A Very OK Podcast
Episode 48: “The 1834 Dodge-Leavenworth Expedition”
June 24, 2025
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. Bob, it’s great to see you again, having some summer fun out there. I hope you are doing well.
Dr. Bob Blackburn: Well, good to see you as well, Trait. It’s been the most unusual spring that I ever remember. I’m growing webbed feet with all of the the rain that we’ve been getting, so that’s one adaptation. But I’m just loving everything is green. I haven’t had to turn on the irrigation system and having to mow about every three days, but other than that, I’m just loving this spring we’ve had.
Thompson: That’s exactly right. I read something the other day that said that all of Oklahoma is out of drought for the first time in over five years, and this was the exact wrong time for my mower blade to break. And so I’m waiting for my new mower blade to come. So I may have to go away from the mower and just get a hay baler for my yard.
Blackburn: I’ve got a scythe I’ll loan you.
Thompson: Okay!
Blackburn: Yoo get out there and do it the old fashioned way.
Thompson: That’s, I’m sure some of our historical interpreters have something they could, you know, we could put on a little clinic about how those work. But, yeah, it’s been a very wet spring here in Oklahoma for sure. And, I, I had a lot of fun recently. I took my daughter camping out at Black Mesa for the first time. And boy, did we have a great time out there. We went and we did some exploration. We, of course, we hiked to the top of Black Mesa. We went and found the monument where the three states meet, Oklahoma, Colorado, and New Mexico. And my daughter had a lot of fun going, you know, hey, I’m in Oklahoma, I’m in New Mexico. You know, and then, we went out to Autograph Rock, which is that stop on the Santa Fe Trail where everyone stopped and they carved their name into the sandstone cliffs. And that was just really fascinating to see all those names and dates like 1858, 1865. And just to think of all those people that stopped there. So we’ve had some fun so far this summer and looking forward to some more.
Blackburn: Well, one of my great memories of the Panhandle is that I’ve been to all those places, and I always enjoy going to the Panhandle. You know, a lot of people complain oh that’s so far, but it’s a different world out there. The culture is so unique. I love going to the Panhandle. We had a little museum in Goodwell that we were operating trying to change it. I was working with a couple of families out there and the president of the university, but I had a chance to go out and see, camp Kit Carson on the Santa Fe Trail.
Thompson: Yeah.
Blackburn: He had, actually at Camp Nichols, I said Kit Carson. Kit Carson established Camp Nichols. But the foundations were just perfect. And it was a cold November day, so I was out of the car for not very long because it can get cold up there. But I got to go out to the side with the rancher who is leasing the land at that, actually owned that land, leased land around it. But but, it was established during the Civil War to help keep peace on the Santa Fe Trail, but it was so distinct. And it’s right on top of a ridge. You can see almost four different directions perfectly from this knoll. And you can see why Kit Carson established it right there. It didn’t last long, but it was so distinctive, and I, I tried to get it as a state property. And the rancher wanted like ten quarter sections of school land for that one, you know, measly, you know, 40 acres. And we couldn’t make that work, of course. I’ll never forget seeing that side of the Panhandle.
Thompson: Well, it’s interesting you mention that because I stopped at our historical marker that’s out there right before you get to Black Mesa State Park that mentions Camp Nichols. And, I keep a running list in my phone of future podcast topics. And so I wrote that down, Kit Carson and Camp Nichols and possibly throw in the Santa Fe Trail there as a future podcast topic. So I think someday maybe we’ll get to that one. I only have about maybe 100 or 200 topics in, in my phone, so, we’ll get there someday, right? One of the things I tell people about our podcast is we’re never going to run out of things to talk about.
Blackburn: Never. Well, Bob, I’m really excited about our topic today because we’re going to be talking about a seminal event not only in Oklahoma history and the history of Indian Territory, but in American history. And that is the 1834 Dodge-Leavenworth Expedition. And I want to bring in our special guest today. Correy Twilley is the director of the US Army Air Defense Artillery Training Support Facility at Fort Sill. In his current position, he uses history to influence the battlefield of the future by overlaying current geopolitical events with what has happened in the past. He’s a former OHS employee. He was a historical interpreter at Fort Gibson from 2010 to 2014. He’s been working there at Fort Sill since 2014. He has a master’s degree in public history from Norwich University and a bachelor’s in military history from Rogers State University. And I know, Bob, you’ve done a lot of work there at the Military Museum at Rogers State. But Correy, welcome into the podcast. We are so thrilled to have you with us today.
Correy Twilley: Well, thanks. It’s good to be here. It’s good to get out of the office and let your eyes adjust to sunlight every now and then.
Thompson: Well, and you were telling me, as we were trying to schedule this podcast, that you’ve been pretty busy late with an important anniversary.
Twilley: Right. So, of course, the army 250th anniversary was, this week or this last week, and, man, there’s a lot, a lot of stuff going on nationwide. So, of course, we had the big national parade, which a lot of us ended up writing the script for each of the vehicles and things like that. So, had a lot going on this last week.
Thompson: Yeah, and I think people would be really interested to know a little bit more about your job, because I had the pleasure of coming down there to Fort Sill. It’s probably been about two years ago now. And you gave me a tour through your facility, which you were still in the process of finalizing. Maybe you still are. Maybe it’s one of those projects that’s never done. But, I just found it incredibly fascinating, the work that you were doing. And I think, I think our folks would be interested in hearing about that.
Twilley: Right. So the army operates a series of museums now, we, we operate, we operate more museums throughout the world than all of the other branches combined. So we operate a series of field museums, but we also operate, four of these training support facilities. And it’s a brand new concept in the army. So the training support facility isn’t open to the public. So it is strictly there for soldier training and to assist with research and development of new weapons and tactics based on the stuff that we’ve learned throughout history. In essence, that whole “those who don’t study history are doomed to repeat it. And those that do study history are doomed to watch other people that don’t study history.” So, so it’s our job to make sure that, that we’re studying that history. So, we offer a very unique perspective, to this stuff. And since we’re air defense artillery–centric, we specifically focus on the air defense weapons. So the majority of my mission is to teach the soldiers that are coming in, the evolution of air defense systems and tactics. But then we have a whole other mission mindset that’s more big army oriented.
Thompson: Well, that’s pretty fascinating. And it’s not so much teaching them how each of those systems works as much as teaching them the evolution and maybe the strategy behind it, so to speak.
Twilley: There’s there’s that aspect of it. Okay. And think about, remember the old school professor that still uses, you know, the transparencies, you know, on the overhead projector. So you have all the current geopolitical events that are going on right now. And imagine overlaying a transparency of all of the historic events that have happened in the past and looking for things that line up between those two. And so we look for those commonalities, and then we advise the army, hey, we’ve tried this before, and this either did or didn’t work. So what if we try this instead. And so it’s a, it’s a whole other mindset of using history to influence the future.
Thompson: That’s pretty fascinating. Well I have to say your, your facility was very, very impressive. And in addition to doing this, you know, how I’ve gotten to know you is you’ve been a volunteer at many of our educational events and living history events over the last few years. And you’ve been doing a long, long time. Of course, I’ve just been here a few years, but, seeing how you come out and portray different eras of American history in the American Army and then, you know, working with our students and our adults to help them understand a little bit more about that history. I always love to see you at our museums and sites, and I appreciate the work that you do there as well.
Twilley: Well, thank you, thank you. I love, I love supporting the OHS, and especially the field museums and everything getting out and, you know, getting dirty a little bit and and teaching and teaching more than just what we teach.
Thompson: So, folks, you’ll never know when, if you come out to, Honey Springs Battlefield or Fort Gibson or Fort Supply. Fort Supply, we’re working to get that one back open, but, Fort Towson, you never know if you’re going to see Correy at an event there. And, you’ve, even taught my kids how to do some military drumming on the battlefield when we were at Honey Springs a few years ago.
Twilley: That’s right. We had a whole class on army field music and communication in the 19th century. That was a lot of fun.
Thompson: That’s right. Well, folks, and I’ll just, since we’re talking about it, I’ll go ahead and plug the, reenactment at Honey Springs Battlefield is coming up this November again. Hope we’ll see you out there.
Twilley: Oh, absolutely. I’ll be there.
Blackburn: Correy, You may have been a reenactor when we still did that in July.
Twilley: I remember that.
Blackburn: Especially that first one when I was in charge of it. And, Richard Ryan, one of your former colleagues, we were all out there trying to take a barbed wire and get that ready. And then on July, I think it was 17th, the actual date of the anniversary, and it was at 105 degrees. And during the reenactment, some of the reenactors had strung copper wire out on to the battlefield. So when you see a cannon firing up over there, you can see dirt fly up over here. Well, they kept catching the prairie on fire. We had to stop that first reenactment about five times. Finally, we said the reenactors don’t fire any more of those charges. They had them charged. They wanted to use all of them, and, but that was quite an experience. And thank you. We’ve come a long way since then with our reenactments. Educational school days were my favorites. When the school kids come in and you all give them that training and let them see a little bit of living history coming alive.
Twilley: That’s exactly, and that’s why we do this. I mean, otherwise we’re a bunch of grown ups playing dress up. But I mean, like when we’re out there with an educational mission and we’re actually teaching these kids, you know, here’s what here’s what really happened, it brings, it brings history to a whole new light when you can see it.
Thompson: Well, let’s dive into our topic for today. And 191 years ago, in 1834, June of 1834, there was a very special expedition that was sent out from Fort Gibson. And it was really the first of its kind that the army had endeavored to put together. And this was going to be an expedition that was led by, by a General Leavenworth and Colonel Henry Dodge to go out to, to take a group of dragoons, which is also a new kind of soldier that would go from Fort Gibson. They would march roughly west or southwest, and their mission was to try to make contact with the Plains Indians tribes and to, to negotiate peace, so to speak, so that we could be preemptive. Of course, Western, Western movement was going on with white settlement, and this was an effort to, to go ahead and to try to make peace with some of these Western tribes, like the Wichitas, the Comanches, the Kiowas, and I’m sure anyone else that they happened to encounter out there. And, this was something that had not been attempted by the United States government in the War Department before. And this was something special. But, you know, Bob, in 1834, you know, Fort Gibson had been established about ten years before, but much of Indian Territory was still pretty, pretty unexplored, and there was, especially west of the Cross Timbers, there wasn’t a whole lot of of white folks that had gone out that direction and made contact, other than what we’ve talked about with the Santa Fe Trail previously. So, you know, this was, uncharted territory.
Blackburn: Yeah. And and to really understand the military side of this, you need to understand America’s goals on Western settlement. And there were really two ways that the that Congress and the president and the American people wanted to deal with Indians. One was through trade, starting with Lewis and Clark and then Zebulon Pike, up Arkansas and the Red River. It was that part of it was, let’s trade with these American Indians. Let’s draw them in to the American empire. So let’s pull them away from trading with the Spanish in Santa Fe or in Texas. Let’s pull them away from dealing with the French. Let’s pull them away from the British in the far northwest. Well, part of it was, let’s establish these trade relationships. And in 1834, you kind of can triangulate this, is that you had American traders in St. Louis to the north, American traders out of New Orleans to the south, of course all coming up the river, the Arkansas Post. And then in the far west, you had Bent’s Fort as early as 1833, which was a place on the High Plains where the Southern Plains Indians could trade. And they were trading horses and mules, of course, furs, but also slaves and, they had this. So the American government says, yeah, we want to trade with you, so be good allies of America. Quit warring on your fellow Indians, which went against their grain. They didn’t want to stop that. That was why they got honor and the way they made a name for themselves to go out and attacking, leading a raid, stealing horses, counting coup, whatever it might be. But the other thing, other place that Congress and the United States put the army in a tough position to say, get out there and show them force. If they don’t behave, if they don’t become good little Americans and find a way to work within our system, you’ll punish them and we will attack their villages, and we will we will take retribution on their women and children as well as the warriors. And so the army was put into this tough position, underfunded, of course. The military usually has been over the century, a couple of centuries, but, especially after the War of 1812, Congress doesn’t want to have a large military. And not again until you get to the Mexican War in 1846 does it start growing again. So in the ’30s, you have this unusual situation with a few soldiers in the American West. You have the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Department of Interior trying to use trade to lure the Indians into being friends, but then saying if you don’t want to be allies, we have another way to deal with you. And then it was a matter of learning what was out there. People need to remember, too, at this time, south of the Red River was the New Spain, in Mexico after 1820. So that was the international border. And even though there were Americans moving in to south central Texas, Sam Houston and that generation beginning to settle, west Texas was still pretty much Comancheria. That’s where the Comanches and the other Plains Indians dominated. Then to the west of that would have been the garrisons the Mexican garrisons in Santa Fe and Taos, kind of in that area. And then the Indian Territory went all the way from the Red River on the south, all the way up to the Canadian border. So you get settlement to the east of us, people moving into Arkansas at this time, like where my family comes from in Howard County, Arkansas, southwest, the first generations of settlers trying to move that far west. And that’s only about 60 miles west of Broken Bow, is that they were beginning to come in in the 1840s and ’50s. And so you already get settlers moving in past the Mississippi River, Missouri, Arkansas are being settled, east Texas. And so here’s the military trying to to tame these these Plains Indians who are very mobile, who are not going to stand and fight. They’re going to, you know, if they see troops coming, they’re going to get away. And they’ve got their warriors and their societies, and they can kind of track what the soldiers are doing. So there are many pitched battles and it’s it’s a war of attrition. And these Indians learn if they just get away and they’re mobile, mobility with their camps, they can wear down the troops and not have to really deal with them. So you get this international intrigue, you get the settlers coming west, moving into the lands of the Plains Indians. And then you got the Indian tribes kind of in between. The Osages coming out of Missouri have more than 100 years of working with the French. They’re well armed, very mobile, very aggressive,
Thompson: Fierce warriors
Blackburn: Fierce warriors. And they’re attacking the Comanches and their allies, the Wichita. And, most of the tribes don’t want to really fight the Osages, because they’re such fierce when they’re so well armed and numerous. And so here on the Southern Plains, southern part, the Comanches and their allies, the Wichitas, the Kiowas, an ally with the Comanches. And you get the Cheyenne, the Southern Cheyenne that is split off from the Northern Cheyenne. And about this time in the 1820s and ’30s. And the Cheyenne sacred medicine bundle had all come south with the Southern Cheyenne. Bent’s Fort is their real connection. But between the North Platte and the Arkansas River is their domain. South of the Arkansas is pretty much the Comanches and Kiowas and, they’re they’re really controlling the area. And the military can’t go toe to toe with them. So how do they do this? Well, when you get into exploration, you try to go out and counsel with them and try to lure them in with trade and and with treaties. So generally, the Indians don’t really understand the implications of those treaties.
Thompson: And we never really kept our word.
Blackburn: Exactly. And so you get this combustible time period when everything is changing and that leads to this expedition. Go out and deal with the Indians, find out what you can, where they are, who they are trading with, what they’re looking for, and see what we can do to make things better.
Thompson: Correy, when we watch a Western movie today, if we see the army, we, soldiers in the West, it’s typically horse soldiers. It’s typically cavalry. And I think that’s the image that people have in their minds. But it might be surprising for some people to know that when Fort Gibson was established, it was all infantry soldiers.
Twilley: Right.
Thompson: And so this idea of putting soldiers on horseback in the western part of the, or the southwestern part of the US at that time was pretty new. So let’s talk about the establishment of the dragoon, the First Dragoon Regiment, established by Congress in 1833. How do they get their start? Where do they get their start? What is their mission?
Twilley: So you have to you have to look at what had been transpiring, just like what we’ve been looking at and trying to make contact with these tribes. Most of these tribes are highly mobile and the majority of your firepower is going to come from infantry soldiers. The problem is, is your infantry is not nearly as mobile because they’re not mounted. So you need a almost a mounted infantry style unit, almost a special forces style unit that can move in quickly with the speed of cavalry, but have the armament of infantry. And so you see Congress beginning to to mull this around based on concepts that have been around since really the revolution and before really with the dragoon concept. So you see them begin to establish the regiment of dragoons there at Jefferson Barracks. The the problem is, is when they first start to establish, Congress doesn’t make many, they don’t leave a lot of leeway for equipping them in the very beginning. So when they start to form up, they form up entirely without horses. It takes them a while to get the horses. In fact, they deploy to Fort Gibson. The majority of them don’t even have horses by the time they move to Fort Gibson. They’re, they’re infantry soldiers. They’re, if you look at their armaments that they’re using, I mean, they’re still wearing civilian clothing. They don’t have their uniforms yet, and they get there and they’re using old antiquated weapons systems, and they kind of become a joke at the very beginning. And it’s not until they really start to receive that equipment and the training that they need to operate that equipment, that they become that fighting force.
Blackburn: Correy explain a little bit, too, about what are the primary weapons that would have been used by the dragoons or even infantry? Because really, the as you say, a this is a way to get the infantry fast to a spot where they get off and have mass firepower because of the single shot weapons. What were some of the weapons that they would have been carrying when they finally start the expedition?
Twilley: So, so early on we see they’re, they’re being issued, you know, like I said, old things that, that they can’t load on horseback. And that’s the problem. So with a standard infantry musket, it’s so long, it’s it’s very difficult to load and discharge that weapon on horseback. So in essence, what happens is, they begin to receive these new breech loading carbines, the Hall carbine, and there’s several different contracts, that the army produces these, or that produces these, these Hall carbines for the army. They have a lot of a lot of difficulties in the very beginning there. They’re one of the contract models, has a, has a propensity to, to explode when it’s, when it’s fired. Now, if you’ve ever seen the Hall carbine up close, it has a massive flaw in its design anyway. So the way it loads, see if we can describe this. The the top of the, in essence, what’s the receiver, pops up and you take the entire cartridge and you place it in from the from the back end, then you close it, but there’s a small, about a 16th of an inch gap in between the back of the receiver and where you put that round in. So when you pull that trigger and, and it eventually discharges the weapon, the first thing that that soldier sees is a wall of flame right in front of their face, and it discharges up to the front and out to the sides. So it creates a, a wall of flame and smoke right in front of the the soldier. They have to make a few, a few changes, small changes to the models that they’re being issued. But eventually when they go out to the field, the majority of them are carrying the the Hall carbine.
Blackburn: And they’re shorter.
Twilley: Yes, quite a bit shorter to make it a lot easier to handle on horseback. But it gives them that, the, the higher caliber round that they need with a quick loading round as opposed to the standard carbines that were out at the time.
Thompson: Would they have had pistols?
Twilley: Yes. We know they had pistols as well. As far as the make and model, I don’t I can’t recall which ones they had, but, we have several examples. In fact, in the Fort Sill collection, we have one of the original dragoon saddles, still has the original pistol panels on it. And so you can actually see how those were stored.
Thompson: That’s fascinating. Now, you were telling me before we started this that the uniforms, we had a little trouble. Not only did they not have horses, but we had some trouble with the uniforms, too.
Twilley: Right. So so one of the stories that comes out, and it’s documented several times, and, and Dr. Agnew actually mentions that at one point. But what happens is the they finally get the uniforms tailored by the contractor that Congress hires. They load them up onto a steamship. It ends up coming down the Mississippi River, coming up the Arkansas River. And at some point, we know it hits a snag. And the boat actually ends up sinking. It stays submerged, we believe about about a month or so. And then the, the dragoons are actually tasked with going out and salvaging those uniforms off of the boat. They get them out, leave them in the boxes, take them back to Fort Gibson, and then they issue them out. Well, by that point, these these uniforms have all become moldy and mildewy and everything else. So the very first uniforms they get just are are pieces of junk by the time they get them. And so they, you know, they still end up getting these uniforms, they end up getting the, the new approved headgear, which is the, you know, the hog killer, which is, as Catlin himself described it, the uniform itself was more suited to comic opera than life on the Plains.
Thompson: Yeah, these things were pretty ostentatious. If you, they were colorful. The hats, if I recall correctly, they’re kind of tall. They have a, you know, like a ball on them or something. And, they are, I always wondered, you know, the first things if, our Native Americans saw, were they scared or did they just laugh? You know?
Twilley: It kind of makes you wonder. Personally, you know, if I would have seen that riding towards me, I don’t know that I could have taken them seriously.
Thompson: I want to talk about Henry Dodge because he was born in 1782 in Kentucky. He moved to Missouri in 1796. He became he became a, he served in the Missouri militia during the War of 1812. He was later in the Blackhawk War of 1832, and then went on to command the dragoons, and, of course, then went on to a career in politics, eventually served as the governor of Wisconsin later on in the 1840s, and the US senator from Wisconsin. But, he was put in command of this dragoon unit, and he said that he wanted to select these dragoon officers by taking part from the regular army who understand the first principles of their profession and uniting them with Ranger officers who understand the woods service. So he was trying to create a new type of soldier here.
Twilley: And that’s why I kind of liken them to the special forces as you’re taking, you know, from the Ranger expedition, you’re taking the best of those guys, mixing them with the best of the soldiers that we can provide and trying to create this, this, like you said, a frontier fighting force.
Thompson: So by October of 1833, they finally get their horses. They they march, they come down from St. Louis, they go to Fort Gibson, only about half of them at that time. There was half that still didn’t have all their provisions, so they were left in St. Louis. By November, then by November, they get to Fort Gibson. It is a very cold winter at Fort Gibson, getting all the way down to as much as -12 degrees, or 12 degrees below zero. They actually had to build their camp and build their stables for their horses at Fort Gibson. We’ve talked before about how Fort Gibson, even ten years after it had been established, was not much to look at in terms of being a firmly established fort. And, they begin their training sessions. General Leavenworth is, he is assigned to be the commander of the Southwestern Theater in the army. He he replaces General Arbuckle, who, for reasons we’ll talk about later, General Arbuckle will come back into that role, a little bit later down the line. And then we are getting ready to march out. Sam Houston says, who is around Fort Gibson at that time, Sam Houston is very, very suspicious of this mission. He thinks that the display of force is going to be a detriment to the United States Army and to United States mission. He says the display of force on the prairies would unite all the Indians that inhabit them and overwhelm it all at once. So he actually said, you should really just get a small party of frontiersmen and go out and try and make contacts so you’re not trying to have this big show of force.
Blackburn: Well, that’s what Thomas Jefferson had done with Lewis and Clark. He tried to keep it small. Ended up being about 40 or 50 men, but not too big to be threatening. And that was very common because once the warriors saw a threat to their women and children and old folks, that’s when they would get, get anxious and be at high tensions. The people would move away. It was disruptive. And, no, he was he was right about that.
Thompson: So one of the things that I think this is, if you’re if you’re a soldier on the frontier, I think you’re thinking action and adventure. But more often than not, your life was pretty much drudgery and it was hard. And so one of the first things that they actually have to do when they get to Fort Gibson is not, you know, military training drills. But guess what? You’re going to be building roads and they’re going to be building roads, to the Arkansas River, from the Cimarron to the mouth of the Little River on the Canadian River, north–south roads to connect Fort Towson to the Washita River. So that’s what you’re going to be doing. And then, Correy, one of the things that he does is he establishes, he knows the the general route they want to take, and so he wants to be prepared when they, to basically have some bit of civilization, some food, some ammunition, and some of the provisions that they would need as they’re making their way on this journey. So he establishes three camps: Camp Arbuckle at the junction of the Cimarron River and the Arkansas River, Camp Holmes at the Little River, and the Canadian River in Camp Washita on the mouth of the Washita River, which is actually underneath Lake Texoma right now. So, you know, talk a little bit about this preparation and getting ready to go.
Twilley: And, you know, that that vital infrastructure that, that they’re creating with those roads. You know, first of all, for as far as you can build those roads, that gives you at least, it gives you an improved surface to, to move on quickly. It allows you to move a lot faster on that first leg, as you move over those roads and, and it gives you the logistics, you know. An armchair historian will study the tactics. A true historian will study the logistics behind anything, because it’s logistics that will win that battle or or lose it. And so he’s setting up those logistics hubs to allow them to resupply. And that actually comes into play later on because they need a lot more logistics than what they realize.
Thompson: Well, you got 500 people, 500 soldiers that are going to be marching out. And also you have civilians along the way. And I want to mention, that as well, because you mentioned Catlin, and that’s George Catlin, who was an artist. And, he made numerous expeditions out in the 1830s to sketch and to draw the Plains Tribes and the landscapes out in the western United States. Joseph Chadwick, who was a St. Louis merchant and trader. He was hoping to, as Bob, as you mentioned, establish trading posts with the Indians they would be making contact with. And Count Beyrick, a German botany professor, with his assistant that would be collecting flora and fauna in this new place that they were exploring. So it wasn’t just going to be soldiers. And also there would be Indians along the way. They did have some Osages and some Senecas who would be helping them in terms of scouting out, looking for water, looking to hunt game, who would be helping them along the way.
Twilley: You know, you mentioned the botanist and this is a question I get a lot, is botany of all things. Why? Why are we studying flowers on the way on the way out to a major action like this. And when you, you have to look at it from a logistics mindset. Now, if you are moving a large force, you know, this is Napoleonic tactics throughout the 19th century. And Napoleonic tactics were, basically as you had an army on the move, it was a foraging army. And so to know what kind of flora and fauna were in a region were absolutely critical to establishing a supply line in that region, because you didn’t take your entire, your entire set of, of food and everything that you needed for the entire expedition. You actually had to go out and hunt and things like that. So to have a botanist with you, that could tell you, okay, well, these plants are medicinal. These plants indicate there’s a water table here. You know, to know that is almost a secondary roadmap that you can use in the future.
Thompson: Yeah. Can you talk a little bit more about the I mean, just think the water that you’re going to need, you’re going to be, you know, crossing rivers. I mean this is a hard trip.
Twilley: It is, it is. And it’s why it goes the way it does, honestly. And, the water is one of the biggest critical pieces of the puzzle that really gets overlooked. And and we’ll get into that here in a little bit.
Thompson: Yeah. Absolutely, absolutely. So, June 15, 1834, 500 officers and men, they embark on their journey. Their column is a mile in length. But even before it gets started, we’ve got problems. And Bob, Fort Gibson was known for, being one of, the places, the most sickliest fort in the western United States. People got sick up there all the time. It’s why they moved the fort in the 1840s up the hill, you know, a quarter of a mile or so to get it away from the river. But sickness is going to plague this journey all along the way.
Blackburn: Well, many more soldiers died of disease in the 19th century than of bullet wounds. But, the, when the fort was established in 1824, they had it within probably a quarter mile of the river, and it was malarial and mosquitoes would have just been all over everyone. And malaria was very much a part of frontier life for everyone. And, and then you have poor sanitary conditions and people getting diseases from that, and cholera would spread through camps so quickly. And, it was a real problem. And of course, medicine was very rudimentary. It wasn’t much different than it had been for centuries. And so it really before the age of discovering diseases, you know, that pass by germs. No one even thought of that. They still thought that malaria was caused by vapors rather than mosquitoes. They didn’t know what was happening. They just knew that people were getting sick and dying.
Twilley: You know, there’s a reason that, early on, you know, the death rates at Fort Gibson caused it to earn the nickname the “charnel of the west.” It was the place the army went to die. And it was it was known far and wide you did not want to get sent to Fort Gibson.
Thompson: Yeah. It’s a good reputation to be known.
Twilley: Right?
Thompson: So with that, we’re going to take a quick break and we’ll be right back.
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Thompson: Okay. We’re back. So, our our intrepid group of soldiers is heading southwest, southwest from Fort Gibson, and they are making their way to the Plains Indians. And, one of the things that they have trouble with along the way is water. And, one of the Company G sergeants remarked, “we would travel whole days at a time without coming to any water at all. And what we occasionally came to was the worst kind, the top all covered with green slime, perfectly muddy and unfit for use by man or horse.” And so, as you mentioned before, Correy, this was this was a problem. It seems like this was a dry spring because they weren’t coming onto a lot of useful water that they could use along their trip.
Twilley: Absolutely. And there’s there’s another account from one of the soldiers he talks about by the time they made it to the Cross Timbers they’re moving through the Cross Timbers, and the soldiers are reaching up and they’re grabbing handfuls of muscadine grapes. And and the grapes are apparently past their prime because, you know, he’s talking about they’re just engorging themselves on these grapes, just trying to get water from them. But he says they’re starting to suffer from the effects of actually getting drunk from the grapes. They’re, they’re just eating so many of them.
Thompson: Yeah, and, I mean, you eat enough grapes and other things start happening.
Twilley: Right?
Thompson: You know that, make life a little bit rough, too. I won’t go into it, but you all know what it is. So, but yeah, we start having trouble. By the time they get to the camp on the Canadian River, they have 27 men that are ill that they have to leave behind. And this is just a continual, this is a continual issue on this whole trip about people just continuing to get sick. Now, 12 days out on the trip, General Leavenworth, Colonel Dodge, and about 40 soldiers left the regiment under the command of Colonel Kearney and proceeded to Camp Washita. All this was at the mouth of the Washita River. And, the rest of the regiment would follow behind at a slower pace. But this is a seminal time in this journey, too, because, while Leavenworth wasn’t the commander of the dragoon regiment, he was the commander of basically the whole army at this particular time. And he’s along on this journey, and he decides he’s going to do something maybe a little foolish, but, I mean, who amongst us wouldn’t do it if we had the opportunity? He wants to chase a buffalo. And I’m reminded of that scene in “Lonesome Dove” where Gus decides that he wants to chase buffalo. And Pea Eye says, why do you want to do that? And he’s like, because pretty soon there’s not going to be any buffalo to chase. And he wants to do it for fun. And, he does it, but he ends up getting hurt. He gets thrown off of his horse and he develops a fever and a cough, and things are looking pretty rough for General Leavenworth.
Twilley: Yeah. So I have a theory on this one, and it’s, it’s, you know, when you when you look at the injuries. Now, of course I’m not, you know, a medical, person by any stretch. But, you know, my theory is, is when he gets, he gets thrown off, he he describes a pain in his side. And and my theory is, is that he more than likely, probably broke a rib. And what he describes and what they describe his symptoms are something very similar to having a punctured lung from that, from that broken rib. And, that’s kind of what my thought is because it seems as though it turns into what we now know is pneumonia and stuff like that from, from that injury.
Thompson: I think that’s probably as good a guess of any, Bob, along what may have happened to him.
Blackburn: Yeah, probably so. But, you know, the buffalo would have been a tempting target. And they were. The southern herd was in the millions at the time. And that’s why the Indians were so mobile and and so prosperous at the time is that the buffalo were really thick on the Southern Plains and maybe just too tempting for him to pass up. Well, and the Indians that were along with the regiment, they would go out and hunt the buffalo and that would be a food source for them. And another person that we’ve neglected to mention so far that was on this trip was Jefferson Davis. And Jefferson Davis would of course go on to be Secretary of War for the United States and be the president of the Confederacy. But, years later Jefferson Davis’s wife recalls that her husband said that buffalo meat was the most distasteful of all foods. She said that that expedition ruined him, he never wanted buffalo meat ever again after this, because I suppose they had to eat so much of it.
Blackburn: Well, and typically people prefer to eat, I have had buffalo tongue at the restaurant the Fort in Morrison, Colorado. They still serve buffalo tongue, and buffalo tongue is very tasty. And the hump was good, but a lot of the other muscles would have been tough. Very lean. Would have had the fat that a lot of people expected at the time, because the typical Plains warrior at the time would have been consuming from three to five pounds of of meat a day, and it was not very meaty. So it didn’t have a lot of calories and so they ate a lot of meat. But yeah, people would eat buffalo if they had to but if they could, they would just eat the tongue and a little bit of that buffalo hump.
Thompson: Well, after a while they get to Fort Washita, which, as I mentioned, was down by the Red River and the Washita River and Leavenworth is sick. And, at that point, Leavenworth kind of, he doesn’t go any farther on the trip. And actually, on July 21, 1834, he will die of his wounds. And, but this is a really interesting part of, of the journey down through here because George Catlin wrote about the landscape around at Camp Washita and he said, “we are at this place on the banks of the Red River, having Texas under our eye on the opposite bank, our encampment is on the point of the land between the Red and the false Washita rivers at their junction. And the country about us is a panorama too beautiful to be painted with a pen. It is like most of the country in these regions, composed of prairie and timber, alternating in the most delightful shapes and proportions that the eye of a connoisseur could desire. The verdure is everywhere, everywhere of the deepest green. And the plains about us are literally speckled with buffalo.” Can you imagine seeing that for the first time what that would have been like?
Twilley: That would be amazing.
Thompson: I think that, you know, making your way through this untouched ground, you know, Native Americans are the only ones who have seen this before. I just think how striking that might have been. Of course we have, we have George Catlin paintings of, you know, all along the way he’s doing sketches and drawings, and later he does paintings that are based on those. And you can tell through those paintings just how beautiful it was. And he would go on to amass a huge collection of paintings, many of which survive today and are in the Smithsonian.
Blackburn: And here in Oklahoma at the Gilcrease. In fact, years ago, probably 50 years ago, I bought some prints of some of his paintings that were in the Gilcrease collection, had them on my wall for probably 40 years. They faded so I don’t have them up now, but, yeah, they had Thomas Gilcrease was able to go out and find some of those when he was buying art with, oil money in the 1920s and ’30s.
Thompson: Something else they would find along the way is, they would find oil, seeping up through the ground at different places along the way. And, you know, at that particular point in time, nobody you couldn’t drink it, you couldn’t do anything with it. But, a little bit of a harbinger of the future for Oklahoma to see what what our future resource is going to be along those lines. They end up leaving Fort Washita or or Camp Washita and across the Washita River. They reorganize their company to six companies of 42 enlisted men each. Dodge was placed in charge, and then they continue on their way west. So they’ve gone southwest to the Red River, and now they’re they’re looking to go almost due west, although they they kind of meander in a line, to get to where they’re going. On July 9, they encounter a party of Indians that they believe to be Wichitas, and then they try to make contact with them, but they aren’t able to. Now about this time, middle of July, is when they enter into the Cross Timbers. And we talked about that lately, or just a minute ago. I don’t think, you know, in Oklahoma right now, today, Bob, we can drive across the state pretty easily on our highways and roads, and we don’t give much thought to the terrain or the landscape that we’re crossing. The Cross Timbers were formidable if you’re trying to get through them in 1834. Can you talk a little bit about how, you know, how difficult it might have been to get through that.
Blackburn: Well, the Cross Timbers was this unique environmental zone that really goes from north Texas through most of Oklahoma, up into southern Kansas. And it was stunted growth, oaks typically growing and red, the red Osage beds. And so the trees did not grow deep roots. And so they did not get very tall, and they would grow into an impenetrable barrier. Washington Irving, who came west in the 1820s, would write about it and he called it impenetrable and like an iron wall that you had to hack your way through. And it was difficult. And, it really was an impediment to, to travel east and west, and, and that’s one reason the soldiers, wanted these Indian guides, they knew how to get through some of these, these areas. If you just tried to go cross-country through the Cross Timbers, you were not going to get there. It would have been a real chore. And so you can still see some of the native Cross Timbers. Okmulgee County has probably one of the largest sections. There’s some areas there where people can get out and see this. But it was a unique formation, and if you’re familiar with Oklahoma City, on the east side of Oklahoma City is where the Cross Timbers end on the west side. And then you get into the High Plains. And Oklahoma City was established there because the railroads, when they were building north and south, did not want to have to cross through the Cross Timbers and have to hack their way through and go over the hills and valleys, just go a little bit farther beyond the Cross Timbers and build on this open land. That’s the reason the Chisholm Trail is where it is. They didn’t want to go through the Cross Timbers, and so these soldiers had to deal with that as an impediment to travel.
Thompson: Correy, talk about all of the equipment, the wagons, the animals that would have been on an expedition like this, and then trying to hack your way through the Cross Timbers.
Twilley: Yeah. So the standard expedition, I mean, you know, you have, of course, your military equipment and things like that, but you also have, of course, all your supply wagons and you have, you know, nobody likes to ever talk, you know, about the lowly cook, but, you know, you had cooks for your officers. You had, you know, you had all of their cooking equipment. Then you had the food itself, you know, in some of these expeditions, they would they would actually have herds that they would, they would call it either beef or mutton on the hoof. And they would literally drive livestock with these expeditions to keep fresh meat on hand. Not as much on this one, especially in the later stages of this, but, but, you see, like, it’s more than just a simple wagon train. Usually it’s a wagon train plus all of these other logistical support things.
Thompson: Yeah, it’s a lot to get through. And I live in Edmond. I think I’m still in the Cross Timbers where I live. You go a few miles to the west of me, and of course, you get out of that. But if you’ve ever dealt with greenbrier, I mean viney, prickly thorns that are just growing all through the trees. And, I mean, I just walk out in the little greenbelt behind my house, and I think, how in the world would anybody ever get through this? I mean, it is nasty stuff. And, you come out of that, and if you’re not wearing long sleeve shirt, your your arms are just hacked up. So it is it is tough. And I don’t think we have a proper appreciation for how dense it is. I think in Oklahoma we think, oh, we don’t have much dense forests, but you’re trying to work your way through it in a massive train of animals and people. It can be pretty rough.
Twilley: As someone who’s worn wool and tried to get through greenbriers like that, yeah, it is such a pain. And you end up almost on your face more times than you’d like to admit.
Thompson: Well, by by July 14, we’re out of the Cross Timbers, and one of the things, they make contact with a band of 30 Comanches. We’re farther west now. Colonel Dodge ordered a white flag be put up, and, they approached one of the the Comanches that was leading his particular group of people. He has a white buffalo skin on a lance. He approaches the group of dragoons, and they actually greet each other, and they start talking to each other. I thought this was pretty fascinating. In order to communicate, they had a translator that translated from English to Spanish and from Spanish to Shoshoni and to be able to talk to each other. And I heard of similar types of communications with Lewis and Clark when they met several of the different Indian tribes. He had to go through three or four different languages before you could get to somewhere where you could actually, almost communicate to each other. And Colonel Dodge, he talks about hey, we’re on a mission from peace with the United States government. We want to meet with you. We want to meet with your leaders. And, the leader of the Comanche, the Comanche chief was actually on a hunting expedition, but he said, come to my village. And the person that they, end up meeting is a Comanche chief or a Comanche named His-oo-san-chez. I hope I said that right. Correy, did I get even close there?
Twilley: I couldn’t even tell you.
Thompson: But they meet His-oo-san-chez, and, he’s actually a mixed blood Comanche. But he had earned the respect of his tribe because of, like Bob, you said earlier, all of his exploits and bravery and battle. And so they go back. They were invited back to the Comanche camp with about 600 to 800 lodges at the foot of the Wichita, what we now know today as the Wichita Mountains. Although back in those days they assumed that they were part of the Rocky Mountains.
Twilley: You know, you’d made the comment about them being met, with that, basically that white flag made out of the buffalo skin. And if I’m not mistaken, that is one of Catlin’s paintings is that exact moment. So you can actually look that up and see Catlin’s view of that and Dodge at the time wasn’t even wearing his uniform. He was wearing a buckskin uniform. And if you look closely at the, at the painting that Catlin does, you can see Dodge is actually wearing, like a civilian buckskin clothing.
Thompson: Oh, that’s fascinating. Now, Correy, we’re in your neck of the woods now, where we’re meeting the Comanches here and where we’re ultimately going to camp. What do you know about that area and where they would have been?
Twilley: So we think we’ve identified at least, one spot where they were, they ended up at one point. So on Fort Sill proper, on the east side of Fort Sill. So the east side of Highway 44, there’s a small encampment area, what we believe was one of the dragoon encampments, if not the, it was at least one of them. And what we found there. Now, there’s never been any archaeology done, as far as I know, but there’s a small oxbow in the creek over there, and the creek has about 15 foot tall cliffs or banks. And then across the mouth of that oxbow is what you can tell was, was an earthworks that was built. And then we’ve had, two dragoon buttons that were found in that area. So, it it hints now, two dragoon buttons a camp doesn’t make, but it does hint that they were right there in that area. So pretty much from where the mountains are through to where Fort Sill proper is, in that area is where all that contact is being made.
Thompson: And interestingly enough, they’re very hungry by this point. And of course, the the Comanches were more of a nomadic tribe, but, another settlement just near the Comanche camp was the Wichitas, which were more of a farming tribe, and the Wichitas, they will make their way over to the Wichita camp as well, which held about a couple of thousand people, and they will start taking buttons off of their uniforms and trading that for food. And so you kind of wonder if some of those buttons that they found, where were they’d plucked those off to trade them for food at that particular time?
Twilley: It could have been.
Blackburn: And too, most of the food that they would have had would have been corn, squash even, and beans would have been some of the main things they would have added and all very nutritious. And so I’m sure that those hungry soldiers finally had a good meal.
Thompson: Yeah. So by July 18, Comanche guide leads Dodge and 183 men to that Wichita village. They, they end up, talking with the Wichitas. And, on July 22, 1834 was the very first formal negotiations between the Plains Indians and the United States government in American history. And so it’s, it’s a very important day in history about making that particular bit of contact. Correy, how do you put that in historic perspective?
Twilley: It’s kind of interesting. One of the things I was just thinking about while you were saying that is that is still where the army has a lot of interaction with these tribes. We still maintain contact with those same tribes right now at Fort Sill, right where this all began. We have a a large tribal presence in the region, in the area. And, of course, they come onto Fort Sill on a regular basis. And it’s interesting to see that happening 191 years ago. And it’s still happening. Just last weekend, we just had a big program with a lot of the tribes. So, it’s it’s interesting put into that perspective that it’s still going on the same way it did.
Thompson: The, the Wichita chief was actually off on a hunt as well. And so they end up dealing with Waco Chief We-ter-ra-shah-ro and, they, they have negotiations with them. They end up going back to the Comanche camp, and they, Colonel Dodge and the expedition and convince them to come back with them to Fort Gibson. And ultimately, the hope was to go on to Washington, DC and make a formal peace treaty and a peace accord. And so on the day that they’re due to leave, they had 2,000 armed Indians, at that meeting place where they were going to leave, and you end up having the Comanches, the Wichitas, and the Kiowas are going to go back with them to Fort Gibson with their respective delegations, and they’re going to ultimately try to move on to Washington, DC, which, doesn’t really end up happening and we’ll talk about that here in just a few minutes. But, they don’t go back the same way, though, they take a more direct route back. And that’s because of sickness. Ultimately, so many of them are sick, and are in poor health, not only because of the sickness that they’re enduring but because of the food situation, that they take a more direct route back, and they kind of follow the Canadian River all the way back to Norman or present day Norman, and then on up to Fort Gibson. What’s interesting, we just talked about the, we talked about the Cross Timbers is, the Plains Indians were no fan of the Cross Timbers as well. They did not like it one bit. So they get back to Fort Gibson and then, of course, they end up meeting together because of a lack of budget and funding. And really, the Plains Indians delegation was not really thrilled about going to DC anyway. So they end up having meetings. They convene on September 2, 1834. And the three tribes I just mentioned, also the Cherokees, the Muscogees, the Choctaws, the Osages, and the Senecas meet together for about three days. They don’t end up really making any agreements. But, Colonel Dodge believed that it was possible to negotiate a lasting peace between all parties on the frontier, and the commissioner of Indian Affairs said this expedition made a “deep and durable impression on the Plains tribes.” And that was, that was the result of our first expedition on the Plains to the Plains Indians tribes. Any thoughts and wrapping up this particular topic, Bob?
Blackburn: Well, the the lasting impact would be of illusion really at the time because the history of American interaction with Indian tribes. Well, really until the 1870s in Oklahoma, would be one of conflict and changing treaties and taking land. And really, you don’t have much conflict until people start moving out onto the high plains, either going to the California goldfields, you get a series of wars coming out of that, because here come these people moving through the hunting grounds, scaring off the game. And the Indians would have said, this is our land. This is where we hunt. So you get more conflict starting in ’49 and ’50, and then you get the transcontinental railroads being built and conflict and settlers moving farther out. And, you know, by the 1850s, you have the the Five Tribes really trying to control more to the west. And then you get the cowboys with the Chisholm Trail and the Great Western Trail, just more opportunities for this cultural conflict, two different ways of life that are really incompatible. American government coming up with their solution, which was let’s make them good little Americans, make them farmers, make them good little housewives, and give them the infamous farmers, educate them, and maybe they’ll give up their ancient ways. Well, the Indians who had these ancient ways and their own code of honor, their own governmental systems, their own worldviews of spirituality and how they live on the land, there was really no way to find that compromise. And so you get several generations of of warring people between the military and, then after the Civil War, you establish Fort Sill, Fort Reno, Camp Supply and the other forts all the way up to the Canadian frontier and south into Texas, Fort Richardson, and really never found a way to make that work with the Southern Plains Indians. It was always a cultural conflict in on until they were defeated and really discouraged with heat, losing the buffalo herds. Their commissary on on hoof was finally gone. Here in the Southern Plains by really ’76, ’77 the later in the north. But basically it became down to placing them on reservations and taking that land away with a General Allotment Act in 1887; statehood, 1907. And not really until you get back to the 1970s, and we talk about tribal sovereignty, do we start really finding ways to make these two cultures compatible and working together for the common good. But it largely was conflict coming out of the 1830s.
Thompson: And, Correy, we have, that’s the long arc of history for sure. But any progress that might have been made with relations of the Plains tribes was completely obliterated when the Civil War came along.
Twilley: Right. Oh, yeah. And and when you get into the what the Civil War turns into here on the Plains, I mean, it’s it is more brutal here. And I hate to say that with the size of the battles that were out east, but it was more brutal per capita here than anywhere else in the in the United States. And, you know, when, Dr. Bob, you were talking about, you know, kind of the, the wrap up of all this and what this turns into my, my mind is going to how this wraps up for those soldiers. And, you know, Catlin himself eventually ends up getting sick, and he’s sitting in his hospital bed in Fort Gibson, and he mentions, you know, this thing wraps up, in essence, they start making their way back in July and all that stuff. And he’s talking about, you know, one of the things that we we failed to mention in a lot of these is how long it takes them to get back, because they get so spread out, that by September, they’re still rolling in, they’re still trickling in. And he talks about from his hospital bed every single day, he has to listen to the drums and fifes as they play, as they go bury somebody else from this thing. And, you know, there they are still burying people from this expedition as late as October and November.
Thompson: You know, Catlin estimates that as many as 150 soldiers die, four to five soldiers a day, as a result of this expedition. So this was costly for sure. And in fact, Colonel Dodge wrote, “perhaps there has never been in America a campaign that operated more severely on man and horse.”
Twilley: That’s exactly it.
Blackburn: You know, Trait. One thing, we might encourage people to learn more about this, and Correy mentioned Dr. Agnew earlier. That’s Dr. Brad Agnew. Brad earned his PhD with Arrell Gibson at OSU in the 1960s. He’s a little older than me, but not much. But he became a professor at Northeastern State College, later university, in Tahlequah, and Brad wrote the history of Fort Gibson. OU Press published it, still kind of the seminal work, and a lot of people have written about these expeditions. But if people want to look up a book, look up Brad Agnew and the history of Fort Gibson.
Thompson: Well and I will say also, I haven’t had the pleasure of meeting him yet, but much of my research for this podcast came from that book that he wrote on Fort Gibson. I mean, it’s really, really fantastic stuff. And I’ll mention this, and this is like many of our podcasts that we do, but we only scratched the surface in these things. There are so many more details that we don’t get to because we only have an hour or so to talk to you. So there’s a lot that we have to leave out. So I would always encourage our listeners to go and research these topics on their own, because there’s so much detail that we just have to gloss over because we only have a certain amount of time. But my hope is that what we do here inspires you to go learn more. And that’s kind of why we exist at the OHS.
Blackburn: And then to get out. And I would encourage people to go to the Wichita Mountains. That’s where I got married in 1978. Just had a wedding anniversary last week. Number 47.
Thompson: Congratulations.
Blackburn: Thank you. And, when I was asked once during the centennial in 2007, what’s my favorite place in Oklahoma? Of course, I can offend a lot of people by choosing one, but I said it has to be Fort Sill standing in that that old quadrangle with the original fort, you can’t see many manmade improvements from there. There are certain places you can stand where you feel like you’re really on the frontier between the Wichita Mountains, a historical importance, cultural, environmental importance, and then Fort Sill’s place and our history is really unique. So I would encourage people to get out, look ahead and how to get into the historical places at Fort Sill, but then to go out and spend some time in the Wichitas and camp and you I know you’ve camped at Camp Doris before. I have to, it’s just a magical place on on the Southern Plains.
Thompson: Yeah, it’s it’s one of my happy places in Oklahoma for sure as well. I just love it out there. Not so much when it’s 110 out, but the fall and spring are nice.
Twilley: Yeah, and I’ve taken both of my boys out Camp Doris as well, and, you know, and then when you get done, you or, you know, when you wake up in the morning, you go for, you know, quick little nature hike or whatever and there’s, there’s the buffalo out on the plains right there. It’s as close as you can get in some places as what they experienced back then.
Thompson: Yeah. Well, Correy, I just want to thank you for being a part of this podcast and sharing your expertise with us today.
Twilley: Absolutely. It is my pleasure. I love coming out and doing stuff like this, and I love getting to share about the history of not just the army, but Oklahoma history as well.
Blackburn: Well, over my career, I’ve known a lot of young people come along, and, some people just want a job. But Correy, you’re one of those that I call a lifer. You’re in this for life.
Twilley: Absolutely.
Blackburn: You enjoyed it. It’s probably enriched your life. And you served the community well, now through the military, but at our civilian events and really educating people on why history is important to all of us.
Twilley: Well, thank you very much.
Thompson: Well, that’ll wrap us up for today. And, folks, we appreciate you listening. And we can’t wait to come back with you. We’ll be off in July, so take that opportunity to listen to some episodes you might have missed along the way, but we’ll be back with another great episode in August. So thanks and have a great day.
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You’ve been listening to A Very OK Podcast, hosted by Trait Thompson and Dr. Bob Blackburn. The podcast is produced by the Oklahoma Historical Society. Visit us at okhistory.org and find us on social media by searching for @okhistory. I encourage you to purchase a membership to OHS to help us continue our mission to collect, preserve, and share Oklahoma’s unique and fascinating history.
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