw Indian Nation and was established to protect the Chickasaws from the Comanches. The Chickasaws taught the soldiers how to catch fish, kill wild animals for food and how to plant and grow vegetables. Some of the soldiers at the fort were true “green horns” from New York.

The troops’ staple food and whatever other necessities they needed had to be shipped from St. Louis by boats. They were first shipped to New Orleans on the Mississippi River, and eventually they arrived on the Washita River about one and a half miles from the fort. Soldiers hitched horses or mules to a wagon or maybe two wagons and drove to the river to retrieve their precious supplies. They quickly loaded all the food and other supplies on the wagons and returned to a camp of cheering soldiers, happy to now have some variety in their chow, which had been quite plain for some time.

For more on this story, see Sunday's print edition of the McAlester News-Capital.

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