A Very OK Podcast
Episode 11: “Battle of the Washita”
January 18, 2022
Episode Transcript
(upbeat music playing)
Trait Thompson: Hello, and welcome to A Very OK Podcast. My name is Trait Thompson. I’m the executive director of the Oklahoma Historical Society, and with me, as always, is Dr. Bob Blackburn, who is the former executive director. And Bob, as always, it’s great to be with you here today. How was your holidays?
Dr. Bob Blackburn: Trait, went great. Have a new baby in the family, and he’s doing well. The five-year-old is bouncing off the walls, as you would expect a five-year-old, and all over Papa. So, we had a good vacation in Colorado, and I understand you went to Colorado as well with family.
Thompson: Yeah, we had a conference called the State Historical Administrators Conference. And, Bob, I know that you have been there to that conference many times, and it happened to be in Denver. So at the first of December, we went up to that conference. And then I love Rocky Mountain National Park, and so we took our family after that conference for a few days of hiking up in the park. It was beautiful, a little bit snowy and cold, kind of got that Christmas mountain-town experience, and we had a wonderful time. And then we came back down for, had Christmas at our house. All my family came into town, and one of the things that I got to do is to take all of my family from out of town to visit Pawnee Bill Ranch, and my niece, who’s ten years old, she’s grown up in Chicago. She’s never seen a bison close up. And so we actually got to go out, and Ronny, who is our great director there, at Pawnee Bill Ranch, we got to go out in his truck and see the bison up close. And everyone had a really good time.
Blackburn: The Pawnee Bill Ranch site, I think, is such a jewel in our constellation of sites and museums because it not only deals with Pawnee Bill the showman and Wild West shows, which is spectacular itself, but half of the museum is American Indian history. The Pawnees embraced Pawnee Bill.
Thompson: That’s right.
Blackburn: There’s where the name came from. The collections are heavy with Indian materials, not just in the 19th century, but 20th century. And so, someone can get a full range of frontier history at that one site. And to see the original home, it’s my favorite historic home in all of Oklahoma. I’ll get some calls on that one, that I have a favorite. But to me, it’s just a unique early, high-style bungalow that Pawnee Bill and May Lillie built, and it’s just a fabulous site. I’m glad you got to take the family there.
Thompson: Well, you’re retired now, so you’re allowed to have favorites.
(laughter)
Thompson: So, yes, I agree with you. It’s a great historic site, and it really is a place that, if you haven’t been there, I encourage you to take a road trip to Pawnee and visit Pawnee Bill Ranch, because it is a unique site for Oklahoma, and it’s something that we’re proud of at OHS to be able to administer that site, and you can see bison close up. Now, don’t get out of your car, because our motto is always “never pet the fluffy cows.” But you can drive through the pasture and see them all there, and it’s fantastic. Well, I want to bring in our guest today because we have a fantastic person who is with us to talk about our chosen topic today, and that is Dr. Deena Fisher. And I have known Deena since a little bit before I came on as executive director. I’m going to read her bio here, which is really impressive, and then we’ll bring her in. Dr. Deena Fisher currently serves as president of the Oklahoma Historical Society. So, she’s kind of, she’s pretty much my boss. And she is the dean/professor emeritus of Northwestern Oklahoma State University. She holds a doctorate in higher education from Oklahoma State University, two master’s in social science education and school counseling from Southwestern Oklahoma State University. She coauthored the book Woodward (Past and Present) and an Oklahoma history textbook, Oklahoma: Land of Contrasts, writing all the teacher’s materials. She has served on several boards of civic organizations and currently serves on the Citizens Advisory Board for the William S. Key Facility, the Hope Center Food Bank, the Plains Indian and Pioneer Museum, and Friends of Fort Supply. She proudly serves on the boards of the Oklahoma Educators Hall of Fame and the Oklahoma African American Educators Hall of Fame. She’s married to Tom, a retired educator and administrator, and they have four children and five grandchildren. And Deena, we are thrilled to bring you on to the podcast today.
Dr. Deena Fisher: Well, I’m happy to be here.
Thompson: Well, today our topic is, we are going to be talking about that time right after the Civil War in western Oklahoma, with what’s going on with the Plains Indians tribes. And of course, we have Camp Supply first, and then Fort Supply, which becomes a supply depot for much of the operations that are going on by the US Army, who are trying to quell the uprisings and the attacks by the Indian, army, and soldiers out there in the Plains area. And then, we also want to talk about what’s going on with the treaties; General Sheridan, who was stationed out there, and also want to talk about, of course, Custer has ties and was involved out in there. So we’ve got some really fascinating things to talk about about that western Oklahoma history that really is important to the overall landscape of American history and what’s happening in that time directly after the Civil War. But, you know, Bob, we always like to talk about the movies we like and how it relates to the topic. So, when we’re talking about that genre, that era of history, what are some of your favorite movies?
Blackburn: I have so many from that time period. One that is a kind of oddball movie that you really can’t find much even on streaming right now is Little Big Man, with Dustin Hoffman playing a character who ends up being at the Battle of the Washita, and his life is impacted by all of what you just mentioned, this changing frontier. But I think the one most directly affiliated with our topic today, which is the founding of Fort Supply, the Battle of the Washita, and Sheridan’s campaign on the Southern Plains, would be Dances With Wolves, because it’s set right near the end of the Civil War in 1964–65, which would have been probably.
Thompson: 1864, ’65.
Blackburn: What did I say?
Thompson: You said 1964.
(laughter)
Blackburn: Yeah, yeah. There was another civil war in the 1960s, but a different kind. But, in 1864.
Fisher: I remember that one.
Blackburn: You remember that one. Yeah. We resemble that remark, don’t we, Deena?
Fisher: We do, we do.
Blackburn: But Dances with Wolves is set in that time period, which was probably the golden age of the nomadic life of the Southern Plains tribes. Of course, in Dances with Wolves, it’s the Pawnees, and the so-called quote in the script at least that had the “Bad Pawnee” was Wes Studi from Oklahoma. A Cherokee born in Nofire Hollow in the 1940s, spoke fluent Cherokee so he could pick up the Indian dialect. He could ride a horse. He could fire a weapon from the back of a horse. So, he was an early star there, later as Magua in other movies.
Thompson: The Last of the Mohicans, right?
Blackburn: Thank you for that reminder. But that movie, I think, captured that golden age of Southern Plains warfare. The Kevin Costner character is befriended by a Lakota band, which would have been very similar to the Southern Cheyenne, Southern Arapaho, the Kiowa and Comanche, who, on horseback, were just prospering. Buffalo herds were in the millions— the northern herd, the southern herd. The Civil War disrupted the expansion of the American nation, and so you don’t have the transcontinental railroad yet. You don’t have the Homestead Act really impacting the fringes of their territory, and that would have been the golden age. And then what happened suddenly, the end of the Civil War comes, and then you get this clash of two cultures.
And to me, the story—if we had to say there is one theme that describes this story—it’s this clash of cultures. It’s not so much the army is out there to keep the Indians from depredating. It’s that you have these two cultures where the Indians are trying to preserve their way of life that is ancient, and it’s true to themselves. So they have their own law-ways, their own social structure, their own trade routes. And suddenly, this alien culture is approaching their territory, and you get these natural conflicts. And as conflicts too often happen, as it does even in America in the 21st century, it comes down to violence. And that’s when the army steps in and says, we’ve got to control the violence and start establishing military force farther out on the Southern Plains and then establishing forts in Oklahoma since the 1820s, when Fort Towson and Fort Gibson established 1824 and later, other forts.
Well, in this time period we’re talking about today, it would have been Fort Supply, Fort Reno, Fort Sill. It would have been those forts, those military bases, out of which they could operate on the Southern Plains. Then you throw on top of that the effort to confine these nomadic Indian warriors and hunters to a reservation. That was very unnatural to them, and the United States government expecting each tribe to be represented by one elected official. Who are we going to talk to? Who’s going to sign this treaty? Very unnatural to the culture that they were dealing with. Total misunderstanding, two alien cultures conflicting here, and our story that we try to tell at Fort Towson, or excuse me, at Fort Supply as well as at Reno and Sill is that the military had a an unpleasant role to play. But at the time, American officials thought it was the only way to deal with that issue. And then of course, we can go into the history since. But what we try to do at the Battle of Washita site, Fort Supply, Woodward, in their museum there, is to tell the story of how it evolved, in the way the military was thrown into this cultural conflict, and says, you all have a role in this. This is what we expect. And in some ways, unfairly, they were expected to do more than they should have been asked to do.
And then policies coming out of the Civil War with the Grant administration and the Peace Policy and the Quakers involved, and trying to find a way to allow these two cultures to coexist, and so many failures, you know, we could go on an entire broadcast just on that. But the military did have a role, and so we got to know the role that Custer played in all of this, and Sheridan, as well as the role that the Cheyenne and Arapaho leaders, the Kiowa and Comanche leaders played. And it’s just such an interesting story and a part of our history that we must understand if we’re to deal today with McGirt and tribal sovereignty and a multicultural society in respect for diversity, we’ve got to understand what happened in the 1860s and ’70s.
Thompson: Sure. You know, getting back to, we’re going to dive into that in even greater detail here in a minute or so. But, Deena, do you have some favorite movies from that time period?
Fisher: Well, I do. John Wayne’s The Searchers, and I know that’s one that you enjoyed, too. I have watched that so many times, and each time something else kind of flourishes, but it had a strong; Scar was very strong, an Indian that took up for himself and his people and wasn’t going to take it anymore. And, you know, you’re going to see that in this story unfolding with what happened at the Washita.
Thompson: Yeah, that was probably one of John Wayne’s darker roles that he ever played during his career.
Fisher: And he played it correctly.
Thompson: Yes.
Fisher: I think he deserved an Oscar for it, myself. It was one of the best I’ve seen and then how his compassion comes out at the end. But it showed what life on the frontier could actually be like. And the fear from both sides of the equation that was happening: one trying to preserve their way of life and willing to fight for it. The others with a new hope and in trying to understand, it’s like, you know, the boy that got killed, you know, trying to find his love, and then his mother, instead of falling apart, said, you know, said, John Wayne says, “I got your son killed.” And she says, “No, it’s this land. It’s what’s happening today. That’s what killed my son.” And it was like, we knew it when we came. We knew what we were facing when we came. But there was still this idea of this Manifest Destiny, this idea that there was land to have, and it was our right to take it.
Thompson: Yeah. You know, for you movie and music buffs out there, one of the lines that John Wayne utters throughout that movie, he says, “That’ll be the day.” And that was the inspiration for the Everly Brothers song “That’ll Be the Day.” I won’t sing it for you right now, but a little bit of trivia there.
Fisher: Well, and John Ford has said his inspiration for the Natalie Wood person was Cynthia Parker, Quanah Parker’s mother, and the story that she had. So, again, that unfolds into our Red River War era.
Thompson: Well, one of my favorites is Lonesome Dove, and I’ve talked about that on this podcast before, but there’s that scene toward the end of Lonesome Dove where Gus is out, and he’s with the character Pea Eye, and he says, let’s go chase some buffalo. And of course, he, you know, Pea Eye says, why do you want to chase a buffalo? Because he says there’s not going to be many left anymore, and I want to chase a buffalo once before I die. And of course, those are famous last words because he chases a buffalo over the ridge. And then next thing you know, he’s hauling back the other direction. He’s got a couple of arrows in his leg, and he’d run into a group of Plains Indians that are unnamed at that point.
But certainly, you know, that clash of cultures that, you know, one group thought that the land belonged to them, and they should have it. The other just wanted to preserve their way of life and their customs that they’d had for so many years. So, I think a good place to start when we’re talking about western Oklahoma and what’s going on in the area around Camp Supply, that end of that Civil War, westward expansion, people are moving west. There’s new opportunity out there. The nation had been at war for five years, and you’re starting to see all of these conflicts now out there. People are dying. Of course, the Indians are reacting to people that are coming into their traditional territory and their homelands, and they see that if they don’t do something that their way of life is going to change. So I just throw it out to you. Talk about that time of change right there after the Civil War.
Fisher: Well, it was more than that. You know, at Medicine Lodge, this area was promised—it really— they were brought into Oklahoma or the Dakotas, and said, okay, finally, this is on the western side, you know, of the Plains Indians, you know, which a lot of people used to refer to as wild Indians. There’s nothing wild about them. What it was was their way of life, and they had been uprooted and uprooted and, you know, Sand Creek, and then down this direction and again, time after time, you know. You had a split between the Indians that insisted that we’ve got to fight for our culture and our way of life, and the ones who said we’ve got to assimilate.
Blackburn: And too, Trait, one of the big picture here, connecting the dots with statehood, 1907, with Reconstruction Treaties of 1866, the Five Civilized Tribes were all punished for siding with the south, and their western lands were taken away from them with the idea that it would remain the Indian Territory. And I always use a little article “the” because it is the Indian Territory set aside for Indians. So, while Kansas and Nebraska are being settled in the old Indian country, in the Ohio River Valley, the Northern Plains, Texas, New Mexico, they’re shoving all of these tribes until we get to the 39 tribes we have in Oklahoma today. Well, in 1866, we had five. By 1889, we had 39. And so here come these other tribes, and with a variety of cultures. And the reason it’s, this western part of the territory is so different from the eastern part, and still today, if you deal with Indian Country dealing with Chickasaws, and the Cherokees, and the Choctaws is so different from dealing with the Kiowas, the Comanches, the Cheyenne/Arapaho. Two different cultures. It’s like dealing with, you know, someone in Western Europe and someone in Central Europe, you know, diplomatically, different cultures.
Thompson: Well, the Chickasaws and Choctaws and some of the eastern tribes, they were farmers, you know, they owned plantations. They, you know, they weren’t nomadic tribes. Right?
Blackburn: Right. They’d already had 150 years of adaptation to a new way of life— free enterprise probably being at the heart of it— and constitutional government. They were used to electing representatives. Well, the Southern Plains tribes are largely Stone Age culture and very strong individuals. That’s part of this whole story is that there was no one tribal leader. We always talk about Black Kettle, who was a peace chief and one of the main leaders of the Cheyenne Arapaho, but he was never elected. Enough people just recognized him—you are a great man and a spiritual man—they said we will follow you. But then he had no control over those warriors. He said, we’re going to go out and raid that ranch. We’re going to attack that wagon train. We’re going to make sure they don’t kill more of our buffalo. They can say, I prefer that you not do it. But he could not.
And so this Stone Age culture decentralized strong individuals, and all these other tribes coming in. And then, as Deena said, the Treaty of Medicine Lodge, they said, well, we’re going to give you this little strip of land with access to the buffalo hunting range. And in 19, or 1867, you still had the buffalo on the Southern Plains. The last buffalo hunt for the Cheyenne Arapaho would not be until 1875. But they said, no, we’re going to confine you. Well, that was so alien. We thought that there is a border, beyond which we should not raid, and we should not hunt. And so that really laid a business plan for disaster, which is what we had soon after 1866 and 1867.
Thompson: Yeah. Medicine Lodge Treaty was signed in 1867. And basically it, the United States and the Indian tribes agreed to certain things, and one of those is that the Indian tribes would confine themselves to a certain area of land. And the United States promised things like food and sustenance and to help them learn how to be farmers. And of course, neither side, it didn’t really take with either side, you know, that, like you said, those warriors were still wanting to go out. They still wanted to go hunt in their traditional hunting grounds. And of course, as more settlers came in, there were more war parties that went out to confront the settlers that were moving westward. So the treaty didn’t really do any bit of good, which really sets up General Sheridan moving into western Oklahoma in 1868.
Fisher: Well, and also, what plays into that is the terrain and always the geography, and the terrain, and the weather, and everything else, because we were considered a desert and wrote that this area was a desert, uninhabitable, you know. And so, with what you were talking about with the Civil War and those treaties, you know, the trains came in, and there were five different lines coming in across the state of Oklahoma. And with that, people traveling through could see this and think this is a place that we can settle. This is good land. This is where we can do some dry farming and things like this, and it all played into all of this short, what 30, 35 years of history that just exploded, that still, you know, myth, and legend, and movies, and everything else is still talking about today as we are.
Blackburn: You know, Trait, I always like to bring history back to the personal level in individuals. And in this particular case, something that I think plays a huge role—it’s usually not depicted in movies or popular culture—and that is status of a Southern Plains warrior. Status was not gained by accumulating wealth. Today in 21st century–America, you know, we look up to Elon Musks and, you know, the people who are out there made a lot of money, created businesses, created jobs, driving the wheels. That status.
But to a Southern Plains warrior, status was your ability to protect your family, first. Then, it was your ability to go out and acquire the resources to survive, which meant that you were a good hunter. You could also raid because you had to have horses. And for 150 years, almost 200 years, one reason the Comanche and Kiowa were moving south out of the North Plains, the reason the Cheyenne and Arapaho came south, was the supply of horses coming out of Mexico, where they had been introduced by the Spaniards. And so, your ability to raid, to capture, to get back to your family, to protect your family from other raiders, your ability to fight, and to be brave, and to show that the group is more important than the individual, by either protection, or your ability on the battlefield, or your willingness to share. And so if you brought back a herd of horses, you were expected as a tribal member to share. Okay, this one’s yours, this one’s yours. And you share, and you gain status. And of course, everyone is looking for status. We historians, we want books. We want to say we did this or that or whatever it might be. So when the business community is seeking that status, we’re all seeking status one way or another. But that seeking the status as a warrior, someone who can successfully raid and be brave on the battlefield, individual action, actually worked against the tribes at the time because that impulse was still there with those young men age 14 to, you know, 40s. I have got to prove myself, even faced with insurmountable odds of the US Cavalry in this onslaught of non-Indian settlers, they still were ready to stand up as brave warriors and say, no, I’m going to defend my family and my way of life. So that intensified the conflict from the Indian point of view.
Thompson: Sure, sure. Well, we have in the spring of 1868 is when General Philip Sheridan, he relieved Major General Winfield Scott Hancock as the new commander of the Department of the Missouri. And the Department of the Missouri was actually a giant area of territory that he was responsible for. It encompassed the states of Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Colorado, and New Mexico. And so he has responsibility for “keeping the peace,” quote unquote, in this area. And he doesn’t have all the resources he needs. He was frustrated because all of Hancock’s previous efforts to try and quell the attacks by the Indian tribes out on the Plains had not been very successful. So they established Camp Supply on November 18, 1868, as a supply base for what they called a winter campaign against the American Indian tribes in the Great Southern, or the Southern Great Plains.
Fisher: A lot of the Indian raids they’re talking about, I mean, in movies, you know, it just looks like this huge, a lot of it is really when you get into it and study it, it’s small. What it is is it’s like you’re saying, you know, they may want a horse or two, they may want something to eat, you know, like cattle or something that they could find. And it’s led to this all of a sudden understanding of firepower back and a growing idea that from both sides that they had to protect each other from the other one. Whether you do Adobe Walls for the first time, which got the attention of the feds, from what I understand, the federal side of things, down to a skirmish that happened, pre-what we call the Massacre or the Battle of the Washita. You know, we refer to it as the massacre. But I do know it’s considered a battle because military personnel were killed. So, you know, you might talk about that because honestly, it just started as small bands and then just grew out of hand. And then, of course, there was raids on the settlement of people from Kansas in that area.
Blackburn: And then you understand the other side at the personal level, we’re talking about people making decisions that impact history. In this case, it’s General Sheridan, General Sherman, General Grant, who is soon-to-be president of the United States. Well, their formula for winning the Civil War was total war. Let’s not just attack the warriors on a battlefield where we say, oh, people around us are not going to suffer. Changing from that, when that was failing, United States government saying, we’re going to take out their ability to fight, we’re going to attack their towns, we’re going to burn their railroads, we’re going to confiscate their cotton crops. We’re going to make the civilians suffer. So, total war had won them. That was their mindset.
General Custer, or Colonel Custer at the time, came out of that same thing. He was this flamboyant cavalry officer fighting under Sheridan’s command who gained status, again, getting back to status, because he was willing to be very aggressive and attack and destroy. And so you apply that mentality of total war, not just on soldiers, the warriors in this case, but on the entire camps. So out of that comes that winter campaign of total war. Let’s attack. We can’t defeat the Southern Plains in open warfare because you know, when it later gets to the Apaches, an Apache warrior could run farther in one day than a cavalryman could travel on a horse. So you’re fighting these warriors who know the terrain, who are physically fit, who have plenty of horses, can strike, get away. The United States military effort was failing with confining it to the battlefield. So let’s go to total war. Let’s attack their villages in winter when they’re in camp. And some of the warriors may be off hunting, trying to provide part of what the village needs to survive. And let’s attack then. And that really is the beginning of that winter campaign of ’68. And Custer, being one of the golden boys coming out of it, who’s already been court martialed, and, you know, was already in a little bit of hot water, and they’re saying, get out there and attack. Whether you like or despise Custer, he was a brilliant military officer. He was one of those unique individuals who had that flamboyance, and the aggressive nature, and the charisma that warriors would follow him in the battle. So this sets the stage for the conflict that we have at the Washita River.
Thompson: You know, I think that’s a really good point, and that’s something that I haven’t heard brought out before. But, you know, you fight the Revolutionary War, you fight the War of 1812. Some of these other, there were almost a gentleman’s wars. You know, we all bring our troops to an open field, and we line up and we all fight, and then we all go back to our quarters. And the Civil War really changed all of that. It was no-holds-barred. It was total destruction. And so I think that’s a great point about what you bring out. You know, I’ve got a quote here from General Sheridan that he issued to Custer when they departed from Camp Supply for the Battle of the Washita that would ultimately end up happening. And this is the orders: “The object of this movement is to operate against hostile Indians. Should any be encountered, they’re to be attacked, their villages destroyed, and their stock killed. Should any surrender, it must be unconditional, and some of the principal chiefs and headmen should be hung. You will then conduct the remainder with women and children to Fort Cobb.” So that’s it. That’s, that’s the game right there. And you’re exactly right. They had not been successful fighting the Indian bands during the summertime when they could, when the Indians could attack and then run off. And so this was a completely new strategy that they were employing of, we’re going to attack them in the wintertime when they’re in their camps.
Fisher: And one of the sad stories that came out of this, I mean, several sad stories, but one of the major ones is always Black Kettle going down to Fort Cobb and trying to make arrangements to bring his people in because he said, you know, we have teenagers that are, you know, the dog soldiers have been talking and riling them up. And I need to bring them in. I’m hearing, you know, rumblings that there may be something happening, and he wants to come in. And he was denied access, from what I understand.
Blackburn: And Black Kettle to me is one of my heroes,
Fisher: Oh, yeah.
Blackburn: of the Southern Plains tribes. He was a peace chief, and even to this day, the Cheyenne and Arapaho have their peace chiefs, and it’s still a very strong institution within, especially Cheyenne culture, somewhat Arapaho. But Cheyenne peace chiefs go back hundreds of years, and largely the community looked up to two sets of leaders: One would be the warriors, those young guys who could go out and defend the people, get the resources to survive, and to prosper. Then the peace chiefs were there to say, no, we need peace, no constitutional government, no institutions of what we would consider government, where someone is a paid employee to do it. You had your different societies that had their own responsibilities, whether they’re in summer camp for the Sun Dance, where the dog soldiers might be able to tell people where which bands to camp here, here, and here, so much so far away from water, just for basic security. But then the peace chiefs were there for peace and reconciliation. How do we keep peace among ourselves? Because the Cheyenne and Arapaho, 150 years earlier, up on the Northern Plains, they decided if we’re going to survive as a people, we have to treat everyone as an enemy. So they fought the Utes and they fought the Paiute, they fought the Blackfeet, they fought the Kiowa. They didn’t have a treaty with the Kiowa until 1830s, and so it was a warrior society. So you get this warrior culture, and it can easily turn on itself. The peace chiefs were there to keep it from happening, to say, no, no; you two had that. You stole that man’s horse. Give it back. And they’re recognized with this authority, not by law, not by constitution, but just by their personal leadership.
And Black Kettle was one of those—those spiritual leaders who knew how to keep his people together. People trusted him that he would help protect them. And that’s part of the tragedy of Sand Creek in Colorado, when the state militia attacked his village and killed so many people, even bloodier than the Battle of Washita. And then here comes Black Kettle, who had suffered that, comes south because he’s told to go to the reservation and checks in, as Deena said. And yet the army says, nah, we can’t protect you. Your warriors have been doing this and that. You got to be punished. And here’s the orders basically saying you’re on your own. So by the time he goes back to these other bands of Cheyenne and Arapaho, and Kiowa and Comanche, who were all camped along the Washita River. This is right in the heart of their Southern Plains, you know, commissary on hoof, the buffalo. So they’re camped along the Washita River. Well, he’s pushed out on the fringes because they said no, no, you “bad juju.” Bad magic. You know, you were attacked at Sand Creek. We don’t want you among us because something’s wrong with your spirituality. So you go out on that far western side of all of these camps. Tens of thousands of tribal members camped that winter along the Washita, but Black Kettle had the bad fortune to be on the western fringe and in his own camp at a little bend. You can go to that site today, where the river kind of makes a bend around some tall buttes. And he was camped down in this valley. His herd of horses, we think 700, 800 horses would have been grazing. His people, living quietly. They would have been doing their ceremonies, tanning hides, the things that these tribal members would be doing in November of 1868.
Thompson: Yeah. I’ve got on my list here. It says 51 lodges and 300, 250 to 300 people in his camp. And, and you’re right, hundreds of horses there. So let’s get into the battle because this is a seminal event in this history that we’re talking about here, and it’s something that is now a National Battlefield out there that people can go and visit. And so late November 1868, we just heard the orders that Sheridan gives to Custer to go out. And so Custer starts marching out in late November, and they do it in a snowstorm, effectively. It is, let’s see what my notes here saying that they march out at 3 a.m., and Custer was anxious to get out into the field. And there was nearly a foot of snow on the ground. Now, I always like to, you can read that. A foot of snow on the ground. It was cold and everything, but I always like to try and put myself. Can you imagine being an infantry soldier marching through the winds of western Oklahoma? I mean, it’s cold today as we’re recording this. It’s going to be a high of 25 degrees. I walked from my car in here to the building with the wind blowing, and I had about all of it I wanted. Can you imagine walking across western Oklahoma prairie and plains in that weather?
Fisher: You know, Bob Rea and I have traveled that route from Fort Supply all the way down to Cheyenne many a time, and kind of referred to the diagrams and, you know, soldiers’ notes and things like this. There were several creeks that they had to pass and go over in that ice, in that cold. And they move pretty quick for that many people. But they had a strategy because they were already diversifying—I don’t know if that’s the correct word—or dividing the troops that he had for the perimeters of how they were going to do that. Was it a three-pronged attack or a four?
Blackburn: Yeah. Well, just preceding that, Custer relied on Osage scouts. The Osage had been working with, you know, since the 1720s with the French, then the Americans, and, you know, dominated much of Oklahoma in the late 18th century. So the Osages had been used to being, working with non-Indian people. And they were hired as scouts. They had fought during the Civil War on both sides and, known as great warriors, which they were. You can still see if you go to Inlonshka in Osage Country, you’ll see seven-footers everywhere. But the Osages were the scouts, and those scouts found the trail of a group that had just gone out for a raid or a hunt, and they were going south. They found it, and they said, let’s follow that trail. And so those Osage scouts left, and I’ll never forget, I was raising money to buy the land for the Battle of the Washita, and the Park Service said, we are not going to acquire any land. And, well, it’s willing seller only. So I had to raise the money. I was at that time deputy director here. And I had a group from New York City out in western Oklahoma. And, I’ll never forget, it was an August day. And I looked up on the ridge, says, see that ridge over there? Not quite sure exactly, but I said, you see that ridge? George Custer and those Osage scouts crept up and looked down into this valley. And those ridges over there, probably 100, 200 feet above the level of the river bottom there. And as they were coming in from the north, they looked down. They could see the horse herd, they could see the smoke coming up from the campfires from the night before. They could see the teepees, and that’s when Custer divided his force into the three prongs that Deena talked about because he wanted to surround them.
Because what they had found fighting these nomadic tribes on the Southern Plains, as well as the Northern Plains, there might be 100 Indians, but the minute that the cavalry charges and they break up into these little bands and just scatter. So knowing that, Custer said let’s surround them. So he sent one group to upriver on the Washita that’s flowing from west, almost northwest to southeast there. He says, you go that way. Another group will come around to the south. And then Custer, being the showman he was, was going to go right into the middle of the camp, and so he split those forces. And in the reports, they say Custer and his scouts could hear the bells tinkling on that on the necks of the horses, because the Southern tribes’ members would put bells on their horses to find out where they were. So if they if they wandered off, you could hear them. You can go find them. Well, they could hear those bells from that ridge at that. You know, the way you can hear things long distance on a cold day in western Oklahoma. They could hear those. And then Custer, of course, has a band, and here they charged down off of that ridge.
Thompson: Yeah. It’s, you know, getting there to that point, too, another 18 inches of snow fell the second day that they were, in fact, one of the interesting stories that I found when I was researching this is that Custer, you know, you had the supply wagons that were coming along with the troop, and Custer said that the teamsters were slowing down the progress of the army. And so, to punish them, he made them get out and walk in the snow alongside their wagons as punishment for not coming up fast enough. And I read that, and I just thought, boy, military justice, man, it’s, it’s no laughing matter.
Fisher: When they do attack Black Kettle and his wife, you know, they’re killed right off the bat, early on. They grab on their horses, and, you know, and there’s different accounts. You know, as all historians. But you know, some say he was going out to try to meet them to stop it. Others say, you know, no, he was trying to leave. What have you heard Bob on that?
Blackburn: Yeah. I think they had an American flag in the camp. And they were trying to say, no, no, we’re here. And of course, Custer was dead set on attack...
Fisher: He tried that at Sand Creek, too. The American flag and was cut down. And then, you know, these were men. The men were really not there. This was mainly women and children. So you can imagine the screams and everything else. And some that could run, and some of the Cheyenne that could run really fast, especially the young ones, you know, went quickly to try to alert the dog soldiers, you know, of what was happening. And then Major Elliott and his team.
Thompson: I’ve got a quote here from a 14-year-old Cheyenne girl who was who was recounting the attack. And I want to read it here because it’s just so, it’s so, it just really puts you in the place of where this happened. “We heard a woman say in a low voice, ‘Wake up, wake up, white men. White men are here. The soldiers are approaching our camp.’ We became frightened and did not know what to do. We arose at once. At the instant, the soldiers led out terrible yells, and there was a burst of gunfire from them. My aunt called to me, but as I started to go out with the girl whom I had stayed all night grabbed me by the arms and pulled me back, saying, ‘Don’t go out. Stay inside. The white man might see you outside and shoot you.’ My aunt called me again and told me to hurry up and come out. I became so frightened that I was trembling but went outside. Many Indians were killed during the fight. The air was full of smoke from gunfire. It was almost impossible to flee because the bullets were flying everywhere. However, somehow we ran and kept running to find a place.”
Fisher: Well. And they blared, you know, carillons that would be enough to wake anyone up as quickly as possible, as, you know, that sound of that horn going and the screams and the running, and you knew it was just a horrible, horrible, horrible scene. There is no way else to explain it. And the reason it’s not totally called a massacre, kind of like they did Sand Creek, it’s just the Massacre at Sand Creek, and it ended up being the ‘battle’ was what happened to Elliot and his group who run into the dog soldiers, you know, and you almost had a Little Bighorn right there at Cheyenne, Oklahoma.
Blackburn: Well, if Custer had stayed around another day, he probably would have died there because as the runners got to the other camps, they say we’re going to protect our people—brave warriors. So they mount, and they start coming back upriver towards the site. And Custer does stay long enough to tell the soldiers, “Kill all of those horses.” And as late as the 1930s, you can still see bones of those horses scattered through that valley. I published an article by an older gentleman who’d been there in the ’30s, took photographs of it, and wrote this story for The Chronicles on it. And so they killed all of those horses. And so just bang, bang, bang. Finally got it. They rounded up the survivors and marched north, and went back to Camp Supply.
Fisher: And they killed the horses so that, you know, they couldn’t follow them. But in the diaries of soldiers at the time. You know, the killing of the horses, they were traumatized hearing the screams, of course, of all of this. But especially, I hate to say especially when you’re talking about human life, but it’s there. These were horse soldiers, and to kill the horses like that was a tragedy.
Thompson: I have some statistics here from the end of the battle. And so there were 689 soldiers in the Seventh Cavalry. The Native Indians that were killed, according to Custer, he first said 103 and later changed that to 140. But the Cheyenne and Arapaho said it was closer to about 60. So there’s a little discrepancy there. There were 22 dead cavalry soldiers, and some which later died of their wounds at Camp Supply. There were 53 Natives captured, all women and children who were removed to Camp Supply, and then later on to Fort Hays in Kansas.
Fisher: And then moved back.
Thompson: And then came back. Yes. And then there were, so this is what we were talking, Indian ponies killed, 650 ponies killed with 225 used to move the 53 captives to Fort Supply. So, can you imagine killing 650 horses? I mean, it’s just, almost unfathomable. I mean, that’s a job. That takes a lot of work to do.
Fisher: And when I took students for over 10 years down to the Battle of the Washita, the Massacre at the Washita, and when we would go down to the site, you know, they’d say, well, what’s in the trees? You know, well, they are prayer shawls and remembrances. The people forget this is not just site of the battle. This is sacred ground. This is a burial ground. This is very, Lawrence Hart, you know, this sacred ground to the Cheyenne. I can’t tell you, when I went down there one time, we were there, and there was a hawk that kind of just in the sky, and just chills come over. I mean, it’s like when I went through Dachau in Germany. You walk through there, you can feel, if you are quiet, and you meditate, and you think, you can feel that something happened here that has stirred up all of us in our hearts, in history, that this happened to this wonderful band of Black Kettle’s people. And it’s just a horrible story. And as Chief Hart said, it’s a shared history. It’s a history we all have to learn from. I mean, people will say, you know, why historic Fort Supply, you know, you trying to keep Custer alive? Heavens, no. It’s a shared history. It’s a history that should never be forgotten.
Thompson: So I’ve been to Wounded Knee up in South Dakota on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, and it’s the same feeling. It’s a haunting presence there, and you can feel the heaviness of being at that site. And so I haven’t had a chance to visit the Battle of the Washita site yet, but I hope to soon, and you almost feel like you have to you have to meditate or to make amends for what has happened at a place like that. Oh, Bob, I would like to ask you, you know, the Washita site was an OHS site, and it is now a National Park site. Could you talk a little bit about the history of the site itself?
Blackburn: I can, and then hopefully we get to Supply here in a minute, make sure people understand the importance there. But I was an eyewitness to this. In 1993, Frank Lucas was elected to Congress from western Oklahoma. Frank is from Cheyenne, where at the time, we had the OHS was operating the Black Kettle Museum, and at one time they said Black Kettle’s skull was on display in the local newspaper office. So, that was the attitude in that town that Frank grew up in that community, of course, a rancher son. But anyway, Frank was determined to do something with that. I had become friends with Frank when he was in the legislature.
And, but anyway, we get together and say we really needed to do something, and this should be a unit of the National Park Service. And in ’92, Bill Clinton was president. He had a director of the Park Service named Roger Kennedy. Some people may remember a TV show called Roger Kennedy’s America. Great historian, writer, and philanthropist, and able to do great things. But he started the Battlefield Commission. It was a national effort to recognize battlefields across the country. What’s significant? What should we be involved with? Battle of Washita and Honey Springs both were on that list. We decided we’d go for it. Frank Lucas had the courage to really promote the bill in a Congress that soon was dominated by Newt Gingrich and a new wave of Republican leaders. But he stuck with it. And Don Nickles on the Senate side was a big supporter, but we had to acquire the site. And I’ll never forget, the Park Service people came in. We met in Dale and Betty Wesner’s home. They owned most of the land that’s now owned by the National Park Service, several hundred acres, and two homes on the site. We were in the Wesner’s living room. Well, I, asked Lawrence Hart, and the keeper of the Sacred Arrows at the time was Mr. Heap of Birds, and then the chief. And I’m sorry, I can’t remember his name, but I had them there listening to the Park Service people, what we at the state were willing to do to try to make this happen. And as we listened to the Park Service people, I said, Lawrence, can we all go outside for a minute? So we went outside, and it’s just like it happened ten minutes ago, standing by a barn, the Wesner’s barn, and I looked at Lawrence and Mr. Heap of Birds and the chief, and I said, gentlemen, it’s your choice. This moment right now. If you don’t think we should go for this, if you want to just leave these spirits alone and say this should be farm land, that’s what we’ll do, and I’ll tell the Park Service we’re not going to help. Without the state, feds won’t do this. But I said, if you want to go for this, I think we can get this through Congress. I think it can be a great memorial to the sacrifices, this cultural conflict, the idea that peace and reconciliation should always win in any, and that we’re still seeking it with tribal sovereignty, at the time. And, they says, let’s go for it. And so that moment, people making decisions that changed the course of history. When they said that, then we went all out. Randy Beutler was in the legislature, very helpful, good friend of Deena and mine, now retired president of Southwestern.
But Randy and the legislature, me at the Historical Society, we were able to raise several hundred thousand dollars to buy the land. Got some legislative support in all of that. And had the Mellon Foundation folks there on a hot August day when it was green in that valley. That valley has probably been green twice in the last 50 years. But it was that August and beautiful on a Sunday morning with a storm approaching. But we raised the money and acquired the site. And then Frank Lucas got it through the House of Representatives, and then Don Nickles got it through the State Senate, or the US Senate. And in 1995, it became a unit of the National Park Service, and we transferred all the property we owned, the property we had bought, and became the Park Service. Sarah Craighead was the first director named there. Gordon Yellowman with the Cheyenne and Arapaho Nation and I were the two historians that worked with the Park Service on how to tell the story. Went to Denver many times, Washington several times. And it took about almost 10 years. Frank was getting a little nervous because he told people, we’re going to have a new museum here soon. It took a lot longer than anyone thought, but it was a sensitive subject. How do you tell the story of Custer? How do you tell the story of a Black Kettle, when many people were dead set with their opinions? Oh, the Indians got what was coming to them. And there were people who said that at town hall meetings. Then there were those who said that Custer should be vilified and never mentioned again. So how do you tell this contentious story, where it’ll be meaningful and respectful, but that allow us to take that story and bring it into modern times connecting the dots.
So, Gordon Yellowman and I did what we could, but the Park Service did a great job with their studies. They had ethnohistorians. They had ethnobiologists coming to the site trying to restore the site to what it might have looked like. And as Deena said, it is one of those magical places. When I go there, it’s emotional. I gave the opening speech when it was dedicated. Jerry Rogers, deputy of the National Park Service at the time, had me come in. We had a big tent set up, and then I’ve given numerous speeches since, because Lawrence Hart went twice with me to Washington to do testimony before Congressional committees. And I really believe that Lawrence’s spirit was leading part of this effort. You know, it’s hard to say that anything was destined to be, but there was something else working in our favor because there’s so many reasons this never should have been a park, but we pulled it off. And it’s been telling this story of peace and reconciliation after people have these conflicts and their two cultures. And we see that today in American culture with the polarization in politics, with people willing to attack the US Capitol. You know, how do we get back to peace and reconciliation? It’s a story that’s relevant today, and that’s the real theme that I hope people come away with. And using this one piece of ground, this place where this one battle happened on one day, and say this is where this turning point was.
And then Fort Supply is part of that story to me, has always been linked to the story of the Battle of the Washita. The Park Service has always recognized it, As Deena said, Bob Rea, who was our site director at Fort Supply for many years, was great working with the Park Service on making these connections. Dr. Bill Lees on our staff at the time, an archaeologist, helped figure out what had happened and how to interpret the site. But I’m proud of the work I did at that, and I think it will survive for a long time. And even though a lot of people may not go there, it’s not a tourist site, in my opinion. I never looked at that as a site where there going to be a lot of tourists. We’re going to have a glitzy big museum. It’s a place for remembrance, a place that we need to because it’s part of the American fabric of our story. And if we don’t save it, and we lose it someday, we lose part of who we are. So even if it’s not a big tourist promotional thing or economic development, all these are the things you could apply to history; it’s something we’ve got to do. And we accomplished it at that one site.
Thompson: Well, I want to talk a little bit more, too, about Fort Supply. In 1878, Camp Supply gets changed to Fort Supply, and troops were stationed there, and the fort had a really important job. It was a place where Buffalo Soldiers were stationed. They had a troop out of there that was responsible for making sure that the boomers didn’t come in. And when they did come in, they were expelling the boomers. And so that fort served a critical purpose. And then in 1894, the fort was officially closed. But, Deena, talk about the importance of Fort Supply.
Fisher: I often love to say historic Fort Supply is more than Custer. It is. It is more than Custer. Custer was there, what, three and a half months? Almost four. What happened to the 53 women and children, you know? Ben Clark ends up marrying a Cheyenne. He was one of the scouts that went on that raid. What happens here is its mission keeps changing. It goes from being a place that went and sought conflict with Indians to a place that then protected the American Indians out in our region, especially with after the Red River Wars and what happened there, and then it becomes a peacekeeping for the Indian preservation and their way of life, trying to keep the boomers out. And it turns into a policeforcing role. They were our police force. And we did have the Buffalo Soldiers that were there, wonderful stories on that. We had Medal of Honor, Mr. Chapman, Amos Chapman. There’s so many stories that we can tell from this site that tells the western side of the history of this state, which I do not want to lose. The western side of the West is really important in preserving.
Thompson: Well, and there’s an important cemetery there. Correct?
Fisher: Yes. And it has, you know, we became Western State Hospital, so it has some of the patients that were there. And it also has some Cheyenne that are buried there as well as others. And it is a beautiful cemetery, and it’s one in which the Friends of Historic Fort Supply have tried to keep and maintain.
Thompson: Well, as we get ready to wrap up here, I think we should talk about the current status of Fort Supply. The Oklahoma Historical Society has maintained the historic buildings there at Fort Supply as an affiliate site, and people can go visit those buildings. The interesting thing is, and Deena mentioned it, the Western Oklahoma Hospital, which was Oklahoma’s first mental health facility, used those buildings there from that were left when the fort closed in 1894, and then eventually the William S. Key Correctional Facility came in and used many of the buildings. And so the fort has been used for many things over the years. And within the last few months, the William S. Key Correctional Facility has been closed. And so now we’ve been working together to try to get the land so that OHS can protect that historic part of the fort, and then look at what we’re going to do with that in the future. And Deena and I have been working on that together, and we’re still working on that. And we have great legislative support to make sure that we preserve that area. But we have challenges. You know, we have financial challenges. We have personnel challenges, and we’re working through those.
Fisher: Financial challenges.
Thompson: Yes, and that’s always one of the biggest ones we have. But, Deena, where can people go to find out more information? I got great information off the Historic Fort Supply Facebook page. Can you tell them where people can go to learn more about the fort, and if they want to go see it for themselves? How would they do that?
Fisher: Well, you do it through Plains Indian and Pioneer Museum in Woodward, Oklahoma. You contact them, and we will give you a personal tour through the Fort Supply, the five remaining buildings from the 1870s. And we’ll also tell the story, and we’ll tell you about, you know, the railroad wars with Enid where Fort Supply helped protect and helped with that fight between Pond Creek and Enid. Then we also tell about the opening of the Cherokee Outlet, where again, Fort Supply troops were again used in a police force. We’ll go back and tell you about Amos Chapman. We will walk you through Western history and what happened. And yes, we will tell you about Custer and where he was located. And we will go through the whole five buildings and give you a tour. And when you get through, we want you to have a sense of how important this site was to the railroad wars, the Western Trail, the cattle trails that came through, as well as what happened at the Battle of the Washita, which we call the Massacre at the Washita. And none of this should be forgotten. All of this should be remembered because there’s lessons to be learned. We’re still trying to decide when we fight, you know, those that want peace and those that want war. And we’re still deciding what is that line? What have we learned? And can we learn from the past to not stay in the past? No one wants to stay in the past, but instead, what lessons was learned so that we can have a better future? And it’s complex issues that takes analysis and understanding, and then maybe we can all understand each other as human beings. And, like Chief Hart said, we all have a shared history, and we all have an important role to play.
Thompson: Yes, Bob, any parting comments?
Blackburn: Yes, please. Deena, well said. I agree with everything. But I cannot talk about Fort Supply without talking about a person who was a mentor to both Dr. Fisher and I, and that’s Dr. John Carmichael. And I always like to talk about people making history. Nothing is inevitable. We would not be here today talking about Fort Supply without Dr. John Carmichael, raised in eastern Oklahoma, a native of Henryetta, ended up as a dentist. Served during World War II, honorably, married a girl from Harper County, and they had a place, and a community leader there. And Dr. John, although not a trained historian, was an avocational historian. And I once called him, he knew everything about Fort Supply. I one day jokingly said, John you’re really a post-hole historian. You know everything there is about one subject. Well, he put that on a card and had an artist do a rendering of post-hole historian. But Dr. John is one who went to Senator, at that time, Senator Tim Leonard, later federal judge Tim Leonard, he was a the senator from that district. And they put into statutes that the OHS had some responsibility for those historic buildings. Without that, my guess they would have been torn down years ago. Dr. John could put pressure on the corrections department. He had the ability politically to keep them from doing that, and then kept us encouraged. People like Deena and I both got our tour from John, and he raised the resources to build the reproduction stockade. You can see a stockade very similar to the original size of the stockade that Custer’s men built out of cottonwood logs. They’re cedar logs now, just because we had a lot of cedars we wanted to cut down. But Dr. John was critical in this. And every time I think of Fort Supply, and I know one reason Deena so emotionally attached, is that she and I both owe so much to Dr. John Carmichael for being a mentor, the kind of person who makes a difference in our community’s history. So Dr. John’s story is very much wrapped up in all of this.
Fisher: And I don’t know if we have time, but how I met him, I was the brand new history teacher coming from teaching at Southwestern Oklahoma State University. And I was going to take this role as running the Northwestern Oklahoma State University’s adult ed program, as well as teaching in the high school and doing concurrent enrollment. So when I came to Woodward, I’d never been to Woodward. I really hadn’t. And so I went out to the Fort Supply and was walking through there in short shorts and a tank top and looking at all the, well, the quartermaster’s roll. And all of a sudden two people drive up real fast and come in and say, what are you doing? And this was 1989. I said, well, I’m here looking at what’s known as Custer’s house, even though Custer never was there. And they said—I’m a new history teacher. And they said, well, you don’t look like any history teacher we ever had.
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Fisher: I never will forget that line. I cracked up, and so they said, well, look behind you. And I looked, and there was a prison, and I hadn’t noticed. I hadn’t even looked. I’ve been looking at all of historic Fort Supply. And I turned around I said, am I in trouble? And they said, give us a name. I didn’t know anyone but the superintendent. Well, they couldn’t get a hold of him. So they called Dr. John, and he drives up, and you know, that hat and his outfit and the, what is it?
Blackburn: The bolo tie?
Fisher: Yes, that he always wore.
Blackburn: And his Osage hat band.
Fisher: Yes, all of it. And he said, who are you? And I explained, and we were fast friends ever since, and I absolutely loved him and admired him and admired the fact that he not only loved history, he wanted to share it with everyone. And he loved our part of the state. And I got that all from this friendship with this man.
Thompson: Well, Deena, thank you so much for being our guest on the podcast today. It’s been a pleasure to have you here with us.
Fisher: Thank you so much. And Bob, I always learn something every time we get together to do these podcasts, and it’s one of the things I look forward to most in our months when we get to do these. And so thank you again for all of your, sharing all of your knowledge with us as well. And folks, we’ll be back with you next month and hope you have a great week.
You’ve been listening to A Very OK Podcast, hosted by Trait Thompson and Bob Blackburn. The podcast is produced by Ryan Green. I encourage you to go out and like us and subscribe to us on whatever podcast app that you use, and please rate us. And if you liked what you heard today, please go recommend us to a friend. We’ll see you next month for our next episode.
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